*espi

@wj we are like children seeking answers, so maybe we can get some of those answers from a higher developed life, or maybe that life unites people on earth simply by existing and we actually get into space. The only bad thing from alien contact is if the aliens want to control us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_terrestrial_exoplanet_candidates

many generation will have come and gone, before we get to any of these

the milky way is one of the newer galaxy's known. If thats true, we are definitely not on the top of anything, as others would have had millions of years to develop further

@ssorenn - I agree with you there. My grandkids probably won't see it, but it'll happen. I think you'll find this link pretty cool, if you haven't gone through it already.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3psmom/we_are_nasa_scientists_looking_for_habitable/

Goldy, i fully believe its all out there. The OP asked why we have not seen anything substantial yet. The day will come, whether its breaking the speed of light barrier, or wormhole tech, or something else

@wj and Espi - Maybe I'm more pessimistic than that. Better safe than sorry. Especially since we only have one planet we all live on. Once we start creating colonies, we can get a bit more risky.

"4. Based on this, there should be lots of opportunities for life in the Milky Way galaxy. Where are all the aliens?"

well we got #fuckghug :))

haha, I know ssorenn. I just tend to get distracted from the OP.

I believe we're in one of three scenarios.

1) There's some "boundary" where most civilizations ultimately fail. Perhaps multiple boundaries, the first of which being the evolution of intelligent life. The second of which could be some unknown, where most civilizations destroy themselves (question is, have we passed it already?). This could lead to very few lifeforms capable of interstellar travel.

2) Similar to above, but we're the first one (or will be the first one) to pass said boundary. We are alone in our technological capabilities.

3) We don't hear anyone because there is some other civilization out there which destroys other forms of life that begin to approach its technological abilities. 1 master race watching all life in the galaxy and stomping it out when they raise above a certain threshold. I hope its not this one.

I believe that the fact that we sit in, as one would put it in Star Wars terms, the 'outer rim' of the galaxy, might have an impact on why we haven't seen any aliens yet.
For all intents and purposes our area might as well be the Wild West.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/10/15/could-this-star-signal-that-alien-is-out-there.html

We may have seen alien life, but we can't be certain with current instruments.

You have to factor in that if there is a space faring civilization living in our time period that they also are headed in our direction. It's more likely that it's heading towards our galaxy's core, then out here.

Every time I reas about it, I find that story really intriguing, Randomizer.

The main 'debunk answer' seems to be comets -- but why would the comets not be absorbed/destroyed into the star. It's a good question.

It'll be exciting to hear about the SETI radio results from the system.

@wj and Random - in the AMA I linked a Goddard scientist answers a question about that. Its near the top, I think. In short, the possibility that its alien-made isn't all that high, in their view.

AMA? What's the definition please?

Ask-Me-Anything. There's a whole subreddit for it where they get notable people/teams to come and answer questions from the general public. The one I linked was done by a team of NASA scientists.

Oh ok, cool, will take a proper look.

It's alien megastructures though. Don't ruin it :p

Actually, the team that found the star in question is doing an AMA on the 11th at 9am.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/

I saw an article which suggests we may actually be one of the older planets out there - which if true means it's possible the aliens *will* be out there, but we happen to be some of the earliest. Don't have the link handy, sorry.

They're here! Some of them even play dip. ;¬)

Soylent aliens are made of people! Wake up sheeple

Aliens either exist or they don't. People seem to think that the size of the universe and the billions of planets somehow affects the chances of alien life existing: it doesn't. Aliens either exist or they don't.

Let us imagine that we could collect together every playing card every made and shuffle them up and ask someone to pick a card. There will be billions and billions of cards but the chances of someone picking the 32 of Helmets is entirely dependent on whether or not the 32 of Helmets exists.

Aliens either exist or they don't - just accept it.

"Aliens either exist or they don't"

want proof? #FUCKGHUG

The answer to the original question is most likely:
"In their own solar systems minding their own business just as we do."

"Aliens either exist or they don't"
Oversimplification. We exist, but life on earth didn't just pop into existence out of some new type of matter. No, we are an arrangement of matter that already existed in the world.

Your card trick also is false.
Let's say you have a deck or cards labeled after the periodic table, a HUGE deck with quadrillions of copies of each element. cards are arranged so you may draw any number of cards, but once you draw a certain sequence of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Hydrogen, life happens. Now it's very unlikely to occur during the first few hours of drawing, but given 15 billion years and trillions are decks to draw from, it will happen many many many times.

So many comments... Natural wormholes may exist and be exploitable, but we don't have any 'exotic matter' to exploit them - even if we did we'd have to move them to other star system by sub light means, which wouldake expansion slowly and painful.

Looking only at earth, why is there no other intelligent life here?

Well maybe there is but we don't recognise it. But certainly our growth and potential destruction of our own habitat makes many question or own intelligence. It the 'intelligence' that we value important does it make us better than dolphins/whales/ elephants?

The galaxy is only 100,000 ligth years across and 10,000 light years thick ( at the bulge ) so nothing like the hundreds of millions (to the nearest next galaxy) someone quoted.

@Maniac, what?? No. If we assume a naturalistic world, we can say with certainty that life of some kind has existed at some place and time elsewhere in the universe. We know you get organic molecules on asteroid/comets an in dust clouds around other stars, and we know they are neccesary for 'life as we know it' - we don't know how abiogenesis occurs (the first self-replicating cell, for example) - but we also know how likely lige is to evolve once abiogenesis has occured.

The chances of finding life entirely depend on whether it exists or not; but if it doesn't exist them we need to figure out why - based on what we know of evolution/cultural and technical development/abiogenesis...

Most scientists agree life definitely exists elsewhere in the universe - though it is possible that 'habitable' worlds like earth are only stable for a few hundred million years and nothing has had a chance to evolve as far as us.

Or that we've reached strict limits of technical development - like hitting the quantum limit for computer processors - Moore's law can't continue indefinitely, so what is the physical limit to transistor size and what other physical limits actually stop development in a given direction?

Are there similar physical limits in other places? Like preventing abiogenesis, or stopping evolution of intelligence, or stopping interstellar travel (yes to this one eith the speed of light) - if we assume life like us, we could send humans to near light speed and to other star systems, but our technology could also massively extend human life ( there are genes which double the life span of types of nemotoad ) i think that extending human life span almost indefinitely is much easier than interstellar travel. An teraforming the earth is much more possoble than teraforming anywhere else...

The only reason to establish a mars colony is to increase our chances of survival in case the earth is threatened by a local disaster ( eg asteroid impact / massive solar flare ) First, these things could also have wiped out intelligent life elsewhere. Second, a Mars colony doesn't protect use against a solar system wide event, though probably rarer we don't know how common they might be. A rogue neutron star passing through the solar system would effectively end all life in our area. But we've never seen such an event happen so we don't know how likely it is.

We also don't know how likely asteroid impacts are in other solar systems - we think Jupiter's gravity makes us safer from these kinds of impact, and earth magnetic field protects us from solar flares; so it is possible that having 'stability' on earth of millions of years is a rare thing overall. And that of those rare civilisations which do develop they only last a finite amount of time ( Rome lasted around 2,000 years, the Mayan empire collapsed, China likely considers itself the longest continuous cultural development, but most human civilisations have developed to a certain level of complexity and then broken down - entropy? )

I would suggest that intelligent life is rare and spaced out in time.

YoYo "but given 15 billion years and trillions are decks to draw from, it will happen many many many times."

Look at the math on DNA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1--tP49mOoE

@BOG
Do you seriously think that aliens will use DNA as a basis for life? Chances are that the first life on Earth want even DNA based. It's too complex. Life will likely start out as a collection of loosely held together organic compounds that can take in light and make more organic compounds.

@orathaic there is one thing we get from going to Mars, we develop technology needed to get to mars and continue to develop it afterwards to make it better, that is why mankind needs to go to space, to develop technology. It is the same effect we get from war, technology increases as the need increases.

^ thumbs up to that, both the moon landing and CERN's LHC tried to do the (then) impossible, and developed jew technolgy as a result, 'the past 100 years' of technical development has come a long distance due to doing new things (as you rigthly point out, often in the name of war)

And i can think of other reasons too... But i'm still happy with the overall thrust of my arguement!