Science

I believe that too, but my point was that I am not too sure how much we can actually prove those 'odds'.. if our way of calculating odds are built on assumptions that are uncertain (most of the assumptions in the Drake equation are educated guesses), then it creates a large margin of error, and that isn't very convincing.

 

Regardless, I also believe that our planet isn't the only one, but again - proving it? egh.. not sure if our *current* science is able to.

I agree, at the moment we have no way to prove these odds. Our technology isn't up to par yet. This is all about assumptions and educated guesses.

I'm excited to see the 30 meter telescope, giant magellan telescope, and the european extremely large telescope go up. I do believe with these new tools we will be able to see more through the window into space.

Hopefully these tools should help us rely less on our assumptions and give us more facts.

Wasn't this done before by the Drake equation?

 

The problem with calculations like these is that every step is dependent on a hypothesis... too many, and your margin of error is huge.

 

~moo

I have no idea. Simply put the odds are more in favor of many planets with life than just one (ours).

I think CPL Luke was referring to the Hubble sphere, which basically translates as the currently observable universe, rather than photos from the satellite telescope.

that's it

actually the number of galxies and stars is most likely infinite (the universe is flat) its just that we can only see the 300 billion galaxies in the hubble volume, if the universe is flat the entire way through then there is an earth out there orbiting a sun which is in every way identical to ours, and more so there will be the same stars in the sky and people on that planet doing the same exact things you are.

 

however without faster than light travel and a few billion years travel time you will never see one of these. (faster than light travel would be a must as this earth s receding away from us at a speed several thousand times that of light (statistically)

I'm about 50/50 with this theory. I do agree we are quite limited with the view hubble gave us. The photo with every small smudge of light is a galaxy truely says words about how big the universe is. But that is indeed how far we are limited to seeing (any telescope). So if we looked beyond that we would of course see many more galaxies.

I believe there are possible parallel universes in which there are truely an infinite amount. But I don't necessarily believe in our universe there are exact copies of our planet and us humans as how we are today. I believe there could very well be exact copies of us and slight to major variations in parallel universes.

Extremely high too.

Think about this..

Most astronomers think the majority of stars have planets. so let's make a modest assumption.

Say a quarter of all the stars in our galaxy had just ONE planet. That's 100 billion planets. Times 300 billion galaxies.

That's how many planets probably exist. The odds are unbelievably high that life exists on many of them. Even a fraction of a fraction of that number is still incredibly high.

I'm pretty excited about seeing this if it happens. The chanes of an impact will get higher early next month once they have a better grasp on its trajectory.