God?

[TheBigCheese]

TBC: What if they are actually less than 14,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to one? You can't calculate what you don't really know. Too many variables to just boil it down to "Out of so many planets, at least ONE will eventually host life randomly"; again, "We can only really speculate about this based on partial information when we don't have the full picture."

Ok, but what if the chances are actually greater? That statement holds just as much logic as saying there could be less than a 1.4x10^34 to 1 chance. You are correct in that we don't know enough to state specifically one way or the other that there is life on other planets, but by that logic, we can't state anything until we actually find life, which sort of defeats the purpose of speculation and scientific study.

If I said there was a 99.9% chance of life, it doesn't mean there is, but there's a pretty damn good chance of it. Just because we don't have all of the facts doesn't mean we can't give a speculation.

We have discovered habitable planets in the visible universe. Plenty of them in fact, over 200 billion billion. I'd say that then chances are fairly high if there are that many habitable planets in our visible universe, and that's not even counting the rest of the universe.
http://www.livescience.com/space/090219 ... -life.html
And back in 2007:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... lanet.html

[Spartan X]

...Norris?

thats right.

[Ragdollmaster]

TBC: Perfectly true As for other habitable planets, they seem much farther back in the evolutionary scale since there's no clear sign of life there, just the right conditions for life to exist.

EDIT: Hmm. Think, what if every planet is eventually inhabited? No doubt that life on a single planet could suddenly end in a mass apocalypse. It takes trillions of years for life to fully form, and in that time, fully formed life could be destroyed. We assume Earth to be the first planet to inhabit life, but what about the others? There is evidence of Mars having held water; I heard the other day on the news that it was found on one of a planet's moons that there was an ocean underneath the surface, frozen there by the crust. Interesting... who's to say life on other planets hasn't already happened?

[Jimmy Jazz]

How do you define "Fully formed" life?... any way, that was most likely one of Jupiter's moons, europa.

[TheBigCheese]

Oh ok.

I was talking about any kind of life, micro-organism to human.

Intelligent life is whole different story, see the Francis Drake Equation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

[NinjaRabbits]

Has anyone ever taken the time to consider that maybe the reson the universe is so big, is because it needs to be so it keeps the Earth is balance?

(just one of my stupid thought, yes it it.... )

[invertin]

I was just saying that you don't even seem to be considering that possibility, that's all.

Infinite Possibilities + Infinite Time != Every Possibility Occurring

This I disagree with.

Imagine for a second a machine that paints circles. (Just run with it)

Every time it paints the circle slightly differently.

Now, imagine that it continues to paint the circles for an infinite amount of time.

At some point it HAS to have done every possible design ever and paint a circle exactly the same as another circle.

But that doesn't just mean that every possibility has happened, because it still has an infinite amount of circles to paint and an infinite amount of time to do it in.

What I'm trying to say here is that, if the universe does last forever, not only will every possibility happen, but every single possibility will happen an infinite amount of times.

[TheBigCheese]

I was just saying that you don't even seem to be considering that possibility, that's all.

Infinite Possibilities + Infinite Time != Every Possibility Occurring

This I disagree with.

Imagine for a second a machine that paints circles. (Just run with it)

Every time it paints the circle slightly differently.

Now, imagine that it continues to paint the circles for an infinite amount of time.

At some point it HAS to have done every possible design ever and paint a circle exactly the same as another circle.

But that doesn't just mean that every possibility has happened, because it still has an infinite amount of circles to paint and an infinite amount of time to do it in.

What I'm trying to say here is that, if the universe does last forever, not only will every possibility happen, but every single possibility will happen an infinite amount of times.

That makes sense, but light particles are emitted to the dark depths of space constantly. How will that exact particle manage to make it back to the star it was emitted from before the star becomes a supernova?

[Ragdollmaster]

invertin: Your illustration points out "every design ever"- you can't have a definite number of designs if there are infinite designs, hurfderf. That's the point of "infinite possibilities" in my equation. You more or less replaced infinite with "large amount that will eventually be achieved"; you can never fulfill infinite possibilities, just like you can't reach the end of an infinite line. So yes, if there were limited possibilities, eventually every one would fold out over time; but since there isn't a finite amount of possibilities, which automatically means there are infinite possibilities, it is not necessary for all of them to eventually happen. But enough speculation about irrational numbers. And anyways, nature seems to do a good job with unique things that don't repeat themselves (snowflakes, DNA, handprints/iris prints, etc)

[invertin]

I see your point, so I'll change what I disagree with.

I disagree with the infinite amount of possibilites part.

Considering that there are a limited number of elements, there must be a limited amount of compounds, and there must be a limited amount of mixtures of compounds and elements. And since atoms can't just appear out of nothing, everything has to fit together the same way it has before one way or another at some point in reality. Assuming it lasts forever.

Which I personally don't but I'm playing along for the sake of debate.

[Ragdollmaster]

Well of course some things will happen more than once, but it really depends on your interpretation. Take water, for instance. Water in its purest form is two hydrogen atoms bonded with an oxygen atom, or as many people know it, H20. There are many subdivisions of water like salt water, or "brackish" water that is formed in an estuary; but in terms of chemical composition, no two cubic feet of water are the same. Maybe one has an extra atom of salt, or maybe one is slightly warmer and therefore has more H20 atoms in it; the point is, it depends on how specific you want to go. On a macroscopic level, many things will happen that seem the same, but the farther down you go until you hit sub-atomic observation, you'll end up noticing more differences.

[invertin]

Infinite seems like such a simple concept but it's so difficult to grasp when you really think about the consequences of it.

Infact it kind of makes my head hurt when I think about it like that.

[Ragdollmaster]

Indeed :<

[invertin]

What the hell is that.

It has red cacti sticking out of it's face.

[Jimmy Jazz]

Camel spider i think, the supposed way it got its name was it ate Camels. well... dead Camels.