Con ~ Round 1

It is a long-held mystery of the masses: Do aliens exist? It is something that cannot be proven, and ultimately something that one feels the need to ponder. I, for one, do not believe in aliens, as intelligent life forms equal to, or even greater, than our own. The probability is not high enough for me to truly accept this as a possibility.

Pro ~ Round 1

As a policy debater my favorite thing in the world to do was to create Kritiks. Specifically I loved to create squirrel Kritiks, in other words Kritiks that no one else would have evidence on.

The best of these was by far my Hawking Kritik which stated, as Hawking has pointed out, the long term survival of the human population is dependent on our ability to colonize other stellar systems or bodies. Eventually life on our earth will end, whether this occurs through an asteroid collision, nuclear war, or simple over population it none the less cannot go on forever.

Thus of course the main problem with my Kritik was finding the viable alternative, something that took me days of research but I finally attained.



A. THERE ARE OVER 17,000 POSSIBLE NEARBY HABITABLE STELLAR SYSTEMS- Turnbull & Tarter '03
[Margaret C. Turnbull, Jim C.Tarter, University of Arizona, SETI institute, "Target Selection for SETI. I. A Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems", 2003, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/...]

The primary topics of this dissertation are (1) target selection for searches for extrasolar life, especially for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and (2) remote detection of biosignatures, especially with regard to TPF. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the field of astrobiology, and to the search for life on other planets. Chapters 2 and 3 ask, "What are the best places in the Universe to search for Earth-like life?" A class of stars, "habstars," is defined as stellar systems that are potentially habitable to Earth-like complex life. The physical properties of habstars are derived from the biological requirement of habitable zone stability, and these properties are translated into observable characteristics. In Chapter 2, the Catalog of Nearby Habitable Stellar Systems (HabCat), containing ~17,000 "habstars" within 300 parsecs, is presented for use as a new target list for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence with the Allen Telescope Array. In Chapter 3, HabCat is augmented with other targets of interest, including a list of ~250,000 stars within 1000 parsecs from the Tycho-2 Catalog that are likely to be main-sequence (based on their proper motions) F, G, K and M stars (based on their B-V colors), old open clusters, and the nearest 100 stars.


With over 17,000 NEARBY habitable stellar systems it is quite possible that one of them has life on it. Furthermore as the number one factor of life on earth is considered to be water and of the 8 planets we know that Mercury reportedly has water in protected craters. Venus at one point had water. Earth has water. Mars has icecaps and 0.03% H20 in its atmosphere. Jupiter has trace ammounts of water in its atmosphere. Saturn also has trace amounts in the atmosphere and its rings are primarily composed of water. Uranus has no water and Neptune supposedly has water in its middle layers. And of the 3 dwarf planets we know that pluto is made of 30% water ice, Ceres hasn't been visited yet, and neither has Eris. Furthermore the moons: Ganymede, Mimas, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Iapetus, Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Caliban, Sycorax, Prospero, Setebos, Stephano, Trinculo, Triton, all have a percentage of water ice on them or are primarily made of such and the moons: Phobos, Europa (possibly 50 km depth of liquid water under the surface), Charon all probably have some amount of water.

With the above in mind it is more than likely that at least a few of the 17,000 nearby potentially habitable stellar bodies have water on them and are close enough to an energy source to create the right conditions for life.

Thus I have no choice but to negate my opponents comments and point out the logical fallacy. Of the 8 planets that we can readily observe 1 of them definitely has life. As this is the only empirical evidence we have the likely observation would be that 1 in 8 planets have life. Therefor my opponents case stating this is so entirely unlikely that it is not even possible is completely and utterly flawed. It is more than possible and highly likely that there is a stellar body out there with intelligent life.

Con ~ Round 2

This round was forfeited because the debater did not post their argument within the allotted time.

Pro ~ Round 2

Right, I'm going to step out on a limb here and ask that everything I have said so far is extended. Thanks.

Con ~ Round 3

This round was forfeited because the debater did not post their argument within the allotted time.

Pro ~ Round 3

My opponent drops everything thus I must asked that everything is extended. I also ask that everyone vote on the tournament debate between Beem0r and I which is currently tied 5 - 5