Well, considering it can be found almost everywhere on Earth, it seems to me that it's not unreasonable to think that it will evolve on other places. We've already found organic molecules in space, and amino acids. To think that we're alone in the universe is arrogant, to say the least.
If the universe is infinite, then we know that life has to exist elsewhere because there's only a finite number of combinations that matter can take. Which means, in an infinite universe, there is another you, reading this post, and wondering....
Would it be gay if you jerked off your other you, and he jerked you off? Because the other you would be you.
There is no scientific consensus on whether the universe is finite or infinite. All we know right now is the diameter of the observable universe 93 billion light years. This number will certainly change as telescopes and detection methods become more powerful but we have no idea how much further out it extends, or if there is an ending. The current estimated age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. We don't how the universe ends, so even if the universe is finite it could expand infinitely.
And Clarke's 2061: Odyssey Three. (In that case, they were nonsentient and sacrificed so the Europans could flourish.)
And the Jupiter Theft, by Donald Moffitt. In it, the Jovians are only discovered after aliens show up to suck up Jupiter.
How can the diameter of the observable universe be 93 billion light years if the universe is only 13.8 billion years old?
Good question. I had to google it. Due to expansion. What we see is 13.8 billion years old. Since then the universe has expanded by a known rate. What isn't known is how large the universe is beyond the 93 billion light-year diameter. more
Clarke describes such creatures in detail in 2010: Odyssey 2. [edit]I never read the third book, so didn't realize they were actually an important plot element. Their appearance in Odyssey 2 is basically just an exploration by Dave Bowman.
The further out you go from the center universe, the faster it expands. Think of it as bread cooking, or raisin bread. The raisins further out from the center of the load are sorted further apart. Also due to gravity and the speed of expansion a light year distance is longer as well. What that means is it also stretches like a rubber band. As it stretches it becomes longer and stretches faster. If you let it contract the shorter it gets the slower the rubber contracts.
Recent observations suggest the rate of expansion is increasing rather than staying at a constant rate. This was found through repeated observations of the distances of stars. Particularly white dwarfs.
Red shift for one, has shown that the universe expansion is increasing. The further away stars move the spectrum is shifted towards the red side of the spectrum. By measuring the amount of red shift it can be determined how fast a star us moving away. Similarly a start that is moving towards us has a blue shift.
Infinite or not, it has nothing to do with whether life exists in other locations. There are billions and billions of planets within this universe and many have had a head start on conditions for life or are behind but will have the conditions - just as Earth at one time had no life but now does, and in the future will not have life.
Done by Michael Whelan, who did the covers for a number of Robert Heinlein's books, and an insanely hot cover for A Princess of Mars. And Thuvia, Maid of Mars.
Was catching up on a science podcast that was talking about this. June's first orbit is 52 DAYS, after it completes that will settle down into an orbit that lasts about 14 DAYS. By contrast, the ISS orbits the Earth in about 90 MINUTES.
I read an article a few days ago saying that life just might be a mechanism to disperse energy (increase the rate of entropy) and thus is inevitable on any planet with a lot of potential energy - the very type of planets that give birth to life. Complex organisms and systems increase this process faster, so evolution toward increasingly complex organisms is the norm. So much for earth being god's unique little miracle! Okay, getting into Red Room territory here, but you get the gist of what I'm saying.
Yes, I believe I read something along those lines a few years back: a thermodynamic explanation for life. Shine a light on organic compounds for a long time, and eventually life will emerge. Seems very plausible.
Albert Einstein was working out the details of the "shit happens" theory when he died of Lou Gehrig's disease. Google it!
