Odds of Finding Alien Life: An Exploration

[DaveC426913]

If another civilization exists within this galaxy, it would have to be less than 1,000,000 yrs old, or they would have collonized Earth before we arose.

There is absolutely no rational logic that could possibly lead to that conclusion. Unless you're having trouble with the line between science-fantasy and reality. Or you're actually one of them, and know what they like in a planet...

 

[DaveC426913]

But i completely believe in a united religion and science...

This is impossible. Religion is based on faith as opposed to knowledge; science is based on replacing faith with knowledge.

While it is possible for one person to hold the two tenets at the same time, they are, by definition, in conflict with each other. That's OK too - No one said humans have to be consistent.

But they will never be unified.


But that's another discussion.

Er... Another forum I mean...

 

[Vanadium 50]

DaveC, I disagree with your description of both science and religion, but as you say, it belongs elsewhere. However, the "unification" idea that the truth or falsehood of a proposition depends on how it makes people feel is certainly unscientific.

 

[LURCH]

I'm studying anthropology, and humanoids have been on Earth dating back to 6-7 million yrs ago. So they would of had to come before then.

The point I was trying to make was that humanity would never have achieved civilization at all in that case. Palientologists are generally agreed that the human race would not have risen to the top of the food chain if something hadden't wiped out the dinosaurs. By that same line of reasoning, if some civilized and technologically advanced species had colonized Earth before we started making spears and wearing animal skins, we would still be living in the forest in small troops.

 

[LURCH]

There is absolutely no rational logic that could possibly lead to that conclusion. Unless you're having trouble with the line between science-fantasy and reality. Or you're actually one of them, and know what they like in a planet...

Tell that to Fermi; it's his paradox!

 

[Zdenka]

I don't believe you guys didn't think outside the box: What if Alien 'civilizations' (if we could call them that) are so far more advanced than us, say 3 billion years ahead.. wouldn't we just be animals to them? Or even worse, they'll see us as bacterias and would NOT want to contact such a primitive organism. And they would NOT be limited by the huge traveling distances through space since they can gather enough energy to open portals to other dimensions.

And who says Aliens that advanced aren't here already? Just like Humans using satellites to spy on Chimpanzees undetected, the Aliens could be around us, or even in some hidden dimension in front of us, spying on us. We can't see them of course, because their technology inhibits our detection... they're simply invisible.

For all intents and purposes, I think it'd be impossible for us to imagine how an Alien that's 3 billion years more advanced, would think.. It'd be like a dog trying to imagine what it's like to be living the life of a human being.. going to work, buying shares, space traveling and doing other 'human tasks'. These Aliens (I call them type V civilizations) are so far ahead of us, we simply cannot fathom their minds.

And their agenda could be totally different from ours (the Aliens, I mean)

 

[Mr. Paradox]

Or emagine us as the aliens. That we are the advances species traveling to a distant planet and the aliens we meet there are as advanced as we were in the 1800's and they are the ones who emagine us

 

[Djrob99]

Will we really? Technologically, I certainly agree with you. Socially however, as I pointed out, do you really think we would fund such expeditions that we have no chance of hearing back from in our lifetimes? Are we going to spend trillions of dollars simply to send people out in space to never return?

The only way this seems possible is if every single social crisis on Earth is solved and there's literally nothing better to do.

Or possibly just the opposite, ie its the last great hope to save mankind!

 

[Nabeshin]

Or possibly just the opposite, ie its the last great hope to save mankind!

You're being too romantic.

 

[Waveform]

I don't believe you guys didn't think outside the box: What if Alien 'civilizations' (if we could call them that) are so far more advanced than us, say 3 billion years ahead.. wouldn't we just be animals to them? Or even worse, they'll see us as bacterias and would NOT want to contact such a primitive organism. And they would NOT be limited by the huge traveling distances through space since they can gather enough energy to open portals to other dimensions.

And who says Aliens that advanced aren't here already? Just like Humans using satellites to spy on Chimpanzees undetected, the Aliens could be around us, or even in some hidden dimension in front of us, spying on us. We can't see them of course, because their technology inhibits our detection... they're simply invisible.

For all intents and purposes, I think it'd be impossible for us to imagine how an Alien that's 3 billion years more advanced, would think.. It'd be like a dog trying to imagine what it's like to be living the life of a human being.. going to work, buying shares, space traveling and doing other 'human tasks'. These Aliens (I call them type V civilizations) are so far ahead of us, we simply cannot fathom their minds.

And their agenda could be totally different from ours (the Aliens, I mean)

Yes, I think you have quite a valid point here. if we just look around at the hierarchy of species here and apply the basic same rules to at least the level of our understanding, then advanced civilizations (if any exist) could well fall into this categorization.

I think perhaps that if and when we do discover another life form ie. alien, it will not be advanced to a great degree beyond us.
A guppy swimming in the ocean can discover another guppy. Even if the other guppy is larger and much more colorful.
However, the guppy can not discover a soaring eagle, or at least until he achieves that status over millions of years.
I apologize for the philosophical nature here, but it is the best way I can put it.
I can't give an equation for it.

On the lighter side however. I think if we were advanced enough to do close interstellar travel. I think I would put us on par with the 'Ferengay'.

 

[Saturni]

There is too much space for no life to be out there.. As I said in my other post on "Is the Earth at the center of the Universe?"
Space is never ending. But inside space, bubbles form. In which forms different atmospheres in those bubbles. There is roughly trillions of bubbles forming as we speak.
But yes, I think Alien life exists..

Good luck,
-Derek

 

[Limitless777]

There is one almost unknown Fermi paradox solution which I think is the best.
The logic of the solution is as follows: to communicate and to rule across the vastness of space, any advanced interstellar civilization will have to synchronize the proper time of its starship travelers and couriers with the proper time of the star metropolis (the center of the civilization). In other words, to compensate for the time dilation of light-speed couriers and communications, the entire civilization has to become mobile and mobile at the speed of light. It may include mass transit technologies like teleportation. Corresponding time dilation makes the communication with such civilization almost impossible. The estimate is that our civilization can achieve this level of technology by the middle of this century. In fact, modern fiber optics, and satellite radio lines allow for information to travel close to the speed of light (it is OK for non-biological ET, like AI virtual personalities). See also an article in Philica on Fermi paradox: http://philica.com/display_article.php?article_id=184

 

[Limitless777]

If we stick to discussions of solutions of the Fermi paradox in this thread, the thread might have a chance to continue on. If this thread continues with the overly speculative posts and high school histrionics that have plagued this thread so far, it will be locked.

DH, that is exactly what I suggest too. That is to repeat that there exist one scientific solution to the paradox which explains that they may be not intentionally hiding - and still are everywhere (mobile civilization utilizing light speed in the everyday life, see my previous post).

 

[Limitless777]

Another proposed solution is to invoke the famous "Prime Directive," stating that other advanced civilizations exist, they are here in our neighbourhood, but they refrain from making contact. Again, this is not impossible, but no real-world examples can be found. Whenever one civilization has encountered another on this planet, contact is immediately made (often to the detriment of the less technologically advanced civilization)

They may exist and "be everywhere" and not refrain from the contact but the communication still may be impossible. Consider the case of communication with the star traveler moving almost with the speed of light. Small talk can take thousand of years due to the time dilation. And the jetliner passengers would not jump out just to stare at the crawling ant.

 

[JaredJames]

There is one almost unknown Fermi paradox solution which I think is the best.

the entire civilization has to become mobile and mobile at the speed of light. It may include mass transit technologies like teleportation. Corresponding time dilation makes the communication with such civilization almost impossible.

How is this a solution? Given you can't accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, it doesn't solve anything.

The estimate is that our civilization can achieve this level of technology by the middle of this century.

"Our civilization"? And whose estimate is this? Certainly not one based in reality. We aren't even close to anything of the sort.

First you propose wee need to travel at the speed of light and then you say we can do so mid 21st century. Nonsense.

In fact, modern fiber optics, and satellite radio lines allow for information to travel close to the speed of light

Those two allow information to travel at the speed of light. It is only the encoding / decoding phases that give a 'delay', but the signal itself is at light speed.

 

[mjacobsca]

I think I am a little late to this thread, but I'm surprised no one has discussed the Rare Earth Theory in this thread. Basically, this theory attempts to add in new developments in our understanding of astrobiolgy, astrophysics, planetary formation, and cosmology to the original Drake Equation in order to come up with an improved, more modern, and more realistic formula for the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy. They add in a bunch of factors not considered in the Drake equation, such as the benefits of having an extremely large moon to stabilize a planet's tilt along its axis, the presence of a large Jupiter to guard the rocky inner planets from excessive bombardment by wayward asteroids and comets as well as the frequency and timing of the impacts that DO occur, beneficial locations within galactic spiral arms (eg galactic habitable zones in addition to the already considered planetary habitable zones), metallicity of planets, types of planetary orbits, and numerous other factors. The Rare Earth Theory takes a pretty realistic approach to evaluating new factors that Drake never did. Depending on your viewpoint on the new factors they introduce, the number of advanced alien civilizations in our galaxy other than us may be as low as 0. They do, however, believe that primitive life is common. It is certainly an interesting theory that deserves some consideration.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

 

[Limitless777]

How is this a solution? Given you can't accelerate an object with mass to the speed of light, it doesn't solve anything.
"Our civilization"? And whose estimate is this? Certainly not one based in reality. We aren't even close to anything of the sort.
First you propose wee need to travel at the speed of light and then you say we can do so mid 21st century. Nonsense.

First, you may consider this as an estimate of one prominent futurist and a famous inventor, Ray Kurzweil. He has already proved many times that he is pretty good in technological predictions. According to his estimates, our civilization will become mostly non-biological to the year 2045. It means that most of thinking creatures (virtual personalities) to this year will be traveling virtually through the networks similar to Internet - at the speed of light. It is obvious that for those, who is massless there is no need to accelerate.
Second, you are wrong, there exist promising ideas on light speed travel for massive objects too, so your thesis is not "given". I don't want to discuss these ideas here, but you may consider, for example, the fact that the Dirac equation for massive particle (4-spinor) may be transformed into two equations for massless Weyl 2-spinors. It means by the way that from the certain point of view fermion particles like electron, proton, etc. are moving at the speed of light all the time (no need to accelerate). It is well-known in quantum theory "jiggling" effect. Future inventors may find a way to utilize this.

 

[JaredJames]

First, you may consider this as an estimate of one prominent futurist and a famous inventor, Ray Kurzweil. He has already proved many times that he is pretty good in technological predictions. According to his estimates, our civilization will become mostly non-biological to the year 2045. It means that most of thinking creatures (virtual personalities) to this year will be traveling virtually through the networks similar to Internet - at the speed of light. It is obvious that for those, who is massless there is no need to accelerate.

These ideas have already been discussed here only a few weeks back. I believe the thread was locked for non-sense claims such as these. There is no substance to them.

Second, you are wrong, there exist promising ideas on light speed travel for massive objects too, so your thesis is not "given". I don't want to discuss these ideas here, but you may consider, for example, the fact that the Dirac equation for massive particle (4-spinor) may be transformed into two equations for massless Weyl 2-spinors. It means by the way that from the certain point of view fermion particles like electron, proton, etc. are moving at the speed of light all the time (no need to accelerate). It is well-known in quantum theory "jiggling" effect. Future inventors may find a way to utilize this.

As far as I'm aware, the only methods for FTL travel for massive objects involve 'exotic' as of yet, non-existent entities.

Also, I'm not sure how interchangeable micro and macro scale matters are.

 

[berkeman]

Thread closed pending Moderation of necroposts by Limitless777...