the uneducated and ignorant are foolish enough to believe the crap that is one side of a moot argument.
it goes like this.
IF we on earth managed to reside on a habitable planet exactly the right distance from the closest sun, and orbiting it to support life, then since there's billions of stars and therefore likely trillions and zillions of other planets, then the likelihood of finding another should be high. - right?
well thats the position most people get to hear.
The full story is this...
There is another conveniently forgotten dimension of the equation and that is time. We need to find (within our time of survival), another planet that is habitable, and it is habitable at the exact same time that ours is. This is like finding the life conditions on a stop watch and managint to stop it to the exactr 1/100th or 1/1000th of a second.
Since we've been around as an intelligent form for thousands of years, and at a level where we can globally communicate for only hundreds, and the universe has been around for 14 billion years, then in terms of a day, we've been around for 7 nanoseconds.
suppose there was habitable planets since the birth of the universe. They couldve lasted for millions of years in intelligent form and unless they are alive during the very same 7 nanoseconds that we are, we wont find them.
so despite having zillions of planets to look at, we only have a tiny little amount of time to find them alive.
That makes the likelihood much much lower- almost zero actually.
Noe the next thing relates to the DRAKE equation. It is- in order to find intelligent life we need to be able to look in the right direction, a tthe right time, and it has to be discoverable. All very unlikely figures.
The final factor is the paradox that is : something that is virtually infinitely large is virtually infinitely small. i.e. when something is so large, it is at the same time so small. in other words because the universe is so large, all the likelihoods become so unlikely that it is absolutely nothing.
youd have a better chanace of winning the lottery.
Our best bet is that someone else will find us...they couldve been around much longer in intelligent form ans be able to search much more thoroughly and over greater distances- perhaps even dimensions.
So to summarise- the chance that we will find alien lifeforms- the intelligent type- in our lifetime and for the next thousands of years- if we survive- is completely zero.
Maybe if we survive for another million years then itll be possible. For now its like an ancient egyptian suddenly inventing the internet..
hope this helps..
