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Today's Poll: Do you believe there's life on other planets in the universe?

By Howard B. Owens
C. M. Barons

Define 'life.' I mean: are we talking naked apes that drive carbon-burners to work to earn money to shop for carbohydrate sheets covered with animal protein and fat to take home and eat while lounging in front of a LCD panel and then spend two hours on a Stair-Master, because their torso resembles a plastic bag crammed-full of whatever they just ingested...

Apr 18, 2014, 11:57am Permalink
Tim Miller

Given the forms that life can take, and the number of planets in the universe, I believe the odds of life existing on other planets is tremendously high.

Will we find evidence of that life in my lifetime? That I wouldn't bet on. But it'd be nice to find it.

Apr 18, 2014, 12:24pm Permalink
Jeff Allen

Was that posted from your solar powered computer that was made in a United States wind powered factory by vegan workers paid $30/hour and delivered to your door by an electric truck?

Apr 18, 2014, 12:26pm Permalink
C. M. Barons

No, it was powered by facetiousness. However... Buried beneath the facetiousness was a serious question. Would we be able to recognize life? Honestly- some humans cannot recognize life within the same species when confronted with racial, linguistic, gender and/or religious differences!

Apr 18, 2014, 12:47pm Permalink
Doug Yeomans

I can help put things into scale for people if they're wondering why we haven't "recognized" any other life yet. Personally, I have no doubt that there's other life in the universe. The spiral galaxy we live in has hundreds of billions of stars and hundreds of billions of planets. Our galaxy is 100,000 to 120,000 light years wide. We have been broadcasting radio signals for a bit over 100 years so the broadcast sphere in any direction is 200 light years in diameter. That means our radio signals have reached 1/500th the diameter of the galaxy. The size of the universe is staggeringly huge, so to think that we are the only life living in it is absurd.

This picture shows a tiny blue dot representing how far into our own galaxy broadcast signals from earth have reached. Compare it to our galaxy and then realize that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. The distances between galaxies is far greater than the size of each galaxy. Check out this site for the scale of distances I'm talking about. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2012/3390.html

Apr 18, 2014, 5:16pm Permalink
Tim Miller

Jeff - where in the bloody hell did THAT response come from?

The question was "do you believe there is life on other planets", and my reply was "probably - just haven't seen evidence of it yet", and you repond with a dick-ish "oh look at the granola guy"?

Quite frankly, it would not have been dick-ish had my response been "yes, and I hope we can all be brothers in this wonderful world we call our universe{yada yada yada}". But if that is how you read my response I'm sure GCC offers a Reading Comprehension 101 course you're more than (less than?) qualified for.... :-P

Apr 19, 2014, 9:44am Permalink
kevin kretschmer

Perhaps you should take the class. Jeff's response was directed at CM Baron, as he clearly indicated; "reply to #2" - which is shown to be CM Baron.

Apr 19, 2014, 10:39am Permalink
Jeff Allen

Kevin, you are correct, my response was to C.M., not Tim. It could still be put in the category Tim described, but just wasn't directed at his.

Apr 19, 2014, 3:01pm Permalink

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