86.6% of the surveyed astrobiologists responded either “agree” or “strongly agree” that it’s likely that extraterrestrial life (of at least a basic kind) exists somewhere in the universe. Less than 2% disagreed, with 12% staying neutral.[Do aliens exist? We studied what scientists really think](https://theconversation.com/do-aliens-exist-we-studied-what-scientists-really-think-241505)
While I do believe that astrobiologists are most expert on the topic I also believe they might be the most biased.
SidScaffold on
‘Astrobiologists’ – might be a biased sample ^^
Jabba_Yaga on
What? 1.4% of astrobiologists don’t believe in aliens? S-should someone tell them?
Dale_Gurnhardt on
95% of Flat-Earthers believe the earth is flat. The other 5% are truely lost souls
hurtfullobster on
This chart is literally the least interesting thing the study found.
jedidude75 on
I don’t think this would surprise anyone, it’s likely there is life outside of the earth. What I think most don’t believe is that earth has been visited by sentient aliens.
Astrylae on
Has/ will life ( Anything that could reproduce, like bacteria ) ever existed? Most likely yes.
Has/ will there be other conscious beings, that can communicate, and also reached the space age? Maybe.
Will their existence overlap ours? No.
50-ferrets-in-a-coat on
Haha cool, I actually participated in this survey!
I did astrobiology in grad school and mostly work in artificial life. For me at least, my understanding of what should be considered life (or “lyfe” and Wong and Bartlett are calling it) has shifted substantially.
We are used to thinking of life as this binary phenomena that it’s either life or not life. However, there’s a lot of reason to think there’s a lot of cases in between (think viruses, prions, technology, etc). Because of this, what we might consider life (or, “aliens”) is very very different than public perception. But all of that is still a huge topic of discussion and it seems we are still pretty far off from consensus.
So, when I said “yeah I think aliens probably exist” I wasn’t thinking about the silly UFO cartoon grey guys, super-intelligent creatures from Three Body Problem, or xenomorphs from Alien. Nah, I was thinking of some boring collection of semi-movable pieces of matter that encodes information dynamically or sumthn.
chocolateandcoffee on
This isn’t beautiful in the slightest. Purple on orange?
robidaan on
I mean theory suggest that life on earth literally began by a space amoebe crashing. Which technically classified as “life”, soooo hard to disagree, really.
ollixf on
Does this mean some astrobiologists are aliens?
FreeTheDimple on
87% agree with what exactly?
Hazzawoof on
This data is not beautiful.
holytriplem on
I’m a planetary scientist. I’m curious to know who they included as “astrobiologists” in their sample. Astrobiology continues to be a relatively nebulous umbrella concept and a lot of people who study subjects related to astrobiology are actually something else.
Environmental-Fan113 on
Everyone’s looking at this chart title and pointing out that astrobiologists believe in aliens. I’m sat here thinking doesn’t this mean that at least 86.6% are aliens… 🧐
SvatyFini on
Almost 90% of them are religious? That is a lot.
Threezeley on
I think this is by far the most beautifully formatted graphic I have ever seen. The 3 bars were very necessary. /s
Raegnarr on
It’s beyond naive to believe we are the only “intelligent ” civilization in existence.
FartingBob on
What does an astrobiologist do with their life if they dont think there is any life in space?
throwawaycanadian2 on
Just to be clear: “extraterrestrial life” is very different from “intellegent life”.
They agree that there are living cells out there, not ufos that do random probing.
SurpriseScissors on
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Parry_9000 on
Ah yes only unbiased data for my predictions
BenThereOrBenSquare on
That’s way too vague a question to reveal anything useful.
geek66 on
At issue here is the lack of understanding of the general pubic of statistical chances AND the mind boggling numbers involved in looking at the universe
Stiltz85 on
Mathematically speaking, our planet being the only one in the vast ocean of infinite stars practically impossible. Is other life beyond our planet a possibility? Most definitely. Are they going to make it across multiple solar systems, or galaxies to find us? Doubtful. Just making it to the next closest solar system would take well over ten thousand years at our current technology level.
That and seeing that the universe is unfathomably old, there have likely been an amazing amount of life outside our planet that could have already lived it’s course and died off, as well as many more to come. The stars we look at every night aren’t even in real time. Some of those stars could have already burned out by now, but the time it takes for some their light to get to us is longer than we’ve existed as a species.
To straight up deny that life beyond our planed can exist is simply unscientific. You can not prove a negative to begin with. The best stance is agnosticism until we find compelling evidence one way or the other.
CaptainMatthew1 on
I doubt only a small minatoiry of the 86.6% would think they are visiting earth. They properly like me think due to shear probability there must be at least some simple life out there at least. In fact there are two moons Europa and Enceladus in our solar system that could in theory have life in their sub surface seas
![[OC]](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/0b6d923ifrie1-1024x947.jpeg "[OC]")
28 Comments
86.6% of the surveyed astrobiologists responded either “agree” or “strongly agree” that it’s likely that extraterrestrial life (of at least a basic kind) exists somewhere in the universe. Less than 2% disagreed, with 12% staying neutral.[Do aliens exist? We studied what scientists really think](https://theconversation.com/do-aliens-exist-we-studied-what-scientists-really-think-241505)
To clarify, I created this graph based on the study mentioned in the attached article. I am not the researcher who conducted the study. [Do aliens exist? We studied what scientists really think](https://theconversation.com/do-aliens-exist-we-studied-what-scientists-really-think-241505)
While I do believe that astrobiologists are most expert on the topic I also believe they might be the most biased.
‘Astrobiologists’ – might be a biased sample ^^
What? 1.4% of astrobiologists don’t believe in aliens? S-should someone tell them?
95% of Flat-Earthers believe the earth is flat. The other 5% are truely lost souls
This chart is literally the least interesting thing the study found.
I don’t think this would surprise anyone, it’s likely there is life outside of the earth. What I think most don’t believe is that earth has been visited by sentient aliens.
Has/ will life ( Anything that could reproduce, like bacteria ) ever existed? Most likely yes.
Has/ will there be other conscious beings, that can communicate, and also reached the space age? Maybe.
Will their existence overlap ours? No.
Haha cool, I actually participated in this survey!
I did astrobiology in grad school and mostly work in artificial life. For me at least, my understanding of what should be considered life (or “lyfe” and Wong and Bartlett are calling it) has shifted substantially.
We are used to thinking of life as this binary phenomena that it’s either life or not life. However, there’s a lot of reason to think there’s a lot of cases in between (think viruses, prions, technology, etc). Because of this, what we might consider life (or, “aliens”) is very very different than public perception. But all of that is still a huge topic of discussion and it seems we are still pretty far off from consensus.
So, when I said “yeah I think aliens probably exist” I wasn’t thinking about the silly UFO cartoon grey guys, super-intelligent creatures from Three Body Problem, or xenomorphs from Alien. Nah, I was thinking of some boring collection of semi-movable pieces of matter that encodes information dynamically or sumthn.
This isn’t beautiful in the slightest. Purple on orange?
I mean theory suggest that life on earth literally began by a space amoebe crashing. Which technically classified as “life”, soooo hard to disagree, really.
Does this mean some astrobiologists are aliens?
87% agree with what exactly?
This data is not beautiful.
I’m a planetary scientist. I’m curious to know who they included as “astrobiologists” in their sample. Astrobiology continues to be a relatively nebulous umbrella concept and a lot of people who study subjects related to astrobiology are actually something else.
Everyone’s looking at this chart title and pointing out that astrobiologists believe in aliens. I’m sat here thinking doesn’t this mean that at least 86.6% are aliens… 🧐
Almost 90% of them are religious? That is a lot.
I think this is by far the most beautifully formatted graphic I have ever seen. The 3 bars were very necessary. /s
It’s beyond naive to believe we are the only “intelligent ” civilization in existence.
What does an astrobiologist do with their life if they dont think there is any life in space?
Just to be clear: “extraterrestrial life” is very different from “intellegent life”.
They agree that there are living cells out there, not ufos that do random probing.
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Ah yes only unbiased data for my predictions
That’s way too vague a question to reveal anything useful.
At issue here is the lack of understanding of the general pubic of statistical chances AND the mind boggling numbers involved in looking at the universe
Mathematically speaking, our planet being the only one in the vast ocean of infinite stars practically impossible. Is other life beyond our planet a possibility? Most definitely. Are they going to make it across multiple solar systems, or galaxies to find us? Doubtful. Just making it to the next closest solar system would take well over ten thousand years at our current technology level.
That and seeing that the universe is unfathomably old, there have likely been an amazing amount of life outside our planet that could have already lived it’s course and died off, as well as many more to come. The stars we look at every night aren’t even in real time. Some of those stars could have already burned out by now, but the time it takes for some their light to get to us is longer than we’ve existed as a species.
To straight up deny that life beyond our planed can exist is simply unscientific. You can not prove a negative to begin with. The best stance is agnosticism until we find compelling evidence one way or the other.
I doubt only a small minatoiry of the 86.6% would think they are visiting earth. They properly like me think due to shear probability there must be at least some simple life out there at least. In fact there are two moons Europa and Enceladus in our solar system that could in theory have life in their sub surface seas