Is There Life on Mars?

[Richard Hakluyt]

Voted #3, there is a lot of universe for stuff to happen in.

[celedhring]

#3, for the same reasons others have exposed; it seems impossible to me, given the universe's theoretically infinite size, that there's no other planets like ours out there, but for the same reason the distances are too great for contact being possible.

[Pedrito]

Bandwagoning on #3

L.

[Josquius]

Life is fairly common, multi-cellular life less so, sapient life drastically less so, industrialised sapient life vanishingly so.
Aliens are either gods or cavemen. And since we've seen no signs of bizzare alien-made stellar phenomena the gods, if they exist, must be pretty far away.

[mongers]

We should send a Drake like character to explore this problem.

[Savonarola]

We should send a Drake like character to explore this problem.

I fully support shooting him into space.   

You mean the Canadian rapper, right? 

[sbr]

#3 for the same reason as others.  There is life out there somewhere, but there will never be any contact.

[Siege]

Tonitron, that was one of my favor movies back in the 80's.

About alien life.
I subscribe to the "Universe is teaming with life" theory.
Given enough time, intelligent live will evolve in most environments within the goldilocks.
The more life-friendly the environment the fastest intelligent life will appear in it.

However, I do not think biological life will ever reach FTL technology without first going through the technological singularity and becoming non-biological life.

The theory goes, intelligent life will absolutely always manipulate their environment and become a technological civiliazation.
There is no intelligent life without technology, as in intelligent life will always improve their environment with technological developments as in agriculture, logging, building, and, the end state of technological development is always non-biological immortality (or rather undefined lifespan, since you can still die by war, accidents, self, etc.)

So, since space exploration FTL is an investment heavy-low returns enterprise, it will develop slowly than other techs like information technologies, medicine,  nanotech, etc. Therefore, singularity before FTL, which means any aliens coming here will be completely invisible to us. Another little theory is that a post human civilization, post singularity, will not be motivated to interact with pre-singularity civs since the singularity event will be part of their perception of life, and therefore they will understand that the illumination of the singularity is just a matter of time for all intelligent life, and meeting them pre-singularity will likely add to the chance of self-destruction.

[Brazen]

Voted 1, but somewhere between 1 and 2. I'm with Professor Brian Cox who said the biological process which led to intelligent life on earth was a fluke that is unlikely to have been repeated anywhere else in the universe. With a twinkle, of course.

[Siege]

Voted 1, but somewhere between 1 and 2. I'm with Professor Brian Cox who said the biological process which led to intelligent life on earth was a fluke that is unlikely to have been repeated anywhere else in the universe. With a twinkle, of course.

Please. There is no observational record to support this position.
As far as we know, within our biosphere, life adapts to any environment, no matter how hot or how cold.
Therefore the goldilocks theory.

[Brazen]

Please. There is no observational record to support this position.
As far as we know, within our biosphere, life adapts to any environment, no matter how hot or how cold.
Therefore the goldilocks theory.

That refers to the habitable zone around a star, not the infinitesimal chance that atoms would have formed into simple proteins that self-replicate and eventually form single-celled organisms, and that two of those would have eventually found a way to co-survive and evolve into multicellular organisms.

[Siege]

Please. There is no observational record to support this position.
As far as we know, within our biosphere, life adapts to any environment, no matter how hot or how cold.
Therefore the goldilocks theory.

That refers to the habitable zone around a star, not the infinitesimal chance that atoms would have formed into simple proteins that self-replicate and eventually form single-celled organisms, and that two of those would have eventually found a way to co-survive and evolve into multicellular organisms.

Haha, why do you assume it is an infinitesimal chance?
Besides, as the teaming universe theory goes, the key phrase is "given enough time".
Given enough time, life will happen, and intelligent life will follow.

[Siege]

About civilization, technology, and discovering fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fftF5lh58qE

[Siege]

Because space is the last frontier.

Lights - Ellie Goulding lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaJ4wzDO5fA

[Tonitrus]

Life is fairly common, multi-cellular life less so, sapient life drastically less so, industrialised sapient life vanishingly so.
Aliens are either gods or cavemen. And since we've seen no signs of bizzare alien-made stellar phenomena the gods, if they exist, must be pretty far away.

Dunno why that has to be the case.  Aliens out there could be muddling through an industrial society and dealing with unemployment, shareholder value and killing each other over abortion as well.