We are not alone?

Billions of suns ? there is 300 billion suns in our galaxie alone and there is 100 billion galaxies even if there was only 3 planets per sun it a unimaginable amount and we are really that special , look at life on this planet alone life thrives in places that would kill us in milli seconds and vice versa so get your head away from life having to be humanoid
 
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I think it's only sci-if writers and producers that tend to think of alien life as essentially humanoid and that's probably because it makes filming so much easier. However , some scientists do suggest we would share some characteristics with an advanced alien life form so intelligent life may be humanoid. Either way humanoid or blob, life that has evolved a little way from microbial will be easier to identify at the Stella distances we are looking at.
300billion still counts as billions doesn't it ?
 
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Can someone explain?

They say the universe is 14 billion years old (since big bang) because the farthest object we can detect is 14 billion light years away.

If that is the case, how has that object had time to get there and -

what precludes there being more distant objects whose light/radio waves have not yet reached us?
 
I'm sure there must be life elsewhere in the Universe but I'm not convinced there is anything similar to Human life or even intelligent life. I base that on the fact that there are billions and billions of planets out there similar to Earth and that billions of those planets formed and stabilised several billion years before the Earth. Therefore the aliens have got several billion years development time on us. In our fairly short time we've developed to the point where we can travel in space, travel to our Moon and send and detect radio signals across millions and millions of miles of space. Not that much really but not bad in the relatively short period of time. But remember the aliens have been doing the exact same thing for several billion years so they're going to be much better at it than us. So, my question is, where are they? Why haven't we heard from them? We've been monitoring space for years now and have never picked up one tiny little signal that wasn't natural.
 
But remember the aliens have been doing the exact same thing for several billion years so they're going to be much better at it than us. So, my question is, where are they? Why haven't we heard from them? We've been monitoring space for years now and have never picked up one tiny little signal that wasn't natural.
You must conclude that they are more than n light years away.

where n is the number of years they have been transmitting.
 
I'm sure there must be life elsewhere in the Universe. I base that on the fact that there are billions and billions of planets out there similar to Earth.
But this reasoning overlooks the fact that the chances of creating life at all are billions and billions to one... we may well be the only place that won the lottery.
 
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But remember the aliens have been doing the exact same thing for several billion years so they're going to be much better at it than us. So, my question is, where are they? Why haven't we heard from them? We've been monitoring space for years now and have never picked up one tiny little signal that wasn't natural.
You must conclude that they are more than n light years away.

where n is the number of years they have been transmitting.
A signal sent into space 5 or 6 billion years ago would have crossed half the Universe by now. So either all the aliens happen to live more than 6 billion light years away or they aren't sending any signals. Or of course there may not be any.
 
But if the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, any signals may be moving towards us as fast as the emitting object is moving away from us. Thus those signals could be relatively stationary, or even becoming further away.

Incidentally, the big bang happened (or so they say) about 13 billion years ago. So simplistically theoretically, the universe would have a radius of 13 billion light years, not a diameter of 13 billion light years.
 
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But if the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, any signals may be moving towards us as fast as the emitting object is moving away from us. Thus those signals could be relatively stationary, or even becoming further away.

I thought that the speed of light was a constant (in a vacuum), and therefore independent of the speed of the emitting source.
 
Roughly, 186,000 miles per second.
However, you have to take into account other anomalies. A black hole for example, the gravity is so high it can trap light - hence it being black, as no light can escape. The progress of the light could be slowed down en route.
 
But if the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, any signals may be moving towards us as fast as the emitting object is moving away from us. Thus those signals could be relatively stationary, or even becoming further away.

I thought that the speed of light was a constant (in a vacuum), and therefore independent of the speed of the emitting source.
Strictly speaking, yes. Perhaps I didn't phrase it quite as accurately as I should. Perhaps it would have been better to say we could be travelling away faster than the electromagnetic wave is travelling towards us. And an object cannot travel faster than the speed of light, but the universe is not an object in that sense, so it doesn't have to obey those laws, or so they tell me.
The observable universe, or if you like our furthest limit of vision in the universe, is becoming less, not more, due to the expansion of the universe.

Also, it's taken us 13 billion years to evolve into what we are today, since the big bang. Any other potential life force out there has had no longer to evolve than that 13 billion years.
Add into that mix the potential bending of electromagnetic waves, and other anomalies, as suggested by fender, and the potential for detection or communication reduces.

So theoretically, there may be "klingons on the starboard bow" but we may never be able to communicate, detect their presence, or they ours.
 
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But if the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, any signals may be moving towards us as fast as the emitting object is moving away from us. Thus those signals could be relatively stationary, or even becoming further away.

I thought that the speed of light was a constant (in a vacuum), and therefore independent of the speed of the emitting source.
Strictly speaking, yes. Perhaps I didn't phrase it quite as accurately as I should. Perhaps it would have been better to say we could be travelling away faster than the electromagnetic wave is travelling towards us. And an object cannot travel faster than the speed of light, but the universe is not an object in that sense, so it doesn't have to obey those laws, or so they tell me.
The observable universe, or if you like our furthest limit of vision in the universe, is becoming less, not more, due to the expansion of the universe.

Also, it's taken us 13 billion years to evolve into what we are today, since the big bang. Any other potential life force out there has had no longer to evolve than that 13 billion years.
Add into that mix the potential bending of electromagnetic waves, and other anomalies, as suggested by fender, and the potential for detection or communication reduces.

So theoretically, there may be "klingons on the starboard bow" but we may never be able to communicate, detect their presence, or they ours.
Are you saying the light from the headlight of a fast car is travelling at the speed of light PLUS the speed of the fast car?
 
But if the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, any signals may be moving towards us as fast as the emitting object is moving away from us. Thus those signals could be relatively stationary, or even becoming further away.

I thought that the speed of light was a constant (in a vacuum), and therefore independent of the speed of the emitting source.
Strictly speaking, yes. Perhaps I didn't phrase it quite as accurately as I should. Perhaps it would have been better to say we could be travelling away faster than the electromagnetic wave is travelling towards us. And an object cannot travel faster than the speed of light, but the universe is not an object in that sense, so it doesn't have to obey those laws, or so they tell me.
The observable universe, or if you like our furthest limit of vision in the universe, is becoming less, not more, due to the expansion of the universe.

Also, it's taken us 13 billion years to evolve into what we are today, since the big bang. Any other potential life force out there has had no longer to evolve than that 13 billion years.
Add into that mix the potential bending of electromagnetic waves, and other anomalies, as suggested by fender, and the potential for detection or communication reduces.

So theoretically, there may be "klingons on the starboard bow" but we may never be able to communicate, detect their presence, or they ours.
Are you saying the light from the headlight of a fast car is travelling at the speed of light PLUS the speed of the fast car?
No. I didn't say it or infer it. Light travels at the speed of light or slower, never faster.
 
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