Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the potential involvement of governments in concealing or studying such entities.

    • michaelrose@lemmy.ml
      0·
      7 months ago

      I’m dubious of faster than life travel being for reasons beyond our understanding of physics. If there were a reasonable way to do so 1 race anywhere in the galaxy could have colonized the entire galaxy or at least a substantial portion thereof in only a few million years. If it is possible it seems to suggest that life is so rare that there are very few forms of higher intelligent life in the galaxy at any given time and probably relatively few ever.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    0·
    7 months ago

    I lean towards no, which is a minority scientific position. The Fermi paradox is strong evidence against technological aliens, and of all the evolutionary history we have immediate abiogenesis is the most weakly supported. It happened early, but there’s still a 10% chance of a thing randomly happening in the first 10% of geological history (to oversimplify the math).

    If it’s not that, it’s eukariogenesis, but that seems a bit more inevitable given how cooperative bacteria can already be. The development of technology seems inevitable once a thing by chance becomes smart and dexterous enough, and every other step along the way has happened more than once. Earth-like planets are still thought to be abundant.

    Edit: Oh, and no to any conspiracy. It would be really hard to hide obvious alien life, and there’s no real motive for all world governments to unanimously do so. And conspiracies don’t exist, because we’re too disorganised to keep a huge secret for long.