Extraterrestrials.

I am going to start this discussion as always with a few simple questions, and everyone can go from there.
I am choosing not to show my opinion as of yet to stop my influence on the resulting responses. Personally, I'd suggest you all to respond before reading other users' posts and then edit your post with quotes if you wish to agree or debate.

Is there life beyond Earth?
How close is it?
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.
Anything else?
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)

 

[kill dank]

Opinion based, remember

Is there life beyond Earth?
Most Certainly


How close is it?
Too far to reach in our lifetimes via the current methods of transportation.


How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.

It depends on the beings. If they are intelligent, we will probably just rendezvous with them on a regular basis like we have since the days of Eisenhower. If not intelligent, or if hostile, depending on their level of technology a war of the worlds could go in either parties favor

Anything else?
God damn. Everything about them is so interesting that I have to keep myself from typing too much

What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor).

Well, I feel that if they are more advanced than us, they won't be very large or physically strong beings. They will probably have developed massive brains and extremely sensitive input such as taste, touch, feel, and any other things they have evolved to be able to do naturally. Maybe they can see heat and gamma rays too. Their legs, if they have any, would be gimpy and useless as the species has evolved beyond the need to transport oneself.

So much more crazy shit I can come up with. I should be like a science fiction writer or something where I can make use of my creativity.

 

[MohtasaUnique]

Is there life beyond Earth?
How close is it?
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.
Anything else?
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)

I don't believe so. People say it's infinitely possible since the universe is so vast, but our living situation is also absolutely unique. The circumstances the earth is in is unique in an infinite array of possibilities (such as distance from their star, planet composition, atmosphere, debris in their galaxy, presence of an oort cloud, presence of electromagnetic fields to protect from the star, the list goes on and on). So, imo, inifite possibility cancels out the infinite impossibility for a similar "earth" like planet

I don't now what you mean by "how close is it"... how close is the supposed inhabited planet? According to what I said above, there's no such planet. How close are we to finding out whether it's possible for life to exist somewhere else? No where near, since we're only just-- in the last few years-- finding out how to find planets by detecting absolute minute changes in starlight as a planet passes between us and the star.

Humanity as a whole would, as all alien encounters have played out in history (alien meaning earthly entities who have never met before, I.E. native americans and Spaniards/europeans), possibly have to defend for their lives as the dominant society begins colonization. If we discover them from afar, I'd say we'd then play neighborhood stalker and watch them as much as we possibly can, since we're no where near traveling far enough to reach another galaxy.

How they'd look would depend on their planet's conditions. If they live on a planet that's bountiful in water (more so than ours, I mean) they'd probably look like fish people... if they live on a rocky planet, they may have either wings or cliff-climbing accommodations.. Who knows, evolution is fickle.

 

[Coinshare]

Is there life beyond Earth?
How close is it?
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.


There probably is but I can't really prove it with a 100% solid fact.

We wouldn't know how close it is.

If the Gov't found out, they would probably hide it from the rest of the world like they do with the majority of things. Society would probably be frightened if they found out before the Gov't did, or if the Gov't actually told us. We'd turn on our self-defense mode.

 

[RussianVillain]

Is there life beyond Earth?
How close is it?
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.
Anything else?
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)

I believe there is. The universe is big. There would be no reason to have a huge universe without other life.
Especially when life is just more then a living being. It can be a plant, or an orgnism.

I believe it is close, but travel wise, it would take use hundreds of years to reach. I don't think life is nearby, but it is in other galaxies.

I believe we will try to manipulate them. Befriend them, then use them for tests, steal their weapons and technology to advance out own. The downfall of Earth will be by us, seeing as how greedy the government is, they won't want to co-exist. Our government will want to dominate, and that's all they will try to accomplish.

I don't know what they would look like, they could look similar to use, or they could be different. They could be green, or they could look like the aliens from Independance Day.

Russian

 

[N01s PeRfecT]

Is there life beyond Earth?
How close is it?
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.
Anything else?
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)

Anyone who's opened a high level physics book up in their life time knows that the statistics show that it's almost impossible for earth to be the only planet harbouring life.

As for how humanity would handle the situation of discovering life- it probably wouldn't change much at all. If life was discovered, it would probably be outside of our solar system as our current know planets have been examined and studied to an end with no know extraterrestrial life forms. There may be a sudden increase in ET related movies, TV series and other social media items.

If I had to guess what kind of life would be discovered first, I would put my money on some form of bacteria, but that's just me.

^_^

 

[Herman Li]

Is there life beyond Earth? I'd say so, yes.
How close is it? I don't know. They could be millions of lightyears away or on Earth right now.
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc. It extremely depends on our current state on Earth or how the aliens are. What kind of aliens are we talking about?
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor) Something semi-similar to us. IF they require our basic resources to survive, and need a similar environment, etc., they might look something close to what we look like. Depends what aliens again

 

[lawlbud]

An Infinite Question

 

[Onemind]

Is there life beyond Earth? Well Obviously
How close is it? Closer than you think. They are the actual rulers of this earth and the ones who pull all the strings. We are just puppets. Many are able to shapeshift and you can say that the malevolent aliens are agents of the New World Order and have been warring against the forces of Light for many years. Aliens are Interdimensional just like us. We have been blinded to the GreAt Beyond due to Indoctrination by Both Science and Religion.
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc. Well we would have no choice to but befriend them because they have technology that could already wipe this whole planet out. Like us humans, there are beneolent and malevolent alien races.
Anything else? There is an Alien race called the Annunaki who have genetically modified the DNA of man. Our soul was created by a perfect God. Since our bodies are imperfect, they were genetically modified by the Annunaki. Many historical texts prove this, like the Bible in Genesis.
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)
There are Reptillian Aliens and Humanoid Aliens as well. The possibilities are actually Infinite.

 

[Herman Li]

Is there life beyond Earth? Well Obviously
How close is it? Closer than you think. They are the actual rulers of this earth and the ones who pull all the strings. We are just puppets. Many are able to shapeshift and you can say that the malevolent aliens are agents of the New World Order and have been warring against the forces of Light for many years. Aliens are Interdimensional just like us. We have been blinded to the GreAt Beyond due to Indoctrination by Both Science and Religion.
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc. Well we would have no choice to but befriend them because they have technology that could already wipe this whole planet out. Like us humans, there are beneolent and malevolent alien races.
Anything else? There is an Alien race called the Annunaki who have genetically modified the DNA of man. Our soul was created by a perfect God. Since our bodies are imperfect, they were genetically modified by the Annunaki. Many historical texts prove this, like the Bible in Genesis.
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)
There are Reptillian Aliens and Humanoid Aliens as well. The possibilities are actually Infinite.

There is some truth to what this man is saying, though I'm not sure if I want to go directly far as to say we're being, without a doubt, controlled by Reptilians.

The only proof for reptilians I see nowadays are "SORTA KINDA REPTILIANISH EYES" in a blurry youtube video of a news channel. Like, wat. I'll keep an open mind though.

 

[hiei-warrior]

Is there life beyond Earth?

There has to be. The jury is still out on whether they are more advanced than us.

How close is it?

Obviously they are far from our planet, or we would have made contact already.

How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.

It's quite unpredictable, since one would have to know the nature of these 'aliens' to comment on how humanity might handle the encounter. With the advent of a new generation, I doubt we will be going into war with them after first contact.

Anything else?
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)

It would be humorous, to say the least, if they looked like Little Green Men lol.

 

[malakadang]

The probability of there being life outside Earth FAR outweighs the probability of us being in the exclusive club. The Drake equation often offers an avenue for discussion regarding this matter. It calculates that there should be 10~ intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. Disregarding that the Drake equation may be based on conjecture, I'll show you guys that believing that we are the only lifeforms in the Universe is almost madness:

There are (rounded down) 100 BILLION GALAXIES in the Universe. The Milky Way is our galaxy. In those 100 bn Galaxies, there are on average 100 BILLION STARS (rounded down, heavily) per galaxy. For the sake of ease and being conservative, let's assume that on average that there is 1 planet orbiting each star.

So, let's do the math!

100,000,000,000 * 100,000,000,000 * 1 = 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
For those non-believers who haven't done the math, this number is 10 sextillion.

Now obviously the first objection is that but not all planets are capable of housing life. Astute observation! Let's add an extra probability function.

What number should this be? We'll try a few common numbers.

1 Million.
1 Billion.
1 Trillion.

10 sextillion / 1million = 10,000,000,000,000,000
10 sextillion / 1billion = 10,000,000,000,000
10 sextillion / 1trillion = 10,000,000,000

Subscribe to whichever probability you would like to add into the equation, I think the numbers do the talking. Oh, I forgot to mention this is a conservative estimate based on current knowledge.


We'll assume for the sake of argument that one agrees with the Drake Equations calculation of approximately 10 intelligent civilizations for our galaxy. We'll also assume that the Earth is in the center of our galaxy (for easy working). We'll also assume that the Milky Way is flat. (Like a piece of paper)

The diameter of the Universe has been estimated to be 100,000 light years across, BUT let's assume that the universe is like a piece of string, and we'll even treat it like a number line.

If there are 10 intelligent civilizations, including Earth, then 100,000 / 10 = 10,000 light years. This is a VERY VERY conservative approximation of the hypothetical distance between the next potential intelligent civilization (We've neglected unintelligent civilizations).

Current physics has taught us that it is IMPOSSIBLE to travel past the speed of light within space. However, we'll assume yet again that these intelligent civilizations are so smart that they can travel at the speed of light, 299 792 458 m / s. It would take them 10,000 light years to reach us. To put this into context, they could travel from the Earth to the Sun in 8 minutes.

So, just let this sit with you. If there are intelligent civilizations capable of travelling at the speed of light, the chance of them reaching Earth are virtually impossible.

How would humanity handle it? Chaos. It would be a huge wake up call and some people probably wouldn't be able to accept it.

What would they look like? Well, if you follow evolutionary theory they'd develop to suit their surroundings. So, I guess be creative and change the looks of us.

That concludes my essay =,=

 

[Lord LaLa]

Is there life beyond Earth?
In my opinion, most likely.

How close is it?
That we will more than likely never know in our lifetime.

How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.
I honesly believe it would be like "The day the earth stood still" film, shoot first and ask questions later due to the fact of our history of wiping out colonisations so we can colonise there. We would more than likely believe if they visited us then they would be hostile automaticaly because of our previous history.

What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)

That i could not answer, it all depends on their world and the evolution, i would like to believe they would be fairly like humans but with slight differences such as skin color hair color e.t.c.

 

Amazing posts by everyone.
Malakadang yours was great, could win an award for that persuasion

 

[Lym]

There can be endless possibilities in my opinion, I think there are other life forms that aren't on our planet.. Yes
Life forms don't necessarily have to be physical beings.

There are many different types of planets. A life form is habited on a planet it would be adjusted to it's surroundings.
A planet that's made of gas. Who's to say there is no life on it? We can't find out if there is or not because of the radiation that we can't survive through.

How would society react? I believe everyone would be afraid of the idea.
but honestly, I don't think we'll ever have aliens on our planet due to the surroundings and how they would react to it.. Just like how we would react on gas planets, and extremely hot planets.

 

What I think:
Is there life beyond Earth?
Yes, they've already found plants in our own galaxy, plants are what changed our atmosphere so humans were eventually able to survive, there are older galaxies than ours so there has to be life somewhere..

How close is it?
How am I supposed to know?

How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them?
Most likely the government would hide it.

Anything else?
No

What would they look like?
I wouldn't know.


They're my opinions.

 

[Herman Li]

The Drake Equation is a terrible "probability equation" to figure out how what it's supposed to figure out.

 

[Noam]

Is there life beyond Earth? Definitely. There is plenty of life, simply as a matter of chance (The universe is infinitely large. Therefor, anything that happens once must happen again). But we will never be able to contact it.
How close is it?
Minimum 2 million light years. Probably several billion light years, however.
How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.
If they are intelligent, Humans will kill them all, or most of them, until alien rights organizations intervene.
If they are unintelligent, humans will kill alot more of them, until extraterrestrial animal's rights organizations intervene. - More likely to intervene than in above situation.
Either way, there is no way the aliens will win.
Anything else?
No.
What would they look like? (This one is obviously just for humor)
IDK. They will look Different in a way dependent on their planet's structures and evolutionary requirements.

 

[SexayMistahBee]

Is there life beyond Earth?
I would be close minded to deny it.

How close is it?
It maybe be closer than we think, like on a local planet in our solar system as bacteria. We haven't done much searching

How would humanity, as a whole, handle our encounter with them? Feel free to be specific based on country, etc.
I'm sure that most countries would try to overpower them for their resources, as they are not human and thus would not have human rights.

Anything else?
What would they look like?
I guess that it depends on their environments. Heck, they might even have green skin to photosynthesize!