Communication with Extraterrestrial Life

[caumaan]

In the 1970's, we utilized the Arecibo Radio Antenna to broadcast a message to the depths of space in the hopes of comming into contact with life beyond this world.

In 2003, we did the same thing, sending a methematical code to convey our thoughts to the universe around us. I begin this thread by asking if we are wise to do this and whatever reason for your thoughts.

I myself, believe that there are extraterrestrials out there and tha one day we may come into contact with them. I don't have much of an opinion of weather or not they are benign. I thank you for your time.

 

[selfAdjoint]

I think it's not paranoid at all to walk warily when you know nothing of the neighborhood. These deliberate broadcasts were in my view foolish, and not at all saved by the fact that our radio and TV chatter had been going out all those years.

 

[caumaan]

I think that the idea is that we have to convince our neighbors that we are normally in a different strata of social and technological development thatn "I Love Lucy", but I see your point. We do have a lot going out now.

 

[Nereid]

IIRC, by far the most powerful transmissions - in the radio spectrum - were (are?) military radars. In terms of directed beams, it may be that the doppler planet and asteroid radar (that suggested there's ice near one of Mercury's poles, for example, and that at least part of Titan's surface is covered with a liquid) have a stronger peak signal strength. Fortunately, or not, I Love Lucy isn't much above omnidirectional.

 

[FZ+]

"I don't think they would come 2 thousand light years just to declare war" Independence Day

Ok seriously, why would aliens not be benign. What do they stand to gain from attacking us, that they can't grab off any other of the billions of stars within their reach?

The most likely scenario is that the aliens just won't care.

Still, I do agree with some caution. But if aliens were malevonent, and determined enough to come such distances to get us, it is unlikely we would hide from them forever.

 

[Phobos]

And at least we can say that our opening move was a friendly gesture.

In 2003, we did the same thing, sending a methematical code to convey our thoughts to the universe around us.

This year? I thought the second transmitted message was a few years ago. Hmm...maybe I thinking of this one in 1999 (http://www.seti-inst.edu/science/enc-2001.html ) but I thought there was another.

FYI re: the first message: (from http://www.bigear.org/vol1no2/sagan.htm)

... transmitted to space by the Arecibo Observatory, which Cornell University runs for the National Science Foundation, in November 1974 at a ceremony marking the resurfacing of the Arecibo dish the largest radio/radar telescope on Earth. The signal was sent to a collection of stars called M13, a globular cluster comprising about a million separate suns, because it was overhead at the time of the ceremony. Since Ml 3 is 24,000 light years away, the message will take 24,000 years to arrive there. If anyone is listening, it will be 48,000 years before we receive a reply. The Arecibo message was clearly not intended as a serious attempt at interstellar communication, but rather as an indication of the remarkable advances in terrestrial radio technology. ...

also...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000123.html

 

[Zeke]

well because of the big bang theroy i believe that if there is intellgent life we will not be able to communcate with them firstly because the transmisions that we send will not reach them for 40 years or more. secondly i think they will not be so much more advanced

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by FZ+
"I don't think they would come 2 thousand light years just to declare war" Independence Day.

Actually, I think it was 90 billion. In any case, I agree with your conclusions. I doubt it would relieve enough boredom to make it worth coming here to crush us.

 

[Doctor Luz]

I think the chance of finding an alien civilization is very low. More low if we think in a physical contact.

How long can a civilization live? what is the mean life of a civilization? Maybe now there are many civilizations in our galaxy, supposing the very few probability that tomorrow we receive a message (similar to those we sent out), that does not imply that the civilization is still alive.

Also, one civilization must be the first. I don't like the idea but why could not we the first?

I think the probability is against any kind of contact. However we should not loose the faith.

 

[gunblaze]

As there is a will there will be a hope! Try to be optimistic! By the way, If there aren't anything out there then why are the planets there for?

 

[Nereid]

gunblaxe: By the way, If there aren't anything out there then why are the planets there for?

... to provide a nice, comfortable home for all those bacteria which live in rocks!

 

[Sting]

Why do we think aliens are going to be friendly?

They may want to come and eat us!

 

[Phobos]

The messages we broadcasted also contained a footnote that humans taste very bitter.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Phobos
The messages we broadcasted also contained a footnote that humans taste very bitter.

As I understand this question, unless we and the aliens have some common or coincidentally similar DNA, assuming aliens have DNA, we would not serve as a food source.

Since the odds of contact appear to be quite low, and since the odds of catastrophic results from any potential contact appear to be even lower, and since the odds of direct contact are astronomically low, and since the benefits from even radio contact with another civilization could be enormous, say for example if they sent us their knowledgebase, I tend to think the potential benefits vastly outweigh the potential risks.

Next, if ET is out there and can get here, that is assuming a level of technology perhaps a million years more advanced than ours, and considering that even we are imagining ways to discern regions of space, solar systems, and even planets that could support life, it seems reasonable to assume that in any event, we can't hide. If ET could be and desires to be a threat, he likely already is; which means we should all be dead or ET’s slaves by now.

Go for it!

 

[Nereid]

How advanced??

... assuming a level of technology perhaps a million years more advanced than ours

As I see it, there's a bit of contradiction in the whole ET thing. A million years is nothing in the life of 1 solar mass (and smaller) stars, let alone the universe. Yet, only ~one tenth of that time has passed since homo sapiens started leaving artifacts which show at least some people had developed abstract symbols; only 1% of that time since permanent settlements began; less than 0.1% of that time has elapsed since we realized the Earth is a mere planet; ...

What is the wildest speculation any of us can make about a technology which develops for another 300,000 generations?

 

[screwball]

Originally posted by caumaan
I think that the idea is that we have to convince our neighbors that we are normally in a different strata of social and technological development thatn "I Love Lucy", but I see your point. We do have a lot going out now.

im more afraid they would judge us by the fox news network than i love lucy reruns

 

[aeroegnr]

I guess I look at it this way:

If you were an alien, and you knew of a particular race of intelligent beings on a certain planet, would you help them? Probably not. Chances are, the aliens that see us probably got to an extremely advanced state of technology without external help, and managed not to kill themselves with it.

Would you want to, by establishing contact with someone who has no grasp of your technology, accidentally give them too much information, them never having proved themselves?

I'm pretty sure any race that evolved with external help would be looked down on by the intelligent civilizations of the universe.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here is some interesting, related information:

Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence:
http://www.nsa.gov/docs/efoia/released/ufo/ufo34.pdf

 

[benzun_1999]

I firmly believe that Aliens exist

Because if there is a coincedence forming us there is definitely a coincidence forming an alien.

i also believe that aliens may exist in a different dimention that we don't know.

 

[Nereid]

Already seems, shall we say, quaint?

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
Here is some interesting, related information:

Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence:
http://www.nsa.gov/docs/efoia/released/ufo/ufo34.pdf

Interesting article; do you know when it was written? Note the very short time-frames the author mentions (50 years, 200 years, ..). Now that there's a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem (took only a few hundred years to solve), what should we transmit?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Nereid
...do you know when it was written?

No. It seems to fall into the category of typical late 60s and early 70s government literature, however I found this while searching the NSA archives. You know as much about this document as I do.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

One question that I have always found amusing is what an alien TV program might be like. We tend to consider our TV signals going out, but [if this is ever even technically possible], imagine the high strangeness of watching a 3 million year old alien I love Lucy...well, you know what I mean...what ever aliens liked to watch...three million years ago.

 

[aeroegnr]

The more I think about this the more I think the answer is: There is no way that we can see evidence of extra-terrestial communication if the beings are more advanced than us.

First of all, think of the way that we communicate. We use radio transmissions, which send various wavelengths out in all directions. When you think about this, if you are just trying to communicate with one target, that is incredibly wasteful. Because waves are made up of quanta, each transmission on the radio potentially wastes mil/bil/tril/ions of quanta of energy.

Now, if the extra-terrestrials are advanced, they probably figured out that you can send out one quanta of energy at the minimum in a vacuum and still get your message through as long as you know exactly where to point your wave and the target is prepared to receive.

I certainly can't imagine an antenna or device for this being easy to produce or use, but could it be that far off?

Probably not. The gap between sending out wasteful television transmissions and quantized communication is probably only a few hundred years. In the vast realm of things, that drops the probability of finding a civilization at our current level VERY small, but doesn't affect a high probability of other intelligent beings out there.


Make sense to anyone else?

 

[Nereid]

So many assumptions, so little time

assume
- the aliens are advanced
- an (economic?) drive to maximise information transfer per unit of energy/photon
- use of photons (vs gravitons, neutrinos, selectrons, ...) as an information transport mechanism
- and more, more and more.

The invariant (invariable?) in conducting these kinds of discussions is ... what, exactly? Many of us reach to science, specifically physics and its implementation in technology. Yet it's easy to show this is less stable than economics - there've been too many science/physics/technology advances in the last ~400 years for you to have much confidence in its predictive capability beyond ~50 years. On the other hand, we might be able to show that economics is a constant, possibly over as much as 10,000 years (how well we understand the economic invariants is a different question!).

But then, why should aliens organise themselves into the social states that homo sap. has? Why not something more like orangutangs? or bees? or cyanobacteria?

And even if we convinced ourselves we're on the right track here - at least in principle - what gives us confidence that we can extrapolate 100, 1,000, 10,000, ... times?

 

[Innexplicable]

Forget belief, let's talk probability. According to theory there are at least 10000 planets with semi inttelligent-intelligent beings in our universe, but also according to that theory we will never meet any of them. As for contacting them, if they are up to 90 light years away they should be hearing from us now, and SETI has been on for the past 50 years. So it's safe to say that no intelligent beings have been broadcasting up to 50 light years away in the past 50 years.

As for how advanced they may be: This is up to question, but it is safe to say that if they find us...lets just say we shouldn't start a war.

 

[Nereid]

Innexplicable wrote: According to theory there are at least 10000 planets with semi inttelligent-intelligent beings in our universe, but also according to that theory we will never meet any of them.

Which theory are you referring to? Could you please give us a reference?

 

[Rog]

Originally posted by Innexplicable
. According to theory there are at least 10000 planets with semi inttelligent-intelligent beings in our universe, but also according to that theory we will never meet any of them.

I think this should be our galaxy not the universe for 10,000 possible intelligent life forms. Anyway I believe that each broadcast from a civilisation is like an expanding donut. i.e. from when radio technology is discovered to the eventual destruction of the civilisation which produced it. Or on the more hopeful side the discovery of that civilisation of more efficient ways to comminucate than radiowaves, which we are not capable of detecting yet. This ring may therefore only be approximately 200yrs wide.

The chances of us being in the right bit of the "donut" of any broadcasting inteligence are by consequence slim but not impposible.

 

[Phobos]

Originally posted by Innexplicable
... and SETI has been on for the past 50 years. So it's safe to say that no intelligent beings have been broadcasting up to 50 light years away in the past 50 years. .

That's far from a safe assumption. SETI only hears a small fraction of all possible "channels" at anyone time and it scans relatively quickly across the sky. Initial scans (e.g., by Drake) just looked at a couple channels for a few stars. More recent scans have a "million channel array" to search through. They're currently working on a "billion channel array" (not sure the status of this offhand). They're also just starting up "optical SETI" to look for laser pulses rather than listening for radio signals. But even all that is not a 100% sampling of all possible signal locations. We may just be missing it. More details about this in Carl Sagan's book Pale Blue Dot. Plenty of info to check on on the internet too.

 

[Nereid]

Communication with aliens

Is there anything from our experience on Earth that gives us some clues about communication with aliens? Here are some wild ideas:

There are aliens living here on Earth, right alongside us, and in full view (more or less). They can spell, wield tools, count, and show deceit and outright cunning*.

Yet we have not learned to communicate with them. Instead we have eaten them, enslaved them, hunted them, and generally quite misunderstood them. Despite this, they haven't embarked on a resistance campaign, nor sought revenge on homo sap.

All these aliens are sexual beings, and inherit many physical and some behavioural traits through DNA; others through interactions with their environment while young, including social learning from others of their species.

The closest of these aliens are separated from us by mere millions of years of evolution; others perhaps one trip around the galaxy by sol; certainly less than two.

Oh dear, if only they had developed mathematics or weapons!

*orangutans, crows, parrots, dolphins and chimps, respectively.

 

[cragwolf]

Originally posted by Nereid
Is there anything from our experience on Earth that gives us some clues about communication with aliens?

Thanks Nereid: a very intelligent post.

There are aliens living here on Earth, right alongside us, and in full view (more or less). They can spell, wield tools, count, and show deceit and outright cunning*.

Well, I would like to see them spell antidisestablishmentarianism, build a car, count to 1,296, play chess ... well, you get my drift. These animals are simply not as intelligent as us. The idea that ET communication optimists have is that if the aliens are at least as intelligent as us, then mutual understanding will be possible. And if they're orders of magnitude more intelligent than us, no problem, they'll work it all out, and our job will be as easy as sitting back and listening to your favourite piece of music! Intelligence is viewed by these starry-eyed dreamers as a sort of translation key. Personally, I think the idea is bollocks.

Yet we have not learned to communicate with them. Instead we have eaten them, enslaved them, hunted them, and generally quite misunderstood them./

Good point, but you could make your point just as well, if not better, by using the example of the clash of different cultures, such as that which occurred between the Europeans and the Amerindians. It took a long while for these two cultures to understand each other. Yet, in addition to the fact that they belong to the same species(!), they also share a large number of cultural reference points: love, myth, religion, astrology, war, etc etc. And we expect to be able to communicate with a lifeform from another planet, with a different biology, an intelligence utterly incommensurable to our own, and a culture we wouldn't even recognise as a culture. Ha!

Oh dear, if only they had developed mathematics or weapons!

Another good point. Technology has the possibility to speed up our development. It has the potential to be orders of magnitude faster than natural selection. Even if, pre-technology, or early-technology, aliens and humans might be able to achieve some sort of understanding, technology would ultimately magnify our respective differences. They'd go off in one direction, and we'd go off in another (*), and the day we met would be a muddle of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, misconstruction, misjudgement ... every "mis" under the sun (except maybe misletoe)!

I think people are reading too much of Sagan and not enough of Lem. A good antidote to Contact is His Master's Voice, or alternatively, Fiasco.

(*) This reminds me of the road we took: gossip gadgets and internet porn; and the road we forsook: space colonisation and more leisure time. Cultures can always regress, I suppose.

 

[Nereid]

Lem?

Thanks for the comments cragwolf.

I didn't talk about the role (and nature) of language in this thread (too many ideas, not enough time), and I see that zoobyshoe made some excellent points that relate to this in a different thread.

cragwolf wrote: Good point, but you could make your point just as well, if not better, by using the example of the clash of different cultures, such as that which occurred between the Europeans and the Amerindians. It took a long while for these two cultures to understand each other. Yet, in addition to the fact that they belong to the same species(!), they also share a large number of cultural reference points: love, myth, religion, astrology, war, etc etc. And we expect to be able to communicate with a lifeform from another planet, with a different biology, an intelligence utterly incommensurable to our own, and a culture we wouldn't even recognise as a culture.

IMHO, this is both too easy and too difficult to explain. Many people seem to believe that such intra-species mis* was a temporary phenomenon, now well on the way to being overcome. Those who take the point may feel irritated that's it's being repeated; those who don't, well, they don't get it. Before we start to speculate too much about what other intelligent life might be like, and how we might communicate with them, I thought it would be interesting to see what communicating with life we *do* know about could teach us.

The 'mathematics and weapons' comment was also partly a metaphor. Much is made of our ability to communicate using maths; many (almost all?) tracts on 'meeting' ET make at least some reference to conflict involving weapons (if only to deny such a thing would even happen). What if ET's mode of communication is something else entirely?

I'm not familiar with Lem - Lem who? (or who Lem?)

 

[cragwolf]

Originally posted by Nereid
I'm not familiar with Lem - Lem who? (or who Lem?)

Stanislaw Lem, science fiction writer, philosopher. The link below is a very good introduction to his work:

http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/lem.html

 

[Nereid]

First Contact

Sometime within the last century or so, first contact was made between the New Guinea highlands society/culture/set of communities and the West. AFAIK, this is perhaps the best documented 'first contact' between an Industrial Age group (society?) and a 'Stone Age' one, though there may have been others (e.g. remote Amazon Basin tribes, desert Australian Aboriginies). As such it represents about the closest thing we have to data on what happens when two intelligent groups meet for the first time.

Can anyone give a concise summary of what happened?

The value of this event for a discussion about communication and contact with ET is, IMHO, rather limited. Firstly, it would be very difficult to 'normalise' it. Not only is there just one data point, but how do you adjust for 'state of technological and social development'? If 1 million years is an uncomfortably short period of time for considerations of such states, how could we speculate about what first contact between a 'Stone Age' and a 'PJAOFHN' Age society would be like (the latter based on technology first introduced 100,000 years from now)?

On the other hand, looking for factors constant across first contacts throughout recorded history may be interesting. Ditto trends,

 

[Merlin]

the drake equation

The Drake equation, yes I do believe that it describes, the probability of Earth like planets in a system. I'm too lazy to look it up, just type it in and you should get many hits.

I feel we aren't alone. "They" are coming back. "They" create universes and life (but not souls). And what's more, "they" have left calling cards, for a reason. And no, I can't prove it, which dovetails with the fact that science can't prove its mainstream theories, like the big bang, and many, many others.

I don't, however think this predestiney/determisism gives us the right to use the God excuse to stop searching for TOE, etc. Science will need religion, and religions need science.

The religious element shouldn't be like a well known church that stifled science for 1000 years, or more. And science shouldn't be like the industrial/millitary complex that lies and deceives,and attempts to crush non mainstream Ideas! ( I love the implications of the word Idea)...ahhh well...

bah humbug ...[/color]Merlin.[/color]

 

[Nereid]

Ah what is science? Mentat, where are you?

I feel we aren't alone. "They" are coming back. "They" create universes and life (but not souls). And what's more, "they" have left calling cards, for a reason. And no, I can't prove it,

What data/evidence etc is there which makes you feel this way?

And science shouldn't be like the industrial/millitary complex that lies and deceives,and attempts to crush non mainstream Ideas!

what are non-mainstream ideas if not either ideas which have been shown to be contrary to solid observations/experiments, or ideas that aren't sufficiently well-formed yet that they're not capable of being tested? At least, in physics, astronomy, ... etc.

 

[Merlin]

I feel we aren't alone. "They" are coming back. "They" create universes and life (but not souls). And what's more, "they" have left calling cards, for a reason. And no, I can't prove it,

What data/evidence etc is there which makes you feel this way?[/color]


quote:And science shouldn't be like the industrial/millitary complex that lies and deceives,and attempts to crush non mainstream Ideas!
[/color]
what are non-mainstream ideas if not either ideas which have been shown to be contrary to solid observations/experiments, or ideas that aren't sufficiently well-formed yet that they're not capable of being tested? At least, in physics, astronomy, ... etc.[/color]

Merlin replys; Scientific method is well and fine.If you allow that this wizard of OZ paradigm only accurate for the time that you happen to be living in! Can you imagine being a "Research scientist" in 3000 BC? You would be there pounding on your bronze ingot, while I was attempting to explain that It's possible to leave Earth and fly to the planets and stars without Passing through the underworld of the dead first? Science and religion isn't flawed, its the deliberate misinformation/application of both that's flawed.

Today's paradigm is wrong. Instead of accepting the MAINSTREAM ideas, (which is designed for you to use like a drug), ask questions! The world wide science paradigm is imbedded into to us from an early age, for a reason. But, alas, it is not possible to put into a sound byte. would be happy to send you some information w/o calculations. Please indicate if you want me to send the math also...whew!..now maybe I can brainstorm with the great alchemist Newton and get some feed back on the lead to gold thing...Netwon's so hung up on developing his Law of Universal Gravitation! Why doesn't he forget that insane thing?

MERLIN[/color]

 

[Sting]

The Drake equation

= (stars having planets) * (those stars having habitable conditions on at least one planet) * (those planets on which conditions lasted long enough for life to evolve) * (those planets on which life does evolve) * (those planets on which habitable conditions last long enough for intelligent life to evolve) * (those planets on which intelligent life does evolve) * (those planets on which intelligent life endures)

(taken from Astronomy: The Cosmic Journey (2nd) by Hartmann)

** Sting's note: I've seen other mathematical factors involved with the Drake Equation (the one coming to mind dealing with communication) so I'm not sure if this is just a slight deviance from the Drake Equation I read about in other textbooks and lecture notes.

 

[Nereid]

good news, bad news

Good news: the first three factors should be constrained, perhaps to an order of magnitude, within the next two or three decades.

Bad news: the fourth, fifth, and sixth factors probably hide a deep confusion or two - what is intelligence? what does it mean for intelligent life to 'endure'?

Of course, as soon as we find some other intelligent life, we'll know that 'the answer' is >= 2

 

[cragwolf]

I think that the sole utility of Drake's equation is to help us to distinguish in our minds between those factors which we are completely uncertain about and those factors which we are "orders-of-magnitude" uncertain about.

 

[Ontoplankton]

I think the first and most important consideration in whether aliens exist is the Fermi Paradox (if aliens exist, why aren't they here?), and I haven't seen any explanation better than "life is extremely improbable and therefore there are probably no intelligent aliens in the visible universe". The Drake equation leaves plenty of room for that.

 

[Steele]

Intelligence versus contact.

I don't see any validity to Fermi's Paradox (I guess then it doesn't make it a 'paradox'.

Intelligent ET life can be common. What if there is one billion intelligent E. civilizations in the Universe? The odds would be beyond comprehension if we ever learned of the existence of any of them. There could be a billion advanced intelligences and the odds are that not one of those would know of the existence of another.

A billion ETs means that just one in a hundred galaxies has an ET civilization. That's no ETs within a hundred galaxies of ourselves. And, even per chance we were lucky and that one in a hundred was in our Milky Way...there's one to two hundred billion stars in our galaxy. ETs could be be a hundred billion stars away.

Unless there's some way of 'getting around' Relativity, I just don't see how any contact is probable.

If we make it a thousand billion (trillion) intelligent civilizations..that's still a spacing of billions of stars. A trillion intelligent lifeforms is a lot ...but not a lot in a Universe thought to consist of a hundred billion or so galaxies...vast distances from each other...with each having an average of a hundred to two hundred billion stars.

Intelligent civilizations may be common. Perhaps a billion, perhaps a trillion or perhaps a hundred trillion. The vast distances of Space and the theory of Relativity almost demands that we'll always 'be alone'.

 

[Nereid]

Steele,

Extrapolation is always fraught. However, it's taken homo sap. only ~10,000 years to go from agricultural settlements to manned spaceflight. Where will we be in 10,000 years' time?

Suppose we (humanity) do seriously want to go roaming among the stars in person, and suppose we're limited to the physics we know today. Suppose it takes homo sap. in one solar system 10,000 years to establish itself in another. If the average distance between 'colonised' systems is 10 light years, then 'we' will expand in a spherical shell at a rate of ~1 light year per 1,000 years.

In less than one trip of our solar system round the Milky Way, 'we' would have completely settled just about all of the Milky Way, and the two nearest galaxies as well (the Sagittarius Dwarf and recently discovered Canis Major Dwarf).

The Sun has made ~20 trips round the Milky Way since it was formed.

Of course, our understanding of physics will advance a great deal in 10,000 years, so the above back-of-a-small-envelope calculation may well be very conservative.

Suppose we decide to 'stay at home', preferring to watch TV than travel. When will we be able to determine the highly probably existence of Earth-like planets? how far away could we detect them? Assume we set 'an atmosphere with significant free oxygen' as the marker for 'Earth-like life' on an Earth-sized planet.

Within two decades we will be able to say with some confidence whether there are such within ~50 light years (TPF - Terrestrial Planet Finder). If we work for 10,000 years, to what distance could TPF XXXIV detect Earth-like life? And after one trip round the Milky Way?

 

[Steele]

Nereid
"Extrapolation is always fraught. However, it's taken homo sap. only ~10,000 years to go from agricultural settlements to manned spaceflight. Where will we be in 10,000 years' time?"

You are correct in warning of extrapolation.

The question is also one of the physical laws of the Universe. Those early agriculturalists 10,000 years ago were subject to the same physical laws as those societies today that have manned spaceflight ...as are all intelligent civilizations in the Universe that developed technology a billion years ago. I see 'distance' and Relativity as showstoppers when it comes to potential contact with another intelligence.

Having said this, however, I hope I'm wrong. I'm a big supporter of SETI and don't see a down side to searching for life 'out there'. Perhaps life is so common that we're nothing special. Just as humans don't stop and turn over every rock or stop and study every anthill, maybe very advance civiliations couldn't be bothered with us.

 

[Ontoplankton]

Steele,

I think you're underestimating just how fast the speed of light is. The Virgo Cluster is only about 50 million light years away. At, say, half the speed of light, it would take a mere 100 million years to get from there to here.

It's possible that life is common enough that there is other intelligent life than us in the visible universe, but sparse enough that we haven't noticed it. That leaves just a few orders of magnitude of room -- it would mean life is very unlikely, but not very very unlikely (or very very very unlikely, and so on).

I'm not convinced by the Ants argument. Aliens would do something we'd have noticed either for utilitarian reasons (take Earth apart for building materials), or for humanitarian reasons (help humanity solve its problems), or even just to remove a potential threat. None of these applies to ant hills, so the analogy isn't very good.

The StarTrekian Prime Directive is not only disadvantageous to those following it; it's callous to leave people involuntarily rotting in primitivity. It's just another variant of the "everything natural is good" meme. (Among the religious, it takes the form of "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds".)

I like SETI, though, if only just so I can say "see, nothing there".

 

[Steele]

Ontoplankton,

I have no idea what a Star Trek prime directive is. Western civilization in 2003 has little more insight than an inanimate rock into the motives of an ET civilization. Even the concept is loaded. Humans have changed 'motives' several times in the last couple thousand years as to why we undertake our actions.

It's fun to speculate but we can't judge alien action on the basis of an episode of Star Trek.

Human 'motive' in the last thousand years for visiting an isolated island could be...bringing Christanity to the natives...finding a place to exile mutineers...looking for riches. ...establishing a military base...studying the natural history...establishing a Leper colony...hiding out from hostile enemies...being marooned...answering an S.O.S. signal... stopping for ship maintenance...loading up with water and food...justt some rest and recreation...etc.

An ET civilization is like a big black box into which we can put whatever characteristcs we want. It certainly won't be restrained by the 21st century motives of humans in Western civilization.

 

[Ontoplankton]

Originally posted by Steele
I have no idea what a Star Trek prime directive is.

Some weird important law that says you're not allowed to interfere with alien civilizations, something like that. From what I've seen, more of a plot device, really.

Western civilization in 2003 has little more insight than an inanimate rock into the motives of an ET civilization.

Not quite true. There are a few arguments you can make from evolutionary theory, as well as general common sense.

It's fun to speculate but we can't judge alien action on the basis of an episode of Star Trek.

I'm not doing so. That was just an illustration. And even then, I was arguing against the Startrekian scenario.

It certainly won't be restrained by the 21st century motives of humans in Western civilization.

Certainly. But it takes a pretty weird set of motives to want to keep everything exactly as it would have been. Just as examples, altruism, resource gathering and threat elimination all don't seem far-fetched.

Also, remember that you'll have to claim not even a single alien civilization would want to colonize us. It seems possible, but very unlikely.

 

[Steele]

Ontoplankton,

Those are all valid points. Sorry for misinterpreting the Star Wars analogy. I enjoy some science fiction (but not a Star Trek fan)and find it strange how our current morality always wins out at the end of the day.

My overall view of any attempt to understand aliens is to just always remind myself that it's all speculation. It's a bit like early theologians holding a conference to discuss angels. We superimpose ourselves on any discussion of aliens. We're really discussing humans as much as we are aliens. It's difficult enough to imagine human civilization in a hundred thousand years, let alone a complete other form of life that's a million or billion years removed from our technology. This just makes the subject all the more fascinating.

 

[Ontoplankton]

Originally posted by Steele
I enjoy some science fiction (but not a Star Trek fan)

(same here, actually)

and find it strange how our current morality always wins out at the end of the day.

It's important not to implicitly assume aliens are like us. But given that they would be much older than us as an intelligent species, they would probably be able to change our surroundings to what they think of as an ideal state at negligible cost. That the planet is in state X stops being an argument for keeping it in state X: the current state becomes just one of an enormous amount of possible states. To let it evolve naturally, they would probably have to consider it intrinsically valuable for nature to run its course. And I think it may be the "everything is better left to the wisdom of nature" way of thinking that's a human quirk.

I should emphasize that I'm not sure of anything, of course. But this is what clearly seems most plausible to me.

 

[Evo]

No one mentioned the "golden record" that was sent with Voyager. At that time "Whale songs" were a big thing and were included. Oh well.

Here's a link. http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ spacecraft /goldenrec.html

 

[Adrian Baker]

Technology of an Advanced Alien nation would indeed be very hard for us to understand.

In the 1800's a prize was offered for the first person to communicate with Aliens in the Solar System - it was generally believed then that they existed. However, Mars was excluded in this as it was thought not to be enough of a challenge! One of the methods suggested (this is before Radio) was to cut out huge swathes of trees across Northern Russia, spelling out messages with trees and cleared land. The Aliens could then easily read this with a powerful telescope.

Apart from Percival Lovel's mistaken belief that he had seen Canals on Mars, ie proof of Aliens existence, it was widely believed that the planets all had life on them. One of the main reasons for this belief was that "God would not create a planet for no reason, and as Mars, Jupiter etc are there, God must have made them for other life forms"! This is the original form of the argument; we exist, space is enormous, so Aliens must exist.

I read a lot of old Astronomy books from the 1800's and the debate about Aliens hasn't changed, just our belief system, and our comprehension of technology.

Evo's note above about the 'golden Record' on Voyager made me smile - We didn't even send a digital recording!