Do Aliens Exist?

[darksidZz]

I once saw David Sereda the UFO nut discussing the Drake equation in an online video. It was in the middle of all this other UFO stuff. What he decided to do was expand it so that it didn't just include our galaxy but the entire universe, and he showed 100% CERTAINTY that other life exists which is capable of radio transmission etc. It was rather fascinating to see because it went from 10k civilizations or whatever to basically supposedly proving there is NO CHANCE other life doesn't exist.

 

[Balerion]

I once saw David Sereda the UFO nut discussing the Drake equation in an online video. It was in the middle of all this other UFO stuff. What he decided to do was expand it so that it didn't just include our galaxy but the entire universe, and he showed 100% CERTAINTY that other life exists which is capable of radio transmission etc. It was rather fascinating to see because it went from 10k civilizations or whatever to basically supposedly proving there is NO CHANCE other life doesn't exist.

I think it's fair to say there's virtually no chance intelligent life doesn't exist somewhere else in the universe.

 

[Mazulu]

I think it's fair to say there's virtually no chance intelligent life doesn't exist somewhere else in the universe.

Are we 100% sure that ALL UFO enounters are not legitimate? Not encounters with extra terrestrials? What about that movie Fire in the Sky?

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

The scientific community is pretty adamant in its position that ALL UFO enounters are hoaxes, crazy people, tricks of light, or in some way, just plain bullshit. How do we know that ET doesn't display technological superiority this way? I'm not specific enough, sorry, out of time.

 

[Balerion]

Are we 100% sure that ALL UFO enounters are not legitimate? Not encounters with extra terrestrials? What about that movie Fire in the Sky?

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

The scientific community is pretty adamant in its position that ALL UFO enounters are hoaxes, crazy people, tricks of light, or in some way, just plain bullshit. How do we know that ET doesn't display technological superiority this way? I'm not specific enough, sorry, out of time.

Because it's far more likely that people lie or are misinformed than aliens are traversing insane distances.

 

[Mazulu]

Because it's far more likely that people lie or are misinformed than aliens are traversing insane distances.

Your argument is ridiculous. The presence of people who lie or who are misinformed has nothing to do with whether or not aliens can build a warp drive. I also think that you are grossly mischaracterizing people who say they have had encounters. More to the point, science is built upon a very limited point of view. Science is built upon only what you can prove, not the full set of what is true. Only what you can prove.

 

[AlphaNumeric]

The scientific community is pretty adamant in its position that ALL UFO enounters are hoaxes, crazy people, tricks of light, or in some way, just plain bullshit. How do we know that ET doesn't display technological superiority this way? I'm not specific enough, sorry, out of time.

We don't but until reliable evidence is provided that at least one of the reported sightings is actually due to aliens it is not justified to believe we're being visited by aliens.

Your argument is ridiculous. The presence of people who lie or who are misinformed has nothing to do with whether or not aliens can build a warp drive.

And your argument is ridiculous. The ability of some other hypothetical alien race to build interstellar travel methods doesn't mean they have come here. Until such time as a report of an alien encounter can be reliably corroborated it is not justified to believe them.

I also think that you are grossly mischaracterizing people who say they have had encounters.

Some lie, some are mentally ill, some mistakenly interpret otherwise natural phenomena. When they provide sufficient evidence they will be believed by the majority of the population.

More to the point, science is built upon a very limited point of view. Science is built upon only what you can prove, not the full set of what is true. Only what you can prove.

Yes and for good reason. There are plenty of things which are true but we cannot prove but unfortunately until we can prove them to be true we cannot distinguish between them and things which are false but as yet not proven false. If the truth value of a statement is not known then it is not sensible to assume it one way or the other and act as if your assumption is accurate. Science involves plenty of people putting forth unproven ideas, it isn't like such things are not allowed, but it is also necessary to propose ways to test the hypothesis. That's the reason to do experiments, to distinguish between various proposed explanations/models. Until the experimental evidence is gathered and the truth or not of the proposed models determined just picking one and declaring it the right one would be daft. Even then no experiment ever proves a model true, you can never determine a model is perfectly true. Instead experiments allow us to determine which models are false. Experiments allow us to show a model is not not false for that particular phenomenon, which is different from showing it is true.

You might be used to just picking whatever explanation makes you feel good or you like the sound of or just accepting because your pastor told you God told him but that isn't a rational way to live. If you're willing to accept things without evidence or worse, even in the face of evidence (as is the case for Genesis), then you're willing to act on beliefs which are not based on sound reasoning and once that happens you open yourself to being manipulated by liars and frauds and to closing your mind to truth. For example, if you accept Genesis as an accurate account of how the Earth and Humans came about then you've closed your mind to reality, which contradicts Genesis. If you accept the actions of the god of the Bible as moral necessarily because anything that god does is defined to be moral then you have become an amoral person, simply following orders rather than considering whether acts are moral. If I or you told a father to kill his son simply because I willed it then we'd be asking the father to do an immoral act. If a god asks the same thing it is still an immoral act and any moral person who thinks about the morality of their actions should arrive at the same conclusion. Likewise with slavery, it was immoral back in 3000 years ago just as it is immoral now, regardless of what the Christian god said. If someone considers reality and tries to inform themselves as much as possible then they are better equipped to do such things for themselves. If you just accept things without evidence then you open yourself to manipulation through deception because you've given up your ability to think and evaluate things properly.

 

[Balerion]

Your argument is ridiculous. The presence of people who lie or who are misinformed has nothing to do with whether or not aliens can build a warp drive.

In the absence of credible evidence of such a warp drive, we're left with a simple question: What is more probable, someone being misinformed or lying, or that some hypothetical race of aliens is visiting us in spite of the apparently prohibitive distances between stars.

I also think that you are grossly mischaracterizing people who say they have had encounters.

How have I done that? By saying that they have lied or are misinformed?

More to the point, science is built upon a very limited point of view. Science is built upon only what you can prove, not the full set of what is true. Only what you can prove.

Proof only exists in math, so that's a ridiculous assertion. If proof were required to formulate an opinion or a theory, then there would be no theory of evolution, nor the Big Bang. In reality, evidence drives these things, so if there were evidence to suggest alien visitation, it wouldn't be relegated to the realm of kooks, loons, and suckers. UFOlogy would be an actual discipline, rather than something akin to "Bigfoot Tracker." But there is no evidence to suggest such a thing, and there's no evidence to suggest a warp drive is possible, so why would we allow such a premise to be on par with a known phenomenon such as bullshitterism?

Oh, right, because you want it to be true. It's easy to forget sometimes what people will do to convince themselves of some comfortable "truth."

 

[AlphaNumeric]

If FTL communication/travel does exist, which is the better strategy of discovering it? My strategy where we assume it exists and then try to figure out how to find it? Or your strategy where we assume it doesn't exist and we don't look for it?

There's a difference between not believing something is possible and believing something is not possible. You're mistaking the former for the latter. This is in precisely the same way as the rational default point of view in the absence of any evidence is not to believe in a god while actively saying no god or gods exists requires justification.

You labour under the mistaken assumption that all scientists actively say "X is impossible" if X isn't explicitly supported by current models. No, that isn't how it works. For things neither supported nor denied by models the view is ambivalence. We don't act like something is true if we don't have any evidence either way but we don't act like it is false either. And even in cases where we do have plenty of evidence supporting something scientists still develop ever more elaborate, finely tuned precession experiments to test things further. For example quantum electrodynamics says the photon is massless, exactly massless. This is completely consistent with experiments but experiments do not prove the photon is massless. Instead current experimental limits say the photon cannot have a mass of more than about $$10^{-54}$$ kilograms. Future experiments will push this further down, if the photon is indeed massless, but will never make the experimental bound exactly zero. If we just said "The photon is definitely massless, everyone stop bothering to check" then we'd be remiss in our responsibilities to constantly test models as new technology allows us. Science is littered with the corpses of old models which were experimentally falsified decades, even centuries, after their initial construction because of new experiments. Newtonian gravity lasted 250 years but we kept poking and prodding it with new data and eventually it collapsed.

Physicists don't have to assume something is true to devise experiments for it. Many physicists ask themselves "I want to see if X is true or false. What phenomena does X have significant impact on? What observations would be consistent with X being true? What would be inconsistent? What if X is false?". You don't have to assume whether X is true or false, you instead work out phenomena which are consistent or inconsistent with one of those two possibilities and then you go look at them. This requires you entertain the possibility X is true to compute the implications and then you entertain the possibility X is false to work out its implications. But you don't believe either until evidence excludes one. As such your 'I'll assume this is true as it will help speed up the work" is flawed in reasoning and highly dangerous as you're introducing bias for no reason other than your poor grasp of how to do proper scientific inquiry.

There is also still a big question about where the big bang came from. All science knows is that the big bang started as a singularity.

No, that isn't 'all science knows'. Science, specifically the big bang model, knows how the universe has evolved and developed from a time when it was extremely small, hot and dense. It then explains the way in which space-time inflated and its contents cooled, symmetry breaking in the forces led to residual matter via reheating, density fluctuations seeded galaxy super cluster structures, nucleosynthesis formed primordial isotopes for the first generation of stars, recombination of nuclei and electrons imprinted density fluctuations in the background radiation and then how this background radiation propagated under continuing space-time expansion. All of those are experimentally tested and verified in their quantitative predictions. This runs from about 1 nanosecond after the initial event through to now, 13.7 billion years later. That's a lot more than your misrepresentation 'the big bang started as a singularity'. Remember that commandment about not bearing false witness, you're doing it again about the work of scientists. If you don't know don't open your mouth, unless you think it is okay to be dishonest if it is for Jesus?

Besides, the BBM has nothing to say about the moment the universe as we know it came into existence. This is a common misunderstanding among religious denounces of the BBM, much like how they often complain about how evolution doesn't explain how life first arise when evolution is about how life developed once it started. The area of biology pertaining to how life got started is abiogenesis, something entirely different. A similar thing occurs in cosmology, the question of how the universe initially came into being is a different thing from the BBM, which is about how it developed afterwards.

I offered the idea that there is a big bang nursery out there somewhere; something that spits out singularities which explode into big bangs, like our universe did. How boring it would be if they were all like ours. So I thought: maybe each singularity (universe) has unique values for physics constants like c, h and G. If that were true, then there could be other universes near ours or even overlapping with ours. Some of those universes might have a significantly higher speed of light than our universe.

It is easy to make things up like this. When I was 16 I made up a wordy explanation of how the universe could create itself through tachyons. Now I look back and see how naive I was. Fortunately I grew out of it when I learnt more science, seeing there's more to it than pulling qualitative suppositions out of ones backside. Maybe we're one universe amount many. Maybe we're stuck to a 3-brane embedded in a higher dimensional construct. Maybe this is the Matrix. Maybe solipsism is true, maybe no one else exists other than you, the person reading this, and all of your experiences are simply figments of your imagination and what you're reading in this post is just your subconscious telling you that.

All of them can be dressed up in fancy terminology and fleshed out to address any particular point you wish to explain if we don't have to formalise anything. Why should we think yours is the right one and not one of mine or any one else's? Can you formalise any of what you said? Can you construct a model which does as you describe and can lead to a space-time of the structure and properties we observe? I doubt it.

All we would be missing is some way to interface with another universe with a higher speed of light, inject our spaceship into the other universe, and then zip along in this other universe until we re-enter this universe. That could be how FTL drives work. If true, then ET might use coexisting universes for transmitting communications.

And if this is the Matrix when if we just find The Key Maker we can use back doors to travel anywhere we wish. Or if this is just a figment of your imagination you could simply will yourself to experience a different place and you would experience it as if it were real. If, if, if. You pile guess on supposition on faith on hope on desire on ignorance. You assume things are true because you see them as preferable to alternatives, rather than considering what things you can demonstrate to be true. It's a deluded way to go about life and can lead to all sorts of problems in how it influences your actions.

Do we have any hard evidence that this is true? Nothing concrete, testable or reproducible. All we have is this odd situation where a universe just springs into existence from (we don't know what).

As I just listed, we have plenty of reproducible, testable concrete predictions from the BBM. This means the BBM's statement that the universe was once very small, hot and dense and underwent a series of specific developments is not only consistent with data but provides a viable framework for how to explain the data. To use an example where predictions from theory guided experiment, after the CMB was initially discovered in the 1960s a satellite was designed and built called COBE which was to do precision observations on the power spectrum of the CMB. The data, which has since been reproduced and refined by 2 further satellites doing the same task, was used to test models in a concrete manner and they passed beautifully.

The statement "God did it 6000 years ago and faked the universe's configuration so it seems like it happened 13.7 billion years ago" is also consistent with experiment but it doesn't provide any way to model phenomena or predict quantitative details. Likewise for the solipsism interpretation, that this is all in your mind. Not being inconsistent with data is not the same as explaining it. So it is your position which provides nothing concrete or testable. Does saying "God did it" lead to accurate models of the kind COBE tested? Nope. And then you're left with the issue of where your god came about. If you have no issue with the notion of your god, an extremely complex all powerful entity, having always existed then why do you dismiss possibilities like the larger 'super-universe' our bubbled out from having always existed? Easy, you have a pre-assumed position you're attempting to do special pleading for.

 

[Bebelina]

Of course they exist, just like bigfoot and eskimoes. Don't remember the whole quote..just the eskimo part.

They have found lots of planets with earthlike conditions already, the universe is crawling with life.

I'm just hoping they won't reveal themselves until I have made my claim for fame, because that would sort of ruin everything. I don't think I can outshine aliens landing on Earth exactly, unless they make me their spokesperson..hmm, yes that sounds logical.

 

[Mazulu]

There's a difference between not believing something is possible and believing something is not possible.

ROFLMAO. Do people look at you funny when you say things like this? Can you cite some examples or explain what you mean by this? Does such a distinction help you achieve your scientific goals?

I will trust that you are doing a good job as a scientist. If warp-drive technology is possible, I am sure that scientists like yourself will discover it. I am not hopeful that it will be discovered in my lifetime. As such, hope/desire/spiritual unfoldment will bring joy to my soul while the intergalactic community waits for humans to discover the warp drive. We're not going anywhere; take your time.

 

[Mazulu]

Of course they exist, just like bigfoot and eskimoes. Don't remember the whole quote..just the eskimo part. They have found lots of planets with earthlike conditions already, the universe is crawling with life. I'm just hoping they won't reveal themselves until I have made my claim for fame, because that would sort of ruin everything. I don't think I can outshine aliens landing on Earth exactly, unless they make me their spokesperson..hmm, yes that sounds logical.

Try wearing Vulcan ears.:shrug:

 

[Balerion]

When I was 16 I made up a wordy explanation of how the universe could create itself through tachyons.

NERD ALERT!!!!

Just kidding! Actually, I wish I were thinking of things like that when I was 16. Instead, I was trying to convince my parents to buy a second-hand above-ground pool so I could convince all the hot neighborhood girls to show me their boobs. (It worked, by the way. On both counts. Is it creepy that I still think of all those 16-year-old boobs?)

 

[Mazulu]

Just kidding! Actually, I wish I were thinking of things like that when I was 16. Instead, I was trying to convince my parents to buy a second-hand above-ground pool so I could convince all the hot neighborhood girls to show me their boobs. (It worked, by the way. On both counts. Is it creepy that I still think of all those 16-year-old boobs?)

Not creepy, perfectly normal.

 

[pywakit]

Of course they exist, just like bigfoot and eskimoes. Don't remember the whole quote..just the eskimo part.

They have found lots of planets with earthlike conditions already, the universe is crawling with life.

I'm just hoping they won't reveal themselves until I have made my claim for fame, because that would sort of ruin everything. I don't think I can outshine aliens landing on Earth exactly, unless they make me their spokesperson..hmm, yes that sounds logical.

I suspect you are safe on that count. Please continue with your agenda.

Rather sad you spent Christmas alone. (I was curious ... sorry)

I tried to spend it alone, but my next door neighbor insisted I come over for dinner.

For New Years I met with friends at our favorite karaoke bar here in Olympia. Interestingly (and perhaps appropriately) I was standing at the urinal when I heard the crowd counting down the last 10 seconds. Not sure how I lost track of time. Nor how this relates to Bigfoot or Eskimos.

That said, it appears my thread has degenerated into the equivalent of a virtual food-fight.

Any relevant (and lucid) criticism of my hypothesis is welcome.

 

[R1D2]

Short answer ... there is a high probability they do.

But why haven't we detected any?

"Maybe it's because they are using technology far beyond our abilities." ~ Seth Shostak @ SETI

Maybe not. The excuses (such as the one above) offered by SETI researchers (and parroted by believers) for our lack of finding artificial signals emanating from the cosmos are, upon unbiased analysis, flimsy at best. All one has to do is look at the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and many other popular proposals objectively to see the underlying problems associated with all of them.

For example, Fermi assumed FTL technology was possible, and therefore intelligent species older than ours must have achieved it somewhere along the line. With all due respect to Kaku and others, this is hardly a given.

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

And of course we know the Drake Equation was never an actual hypothesis or theory supported by any evidence ... rather, it was little more than mathematically organized wishful thinking on the part of Drake, dreamed up to encourage funding. Successfully, I might add.

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

No, I think the answer is stupidly simple. There is another ... better ... reason as to why we have not detected any confirmed artificial signals; a not only possible solution, but plausible one seemingly ignored by researchers and masses alike.

"Human" may be ... by far ... the best, the most advanced life form the universe can produce.

The only life form that will ever achieve the capability to make a radio, let alone leave the planet.

This just in ...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/billions-of-earthlike-planets-found-in-milky-way/

Even with the potential of billions of earth-like planets in the MWG alone, we still haven't detected a signal ...

I suggested on the "Big Bang Evidence For God" thread that "Life is an extremely rare by-product of the natural laws of space. Intelligent, technologically advanced life is even rarer."

I insisted (despite Alex's protests) we had "literally millions of samples" and "billions of locations" to support this 'hypothesis'.

Let's start with the millions of samples.

How many species on earth have achieved technology capable of creating radio? One.

Can I be so sure of this? Could there have been a technologically advanced species equal to or greater than ours earlier in our history? I often wondered about this as a child in the 50s and 60s. But soon it became apparent this was not a viable possibility.

Certainly any advancing species would have had to eventually develop radio. After all, there are only so many known ways to achieve rapid communication, and they would have had to deal with the same laws of physics, chemistry, etc that we have.

What is the likelihood of a species being curious (or driven) enough to achieve radio and space travel and not leaving a shred of evidence behind?

And what are the chances they jumped from fire to FTL? Possible, I suppose. But not plausible. And by the same line of reasoning, we can also effectively rule out other species on other worlds jumping from 'nothing' to FTL technology. They would have invented (and used) radio at some point.

No, if there had been a species before us on earth that achieved radio, we would have found the evidence in space, or on the moon, on Mars ... somewhere. It stretches credulity to the extreme to suggest they could have (or found it necessary to) destroy every last little bit of space junk that would have been an inevitable by-product of radio communication and space exploration.

We were the first.

Millions of samples ...

Sharks. Turtles. Birds. Reptiles. How long have they existed? There is good evidence sharks (in a plethora of different forms) may have existed for as many as 420 million years.

How close are they to achieving radio? After all this time? If they had another 2 or 3 billion years, would they ever build a radio? Possibly. But they wouldn't be sharks anymore.

Turtles? Same story. Hundreds of millions of years and they are still turtles. Birds? Will they ever make a radio? No.

There have been millions of species on this planet. A planet arguably very well suited for life to flourish and evolve. Yet, even after (in numerous cases) hundreds of millions of years, none have come anywhere near radio. And, in their present forms, never will. Isn't this obvious?

How about hominids? Once again, there have been numerous species that have existed for millions of years. How much longer before chimps develop radio? Gorillas? They never will ... as long as they remain in their present forms.

What about the humanoid species? Neanderthals? Homo erectus?

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

Evidence from molecular biology

The closest living relatives of humans are gorillas and chimpanzees.[19] With the sequencing of both the human and chimpanzee genome, current estimates of similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA sequences range between 95% and 99%.[19][20][21] By using the technique called a molecular clock which estimates the time required for the number of divergent mutations to accumulate between two lineages, the approximate date for the split between lineages can be calculated. The gibbons (Hylobatidae) and orangutans (genus Pongo) were the first groups to split from the line leading to the humans, then gorillas (genus Gorilla) followed by the chimpanzees and bonobos (genus Pan). The splitting date between human and chimpanzee lineages is placed around 4-8 million years ago during the late Miocene epoch.[22][23][24]

Evidence from the fossil record

There is little fossil evidence for the divergence of the gorilla, chimpanzee and hominin lineages.[25][26] The earliest fossils that have been proposed as members of the hominin lineage are Sahelanthropus tchadensis dating from 7 million years ago, and Orrorin tugenensis dating from 5.7 million years ago and Ardipithecus kadabba dating to 5.6 million years ago. Each of these have been argued to be a bipedal ancestor of later hominins, but in each cases the claims have been contested. It is also possible that either of these species are ancestors of another branch of African apes, or that they represent a shared ancestor between hominins and other apes. The question of the relation between these early fossil species and the hominin lineage is still to be resolved. From these early species the Australopithecines arose around 4 million years ago diverged into robust (also called Paranthropus) and gracile branches, one of which (possibly A. garhi) went on to become ancestors of the genus Homo.

The earliest members of the genus Homo are Homo habilis which evolved around 2.3 million years ago. Homo habilis is the first species for which we have positive evidence of use of stone tools. The brains of these early hominins were about the same size as that of a chimpanzee, and their main adaptation was bipedalism as an adaptation to terrestrial living. During the next million years a process of encephalization began, and with the arrival of Homo erectus in the fossil record, cranial capacity had doubled. Homo erectus were the first of the hominina to leave Africa, and these species spread through Africa, Asia, and Europe between 1.3 to 1.8 million years ago. One population of H. erectus, also sometimes classified as a separate species Homo ergaster, stayed in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens. It is believed that these species were the first to use fire and complex tools. The earliest transitional fossils between H. ergaster/erectus and archaic H. sapiens are from Africa such as Homo rhodesiensis, but seemingly transitional forms are also found at Dmanisi, Georgia. These descendants of African H. erectus spread through Eurasia from ca. 500,000 years ago evolving into H. antecessor, H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis. The earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are from the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago such as the Omo remains of Ethiopia, later fossils from Skhul in Israel and Southern Europe begin around 90,000 years ago.

Homo habilis made stone tools. They had exactly the same materials to work with that we have now. They had essentially the same pressures and challenges we have now. Extremes of weather, food, predators, etc. And how close did they get to radio after a million years or so?

Modern homo sapiens emerged a mere 200,000 years ago. And only 50,000 years ago did they begin to exhibit modern behavioral patterns.

They went from fire and stone tools to space in 50,000 years. 50,000. All other species (physical configurations) had millions, if not hundreds of millions of years to accomplish radio. None came close.

What can we infer (if not conclude) from this?

First and foremost, it takes an extremely specialized life form to create a radio. If the life form lacks any of homo sapiens specializations, radio is not going to happen. Again, millions of 'failures' ... only one success.

The life form must have sufficient brain power to observe and comprehend the world around it, and just as importantly, learn how to manipulate it in extremely complex ways. The life form would need to develop mathematics. Physics, chemistry, electro-magnetism, etc.

So what about those 'other' planets?

Well, we can eliminate all exoplanets similar to the others in our solar system. Clearly, it is going to be rather difficult to have evolved complex, intelligent life forms on a water less world, such as Mars. Or on a gas giant. Or on a planet that's 700 above zero Celsius. Or 700 below. You can say all you want about earth's extremophiles, but none of them are going to ever be able to manipulate the environment ... or create mathematics. Both of which are prerequisites for radio.

How about 'earth-like' planets? I don't think earth-like is sufficient. Yes, our evolution (both the planet and us) was in many ways serendipitous, and were it not for a big rock, given the previous history of earth (equally serendipitous) we would probably not be here. But it comes back to how specialized we are. We are, among millions of species, the only ones uniquely qualified to build radios. Even the smallest variations appear to preclude such an achievement.

Given the serendipitous nature of our existence, while clearly possible, it (millions of intelligent species) remains exceedingly unlikely as a common feature of the universe in such a short (13.7 billion years) time.

Happily, there are many chances for this to have happened in an observable universe containing anywhere from 200 to possibly 500 billion (or more) galaxies ... each with as many as a trillion stars (on average). Especially if those galaxies (again, on average) contain several billions of planets very similar to earth.

When Frank Drake began his search for extraterrestrials in 1960, he had high hopes for detecting an artificial signal. Indeed, when SETI began, even using the relatively primitive tools of the day, the expectation was that we would discover 'alien' life forms within a mere 5 years. I was around then, and I was very excited about it. If for no other reason than to prove Christian dogma/theology was bullshit.

Over 50 years later and no signal confirmed to be artificial. Our technology ... our ability to detect, ability to analyze the data ... has improved on the order of several magnitudes during that time. And nothing.

We have 'observed' literally billions of locations since 1960.

NO SIGNAL.

If there are (or were) multitudes of intelligent, advanced life forms in the observable universe, it is absurd to suggest (as Shostak has) that they could be using technology beyond our ability to detect. Or as others have suggested, that they are all (or mostly) xenophobes. Or that they use magic, or telepathy. Or they simply aren't interested. Or they all killed themselves off.

Billions upon billions of intelligent (and varied) species in the universe, and no evidence?

Absurd.

Just us?

Equally absurd.

By the way, what would be the point of creating a universe of 200 to 500 billion galaxies, each with billions or trillions of planetary systems ... all just to support one species? Rather inefficient for an omnipotent god, don't you think? Wouldn't one galaxy be sufficient? Or less?

Oh wait. That's what Christians were so sure of: Earth was all by itself, except for those little lights in the 'firmament'.

Whatever ...

In any case, we do have millions of samples, and billions of locations.

Yes, there is in all likelihood other intelligent, radio-capable life in the universe.

I don't remember which scientists suggested this, but I must agree with them (in part): It might take an entire galaxy (or more) to produce just one radio-capable species. I would go even farther and suggest it might take a million or more galaxies to produce just one radio-capable species.

But we know it happened at least once. And even if it takes a billion galaxies, that still means there are (or were) around 200 to 500 radio-capable species in the observable universe.

And in all likelihood, they are identical to us.

Damn that was long...
Yes they exist somewhere.
And they (aliens) would be light years away. Our radio signals we receive and send are taking to long to reach each other. We have not hit the same time frame.
My spell checker don't have a bunch of those big or fancy words...

 

[pywakit]

How so? The way I responded means all you have to do is press "Reply With Quote." There's no mess, and I'll know what you're responding to when you write something. Now I have to continually cross-reference my last post following each of your answers. If this is how you're going to play the game, then I'm done after this post. Have some common courtesy and make it easy for others to respond.

I will try to improve.

Another misrepresentation of my words. I never said anyone was insane, I simply said it was insane to think that we'd hear something in such a short amount of time. And yes, expecting to hear a signal within 24 years is crazy. Though I have to admit, the more I learn of SETI, the more it reminds me of a Bigfoot tracking company, or professional ghosthunters.

Well, Shostak did say by then we will have carefully examined 1 million stars. Or maybe he meant 1 million per year. Or maybe he just wants to save his job. In any case, I have made it clear that I think it takes quite a bit of real estate (on average) to produce one radio-capable species.

And I say again, it is a fallacy to assume that it takes our exact design to create a radio. Look at how many different species do other things that we do, such as build habitats and use tools. Most of them don't even have hands. Building a radio is simply levels of complexity beyond that, so there's no reason to believe it can't be done by some other form factor, if you'll forgive the term.

I can forgive the term. Not your reasoning. As I have already pointed out, many different forms on earth have had ample opportunity to make a radio. Up to hundreds of millions of years. Simply "levels of complexity" huh?

Balerion, I don't doubt for a second that you are a highly intelligent, well-educated person. That comment was hardly illustrative. Once again, I must draw your attention to the fact that our planet produced millions of different physical forms. None ever came close to building a radio. Other than the highly specialized homo sapiens. How many examples do you need?

You claim there may be "hundreds, thousands, millions" of different ways it could be done. "We just don't know" you say. Well, what we do know (or can reasonably deduce) is there are millions of ways it cannot be done. If it was so easy to accomplish then one of the millions of species that came before us would have done it. Hundreds of millions of years ago.

You complain about my being vague. Well, how vague are you being? "Who knows?" Shall we just accept your statements as valid with zero evidence in support? Shall we accept with zero evidence that radios could be built by any number of 'designs' existing under any sort of conditions? "Could be?"

If we begin to consider the conditions that had to be in place for a species to build a radio right here on earth ... how specific those conditions are (and were) ... we can see very quickly that if all these conditions had not been in place, not only would there be no radios, but we wouldn't be here either.

With a wave of your arms you proclaim the 'possibility' of other physical forms (on other planets) building radios. Yet you can't produce a single example. Or even attempt to describe such a species. "Who knows?" Vague, indeed.

You keep appealing to authority, offering no explanation as to why they would have expected such a signal. It's almost as if you don't know...

I am not an astronomer. I am an observer, and perhaps a poor one at that. Based on the many materials I have read on the subject, and numerous talks given by those in the science community, there were people who (in my crude analysis) either seriously overestimated the number of radio-capable species in the galaxy/universe, or seriously overestimated our ability to detect them ... or both.

That's still pretty rare. There are like 400 billion stars in the galaxy, so that's one intelligent species every 400,000 stars. Even if we were an outlier, and had several such civs within a few hundred light-years of us, the odds are that we'd either have missed their signals or they hadn't arrived yet. But it's more likely that even if intelligent life were as common as all that, they'd still be so far away from us that the likelihood of picking up a signal would be slim. And the farther away the civilization, the more precise and powerful the signal would have to be. We're not catching Alpha-Centaurian "I Love Lucy" episodes unless they beamed them to us.

Fine. Have it your way ... even if experts in the field disagree. I am not knowledgeable enough to address this. Still, I think it is safe to say that even if there are 17 billion 'earths' in the MWG, that does not mean there are (or were) any intelligent species existing on them. Our existence could not be any more serendipitous. What if that rock hadn't hit? We wouldn't be here. The moon? How important a part did that play in our existence?

Don't play games. No one has lost their cool here, and my critique of your argument is fair. And for whatever it's worth, I'm not knocking you for being critical of them, I'm knocking you for mouthing off without having a clue as to what you're actually talking about.

Another example of your 'common courtesy'?

The irony here is that you and Shostack have taken a similar tack, in that neither of you have really articulated why it's probable that we would have or will received a signal. You both say it's a numbers thing, but you both seem to ignore the practical limitations of such signals as well as make huge assumptions. Even if every star had intelligent life on it, the distances between them and the unknown variables (such as, are they even using radio? Are they attempting to contact ET like we are? If so, when did they stop, or how long ago did they start?) make it impossible to say that anything of the sort is likely in such a small window.

You are making the unsupported assumption that the window is (was) small. Further, you have yet to offer any support for your claims of our technological inability to detect signals. Apparently we are to simply take your word for this.

Where's the facepalm smiley?

Adjective
Not being what it purports to be; false or fake: "spurious claims".
(of a line of reasoning) Apparently but not actually valid: "this spurious reasoning results in nonsense".​

You'd think that someone as sarcastic (and rude) as you would be a little more cognizant of someone else's sarcasm.

I never characterized Drake as an idiot. However, expecting to detect an alien signal using one channel is idiotic. "Overly optimistic" is more than a gross understatement.

Enthusiasm. Wishful thinking. Delusion. Whatever. I can't fault him for that. You also fail to recognize light humor.

Another appeal to authority. If you can't tell me why they would disagree, then why are we having this discussion? You're clearly in over your head.

I have offered a hypothsis based on observations. I have offered at least some evidence in support of my conclusions. You have offered little but arm-waving, demeaning, denigrating speech. You're clearly incapable of having a reasonable and respectful conversation.

You are 'lucky' I am even talking to you.

And again you fail to address the problem of variable times, distances, or signal decay. You can keep saying "but the numbers!" until you're blue in the face, but until you address my points, it's just noise from another clueless schmoe.

Again, I am dependent upon the scientists who specialize in this field. If they say it can be done, then I must assume they have at least some knowledge upon which to base their confidence.

Not at all. It hasn't been long enough to say. And as I've said before, there's every possibility that we would never receive a signal in a billion years.

We won't be around long enough to find out, will we? Still, even though in this instance we agree (although for vastly different reasons), I am hopeful we will detect a signal before I die.

Another fallacy. You're talking about the only known species to build a radio and making the assumption that it must be the only way to achieve such a thing. In reality, there may be a hundred different ways to get there. Or a thousand. Or a million. You simply don't know.

Referred to above.

There is no such thing as "devolution." If you're implying that we are weakening, that's probably true, but we have medicine to counteract that. At any rate, I don't know what your point is here.

My point is, just as sharks found their niche, so have we. I don't see us evolving much beyond where we are.

I don't know what physics has to do with it. There's no way another intelligent species follows our exact path up the technological tree. Another species might never discover radio waves, or they might advance more quickly than we did.

If they don't, they will always be invisible to us. If they did long before (and this has happened billions of times) then we have a shot at detecting them. What physics has to do with it is ... any species that ever achieves radio will have had to learn the exact same things we did or they would never been able to make a radio. It doesn't matter when, or how fast. They would still have to understand exactly what we understand. This knowledge must shape how they think, just as our understanding of physics has shaped our thinking, as we relate to reality and the universe. Or some of us, anyway. This would necessarily dictate their future scientific paths, just as ours is dictated.

Well that's just stupid.

Ok.

Don't worry, you're wrong. Radio waves expand and weaken the further into space they travel, so even if one was headed right for us, from a sufficient distance it wouldn't even be recognizable against the background radiation. That, along with distortions from gravity and whatever else might get in the way, make long-distance radio communications--especially accidental long-distance communication--highly unlikely. Unless some far-off civilization targeted us specifically, we're not likely to hear from them. Life would have to be very common, or at least very close, to pick up accidental transmissions. And all of that is possible. After all, we targeted several places and sent out messages. But then factors of time come into play, and the likelihood of us catching one in a fifty-year span is virtually nil.

Kind of stuck on this, aren't you?

I don't care what you meant, frankly, because you appear to be talking out of your backside.

*sigh

Trust me, you don't hide it well.

Again ... sigh

You would be right if that's how rare life was. But there's simply no way of knowing if that's true or not, and looking at earth isn't a very good measure, since it's the only planet we know of that can sustain life and it also happens to sustain a radio-capable lifeform. That fact either implies that radio-capable life is abundant, or it implies nothing at all.

It implies far more than that, but you are apparently too obtuse to see it.

Considering that you base it on fallacies and half-remembered comic books from the 50s, I'd say the chances of you being wrong are high.

Lol. Ok.

 

[Balerion]

I can forgive the term. Not your reasoning. As I have already pointed out, many different forms on earth have had ample opportunity to make a radio. Up to hundreds of millions of years. Simply "levels of complexity" huh?

Yes, levels of complexity. I mean, what does it even mean to "not ever come close?" Other animals use shelter, build habitats, use tools. Our ability to build a radio isn't some magical power, it's just a more sophisticated tool. Yes, it requires a level of intelligence not found in any other species, but that doesn't translate to "Only 100-500" intelligent species in the universe.

You claim there may be "hundreds, thousands, millions" of different ways it could be done. "We just don't know" you say. Well, what we do know (or can reasonably deduce) is there are millions of ways it cannot be done. If it was so easy to accomplish then one of the millions of species that came before us would have done it. Hundreds of millions of years ago.

It very well may have been done before, had it not been for extinction-level events. And for all we know, there was another intelligent lifeform on this planet hundreds of millions of years ago that died out early in its existence due to an extinction event. That's entirely possible. After all, we almost died out while still in Africa. There were as few as 3,000 human beings at one point. I'm just saying--and you agreed with this earlier, only to now change your mind--we don't know how often or easily intelligent species appear, since mass extinctions have occurred here several times. And we don't know how many more intelligent species will evolve in the future. Saying "We're the only ones here, so we must be special" doesn't imply anything other than the fact that it's very difficult to survive. Wind the tape back and play it again, maybe there are six or seven intelligent species here. Maybe there are none. Point is, you can't know. There are too many variables.

I mean, we're taxonomically close enough to chimpanzees and gorillas to be in the same family, so who says another form isn't right on the brink? A chimp has never built a radio, but a bigger brain, better hips, and precision grip, and you've got all the tools to build a radio.

You complain about my being vague. Well, how vague are you being? "Who knows?" Shall we just accept your statements as valid with zero evidence in support? Shall we accept with zero evidence that radios could be built by any number of 'designs' existing under any sort of conditions? "Could be?"

"Who knows" and "Could be" are the correct answers. Your vagueness, however, comes in lieu of having anything to actually say.

If we begin to consider the conditions that had to be in place for a species to build a radio right here on earth ... how specific those conditions are (and were) ... we can see very quickly that if all these conditions had not been in place, not only would there be no radios, but we wouldn't be here either.

You're half-right. If the conditions were slightly different, we wouldn't be here. That doesn't mean there would be no radios, however. Some other species (or several others) might have diverged and evolved intelligence on par with ours. The answer is "Who knows?"

With a wave of your arms you proclaim the 'possibility' of other physical forms (on other planets) building radios. Yet you can't produce a single example. Or even attempt to describe such a species. "Who knows?" Vague, indeed.

We don't even have another example of extant intelligent life. Does that therefore mean there is none? Or that it is rare on a cosmic scale? Of course not. It just means we haven't seen any yet. As for what a radio-building species might look like, who the hell could guess? Any form is possible, provided they have the right amount of brain power. There's no law that says intelligence requires fingers. It's an adaptation just like any other. It seems to require a certain brain size/body size ratio, but again, I don't see "Bipedal, hands w/ fingers" in that description anywhere. Oh, so a squid's tentacle can't build a radio (I see no reason why it couldn't, but let's just suppose it can't) then maybe the squids build a machine that can build radios, sort of like how we build machines that do things we aren't capable of doing.

You've made the mistake of believing that just because we are a certain way, that we must be the prerequisite for being that certain way.

I am not an astronomer. I am an observer, and perhaps a poor one at that.

You're not an anything, except maybe a stubborn coot who has held onto this notions for a very long time and won't relinquish them because of the emotional investment you've made in them. What I'm telling you here is the truth.

Based on the many materials I have read on the subject,

All of them pulp novels from the 50s.

and numerous talks given by those in the science community,

Again, hopelessly vague.

there were people who (in my crude analysis) either seriously overestimated the number of radio-capable species in the galaxy/universe, or seriously overestimated our ability to detect them ... or both.

I don't discount that. But 100 to 500 species? That's asinine. As is your assumption that all intelligent species must look like us just because we're the only intelligent species we know of.

Fine. Have it your way ... even if experts in the field disagree.

Experts in the field of what? Listening for alien signals? Not sure what's supposed to make their opinions on this subject more relevant than mine. I've communicated with as many aliens as they have.

I am not knowledgeable enough to address this.

You're not knowledgeable to address any of it. I wish there was an evolutionary biologist in the house who could learn you better than I can on the ludicrous nature of your opinions, but sadly you'll have to deal with me.

Still, I think it is safe to say that even if there are 17 billion 'earths' in the MWG, that does not mean there are (or were) any intelligent species existing on them. Our existence could not be any more serendipitous. What if that rock hadn't hit? We wouldn't be here. The moon? How important a part did that play in our existence?

Not on all of them, no, but certainly on some of them. Trying to figure out how many is stupid (just like the Drake Equation is stupid) because we only know of one planet that has life on it. Show me a few hundred, or a few thousand, planets harboring life, then we can start talking. But even then, there are maybe a trillion planets in this galaxy alone. The odds of a hundred planets being devoid of intelligent life are probably pretty high. I mean, that's hte problem with making assumptions like this. There universe is just too damn big!

Another example of your 'common courtesy'?

What's that even mean? I spoke of common courtesy in the context of making your posts easier to reply to. I'm not obliged to respect your opinions or your argument style. Were you raised to think that all ideas were of equal merit? Or that you were due respect even when you were talking out of your ass?

You are making the unsupported assumption that the window is (was) small.

Unsupported? It's basic math. We have only been listening for 50 years, yet most of the stars in the galaxy are hundreds to thousands of light-years away, making the probability of a signal beamed directly at us either still on its way or arrived before SETI began extremely high.

Further, you have yet to offer any support for your claims of our technological inability to detect signals. Apparently we are to simply take your word for this.

I never said we were technologically incapable of detecting signals. Where are you getting this shit?

You'd think that someone as sarcastic (and rude) as you would be a little more cognizant of someone else's sarcasm.

If that's your idea of sarcasm, you need sarcasm lessons. I mean, in what way was that supposed to read as sarcasm?

You also fail to recognize light humor.

You're just not as funny as you think you are.

I have offered a hypothsis based on observations. I have offered at least some evidence in support of my conclusions. You have offered little but arm-waving, demeaning, denigrating speech. You're clearly incapable of having a reasonable and respectful conversation.

No, you've offered your gross misunderstanding of biology and the size of the universe (and radio waves), with some wild assumptions based on literally nothing but your own ignorance. Remember your claim that if there were billions of intelligent life forms in the universe that it would be "impossible" for us not to have heard from them? Have you already forgotten that gem?

What I've done is correct your errors and tell you that there's simply no way of answering some of the questions you're so damn set on having an answer to. That's not an appealing reality to you, so you'll simply discard it and substitute your own, but it's hardly arm-waving to say "Hey, we don't know." As for being demeaning, well, you're talking a bunch of nonsense. Am I supposed to respect idiotic ideas? Maybe the reason you've held these foolish notions for so long is because you haven't had enough people rudely disabuse you of them.

You are 'lucky' I am even talking to you.

Yeah, because old-timers holding on to really loony ideas aren't a dime a dozen on this forum.

(See, that's sarcasm)

Again, I am dependent upon the scientists who specialize in this field. If they say it can be done, then I must assume they have at least some knowledge upon which to base their confidence.

Stop pretending you don't know what these estimations are based on. Essentially, it's a variation of the Drake Equation, which is science fantasy. And as I've pointed out, even if we knew the variables, there's no logic route to "We'll hear something within 24 years." There just isn't a way to say that based on the numbers.

We won't be around long enough to find out, will we? Still, even though in this instance we agree (although for vastly different reasons), I am hopeful we will detect a signal before I die.

It could happen. But putting a date on it is impossible, regardless of what Seth Rorshack says. Or whatever his name is.

My point is, just as sharks found their niche, so have we. I don't see us evolving much beyond where we are.

That's not at all what you said, though I agree we're probably not going to change much. Doesn't mean there won't be others joining the party, though.

If they don't, they will always be invisible to us.

Irrelevant. Also, incorrect. The technology tree is not just a long pole with no branches. There isn't just one path up it.

Kind of stuck on this, aren't you?

If you didn't need it explained to you more than once, I wouldn't have explained it more than once.

*sigh

Again ... sigh

It's true. You don't hide your lack of expertise in these fields well, and you really do seem to be pulling stuff out of thin air.

It implies far more than that, but you are apparently too obtuse to see it.

No, it doesn't. Should I explain it again? The only planet we know to harbor life has an intelligent species on it, and previously had more than one (don't forget our extinct cousins). Since this is our only example of a life-sustaining planet, that it has such a species implies either that intelligent species are very common, or we're an exception and it therefore doesn't imply anything since we can't yet know we're an exception. Not a difficult concept. Of course, it is difficult for you to accept, given your long-held beliefs, but I think it's time you shook them off and started fresh. It's never too late.

 

[pywakit]

No, building a radio isn't magic.

You really don't get it.

It's not just species extremely close to us in form, manual dexterity and brain size that never came close to advanced technology.

Even within our own species, the vast majority lack the intellect.

All the major advances in technology and learning about our universe have come from a tiny fraction of the human species.

Even homo sapiens wasn't 'specialized' enough. It took even more specialized humans to create the advanced world we have today. And there have been a mere 'handful' compared to the billions who have lived and died.

Building nests, using sticks to scoop honey and/or ants, creating rudimentary habitats from shells is certainly a great start. But they have been doing it for millions upon millions of years. And they will keep doing it for millions upon millions of years ... assuming they don't go extinct.

An octopus building a machine to build a radio? Fascinating. But 'absurd' unless they learn to live on dry land. Correct me if I am wrong, but haven't octopods been around for a few hundred million years? When are they going to build a radio? Or a machine to build one? Seems like they are pretty happy where they are.

Homo sapiens ... 200,000 years. And again, just a few of them. And the vast majority of our advances in only 1,000 years.

Sorry. There were never species on this planet intelligent enough ... or specialized enough to create a radio. Unless they were identical to humans. And if there were, there would be a fossil record of them. In any case, clearly, no species ever did it before.

I have suggested 200 to 500 radio-capable species in the universe (and it's a guess) for one, because the evidence here on earth (eminently suited for life) strongly suggests it required an extremely specialized form to achieve radio technology. Millions of wildly diverse shapes, sizes, and configurations, and none progressed to any real extent ... in millions of years.

I think it is highly improbable any form but human could ever accomplish it.

Add the serendipitous nature of our existence. Consider all the things that had to come together for us to be here.

How likely is it in 17 billion chances? Not very.

A billion times a billion chances? Much better odds.

200 to 500 billion galaxies, each with an average of several billion earth-like planets?

I don't think 200 to 500 radio-capable species is too conservative.

Did I contradict myself? Don't think so. Might not have been clear though.

Assuming life is ubiquitous in the universe, and if a wide array of life forms could (and did) produce radio technology at some point in their development, in a variety of different environments (not just earth-like) then yes ... we should have detected artificial signals by now.

Weak, distorted, overlapping ... but clearly not natural background radiation.

Out of time.

 

[Bebelina]

I suspect you are safe on that count. Please continue with your agenda.

Rather sad you spent Christmas alone. (I was curious ... sorry)

I tried to spend it alone, but my next door neighbor insisted I come over for dinner.

For New Years I met with friends at our favorite karaoke bar here in Olympia. Interestingly (and perhaps appropriately) I was standing at the urinal when I heard the crowd counting down the last 10 seconds. Not sure how I lost track of time. Nor how this relates to Bigfoot or Eskimos.

That said, it appears my thread has degenerated into the equivalent of a virtual food-fight.

Any relevant (and lucid) criticism of my hypothesis is welcome.

I'm not so sure. They have an untimely advantage of perspective. They will pinpoint exactly when my time has come to shine and will appear just right there and right then, I just know it. Typical. They always do that.

Yes, that was saddest Christmas in history. I will never put myself through that ever again. I didn't have anyone to watch the cats either, and to ask people for that over Christmas is also tricky. I don't like asking people for favours in general either. So at new years I had to travel up north to see some family members, and left the cats alone for two days. The cats were fine, but my family members were already so pissed that I didn't join them for Christmas that new years got pretty ruined because of that too. Well, new year, another Christmas is coming soon...let's try again.

One new year I was watching Scrubs for the countdown, not so festive either.

So one can say your timing was symbolical, letting go of the old and bringing in the new.

Virtual food fights are the best, then you can imagine having food that you could have had for real, if it hadn't been January and all economic resources are down at below zero.

 

[youreyes]

yes aliens exist, countless civilizations in so many galaxies and their star systems that the entire existence of human civilization of every person would not be able to interact with a fraction of them.

It's an exciting world out there and we are at the earliest birth stages of our civilization, it will take thousands of years before we realize the universe is a crowded place.