Life as we define it, most probably... but it wouldn't have been created (only) since it has been evolving here from total emptiness through multiple genetic mutations. Conditions may differ but i doubt God stopped at Earth to provide highly diversified "environments" in this Universe -- we're far from still being in Eden if you wanna get religious or mythologic about the issue of extra-terrestrial life potential.

Creationism is a philosophy and for some people - a belief, Scientology is yet again another opinion that gathers the sheep for domestication while others speak of facts and/or demonstrable evidence.

It's simply arrogant to consider ourselves unique or the exclusive representation of intelligence by somehow conscious reasonings based on assumptions or deductions. Human brain might be a miracle of odds beyond comprehension, it's still NOT as sophisticated as Dolphins (considering THEIR fishlike situation, btw), for example.

If mortality is our burden, survival of the fittest made it all the more evident; You are dust and you will return to dust. They are (insert your favorite chemical, biological, physical manifestation of strange molecular combinations here as you please) and they will return to (sic).

And if the Mayan could point at the center of the galaxy with extreme accuracy centuries before Galileo or Copernic calculated some orbital figures for the "Church" to approve, what is the true origin of knowledge and, as a result, truth?

Another example of mysterious secrets kept away from the common man. In a Pyramid, during the Dark Ages and in more recent espionage circles for political agendas.

If i knew about Frank Drake's formula when i was trying to prove that We are NOT alone for a thesis (statistical analysis in maximized or optimal computational environments -- sort of virtualization about AI potentials based on speculative conditions, btw) in '00, i think i deserve being perceived as being logic or respected for opinions, buddy.

I realized back then that i was being outrunned & outgunned by tons of books on the subject and by doctorate holders safely tucked in their own rational activities. Imagine the summary nightmares i had to go through to put some order in that superb chaos.

The language barrier strikes again, i guess.

Why else do you think we move Oil by cargo or pipelines?

Or use robotic probes to study the neighborhood?

We are a bunch of explorers, i give us less than 50,000 more years to own and operate more than ONE Earth -- minimal. Be it far away or close enough to host populations or yet again, more curious & intelligent explorers. At that rate we're bound to find equal or superior lifeforms.

Problem is, you're stuck in a loop believing Kurzweil as being the ultimate truth bearer. I claim he or anyone else (including me) aren't by a fair chunk of rational deductions based on *CURRENT* means & known facts.

Mask themselves? Cowards might be a better word, bet it a cunning way to conquer_invade_eliminate *us* or not.

The truly funny bit is, if LIFE is so difficult to create, then why is there such an immense variety and diversity of it on the planet we called Earth?

Did Earth actually get all the building blocks and then there was no more left for anywhere else in the Universe?

When Humans can manipulate Time/Space and or Wormholes, then we will begin to truly explore the vastness of the Universe.

Hopefully, the power that certainly accompanies such an achievement doesn't ultimately spell Mankinds own Doom.

Look what little ole Nuclear Fission almost did.

Life is so abundant here because it only takes one spark. Everything on Earth evolved from one base organism, and once that organism was created (however it happened) diversity was sure to happen.

Also, FTL travel in the normal sense is impossible. The only way it could happen was if we used wormholes, and so far, we have never observed one. According to Einsteins equations, they are possible, we just haven;t found one yet. Also, we would have to construct a craft capable of withstanding the emmense pressure they would be under. And I don't mean wormholes as in black holes. Once you get to the center, the force ripping at you is pratically infinite. I mean a different kind of wormhole, a fold in spacetime, something we haven't found yet.

Yeah sorry I didn't mean to be offensive.  I took courses in logic as part of my comp sci degree, so I was referring to proof in the formal sense.  I wouldn't be arguing with you if I didn't think you had a strong point!  In any case your thesis sounds interesting.  Is it published somewhere?  I took a special interest in artificial intelligence and learning algorithm design as part of my undergrad program.

And yes, you're right too that we can't possibly know what the future holds.  I put faith in the singularity concept because it follows from principles of evolution, namely competition, random variation, and selection through scarcity.  In order for there not to be a singularity event, we would have to forsake our biological imperatives for something else.. an occurance I deem unlikely given current events.  You'll also note that 3 of the 4 scenarios I presented support the existance of alien life more advanced than us.  Only one scenario, the least likely, suggests we're alone or most advanced.  So yes, I agree there is alien life.  Kurzweil believes we are alone, but his main point concerning extraterrestrial life is that we are very very unlikely to discover advanced alien life until it wants us to.. that is to say, SETI will fail.

I would only have repeated a number of already published "items".  I did make a PPT file for a quick summary at the time... but it's buried deep on an old PC or some CD gathering dust in a drawer somewhere. MS doesn't make backward compatibilty any easier and newest PowerPoint viewers never could load it last i checked some 5 five years ago from a dreamy mood swing.

Oh, but he's also right in that "situation"; it's only that the parameters and model are everchanging. I doubt that in a decade or more, we'll have less to work with. As any good scientific quest can demonstrate.

We simply have hypothesis, at the moment.

Where is proof for evolution?   I was not presented with any proof when I was in college; maybe you can help me out.

Ah now here's a topic I know a little about

Evolution in a nutshell:  Resources are scarce.  Self replicating matter will replicate to use up all possible resources.  When there are not enough resources in a given area to support the amount of matter (life) that wants to duplicate, some of the organisms will be unable to do so.  If every individual in the entire population was identical, selection concerning who dies off would depend only on the placement of resources.  However, the genetic code that makes up all life is susceptible to variation by a number of means.  This means that there is some minor variation among individuals in the population.  Certain mutations will randomly happen to be beneficial to getting resources, so individual organisms posessing those randomly beneficial mutations will be more likely to duplicate themselves.  In this way, there is a higher percentage of the randomly beneficial "gene" in the next generation than the one before it.  Over time, the entire population without the successful gene will die out and be replaced by the new, genetically adapted variant.

The reality is rather more complex, but you'd have to read a textbook for that.  The theory of evolution can be easily demonstrated through simulation, examination of fossil records, experimentation through selection on controlled populations, and on observation of wild populations.  The theory of evolution is a description of a process.  It cannot and does not attempt to explain how the process began, i.e. how life got started is outside the realm of evolution.  Evolution is only concerned with what happens once self replicating matter exists.

Actually by narrowing the facbric of spacetime in front of a ship and widening spacetime behind it you can make an FTL drive.

The fossil records shows evolution. But more recently and importantly DNA shows how creatures have evolved. I believe sponges or coral have been shown genetically to be one of the first multicelled creatures that evolved into all the others.

Cylinder *could* even create a time bending effect as speculated by Frank Tipler...

I'd also recommend a closer look at Hawking's causality conjecture though.

Basically, it's not energy consumption but if speed is stable enough to provide point to point precision during space "opening" calibrations.

Richter scale kinda stuff, the exponential growth near FTL is an accidental singularity (not of the technological Kurzweil kind, btw ) threshold which must be kept ahead (of whatever dares traveling to THAT point) long enough to sneek in at the right moment (which is infinitely static, btw) or else you'd be crushed like a split two dimensional matter TO infinity measures.

Risky, you say. Pffftttt, think again.

According to BlackHoling dynamics, there's no exit. UNLESS - you bounce off fast enough to catch your own past -- perpetually.

Hold it, it's more complex even.

You're out safely. You must reproduce that space "opening" calibration from the guess of a resulting point target blank ALREADY in the future. Gimme a crystal ball please, i'm lucky but not that much.

Otherwise, there's always good'ol velocity and gravity pulls in a vacuum. Experimentally impossible to produce in this Universe, btw.

Why is everybody found of the word IMPOSSIBLE? IS it because we humans in the year 2009 know of EVERYTHING? Einsteins theries are all true and will never ever be modified at all? He got it all true in 1912?

There is nothing left to be discovered in the univers that can modify that theory at all? I wonder if that's what they thought when they said the earth was flat....

Well if God is all-knowing then he certainly wouldn't create just one oasis of life in the universe.  Hmm, sometime in the future the dominant species on this planet will build nuclear weapons and make the whole ecosystem go out of whack with global warming.  Yeah, I think I'll go and work in the sandbox a bit more, over there.  He might have faith in us to overcome these trials we keep inventing for ourselves, but he knows what the odds are so it's not a bad idea to have a Plan B.

Cuz it's the exact opposite of possible - only. Seriously, the term is that obvious to us now but not necessarily foverer.

As imagination proved it many times over; btw, Einstein was wrong by his own admission on the elusive equation (sort of missing a provable factor, IIRC) and died trying to find THE solution. Relativity (the non-Law one in fact) was a simple stepping stone, AFAIC.

I disagree; fossil records show otherwise.  Fossil record show stages instead of gradient.  Evolution would be supported by gradient.  Also our ecosystem is in equlibrium instead of constanly "evolving" with some species dominating others.  I think its more about the ecosystem as a whole than individual species.  In fact the species that are already extinct are not necessarily less fit.  Prehistoric organisms are arguably more fit than the organisms that are still around today. 

Don't believe me?  I went to dictionary.com and look up evolution; here is at the bottom of the page:

Our Living Language  : Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection assumed that tiny adaptations occur in organisms constantly over millions of years. Gradually, a new species develops that is distinct from its ancestors. In the 1970s, however, biologists Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed that evolution by natural selection may not have been such a smooth and consistent process. Based on fossils from around the world that showed the abrupt appearance of new species, Eldridge and Gould suggested that evolution is better described through punctuated equilibrium. That is, for long periods of time species remain virtually unchanged, not even gradually adapting. They are in equilibrium, in balance with the environment. But when confronted with environmental challenges—sudden climate change, for example—organisms adapt quite quickly, perhaps in only a few thousand years. These active periods are punctuations, after which a new equilibrium exists and species remain stable until the next punctuation.

What that means?  They know that Darwin's theory contradicts what data we are able to gather.  They try to salvage that by shortening the time, but that means instead of evolve through long periods of time, now it has to happen in a hurry.  Evolution has not been reproduced nor observed (changing from one specie to another).  If evolution can't be observed in microorganism, how do you suppose it happened with creatures that has many cells?  If this is a puzzle, there are too many missing pieces.