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Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the...


 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    BookTalk.org Forum Index -> Archived Book Discussions 2004-2005 -> Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space - by Carl Sagan
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 12:01 am    Post subject: Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the... Reply with quote
Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the cosmos?

What a fascinating question. And by life do we mean intelligent and sentient creatures much like humans? I'll provide a few choices for this poll, but please feel free to elaborate on your answer.

So...

Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the cosmos?


Results (total votes = 7):
I believe life to be unique to just our planet 0 / 0.0% 
Life is rare - only simple lifeforms exist elsewhere 0 / 0.0% 
Life is rare - complex life exists including more advanced 5 / 71.4%  
The universe is filled with lifeforms of all sorts 2 / 28.6%  

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 1:03 am    Post subject: Re: Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the... Reply with quote
My answer was...

The universe is filled with lifeforms of all sorts

Am I sure of this? Of course I don't know this for a fact, but I am so confident I would be more than willing to gamble my very life on it right this second.

With the size of the cosmos how could life not exist elsewhere? It almost seems like a mathematicl impossibility.

Chris

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 5:28 am    Post subject: Re: Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the... Reply with quote
My vote was that it's rare...but by rare I mean only to say that I don't believe life and especially advanced life forms to be a common occurence even on planets that have the correct conditions for it. The chances of (at least our type of life) the amino acids stacking in just the right manner etc...are exceedingly slim. But if it happened here, it MUST have happened elsewhere as well.

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 7:57 am    Post subject: Re: Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the... Reply with quote
I chose #3. Life is rare, but I do think there are advanced forms out there beside us.

I do not think the universe is chock full o' life, relative to the size of it all.

Mr. P.

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:13 pm    Post subject: Re: Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the... Reply with quote
When we prove that life existed on Mars we will have our life is extremely rare theory turned on its head. Or so I hope. ;)

Chris

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2004 3:56 pm    Post subject: Re: Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the... Reply with quote
I chose option three. As Sagan explains in a footnote on page 31of Pale Blue Dot, "Our universe is almost incompatible with life-or at least what we understand as necessary for life... The rest is cold, radiation-riddled black vacuum". However, he does say, "almost"!

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PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 2:32 pm    Post subject: Re: Do you believe life exists elsewhere in the... Reply with quote
I picked option 4: lifeforms of all sorts. I wasn't looking at it as 'the universe is bursting with life-forms,' but rather as 'there's life in the universe, and it comes in radically different forms.'

Of course I could easily be wrong! 0]

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Post new topic   Reply to topic    BookTalk.org Forum Index -> Archived Book Discussions 2004-2005 -> Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space - by Carl Sagan  
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