We havent been contacted by anyone

Cú Giobach

maninasia wrote: »

......

Yes perfectly valid, logical, points that I wholeheartedly agree with.
Only originally wanted to make the point that "We can't use the fact of our own existence to prove life is "common" throughout"
It's just nice, and valid scientifically , to discuss and think about things that although improbable (by the best scientific knowledge of the day, which will change) are not impossible, one of the reasons we have the knowledge we have today.
Since we don't understand how life began whether here or elsewhere, or the nature of our own consciousness and consequently our (seeming) intelligence, everything we can say about life in the universe as a whole, is ultimately guesswork.
The history of science also shows us that often the seemingly illogical and impossible may not quite be what they seem.

PS; wouldn't mind reading your book.

maninasia

Got to get to work on that book alright instead of hassling boards.ie posters! It just bugs me when people always rehash things like 'the vastness of space', the 'huge amount of coincidences to make life possible', the 'we haven't seen any life so where are they'...lines. All of them, when you break them down, are simply people making judgements using their human reference point. Most people don't even know the key statistics of the Milky Way Galaxy..simple stuff.

Then you get great scientists like Fermi and Hawkins who make casual statements on life in the universe, but their statements are usually throw away and they don't seem to be very well thought out (as compared to their actual work in physics). For instance Hawkins states that we should be careful about advertising our presence. He of all people should now that advanced civilisations would most likely have detected our presence during our evolution and would certainly detect us with telescopes that are hardly more advanced than we have now, why would they only suddenly detect our presence when we 'broadcast' things. Take a timeline on earth and a timeline against the age of the galaxy...billions of years for evolution to occur in other places.

Take yourself out of the human reference point and these statements have no backing behind them.

Cú Giobach

Yea! Anthropomorphising your dog is one thing, but for an energy based life form out in M106 .
I often wondered about that comment by Hawkins, 'cause when taking the example of this planet, the vast majority of different species live in harmony with or at least ignore each other (when not in predator prey mode). The only notable exception being us. I guess many such comments are "cherry picked" for their dramatic effect.

Maninasia;
.......... instead of hassling boards.ie posters!

Sure it adds a bit of spice to the proceedings.

Good luck with the book. :cool:

rccaulfield

Cú Giobach wrote: »

Since we don't understand how life began whether here or elsewhere,

What makes you say that? There are excellent explanations for how life originated from the early chemistry of the earth. The most likely being the forming of nucleotides/amino acids from the breaking up of hydrogen rich molecules by uv rays and lightning.

Cú Giobach

rccaulfield wrote: »

What makes you say that? There are excellent explanations for how life originated from the early chemistry of the earth. The most likely being the forming of nucleotides/amino acids from the breaking up of hydrogen rich molecules by uv rays and lightning..

I note you said "most likely"
I'm an amature astronomer not a biological chemist and though my knowledge of that subject is very limited one thing I'm pretty sure of is we don't yet Fully understand how life began, though we are getting closer.

Link Quote; "Scientists may be zeroing in on that most profound of questions. “We’ve gone a long way to showing” the processes that “set the stage” for cellular life on Earth". (my bold)

Link Quote ; "It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7 billion years ago. To be sure, under the right conditions some building blocks of proteins, the amino acids, form easily from simpler chemicals, as Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey of the University of Chicago discovered in pioneering experiments in the 1950s. But going from there to proteins and enzymes is a different matter".

maninasia

rccaulfield wrote: »

What makes you say that? There are excellent explanations for how life originated from the early chemistry of the earth. The most likely being the forming of nucleotides/amino acids from the breaking up of hydrogen rich molecules by uv rays and lightning.

Knowing something about this subject myself, the term 'excellent explanation' doesn't cut it. We only have very loose theories about how life got started, starting to get a handle on how cells may have formed and what could have been progenitor molecules, but still very early days. Some theories say life got started in clays, others in hydrothermal vents, some in a hydrocarbon soup. These are all theories, some good ones, but they may not even cover how life did get started in reality, if it did indeed begin on Earth.

yawnstretch

rccaulfield wrote: »

What makes you say that? There are excellent explanations for how life originated from the early chemistry of the earth. The most likely being the forming of nucleotides/amino acids from the breaking up of hydrogen rich molecules by uv rays and lightning.

If we understood the origins of life we could better predict the likeliness of life elsewhere. But we don't. Not yet anyway.

rccaulfield

yawnstretch wrote: »

If we understood the origins of life we could better predict the likeliness of life elsewhere. But we don't. Not yet anyway.

maninasia wrote: »

Knowing something about this subject myself, the term 'excellent explanation' doesn't cut it. We only have very loose theories about how life got started, starting to get a handle on how cells may have formed and what could have been progenitor molecules, but still very early days. Some theories say life got started in clays, others in hydrothermal vents, some in a hydrocarbon soup. These are all theories, some good ones, but they may not even cover how life did get started in reality, if it did indeed begin on Earth.

Cú Giobach wrote: »

I note you said "most likely"
I'm an amature astronomer not a biological chemist and though my knowledge of that subject is very limited one thing I'm pretty sure of is we don't yet Fully understand how life began, though we are getting closer.

Link Quote; "Scientists may be zeroing in on that most profound of questions. “We’ve gone a long way to showing” the processes that “set the stage” for cellular life on Earth". (my bold)

Link Quote ; "It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7 billion years ago. To be sure, under the right conditions some building blocks of proteins, the amino acids, form easily from simpler chemicals, as Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey of the University of Chicago discovered in pioneering experiments in the 1950s. But going from there to proteins and enzymes is a different matter".

The Miller/Urey experiment was very flawed and shouldn't be used as an example. As i said there are excellent explanations, all possible through the laws of chemistry/physics. This was my reply to the posters comment that we D'ONT understand how it could have started. Whether we ever find out which one seems silly to me, we'll most likely never know that imo!

Cú Giobach

rccaulfield wrote: »

This was my reply to the posters comment that we D'ONT understand how it could have started.

Fixed
Since we don't understand know how life began whether here or elsewhere, or the nature of our own consciousness and consequently our (seeming) intelligence, everything we can say about life in the universe as a whole, is ultimately guesswork.

rccaulfield ;
Whether we ever find out which one seems silly to me, we'll most likely never know that imo!

That seems an odd thing to say in a science forum, when the history of science is utterly awash with explaining and doing what seemed impossible at one time, and the very nature of science is finding the answers to questions just like this.

Morphie

wylo wrote: »

I agree with all of this.
Regarding your first point. I have read that more than 97% of all species that have ever existed on Earth are extinct, so it makes me think that even on Earth we are a very very lucky rare occurrence. And combine this with the fact that only certain types of humans seemed interested in developing technology makes me feel were even more rare in the universe regarding technology.(alot of cultures , while very intelligent and knowledgeable did not seem to express the same interest in pushing forward with technology).

To say we human are a very, very lucky and rare occurrence isn't something I'd be willing to agree with. There is so much I personally don't understand about the universe or how everything occurs, and with such large time scales, it's impossible for me to think (even on how we humans came to be) that we are just a fluke in the universe. To my mind it would seem to be a fluke, because the odds seems so staggering, but when these odds are placed within the universe, it doesn't seem so staggering or believable that we are a very, very lucky fluke. I'd go with rare, but only because I know for fact from what we already know, we are the only animal like ourselves on this planet.
----
The point you made about only certain types of humans seemed interested in creating better technology. I once watched a program about this, and the question posted was "why?". Why do some civilisations outgrow others, when intelligence capability isn't the answer.

What they came up with was this: Environment.

It's not that certain civilisations didn't want to progress, it was more that the environment really wasn't suitable for it. They would have to spend so much time doing things to survive, not really having the time or chance, or even the opportunity to think other things.

One example was farming. There is a place where people live without farming (can't remember the name). They have done so because certain types of animals were never available on their land (an island) so they never found a use for it (such as plowing, as other civilisations did, those who had access to such creatures).

If the people on this island were placed in an environment where these creatures were accessible, I'd be willing to say they'd eventually use them for something.

The other thing is necessity, some civilisations don't progress, simply because they don't need to. Get smarter by playing a smarter opponent, but what if you have no opponent? There is no need to try and thing of ways to better that opponent.

Not that I disagree with what you said, I just thought I'd share what I know, very little as it is, on the subject.

---

I believe humans and Neanderthals evolved from the same ancestor, but they became different due to the environment they evolved within.

---

OP.

I'd think it to be quite unreal to say there is no life other than that which we currently know, in the universe. It is far too vast. Intelligent life is only going to be much more unlikely, but again, I couldn't personally say it didn't exist.

If we humans were capable to travailing to another planet and found a species of intelligence which was less capable than our own, do you believe it would make a dramatic appearance and let the whole planet know of us? I find that hard to imagine. It is more likely I believe, that if such a life exists, it only watches, not wanting to interfere. We may be quite exciting to watch, as I believe it would be exciting to watch another civilisation on another planet.

If contact has been made, it won't have been with the common man, but perhaps those who hold the power of the world. Perhaps (if they exist already) these beings do want to contact us all, but our leaders are preventing such a thing, due to the effects it would have on us all.

Who knows, but unless I know I'm happier to imagine such a life existing out there.

maninasia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11043922

maninasia

My reply as to the non-issue of distance for alien civilisations to travel around the Milky Way. It's good to look at the numbers in relative terms to get a grounding.

I answer this old hedgehog again and again on Boards. Distance is NOT an issue. Why?

- Universe is 14 billion years old
- The Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years across
- Contains 2 x 10*12 planets or so
- Travel across Milky Way at half speed of light would take 200,000 years
- Robotic entities are probably more common than biological in space
- Robotic entities are immortal and can replicate in vast numbers
- Any civilisation travelling through the galaxy could replicate and split off to new areas as it travelled, giving us a rough estimate of 1 million years to cover the entire galaxy at speeds much less than the speed of light
- 1 million years is less than .00017% the time of the universes existence or put in terms of an 80 year olds man's life about 5 days

So tell me why is distance a problem for intelligent entities to get around? The numbers tell us it is almost a 100% certainty that intelligent entities are ALREADY all over the galaxy...given the high likeliehood there are at least 100s -1000s of intelligent civilisations developing in the Milky Way over the billions of years preceding our development. To argue that there are not intelligent entities in our zone of space would mean that the physics/chemistry of our region is somehow special compared to everywhere else...I don't think so..even if it is special to be a 1 in a million solar system that still leaves possibly TWO MILLION solar systems developing intelligent life JUST in the Milky Way Galaxy!

BTW, all the above don't include modern theories such as multiverse, extra dimensions, possible faster than light travel, wormholes etc.

So why haven't we been contacted? I think nobody is interested to contact us or they aren't contacting us on purpose ... what's clear is the present search technology does not seem to be good enough to pick up even one of the putative 2 million intelligent civilisations proposed above. Get a bigger telescope, start thinking creatively!

Gurgle

maninasia wrote: »

- Any civilisation travelling through the galaxy could replicate and split off to new areas as it travelled

Maybe they could, but why would they?

maninasia wrote:

a rough estimate of 1 million years to cover the entire galaxy at speeds much less than the speed of light

By 'cover', do you mean 'start at one end and proceed directly to the other without slowing down to look out a window'?

Jaafa

Gurgle wrote: »

Maybe they could, but why would they?

Simple. One group says lets explore system A . Another says no lets explore system B. They both agree to disagree and go their separate ways.

Seriously.

maninasia

Gurgle wrote: »

Maybe they could, but why would they?

By 'cover', do you mean 'start at one end and proceed directly to the other without slowing down to look out a window'?

For EXACTLY the same reasons as on Earth. Competition for resources, competition between species, disagreements, leadership struggles and infighting, evolution, natural disasters, scientific and resource explorations.
No different than the things that drive life on Earth.

maninasia

Gurgle wrote: »

Maybe they could, but why would they?

By 'cover', do you mean 'start at one end and proceed directly to the other without slowing down to look out a window'?

So got any of your own suggestions instead of sniping?

Imagine the case of small robots arriving on a planet and replicating into the millions/billions then shooting off in every direction from that planet for the next solar system. Repeat as neccessary. They will initally follow their programmed path but 'subspecies' of robots will quickly emerge in different regions of space as they evolve during replication process. Some 'subspecies' may entirely lose the original programming and live out there own lives as they see fit. Some may co-operate , some may ignore each other and some may compete for living space or resources.

Even in the case that no civilisation set out to program these robots to act in this manner this indeed may happen as a function of evolution, any robot that maintained ability to spread more rapidly through ajoining solar systems would obviously be more common and would have no limitation, seeing space as simply a river or road in betwen destinations. Space also has dust clouds and comets, some bacteria may happily live in these areas or piggyback.

I suggest you read about the Cambrian explosion on Earth or about the first land plants.

This is the way populations of bacteria and virus evolve by the way. They have no 'brain' guiding them, only the competitive forces of evolution and natural selection.

Gurgle

maninasia wrote: »

So got any of your own suggestions instead of sniping?

OK, here's my take: The galaxy is so utterly vast that we could escape notice for millions of years even by an advanced civilization that was actively looking for us.

Approx 8 trillion cubic light years of almost entirely empty space. A light scattering of only a few hundred billion stars, some with rocks and gas balls of various types in orbit, some without.

If some civilization were to cover the galaxy with communications posts, they would need ~10,000,000 to quarter it into 100 light year cubes. This would be the maximum separation for one of those posts to have received radio waves from Earth yet, assuming the technology is at a level that could detect the tiny tiny power of early radio transmission at that distance.

If we imagine that they immedietely sent us a message, we wouldn't have received it yet.

maninasia

Fair enough, I still don't think advanced civilisations will use regular radio waves to look for other civilisations. Not entirely sure what they would use but their physics capabilities should be many many generations ahead of us.

Gurgle

maninasia wrote: »

Not entirely sure what they would use but their physics capabilities should be many many generations ahead of us.

Thats kinda the catch, isn't it

seamus

maninasia wrote: »

- Any civilisation travelling through the galaxy could replicate and split off to new areas as it travelled, giving us a rough estimate of 1 million years to cover the entire galaxy at speeds much less than the speed of light

Yes, but what's the point, separated from the original planet by 1 million years? Who do they report to? Do they report? Why would a planet send out "drones", if there was little chance of ever getting any kind of meaningful contact back from those drones? That is, they send out the drones today, at half light-speed and they manage to visit all of the closest stars to that planet in the first 50 years, and then another 25 years for the signals to arrive back to the planet. But nothing, no life. Or nothing worthwhile anyway. And this goes on. It's 5,000 years later before any drone reports back something worthwhile, but who's there to hear it? 5,000 years is enough time for civilisations to rise and fall (a few times over), for the entire project to be forgotten about and for these drones to be scouring the galaxy with no actual purpose. Never mind 1 million years which is enough time for the original race to evolve into something with no desire or ability to carry out scientific research.

If an American government proposed a large-scale project which neither us nor our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will ever see any results from, do you honestly think they'd get any support for it?

Jaafa

This is not the kind of project that would be launched in our time.

You see the tech needed is that of drones that are down to the molecular/atomic size. That way its cheap to make millions of them and less chance of them all being destroyed. Also they would need to be capable of self reproduction...which again is currently beyond our capability.

So this project would not be possible for at least a few hundred more years. At which time the tech would be available and be cheap enough to do without worrying about the chances of failure. or the time needed for success to occur.

seamus

Jaafa wrote: »

So this project would not be possible for at least a few hundred more years. At which time the tech would be available and be cheap enough to do without worrying about the chances of failure. or the time needed for success to occur.

But if the project is not likely to yield anything, why embark on it?

Jaafa

Not likely yes...but again this would be at a time when it would be very cheap to try. So they might as well give it a try.

maninasia

Gurgle wrote: »

Thats kinda the catch, isn't it

Well actually I can give plenty of examples that they are more likely to use for communication purposes, such as giant symmetrical space structures, large concentrations of high atomic weight artificial elements, lasers, neutrinos, entangled particles, gamma rays bursts, wormholes..the list goes on.

But yes, I don't know which oone of these ideas and more...have to look to find out!

maninasia

seamus wrote: »

Yes, but what's the point, separated from the original planet by 1 million years? Who do they report to? Do they report? Why would a planet send out "drones", if there was little chance of ever getting any kind of meaningful contact back from those drones? That is, they send out the drones today, at half light-speed and they manage to visit all of the closest stars to that planet in the first 50 years, and then another 25 years for the signals to arrive back to the planet. But nothing, no life. Or nothing worthwhile anyway. And this goes on. It's 5,000 years later before any drone reports back something worthwhile, but who's there to hear it? 5,000 years is enough time for civilisations to rise and fall (a few times over), for the entire project to be forgotten about and for these drones to be scouring the galaxy with no actual purpose. Never mind 1 million years which is enough time for the original race to evolve into something with no desire or ability to carry out scientific research.

If an American government proposed a large-scale project which neither us nor our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will ever see any results from, do you honestly think they'd get any support for it?

They are doing a survey...just like the govenments of old did surveys and we survey the sky now, to find what is out there. That it takes a long-time or not is immaterial, the information is very valuable. 1 million years is nothing if something is immortal or has a life span of many millions of years, the same beings exist to receive the information back. Machines do not die if they can download to a new structure, the same as we would not die if we could download ourselves to a machine. Really an obvious point no?

That the civilisation has changed or doesn't exist or is not interested is IMMATERIAL. The relevant fact is whether a civilisation would launch such a survey or a fleet of replicating nanorobots..once they start they will keep going as they have been programmed to do. Once they are launched they can operate autonomously, as some of NASAs space probes have the ability to do already during times that communication is cut with Earth and due to the delay in signal transmission.

Gurgle

maninasia wrote: »

Well actually I can give plenty of examples that they are more likely to use for communication purposes, such as giant symmetrical space structures, large concentrations of high atomic weight artificial elements, lasers, neutrinos, entangled particles, gamma rays bursts, wormholes..the list goes on.

But none of these (or any other real physics based tech theories) have any potential for FTL communication so they've got nothing over radio waves.

Zillah

I tend to look at this issue the way De Grasse Tyson does. Many seem to have the notion that there are two types of lifeform: Unintelligent, like animals, and intelligent, like us. When in fact intelligence is a broad scale. How far beyond us that scale goes, we cannot know. Some people seem to think of aliens in the Star Trek sense, that they hope we'll have a conversation, perhaps they'll share some technology with us. To put things in context, let's use a metaphor:

In a field there is an ant hive. Half a mile from the field there is an engineering crew constructing a brand new motorway. One day, one of the engineers walks into the field, up to the ant hive and says hello. He introduces himself and begins trying to teach the ants how to build their own motorways. Not only do they not understand, they don't even realise he is there, nor that he is communicating with them.

We may very well be the ants, the engineers a staggeringly more advanced alien species. Not only is their technology beyond our ability to replicate, it is beyond our ability to comprehend its existence or purpose, and our civilisation is simply no where near the sheer scale or level of development whereby it could make use of that technology in the first place. The engineer literally cannot condescend to a sufficient degree to engage in two way communication. Their children run up to them with doodles that are the equivalent of our most advanced theoretical physics. They put string theory on the space-fridge and make cooing noises. What we must spend entire careers learning, they may be so intelligent that they can do it intuitively, just as you or I might intuitively work out that 2 x 5 = 10.

Now imagine that that alien race are the ants and another alien race are the engineers. I know it has been said before, but in the grand scale of things we're very possibly just not very special.

maninasia

You've been watching Michi Ikaku again, haven't you

Well put. There should be well be a scale of intelligence, multiple layers. Some could have a quantum computer type intelligence..wonder what they would be like?
But that still means there should be plenty of intelligences out there we can still recognise and communicate with.

We should be able to recognise odd structures and chemical signatures and electromagnetic signals fairly easily, over the next few hundred years anyway. Physics is physics and the formation and physics of stars and planet formations is fairly well understood.

CaraFawn

Who would want to meet with us, humans, anyway?

If there was a civilisation capable of travelling through the immensity of space to reach us, we would certainly not deserve for 1 second to meet any of them.

We are a stupid race, still teaching in 2010 to 8 years old kids in catholic schools in Ireland that when it rains that is because Jesus is crying because he is sad.

yawnstretch

CaraFawn wrote: »

We are a stupid race, still teaching in 2010 to 8 years old kids in catholic schools in Ireland that when it rains that is because Jesus is crying because he is sad.

Well I agree it would be stupid if we did this but we don't. And it's sad that those who believe in more than the puny sum total of human knowledge are derided so.