The universe is too big of a place for us to be the only life out there, but I'm not going to walk around yelling that aliens are coming from planet x.
There's Now Credible Evidence of Alien Intelligence - But Are We Ready For It?"
- Thread starter m00se
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Neither am I remotely surprised that The Escapist is now the home to conspiracy theorists and the overly credulous.Thaluikhain said:
I mean this
Does not, under any definition of any words known to man or gods, lead to this
As I've read through the comments, there are a variety of views expressed, some are on board, some remain cautious, and others (like you) seem to have a reactionary stance. For the record, there was a prediction made by a scientist in 2012 of extraterrestrial behavior that fits this recent discovery like a glove. Stating that does not mean I am jumping to conclusions or clutching at straws.Don Incognito said:
The whole point of the article is that a number of credible scientists are being led further and further towards a conclusion of alien activity because other explanations have either been eliminated, or are just as dubious as the ETI theories.
What is your personal belief regarding ETI? I'm curious. I know there are more discoveries to be made before "running victory laps and opening champaign bottles". I wrote that in the article. That is not the issue.
The issue is whether these three different steps of progress which have unfolded this month will really matter in the minds of the public. For some, absolutely, for others maybe one day, and for still others never. That dynamic is the point.
Confirmation bias has a lot to do with how you will approach new information, one way or another.
The whole, humanity is a caterpillar just waiting to become a butterfly falsehood just pisses me off so much. We are what we are, evolution does not make things "Better" it just adapts them to the current environment. And even then it still does so only when the last generation is in the ground.mtarzaim02 said:
I have a very healthy respect for rule 34. Asexuality, cloning and seasonal reproduction are all things however. No reason to believe an alien species would have less than three sexual partners or more than one to reproduce. Also no reason to believe they "got it on" more often than a Vulcan does.
Hell, they might reproduce like the creatures from the movie, Alien (Based off real Earth animals). Even the human race would have trouble finding that sexy.
The problem, moose, is that saying that stars emitting laser-like light is confirmation of alien intelligence communicating with distant planets.m00se said:
It is no such thing.
It COULD be that. It could be a natural phenomenon. It could be any of a number of things. But until we learn that it is actually long-distance communication by alien beings, it is 100% NOT confirmation of long-distance communication by alien beings.
I strongly believe intelligent alien life exists, FWIW.
It could be a limited number of things. The point I made is that more and more possibilities are being eliminated as the findings are studied. One such possibility is ETI. However, this article isn't about just one bit of news in the matter, but three simultaneously unfolding news stories. So from my viewpoint you are using the introductory sentences about one of these issues and presenting that as the entirety of my argument, which simply isn't the case. All I'm doing is sharing the opinions of trained professionals, not sculpting a mountain out of mashed potatoes. You want to dismiss it, that's your choice. I am very excited about how all these matters will develop in the near future, though.Don Incognito said:
That's pretty much what Arthur C Clarke wrote in 2001. People are wholly unprepared to even learn of this.Stupidity said:
On the other hand, even if I'm sure there would be violent reactions from some religious nuts, it would also mean their religious nuttiness would only last a generation. After the initial outburst of a few years, their religious basis would soon disappear and be severely tamed to accommodate the new situation.
Could be an alliance of various species, like Star Trek or Mass Effect.m00se said:
Yeah, Jared Diamond seems to be pretty much of the opinion that humans are the horniest species around, which could be the main explanation for its success - ability and will to reproduce constantly ensures a lot of offspring compared to many species who can only reproduce a tiny part of the year or of their lifespan.Stupidity said:
While I'm pretty open to (and a little scared of) the idea, I'm mostly there with you.Sniper Team 4 said:
While I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, I'm sure there's been plenty of things that happened that we were all "Aliens! Wait, no."
It's like the term UFO itself, Unidentified Flying Object. It doesn't mean aliens, something's flyin' around we don't know what it is but we like to imagine.
I expect this to go the same way, I'm expecting a reasonable explanation once more evidence comes to light of what's goin' on. Not gonna rule out aliens, I'm just sayin' I'll be pretty surprised if that's the case.
Even if aliens are out there and intelligent and interested in communicating and still around after the thousands of years it took the light to get to us there's still the bigger question of 'is there any way for them to get to us or us to them?' Otherwise we might as well just be two people on deserted islands flicking flashlights at each other.
I feel like even definitive proof of aliens is going to be much more 'huh, cool' than 'world changing', like finding dinosaur fossils for the first time.
I feel like even definitive proof of aliens is going to be much more 'huh, cool' than 'world changing', like finding dinosaur fossils for the first time.
And what part of that precludes being able to meet extraterrestrial life? What makes you think space-going species wouldn't be just as bad as humans, if not worse? Because, if I recall correctly, the vast majority of our space advances (and most technological advances) come about as a direct result of competing factions - the cold war, WW2 rocketry, etc. Peaceful utopian societies wouldn't have the same motivation to do useful stuff.Stupidity said:
The "indications" this article provides is that a former astronaut (Edgar Mitchell), who is also a long time UFO conspiracy believer and believes in ESP, contacted Podesta in order to discuss the possibility that the US government was withholding evidence of contact with ETs. The second mail goes on to suggest that he, Mitchell, and people he works with are in contact with alien beings to bring Zero Point Energy to earth. But only on the condition that no war on earth or in space take place, because the aliens hate war.Smilomaniac said:
The other indication is the most far-fetched and least plausible explanation for the irregularity of light emission from one particular star. The leading explanation at the moment instead suggests cold comet fragments in an eccentric orbit. The whole "Aliens using laser to communicate" theory is also brought down by the fact that there's a lack of infrared light and early radio recon suggests a lack of technological radio transmissions.
So, just by going to Wikipedia I could tell that this entire article was nothing but a UFO conspiracy nut spouting nonsense and selectively interpreting actual scientific data to push a flawed interpretation. I thought the Escapist had gotten rid of its' trashy, unscientific "science" articles?
I'm a skeptic - not because I don't believe aliens don't exist, but because of probability.
You've heard this before: There are ~10 billion galaxies in the universe, and ~2-3 trillion planets per galaxy. What are the odds that only one of those planets, Earth, could have evolved life? Probability says, aliens must exist.
But here's the follow-up: There are ~10 billion x ~2-3 trillion planets in the universe. If there is another planet with alien life - what are the odds that we would ever find it? Probability says, we'll never meet them.
You could raise that number up, if you'd like - a hundred planets with aliens. A thousand. A million. A billion. Doesn't matter - you're still talking a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent likelihood that the planet you're looking at has alien life.
If there were a quadrillion planets in the universe that had alien life, then you have a 1 in 20 million shot.
Here's a thought experiment: Let's say that tomorrow, you are alone on Earth, except for ten strangers who are somewhere on the planet. You don't know anything about them - who, when, where they might be. Will you be able to find them? On this huge planet - could you track even one of them down? In between your daily struggles to find food, water, keep yourself alive, and fend off the post-apocalyptic hordes of hungry Chihuahuas - will you be able to find those 10 people ... somewhere on Earth? Before you die? Before they die? Would you even be able to find them if they were in the same city as you?
As difficult as that might be, it's exponentially, exponentially worse when you're talking about something the scale of the Universe.
And actually, the problem is a lot worse than that. Because that alien life has to be within our technological capacity to detect it. If there's a small colony of proto-bacteria inside a tiny puddle on the other side of the galaxy, we're not gonna be able to detect that from the dimming rates of a star. Hell, there could be a colony of bacteria on Mars and we wouldn't know unless a rover landed on it. There could a vast underground civilization of mole people and dinosaurs living under the surface of Mars and we wouldn't know it. So that alien life would need to be developed enough as a civilization to be detected using our current level of technological development. That won't be easy. The human race has only been giving off radio signals for about the past hundred years. Meaning that if an alien race was to detect our radiowaves, they'd need to have been monitoring our specific tiny area of space for just the past hundred years. And it's a really big universe. And it's been around for a really long time.
Speaking of timing - it also wouldn't help if we somehow beat the odds, located a planet that had alien life that could be detectable to our instruments, but whoops, their civilization collapsed a thousand years ago. Or they succumbed to an ice age a million years ago. Or an asteroid crashed into their planet and wiped out all life just last March.
Or, if we were monitoring that planet, didn't find anything, and moved on, and then a century later, those aliens send their first radio transmission, but whoops, we weren't there to catch it at that time.
And since we're talking about lightyears, it wouldn't help if those aliens sent out a laser beam in our direction last week, but their planet is located 200,000 lightyears away Can we wait 200,000 years? Will our civilization even exist in 200,000 years? Our current record is about 6,000 - and we have no existing models on which we can draw a conclusion. Perhaps an intelligent, civilization-building species only has a lifespan of 50,000 years before it disappears, in which case we're gonna miss that 200,000 year laser beam. And even if we happened to catch it, would those aliens be around to receive our reply?
And another major problem - would we be able to recognize life if we saw it? Related to the problem of detection, would we have the correct instruments to detect that specific alien life when we had the opportunity? What if they don't use radiowave transmissions? What if they communicate solely telepathically and thus conclude our planet is barren because their telepathoscopes aren't catching anything? What if they don't have the senses to receive and decipher tiny variations in the movement of gases in the atmosphere (sound)? Would they develop the same technology for communication as us? What if they're a giant sentient mountain for whom the slow trickle of minerals over hundreds of years is akin to the movement of neurotransmitters in our neurons? What if they're a hyperintelligent shade of blue?
So back to the lonely man looking for ten strangers on the planet: What if those people are not necessarily alive at the same time as you? Maybe they lived a century before? Could you locate their remains? Find out where they lived?
And what if those 10 people are not necessarily human? One's a smart robot, another's a talking squirrel, and there's also a sponge and a starfish who live under the sea. Only you don't know that - you just know there's 10 intelligent lifeforms on the planet somewhere. Go find them.
Then multiple those difficulties by the size of the universe. Good luck.
So yeah, lot of problems. I think alien life might exist. But I highly doubt we'll ever encounter them.
Maybe we're not alone in the universe. But we might as well be.
You've heard this before: There are ~10 billion galaxies in the universe, and ~2-3 trillion planets per galaxy. What are the odds that only one of those planets, Earth, could have evolved life? Probability says, aliens must exist.
But here's the follow-up: There are ~10 billion x ~2-3 trillion planets in the universe. If there is another planet with alien life - what are the odds that we would ever find it? Probability says, we'll never meet them.
You could raise that number up, if you'd like - a hundred planets with aliens. A thousand. A million. A billion. Doesn't matter - you're still talking a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent likelihood that the planet you're looking at has alien life.
If there were a quadrillion planets in the universe that had alien life, then you have a 1 in 20 million shot.
Here's a thought experiment: Let's say that tomorrow, you are alone on Earth, except for ten strangers who are somewhere on the planet. You don't know anything about them - who, when, where they might be. Will you be able to find them? On this huge planet - could you track even one of them down? In between your daily struggles to find food, water, keep yourself alive, and fend off the post-apocalyptic hordes of hungry Chihuahuas - will you be able to find those 10 people ... somewhere on Earth? Before you die? Before they die? Would you even be able to find them if they were in the same city as you?
As difficult as that might be, it's exponentially, exponentially worse when you're talking about something the scale of the Universe.
And actually, the problem is a lot worse than that. Because that alien life has to be within our technological capacity to detect it. If there's a small colony of proto-bacteria inside a tiny puddle on the other side of the galaxy, we're not gonna be able to detect that from the dimming rates of a star. Hell, there could be a colony of bacteria on Mars and we wouldn't know unless a rover landed on it. There could a vast underground civilization of mole people and dinosaurs living under the surface of Mars and we wouldn't know it. So that alien life would need to be developed enough as a civilization to be detected using our current level of technological development. That won't be easy. The human race has only been giving off radio signals for about the past hundred years. Meaning that if an alien race was to detect our radiowaves, they'd need to have been monitoring our specific tiny area of space for just the past hundred years. And it's a really big universe. And it's been around for a really long time.
Speaking of timing - it also wouldn't help if we somehow beat the odds, located a planet that had alien life that could be detectable to our instruments, but whoops, their civilization collapsed a thousand years ago. Or they succumbed to an ice age a million years ago. Or an asteroid crashed into their planet and wiped out all life just last March.
Or, if we were monitoring that planet, didn't find anything, and moved on, and then a century later, those aliens send their first radio transmission, but whoops, we weren't there to catch it at that time.
And since we're talking about lightyears, it wouldn't help if those aliens sent out a laser beam in our direction last week, but their planet is located 200,000 lightyears away Can we wait 200,000 years? Will our civilization even exist in 200,000 years? Our current record is about 6,000 - and we have no existing models on which we can draw a conclusion. Perhaps an intelligent, civilization-building species only has a lifespan of 50,000 years before it disappears, in which case we're gonna miss that 200,000 year laser beam. And even if we happened to catch it, would those aliens be around to receive our reply?
And another major problem - would we be able to recognize life if we saw it? Related to the problem of detection, would we have the correct instruments to detect that specific alien life when we had the opportunity? What if they don't use radiowave transmissions? What if they communicate solely telepathically and thus conclude our planet is barren because their telepathoscopes aren't catching anything? What if they don't have the senses to receive and decipher tiny variations in the movement of gases in the atmosphere (sound)? Would they develop the same technology for communication as us? What if they're a giant sentient mountain for whom the slow trickle of minerals over hundreds of years is akin to the movement of neurotransmitters in our neurons? What if they're a hyperintelligent shade of blue?
So back to the lonely man looking for ten strangers on the planet: What if those people are not necessarily alive at the same time as you? Maybe they lived a century before? Could you locate their remains? Find out where they lived?
And what if those 10 people are not necessarily human? One's a smart robot, another's a talking squirrel, and there's also a sponge and a starfish who live under the sea. Only you don't know that - you just know there's 10 intelligent lifeforms on the planet somewhere. Go find them.
Then multiple those difficulties by the size of the universe. Good luck.
So yeah, lot of problems. I think alien life might exist. But I highly doubt we'll ever encounter them.
Maybe we're not alone in the universe. But we might as well be.
I always thought on a purely statistical level this was already a given, just not a very pressing reality to have to face or really acknowledge because of the far-flung distances involved and the extreme unlikelihood on a probability level of ever meeting or even just making direct contact with alien life.
Very well said! As I've said before, I'm super excited about what will come of these studies, and other email dumps.skim172 said:
However you make an excellent argument about the sheer improbability of us ever making contact. But one can always hope. Good read! Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.