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I know that there has been found evidence pointing to simple life on Mars, but has any of the projects like SETI found anything that could point to intelligent alien life out there?

By alien life, I mean from another planet than Earth. By intelligent, I don't necessarily mean something we can communicate with.

I'm looking for is what evidence there is of life outside earth

Oddthinking
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EKS
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2 Answers2

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If there were and any proof of intelligent life from SETI, it would be right on their page, and all over world-news. It just hasn't happened yet. That may be due to the fact that we just haven't looked in the right place, or in the right ways yet, or because we lack the ability to detect them, or because they are not there. We just don't know.

As for microbial life on Mars, there isn't any conclusive evidence for that yet, though there are some interesting signs, including the possibility of liquid water. There are other interesting signs that are mentioned on the Wikipedia page that you linked to, and scientists around the world are looking to investigate them, though Mars is difficult to study. As of the time of this writing though, we can not conclusively say that there is any life on Mars.

As we like to say around here though, absence of evidence is no evidence of absence.

Ustice
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    Absence of evidence may well be evidence of absence if the hypothesis conjectures that evidence should exist. – Oddthinking Jun 19 '14 at 13:42
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    @Oddthinking - How do you distinguish between it being evidence of absence and it being evidence of a flawed hypothesis? – Bobson Jun 19 '14 at 14:56
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    @Bobson: By having a scientific hypothesis that makes predictions, and then testing for those predictions. If there are no predictions, it isn't a scientific hypothesis. – Oddthinking Jun 19 '14 at 16:48
  • @Bobson Life is a fuzzy term that is only rigidly defined for distinct purposes, in this case for a given hypothesis. If we are to consider the space of all possible hypotheses, then the question becomes unfalsifiable. – called2voyage Feb 13 '20 at 15:04
  • @Bobson Thus for the purpose of this site, "life" in the question must be interpreted as "life as we understand it", in which case rejecting the hypothesis means you have disproved life in the way it should be interpreted for this question. – called2voyage Feb 13 '20 at 15:06
  • @Oddthinking A hypothesis that predicts there will be no evidence for itself is a rather pointless hypothesis. Invisible dragons and Russel's teapot and all that. – Acccumulation Feb 14 '20 at 22:33
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Top 10: Controversial pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial life (New Scientist, 2006)

1. 1976, The Viking Mars landers detect chemical signatures indicative of life

2. 1977, The unexplained extraterrestrial "Wow!" signal is detected by an Ohio State University radio telescope

3. 1996, Martian "fossils" are discovered in meteorite ALH80041 from Antarctica

4. 2001, A more rigorous estimate of the "Drake equation" suggests that our galaxy may contain hundreds of thousands of life-bearing planets

5. 2001, The red tinge of Jupiter's moon Europa proposed to be due to frozen bits of bacteria, which also helps explain the mysterious infrared signal it gives off

6. 2002, Russian scientists argue that a mysterious radiation-proof microbe may have evolved on Mars

7. 2002, Chemical hints of life are found in old data from Venus probes and landers. Could microbes exist in Venusian clouds?

8. 2003, Sulphur traces on Jupiter's moon Europa may be the waste products of underground bacterial colonies

9. 2004, Methane in the Martian atmosphere hints at microbial metabolism

10. 2004, A mysterious radio signal is received by the SETI project on three occasions - from the same region of space

click on the Link for more details.

Oliver_C
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    +1 Great answer! This is the best we've got if you're looking for evidence. – Django Reinhardt Apr 16 '11 at 14:51
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    It would be interesting to include alternative explanations for these happenings. – amit kumar Mar 29 '12 at 16:52
  • Didn't the wow signal lead to the discovery of pulsars or am I thinking of something else? – GordonM Jun 11 '15 at 12:24
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    Update 2016/1/13: [New claim about the Wow signal NOT being 'evidence'](http://www.iflscience.com/space/wow-signal-might-have-been-comets), citing [this study (PDF)](http://planetary-science.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Paris_Davies-H-I-Line-Signal.pdf) –  Jan 13 '16 at 15:18
  • Might be worth mentioning that all but the points 2 and 10 are possible signs of life, but they are not signs of *intelligent* life. Point 2 and 10 are radio pulses which were not clearly identified, but there is not nearly enough data available to rule out natural causes. – Philipp Feb 14 '20 at 12:44
  • @DjangoReinhardt Actual video recordings from the U.S navy in conjunction with pilot and radar operator eye witness testimony I would say is a lot better evidence than what's posted above. – dan-klasson Feb 21 '20 at 21:41
  • @dan-klasson Then write an answer! – Django Reinhardt Feb 25 '20 at 18:54
  • @DjangoReinhardt Why bother? People will just downvote it regardless how well you phrase and source it. This site should be renamed to Conformists. – dan-klasson Feb 25 '20 at 19:16
  • @dan-klasson People won't downvote a well researched, well sourced answer. – Django Reinhardt Feb 27 '20 at 14:33
  • @dan-klasson Yeah. Only 9 years. But sure, keep harping on with a persecution complex – Django Reinhardt Mar 10 '20 at 15:23