[quote]roguevampire wrote:
[quote]Stern wrote:
[quote]Mascherano wrote:
The universe is 13 billion years old, the planet Earth is 4 billion years old. You don’t believe that the concurrent prerequisites needed to support a life in space can’t happen simultaneously throughout the galaxy?
If our technology is as such after being around for 4 billion years, imagine what the technology is of other beings that have been around 2x as long. Imagine 3x as long. And never mind technology, imagine the mental and dimensional capacities they must have as well!
In other words, you’re right, i think its amazing that humans have the capacity to imagine such things, but I think its our lack of imagination that’s holding us back from truly realizing what’s going on here on earth, in the universe and beyond .
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We’ll have to agree to disagree Mascherano. 
The way I see it - if you want to count the evolution of single-cell organisms then yes - we’ve been around for 4 billion years, 3 billion of which we were still microorganisms. If you want to speak specifically of our species however, which has only been given the chance to rise to dominance at the whim of mass extinction events, then we’re but a twinkle in the earth’s eye; a couple hundred thousand years of establishing dominance. Now we could quite easily be thrown back into the ocean come the next mass extinction event. And there will be one - of that there is no doubt. The last one was what, 60 million years ago and there have been a handful of them within the last 500 million years alone? Each one wiping out thousands of species and changing heirarchy of life on earth.
Now it would stand to reason that a parallel planet that meets all the criteria neccessary to allow lifeforms to evolve in an environment capable of producing intelligent life (and let’s not beat about the bush here it would basically have to be another planet earth, pure hydrogen/water/iron planets and the like just won’t do) would also suffer the same extinction events that we observe in our own solar system wouldn’t you agree?
So with that assumption in mind a planet twice the age of the earth quite likely will have also suffered twice as many events. The amount of species that have been born, evolved and then wiped out on earth is incredible. It’s beyond incredible actually - it’s terrifying.
So not only would you have to meet all the crazy criteria that our earth did - distance from a certain star in a certain phase and a terrestrial planet with a history of glaciation, photosynthesis, all the rest…you would also have to have a species that has survived numerous exctinction events to remain the dominant life on that planet (or evolve at an indescribable rate in which case, well, there you go ;p) AND be a species with not only a brain capable of thinking about more than just food and fucking but also possessing a phsyique which allows that species to break certain barriers in evolution - hands with opposing thumbs, for a start. To illustrate my point - as intelligent as we believe dolphins to be (a species that is 50 million years old or so?) I can’t see them really making ships capable of deep space travel in the foreseeable future. They just don’t have the tools for it. Maybe they’ll evolve to mind-control the human race and get us to do it or something I dunno, but I digress…
The bottom line is there is a staggering amount of criteria to be met and while it’s not impossible, lady luck plays such a huge part in it that it makes it less and less likely the older the planet is. Considering how far away we are from deep space travel - if we even ever get there at all!, I would be amazed if there are civilisations out there nipping through space at whim.
But feel free to bash my cynicism. I mean at the end of the day - what the fuck do I know? =P
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I’m afraid, this nice big post is just an example of us humans thinking we are special and this planet is somehow special and unique. You can come up with all the special circumstances of how a planet can have life on it, that you want. but the fact remains, its not all that difficult. just in this galaxy alone, forget the billions of others, just in this one, there are billions of stars. You don’t think, that there are tons of planets circling these stars. of course there is. i think earth is special compared to the other planets in this solar system, but thats about it. as far as earth being special compared to the other 900 billion planets out there, im not so sure we are all that special.
We has humans, we love to try and convince ourselves that we are somehow special, that ufos don’t exist. Those who say, why would our government keep ufos secret, gee, i don’t know, why did they keep Area 51 a secret till just a few years ago when they were forced to admit its existance. Even if this planet is somewhat special, you don’t think there are billions of other somewhat special planets out there. and whos to say, other life forms need the same sort of oxygen nitrogen atmosphere we do. maybe they can survive off of a completely different type of atmosphere. Just as people once thought the earth was flat, still today, some people question life elsewhere. i feel sad for those people. [/quote]
To say Area 51 was a “secret” is an exaggeration. If it was a “secret” it was a poorly kept secret. Area 51 was used to test advanced secret craft like the stealth fighters and bombers, among others. The “secrecy” and restriction were entirely appropriate.