this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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Depends on what do you mean by existence of aliens:
Some chemical/biological processes happen on other planets in the universe, that are necessary for life to exist. Or maybe there are "life" forms like viruses.
Life exists, but only in the simplest form, like single-cell organisms (e.g. bacteria).
Life exists, but only in the form of simple multi-cell organisms.
More advanced species exist, like fish or frogs on Earth, but nothing like Humans.
Other advanced species with their own civilizations exist (or existed and destroyed themselves), similar to ours, but again they might not look like humans at all.
Super advanced civilization of aliens exists, and they have tech we could only dream of.
Given that we know only one place where life naturally exists (Earth), it's probably hard to tell which one is true. But I think that it's sane to think that there are at least several other civilizations out there similar to ours, but given that our universe is relatively young, we might be the only one in our neighborhood (even on galaxy level) for now.
It's also very important to note that extraterrestrial life might not resemble our life at all, and make us reconsider what even is life.
I'm intrigued by 0. Nobody ever talks about that one. Multicellular life and complex life have independently shown up more than once on Earth, so 2 and 3 are hard to defend.