• Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      How do you know? It’s like you sampled a thimble full of water from the ocean and concluded that whales don’t exist.

        • Gabu@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The meaning of that phrase is “don’t assume things without evidence”. We have plentiful evidence that life should be common in the Universe - of which not the least reason is that the Universe is believed to be infinite, meaning there are countless galaxies out there nearly exactly like out own, with planets exactly like our own.

        • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No serious astrophysicist is claiming there is no extraterrestrial life. We haven’t found any definitive evidence yet, but that’s just because our sample so far has been tiny.

          • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Nobody claimed there was no extraterrestrial life. Most expect some life with at least some algae. Just chances for intelligent life, as more data comes in, turns out to be rather small and with a reasonable chance we’re the only one in this galaxy. The values originally used in the Drake equation were very optimistic.

    • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      That would be very surprising if it were true, considering the incomprehensively vast numbers of stars and planets out there. I wonder what the equivalent of crying in the shower would be for some alien though? Maybe that is our unique trait.

      • Richard@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If it were not true then that would be the actual surprise. The probability for life to form has been computed over and over during the past century, incorporating ever more gains in scientific knowledge, and it is on the order of 10-100, meaning that there likely is no other life in at least our galaxy.

        • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          There’s no one that can make the estimate accurately right now. Any calculation like that is going to rest on lots on many wild estimates and unknowns. Happy to look at it if you have a source though.

      • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But so far chances of intelligent life seem to be vanishingly small and using those numbers we get one civilization every few galaxies.

        • Gabu@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There could be ten different civilizations in a radius of 100 light years of us with the same technological level we had 200 years ago and we wouldn’t know.