Where does E.T. come from?

@AgentOrange:

Machines with intelligence might just view their automated anatomy as superior to any organic models.  (Just like the machines in the Matrix, they might view humans and other biological life-forms as “unnecessary” and “obsolete”)

Or they may not recognize biological life as life at all.  Like Teletran-1 in the Transformers  :-D

Due to the vastness, huge vastness of space, there could be thousands of alien races and no one would ever no about each other.  In astronomy class, there are galaxies and super galaxies, between them, HUGE voids of nothingness, not even gases or dust, just nothing.  There are an almost infinate number of galaxies with billions of stars in each…  It goes that unless someone can bend time and space to reach a distance, how could we ever get to a far away destination.  Aliens would come in my opinion as robot driods like ours, sent out into space forever in a direction.  It think we would only meet their engineered robots.

Yep and thats why Cylons are real. They are coming soon.

This may be a way to travel through space quickly:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200.html

interesting, perhaps in the future they could make even faster engines.  But the universe is still way to big.  MAybe something similar to the hyperdrive in the movie, Event Horizon.  Fold two spaces into the same space.  With still trying to reach a destination in a straight line, even with super super fast engines, to reach another galaxy would take forever.  With this new drive mad scientist, we may be on our way.  I hope so.

Is there any relevence to this question, or secondary point, if you don’t believe in E.T. life at all?

Do you mean intelligent life or one-celled bacteria?

There’s a high probability that aliens do exist, but nobody knows for sure.

Isaac Asimov didn’t include aliens in his Foundation series, I don’t know why–can someone tell me

Unlike myself I’m guessing he did believe in the possibility of aliens, but I’m fairly certain that his reason for not including any is because the premise for the Foundation Series is Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire set in space.

In order to have life on a planet (let alone intelligent life), you need a medium sized star containing the right amount of metals and hydrogen, a planet with the right amount of mass, the planet has to be at the right distance from the star,the planet has to be in a nearly circular orbit, the planet has to have enough water and nitrogen and carbon, and a gas giant farther out to deflect comets wouldn’t hurt.

We have detected about 200 extra solar planets so far, and only a handful have some of the above criteria (two of the stars are called 47 Ursae Majoris, 44 light years away, and Gliese 777A, 52 light years away www.extrasolar.net These two star systems have Jupiters at the right distance for comet deflection and would be stable with an Earth-like planet closer in).

Oh ya. You could also have life on the moon of a gas giant if the moon had an ocean (covered by ice or not) and an internal heat source if it was covered by ice (like Europa).

Madscientist…

The only issue I have with your post is that it is based on assumptions regarding life based on a single example… Earth.

It MAY be correct for Carbon based life, but it may not.  With only a single example, and all life here living under the same criteria, of course it all needs the same basic things.

But could carbon based life have evolved differently under different circumstances?
What about Solicon based life (another often considered example in Sco-Fi)
Or perhaps life of a totally different type all together?  One that is Hydrogen or helium based and lives in the high energy environment of the sun?  (has been speculated about in fiction, sorry, I cannot place my hands on the book a tthe moment, Angel and I are redoing the office and my library is in a score of 6’ stacks in the guest room).

Uh, yeah, but that would be a totally alien species. Scientists don’t think it’s possible to have hydrogen or helium-based organisms… Just imagine–hydrogen is the lightest element and helium is not abundant enough!

It is on the surface of the sun…

I like the idea that the planet Mercury actually may have ice at its caps. If you move further south eventually a barrier of say 100 miles exists where the temp goes to 600 degrees. I wonder if life can be sustained in the “in between region”

Robotic life-forms have been mentioned earlier in this forum. Just remember the 3 Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In Asimov’s Robot books machines started to become more human and expanded the meaning of artificial intelligence. This is speculative sci-fi but if robots develop feelings they can be considered aliens too. Biorobotics is the study of making robots emulate or simulate biological organisms. And clones can be considered aliens, too. If you know the story “Island of Dr. Morreau,” he engineered clones, mixed their genes with animal DNA (recombinant DNA), and then they became not human anymore.

@Imperious:

I like the idea that the planet Mercury actually may have ice at its caps. If you move further south eventually a barrier of say 100 miles exists where the temp goes to 600 degrees. I wonder if life can be sustained in the “in between region”

It can’t, it’s too close to the sun

@Gen:

If you know the story “Island of Dr. Morreau,” he engineered clones, mixed their genes with animal DNA (recombinant DNA), and then they became not human anymore.

That is the movie with Val Kilmer.  In the short story by H.G. Wells, the “beasts” were all created by vivisection… he CUT them to make them Human.