We Might Not Be Alone

Shouldn't they be common? There's like millions of them.

This makes the Fermi Paradox that much harder to answer.

My theory? Every civilization either destroys itself or (as postulated by SF author Charlie Stross) undergoes a technological singularity type event and chooses to stay near its home star to conserve bandwidth and energy. Also, we'd have nothing to talk about with such a civilization.

Either that, or we truly are alone, which seems really, really strange and counter-intuitive, but so are many other truths.

Paradox shmaradox. We don't even understand 80% of life on this planet, or 1% of the entire universe, just to give a little perspective on things.

At this point, we're detecting these new solar systems because stars have a certain wobble to them, indicating that they have planets orbiting them. They have ways of measuring approximate size, density and distance of these planets from their stars, but we have a long ways to go before we're able to say with absolute certainty what is or is not on them.

Although I think it goes without saying and is just plain fucking common sense that life is a thing that exists throughout the universe, and the whole question if we're alone is primarily based on human arrogance.

Also things like the Fermi Paradox take expectations (which aren't really based on any sort of evidence at all) too far into account when measuring these sort of things.

How the hell do we know the closest alien civilizations (those that have been around long enough for their radio transmissions to have reached us) even communicate in signals that can be interpreted by us?

Shit, how do we know we havn't received their transmissions already and don't know what to look for, or that such findings havn't been made public?

For all we know there could be a cosmic force which disrupts and at some point completely fades the signal of whatever transmissions they might be sending.

And it's not as though the sort of devices that could potentially pick up these signals are common. Or even covering a significant portion of the sky.

That paradox is an interesting point, but one with a logical counter-argument: We've only been paying attention for alien life for roughly 55 years, and even then, it's been half-hearted and underfunded. Given the billions and billions of years the universe has been around, calling it a paradox that we haven't detected any other life forms after a mere half century of looking is premature at best.

No He will find us



Azathoth.

Either way, the fact that such star-gazing is underfunded is something that had slipped my mind.

In my opinion, I relish finding life out there, but I also fear what exactly is out there, such as beings that are 21 dimensional and beyond our comprehension. Terrible things that could obliterate us in less than a second. One thing I would like to see is a race made of pure energy, how it would be setnient or alive, I do not know, but I dream too much.

Well, duh.

This just in! Plants are actually alive!

Oh, the lack of funding is undeniable. Though the tricky one I can´t quite wrap my head around is the fact, that we haven´t even seriously begun to discover the secrets of the deep sea. It is about 70% of our planet that goes rather unnoticed at the end of the day.

This one is:

My planet could kick your planet's ass.


I did write plant though.

If that were the case it would invalidate all of radio astronomy as well. If there were such a force, we'd know about it.

I don't think anyone involved would necessarily disagree with you about all the uncertainties, but one can make some reasonable educated guesses about what sort of frequencies civilizations would use if they used radio, and there's no harm in looking. Also, radio searches aren't really related to planet detection. Planet hunting bears a lot more fruit, for one thing, and the search for planets isn't the search for civilizations. A rocky planet with oxygen or methane in the atmosphere will be the eventual goal, I think.

They are common, but they're always busy. SETI's data comes from just one telescope at Arecebo, and it's not dedicated to SETI by a long shot.

Are you sure about that? Don't black holes interfere with anything and everything, including radio transmissions?

I stand corrected on radio telescopes, I posted that without thinking much, but yeah the devices are their, they just aren't dedicated to seti, I imagine there are more urgent things to be listening to.

I mean hell, we could live in the black spot of the universe where radio waves and other transmissions never make it through.

The other theory is...

We aren't alone but whoever is out there is obviously smart enough to create interstellar travel that works and maybe they've seen our world:

A. They have a Prime Directive like code that won't let them interfere with our natural development.

B. They've seen how shitty or uninteresting we are, dubbed us "mostly harmless", and moved on. Who the hell would want to talk to us? Especially since half the sci-fi movies involve us killing aliens. Some of those half with us killing them through a misunderstanding. They might think we're not ready for contact yet. I mean it could be them blocking the transmissions.

C. They've seen our society and committed mass suicide. Earth was that depressing.

Yes, we as Earthlings have indirectly killed off all sentient life in the universe that had the misfortune of trying to reach out to us. See Mars Attacks for reference.

Edit: reiterating what Radb707 said.

Great, now we are one step closer to having that Predator/Cowboy Bebop universe I've been cranking out fanfics of for the past ten years.

Or directly. Maybe somebody set off the HALO.

If there were, I'd make sure to expose myself to it, so I may develop powers such as invisibility, spontaneous combustion, or the ability to elongate "certain limbs" (if you know what I mean).
Until they return, to destroy Earth in order to make way for an interstellar highway, of course.

The problem with searching for intelligent life apart from Earth is we end up measuring our own instruments.

Whales and Dolphins have very sophisticated communications going on all the time. We don't view them as intelligent on our level because they do not have hands, thumbs, tools, TV etc

SETI assumes that aliens would communicate via the same radio waves we use, with a language based on mathematics or a regular alphabet (like we use) etc etc etc.

What is really interesting is the way people (including a number of posters above) assume aliens would be a) nobler, kinder creatures than we or b) would be like those Predator comics.

Maybe the aliens have been so busy killing each other that they don't have time to search for other life.

Maybe our radio transmissions are deemed inferior by them. Perhaps the wave spectrum works completely different on their planet.

I want to know what alien music sounds like.

Something like this.

Yes, they do, if you happen to be listening to a source near or behind a black hole. But that's not a mysterious cosmic force causing distant signals to fade in ways we don't understand. If there were, it would raise a metric assload of questions regarding how we have interpreted distant natural radio signals that we can receive.

Well let's say that, hypothetically, there are exactly one million planets with sentient life on them. Logically, one (or perhaps a few are tied) of those planets has to be the most technologically advanced.

What if it's us?

Than this is a sad sad little universe.

But let's just focus on our galaxy alone. There's bound to be some solar systems created long before ours was. I mean the closer to the center of the galaxy the older they'd be right? There could be some on the opposite side of the galaxy that would be our equivalent age. How long would our radio waves have to travel before they get to them? Would it be so corrupted it would just come out like fuzz and noise?

If we go beyond that, there's the whole universe. I'm sure there's plenty of galaxies and systems that are much older than us. If sentient life was on them, they'd be far more advanced than we are. That would also mean less chances of finding us. It'd be like a needle in a haystack.

Radb, most of what you are talking about has been discussed and thought about.

Basically cosmic noise drowns out most of everything. On top of that the current SETI program is basically using a needle to find a needle in a huge haystack.

So you were playing Ouija with Sagan?

Yep, I made that awful and silly post just to point what billy said.

Some interesting ideas from the Fermi Paradox.

There is probable a life zone with in the galaxy. You most likely will not find life to close to the center of the galaxy or to far out. Let say that only 1/3 of any given galaxy has the right conditions for life. The center is to energetic for life. and the outer rim does not have enough of key elements.

Here's hoping at least one of those planets has hot green women who love to breed!

Considering that even in a place as small as Earth we keep finding life in places no one would logically assume there was any, I wouldn't be surprised if the universe is actually bursting with life.

I think it's quite obvious--God decided to only have life on Earth. You can all stop wondering now about life on other planets now.

You have a point there. How come I never thought of that?

God's kind of a dick.

If the dino's hadn't been wiped out, it doesn't necessarily mean that there would be human level intelligence walking around on the planet today. I mean, Earth went billions of years before a creature came about that realized that Earth went billions of years before that creature evolved.

Fermi's paradox assumes 1) Evolution is a universal law and therefore 2) Evolution always pushes towards evolving higher intelligence.

I think point 1 is correct possibly, but 2 is up in the air.

When Fermi asks 'Where are they?' The answer could simply be 'Grazing in an alien pasture eating alien grass'.

If we went billions of years before human level intelligence came about, then that means there could be billions of planets with life, and only a few of those planets would have advanced intelligence.

So in that sense, we truly could be alone.

Yeah, it's weird to think that you can find organisms in the acid pools of Yellowstone and in the thermal vents in the ocean. As others have pointed out, if we're so freaking interested in life, we might want to seriously fund research concerning the 70% of our planet that we really don't know much about before looking elsewhere. If you can find microscopic organisms in places you never thought could sustain life, the unknown larger scale organisms may surprise the hell out of you.

I remember seeing something on Discovery channel where they invented theoretical alien species. One was a creature that was composed of a crystal structure, a hard carbon based life form. It basically took the creature millenia to think a thought and move.


I feel the variety of life is as varied as the theories about life that scientists have produced, if not more so.

And I'll back up the idea that life may be abundant, but being intelligent or having a technological singularity may be much much more rare.

Sorry, I was specifically talking about silicon based life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_biochemistry

A good point that was already brought up, it's our different forms of technology that can have us miss what ever might be sent our way, since i'm sure the signals we have sent out have yet to reach any type of planet, yet alone even more it our of our solar system...and if it does, just think! the first human they see will be Hitler.

Or option B, we have been discovered and do the WWF and other forms of stupid, they've gotten the hell away.

But this does nothing to settle the question of whether or not life is common in the universe. Which isn't to say ocean exploration isn't fascinating in its own right.

I suport Warren Ellis's counterpoint to the Fermi paradox....which esentially boild down to Galactus chokung civilizations on their cribs before they advance enough....surely a highly evolved species would wipe its competition early as possibly, right?

Sure it doesn't answer the question of if we are alone in the universe. It however does expand our notion of life, parameters of life.

What? Why? Granted, the universe is a zero sum game, but given the amazing diversity of everything in the universe, it could very well be incredibly advantageous to let different life forms evolve and see if their different advancements benefit you. Also, it assumes tremendously forward-thinking creatures. The utility to be derived from wiping out creatures that won't be competing with your for millenia is miniscule compared to the expenditure of resources required to find and eliminate them.

True, true, but im a pessimist....

Do you think the benefit of whatever technology some fledgling species might create outweighs the risk of allowing a species to develop beyond your own? That either species would trust the other or want to share technology?

We don't know what a truly alien intelligence might think like. We don't even know if our species is the type of species that can survive to create some sort of advanced civilization. Look how we eat up our own resources on just this planet, now think of that, at the very least, on the scale of just a solar system, or only a few relatively close solar systems, assuming it was practical to travel the distance between solar systems. As a species it would be in your interest to retain absolute control of whatever resources you could get, and to limit the development of any potential competitors. But I suppose that's human intellect act work, and we don't know if we as a species are actually capable of creating a space civilization, or developing technology to make it practical. We don't know the type of make up such a civilization would require, and how that might reflect in its interaction with other life.

This all assumes some method of traveling and communication through the stars being realized. If you can't travel to or communicate with other solar systems, then you have no use or fear of other alien species.

Greg Bear wrote two books about the idea of alien civilization killing off others as a means of self preservation: The Forge of God, and Anvil of Stars.

As far as no sign of intelligent life goes (besides some scientists now saying our transmissions probably just turn to indecipherable static), there's always the old observation: It has yet to be proven whether or not intelligence is a good survival trait. Maybe we all wipe ourselves out.

And when we talk about life, what we really mean is life we can communicate with and have some sort of mutual comprehension with. People may be interested to hear we discovered bacteria on Europa, but what they really want is talking fish people who built vast glittering underwater cities that we can visit.

That is true.

I doubt the entire species would be of one mind on this. Ours isn't.

If you can travel between stars, you can plunder a huge number of barren systems. Stuff like the ruse in V or the motivating factor in Independence Day make no sense to me: there's nothing here you can't find out there, and out there you have the advantage of not having to quell the restless natives and lift stuff off the planet.

This is true. And Bear's not the only one who's written on that theme.


Maybe.

I'd be happy knowing life formed on two out of eight planets. The fishpeople will have to wait until the sun gets hotter to evolve, I think. And by that time we could be dead, or transcended, or transformed, or just have long since left for greener pastures.

Of course, we make decisions with a hive mind, but suppose a species of individuals that could when encountering a lesser advanced people, seize their land, laying claim over their resources, and wage a near genocidal campaign against them. Or, imagine a species, that consumes resources at the expense of what they consider lesser species. Or, suppose a species ruled by 'leaders' capable of initiating actions without first consulting the hive mind for agreement.

We haven't figured out how to travel to our closest neighbors, so maybe its a little optimistic to assume unlimited distance travel is practical. In that case a more advanced species might find it better to maintain, control, and plunder it's neighboring star systems. Of course, we don't know how valuable our planet is or why some other species would covet it. I figure though, if a species spanned the distance between stars, even relatively small galactic distances, there'd be no reason why they wouldn't be patient enough to drop a dinosaur killer on us, and wait for the Earth to sort itself out. Or they could just ignore us all together and eat up whatever resources they might be interested in without ever even bothering with our Earthbound resources.

I agree, it would be a tremendous discovery, and would tell us life is far more common than we thought. I'm not trying to take away from that, but like I said when people think about alien life, what they really want is some form of Star Trek. What I mean, is even with the bacteria we are looking for life like us. That's what we're interested in, because it means, there could be stuff like us we might be able to actually communicate with.

I see no reason to think an entire species would act as one. And we don't make decisions with a hive mind. The decision to invade Iraq, for instance, was not made by world-wide referendum. It was made by a few dozen people at most.

I don't assume that, but you were talking about aliens that can manage to get here. Any race capable of getting here probably has stars closer to home it can visit (nothing around here seems conducive to life) and wouldn't need the resources of a planet anyway. Not when the same resources are so much more readily available nearby. You want iron? Take Ceres. Water? Mine the Oort Cloud or Europa. Methane? Neptune. Hydrocarbons? Titan. Diamond? Could be a toughie. But if we can synthesize diamond with our puny Earth brains, the Vorlons certainly can.

That's exactly my point. Any race capable of getting here is more than capable of mining moons and asteroids for resources.

Ever read John Varley's 'Eight Worlds' books and stories? Neat stuff.

I think this is exactly the case. Bothering with us would be terribly inefficient.

I disagree. People who take the matter seriously know there's almost no chance of finding the Federation or the Tymbrimi or the Instrumentality (how's that for obscure?). There's so much room to search in, and so much time has passed in which civilizations could have risen and fallen. SETI began less than forty years ago, depending on when you start counting; the odds of it finding anything before I die are smaller than a very small thing. And anything it did find will have probably long since become extinct by the time the signals reach us.

People who take the matter less seriously might hope for UFO's, be it ours or theirs. I wish they were right, but I know they're wrong.

The problem with UFOs is that both relativity and thermodynamic are against them. First in order to travel faster then 1/2 C you will have to find a way to travel with out increasing velocity. Macro worm holes like in Stargate are not a possible means of travel or communication, because gravity is a bitch. Micro Worm holes might be a possible use for communication. The math for time travel never works, thermodynamic alway goes boom.



So there are no UFOs from either outer spice or the future. if there are UFOs then they are from God, Satan, or some other ultra-dimensional being, that might as well be God like.