Quote (KungPeriodFu @ Nov 29 2019 02:19pm)
mathematically speaking, it's basically impossible for life to not exist elsewhere in the universe. it may be a rare thing, but it must exist elsewhere.
im not sure that any of you comprehend the size of the visible universe or know of the fact that to this day we've only crudely observed about 1% of the sky. there are things going on right in front of our astrophysicists' telescopes that go unnoticed because we lack the technology to examine said things carefully. don't be naive or proud: know that our understanding of the cosmos is in its infancy.
to calculate the chance of something happening in a number of tries (in this case, in a number of places), you need to know two things: 1) number of shots you have, and 2) chance of getting the positive outcome for a single shot. if you dont know either of those, you cant make a prediction whatsoever. and we dont have the slightest idea about the chance of positive outcome for a single shot. there could be 10^100 planets in the universe, if the chance of "hitting it" is 10^150, well guess what. nothing will happen.
also note that counting the earth as a "hit" is statistically invalid because the anthropic principle will shit on you
tldr: mathematically speaking, we dont know shit. we WILL know, if we find at least a planet with any kind of life thats not the result of life from earth. that would actually change something. but for now, we are completely in the dark
