Sparked by a "word exchange" with Temperance about our "human" existence, I mentioned that we are perhaps not alone in the universe and that there on the millions of planets around the myriads of stars (suns) there are perhaps circumstances which allow the existence of "beings" perhaps evolved to having the same or higher brain or whatever than ours...
It is perhaps not that interesting for our small group, but nevertheless I want to put it on this board. What the heck (I learned from Temperance...)

It is the latest "stand of science" about this subject up to 2013.

I watched it in French on ARTE, but I see now that you have to pay for a DVD if you want to see it again( I have it on my hard disc of my TV connector)
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/052741-000-A/planetes-habitables/
A discussion about the film I think with the two ones who played in the film about the subject. I have not watched yet this discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7blxZ51DSwQ

And finally the documentary in English. I put it here this evening and if you are interested you can watch it tomorrow.
https://documentaryheaven.com/aliens-are-we-alone/

First I found nothing in English only the document in Russian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkOCOnr2CHQ

Tomorrow more comments.

Kind regards, Paul.

Paul,,

Topics on the possibilities of life on other planets often comes up on forums and even on TV documentaries.

I also sometimes wonder if there is intelligent life out there and if so what and how would  this intelligent life physically look like and what internal organs would be inside their physics.

Somehow I think that they, whatever they may be called , certainly would not look like the human species of this planet. 


All right , let fantasies have a clear run here on this subject



Dirk

Dirk,

"I also sometimes wonder if there is intelligent life out there and if so what and how would  this intelligent life physically look like and what internal organs would be inside their physics."


Have a look to the interesting (at least to me) documentary that I mentioned
"And finally the documentary in English. I put it here this evening and if you are interested you can watch it tomorrow."
https://documentaryheaven.com/aliens-are-we-alone/
Are the planets that the Kepler telescope has dicovered able to have life: scientists has made "models" of organic life that could exist, "could" because dictated by the environment as BTW the evolution on earth too. For instance you will see a computer model of an octopode with a kind of broad elephant trunk...8 because of a bigger gravity and that broad trunk a manner to get to the scarce food...as for intelligence, that was not an emphasized subject in the documentary, but when one speaks from organic organisms there have to be in my opinion already a kind of intelligence. And as it are only the first habitable planets, which are discovered among the myriads in the universe it is nearly statistical sure that there is intelligent life in the universe.

When I saw the documentary, it remembered me, about what I ignored, perhaps in my first 50 years, namely that the universe consisted of always the same chemical elements. Although having studied chemistry, I thought in my innocence that there were a thousands of other elements in the universe...
https://www.thoughtco.com/most-abundant-element-in-known-space-4006866

And what I saw in the documentary as new: the condition for life is "water", liquid water, while seemingly in no other medium life can develop. I will review the documentary again for an answer on this (perhaps they said it, but ignored it in my haste) and perhaps the question will be answered in the discussion about the documentary that I mentioned, discussion by the authors of the documentary
"A discussion about the film I think with the two ones who played in the film about the subject. I have not watched yet this discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7blxZ51DSwQ"



Kind regards from Paul.

Interesting feature yesterday about a probe going to Europa, which seems the favourite location for extra-terrestrial life in our system. Some life forms appear to be able to hide from our equipment.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok6CoIwcJ-E

Green George wrote:

Interesting feature yesterday about a probe going to Europa, which seems the favourite location for extra-terrestrial life in our system. Some life forms appear to be able to hide from our equipment.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok6CoIwcJ-E

Thanks Gil. Just ended watching the discussion that I mentioned upstream. A lot of new information, but have to go to bed, because tomorrow early up for a task. 
The discussion about intelligent life and all and is there extra-terrestrial intelligence among us without that we knowing it , even in the conference room (as I once said to Temperance in a "conversation")
and a more serious matter about contamination of for instance a possible Mars eco-system and disturbing it with our terrestrial bacteria, before we have studied the Mars system. Samples from Mars for instance are stored with the same precautions as the Ebola- virus...

Kind regards from Paul.

I remember an SF story about the first astronauts on Venus, who left their waste (as did the Apollo guys) and the first creature on the planet found it - and was poisoned. Think it was by Asimov, but others are possible.

Mmmm - it is also possible that we are the result of a distant galaxy alien 5yr old's holiday project in ape gene modification in our year dot time-scale here. 
Contemplation of the universe is a useful way to counter taking oneself and ones problems too seriously.

This is how / why we exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld

It's certainly possible that in the vastness of the universe there are other life forms on other planets but I haven't the scientific knowledge to speculate.

Carl Sagan ( now deceased) mentioned quite a few years ago that there was a REMOTE possibility that planet earth was the only planet in the universe with intelligent life.


Dirk

Think I am more in tune with this version of the probability of intelligence here and elsewhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcC6FYyL4U

About my own question that I mentioned upstream:
"And what I saw in the documentary as new: the condition for life is "water", liquid water, while seemingly in no other medium life can develop. I will review the documentary again for an answer on this (perhaps they said it, but ignored it in my haste)"
Instead of reviewing the entire documentary I did a quick research on google and found this:
https://www.livescience.com/52332-why-is-water-needed-for-life.html
"in this regard, water is essential simply because it's a liquid at Earth-like temperatures. Because it flows, water provides an efficient way to transfer substances from a cell to the cell's environment. By contrast, deriving energy from a solid is a much tougher prospect (though there are microbes that eat rock), Glazer said."
"Scientists are also looking at other liquids that could play a similar role as universal solvent and transport medium. Some of the top contenders are ammonia and methane, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Ammonia, like water, is a polar molecule that is relatively abundant in the universe, but scientists haven't found any large bodies of ammonia anywhere in the solar system, McKay said.
Methane isn't polar, but it can dissolve many other substances. Unlike water, however, methane becomes liquid only at very cold temperatures — at a frigid minus 296 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 182 degrees Celsius).
"We know that there are large lakes of liquid methane and ethane on Titan," one of the moons of Saturn, McKay told Live Science in an email. "Thus there is keen interest is the question of whether life can use liquid methane/ethane."


Kind regards from Paul.