[NeoPeasant]

Have you ever wondered whether we are the only life form in the universe to ever reach the level of conciousness to even be aware that there is such a thing as the universe?
When you think about it, we really have no way to know what the odds of evolving, reproducing, energy exploiting life to actually manifest itself on a formerly dead planet. It could have happend on millions of planets or only once in all of time. All we can really say for sure is that it happened once.

This is what really pisses me off about our lack of concern for preserving the environment and energy sources that make our continued existence possible. We could carelessly extinguish our own species in a very short amount of time, leaving the entire universe as an enormous dead thing that exists without anything in it having a conciousness to know it exists.

I would feel much better if SETI actually suceeded in detecting an intellegent radio signal from space. Then I would know that life is common in the universe and it wouldn't be such a trajedy if we blow it on this planet.

[JayHMorrison]

The evidence of Mars and Titan really seem to indicate that life could be common in the universe.

Mars could easily have supported life at some point in it's history. The robots running around there have found evidence of liquid water and signs that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere.

Titan has many of same early chemical ingredients that Earth had. But Titan had the misfortune to be in a location that is frozen. If Titan had developed in an area of the solar system closer to the sun, it might very well have turned out to support life.

So just looking at our solar system, there were three good locations for life. Odds are that life has developed elsewhere in our galaxy in abundance.

The key variable is whether the life developed at approximately the same time as when we are here. I believe Arthur C Clarke did a paper on this topic and calculated some variables to determine how common life is within the universe. He also was trying to calculate the odds that the other life would be a form of life capable of communication with us and the odds of such a life bearing planet being within a reasonable range of Earth.

Once you reach the conclusion that life is common in the universe and evenly dispersed, then one must consider whether communication is possible. It is only within the past 70 years on earth that radio waves of any strength have been traveling away from us. 70 years is nothing in relation to galactic time spans.

Let's suppose that another planet with life happens to have developed intelligence to the point where they would search for life also elsewhere in the galaxy. The odds are not good that both planets happen to be operating with intelligent life at the same time. Especially within a reasonable range for radio signals to be detected within a reasonable distance, perhaps 100 light years or less.

Mars may very well have had life at some point. But it might have been hundreds of millions of years ago. The odds of two planets having intelligent life, capable of sending and receiving radio transmissions, and doing it at the same point in time, are VERY low.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Interesting title for a thread, reminds me of the old Peggy Lee song:

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friend
Then lets keep dancing
Lets break out the booze
And have a ball, if that's all
There is!

[archaen]

Be careful what you wish for in the detection of intelligent life department. I read a book by Charles Pellegrino(A physicist from Brookhaven national Labratories) called the Killing Star. In the book he has an actual transcript of a discussion taken from the Valkyrie Brainstorming sessions(including Isaac Asimov, Richard Tuna and Jill Tarter) about Alien Civilizations and what we know about them and can expect from them.

We know with our current level of physics that is possible to have interstellar travel with antimatter drives which can propel objects up to a theoretical 92% the speed of light. The only down side is that we dont know if the matter density between the stars is too thick to safely travel at these speeds. It follows that if a technological race developed before us discovered thsi fact, then it would feel safe in communicating its presence; as it would be very hard for someone to destroy them. But our universe is totally silent, even out to safe distances of 100,000 light years or more. Remember, our universe is very old, and the chance that we are the first technological race to rise up is miniscule(this is taking the position that we are not the only technological race). If it was safe to transmit your location we would have most likely intercepted a signal from a race that developed thousand to millions of years before us. Now why would one be afraid to transmit your location in the universe?

When you put your thinking cap on what is it you can truly say about an high tech alien civilization?

The three things that came out of this meeting were:

1. Their survival will be more important than our survival

If an alien civilization has to choose its survival over ours it will be us biting the bullet everytime. Species don't survive by being self sacrificing.

2.Wimps don't become top dogs
Lets be realistic, a race that is technologically inclined is going to have to be the master over its environment. The species that has the chutzpah to break out of its gravity well will be agressive, intelligent, ambitous and ruthless when necessary.

3.They will assume the first two about us and rightfully so

Combine this with the fact that the ships we know will work for interstellar travel are in and of themselves a terrible weapon. Just do a basic energy calculation of a fully loaded space shuttle traveling at 50% C using the old equation KE = 1/2*m*v^2. lets see here KE = 1/2*24,948 kg *(1.5*10^8 m/s)^2 = 2.807 * 10^20 Joules of energy. That is about 67,000 gigatons of energy stored on the ship which can then be directed at the planet.

It is impossible to tell if a ship visiting your system is friendly or on suicide run to take out your civilization. The other thing about relativistic weapons, you dont see them tilll they are almost there thanks to space time distortion.

It takes just a few logical steps to get the interstellar golden rule

"Do unto others as they would do unto you, and do it to them first."

Kind of reminds me of George Bush's war rhetoric .

Wouldn't it be ironic if the human race finally pulled itself together and over came peak oil just to be relativistically buck shot out of existance?
Im not saying this scenario is true or even likely; but if you have a signal from an intelligent race in proximity, the discusion from above becomes applicable.

[Licho]

Well, as a person who personally witnessed UFO, I have little doubt other intelligent species exists somewhere in universe..
UFO I witnessed with other people from fairly close range was so unlike anything I've seen or heard about, that I had little doubt it's something "alien".

[julianj]

I have thought about this a lot over the years.

I don't personally take the Aliens will automatically be hostile point of view.

But I have often pondered on the (Carl Sagan?) idea that if the possibility of intelligent life on any planet/in any star system is 1 in a million, or billion, pick any number, no matter how large, and that means

BECAUSE THE UNIVERSE IS SO FULL OF STARS

that there have to be other intelligent life-forms out there.

More recently New Scientist had an article that Planet A reaches manned spaceflight, sends out one (sublight speed) Space colony to Planet B, After a few hundred years, B sends out 2 more. It would only take 4,500 years to colonise our galaxy!

I dispute these figures, I think it glosses over the huge distances involved, but you get the idea. Even if its 100,000 years, it's nothing to the Galaxy.

So the question is,

Why aren't we seeing their daytime soaps?!

Even if they can't get here an older civilisation should have carpeted the galaxy with its electromagenetic emissions, even if its hiding in a Dyson sphere by now (see the archaen's ideas).

Peak Oil gave me the answer, and as Deep Thought said: "You're really not going to like it":

They either overshot their eco-limits and crashed and burned, becoming extinct, or are leading a low-energy non-spacefaring sustainable lifestyle. There's probably a lot of trashed civilisations out there.

I did actually come across a space scientist, name began with a K (doh! memory!), who had much the same theory.

As Marvin would say: "Depressing, isn't it?"

[MikeB]

PenUltMan:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')s that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friend
Then lets keep dancing
Lets break out the booze
And have a ball, if that's all
There is!

[linlithgowoil]

ive no idea if there is life in the universe. intelligent life? hmm, dont know. i dont think we'll ever find out either.

i also think that people are totally deluded if they think than mankind will ever leave earth and become a space bound species. we'd be dead within a few years with radiation, muscle wastage, no water/food.

the more you think about it, the more it becomes clear that hoyle was right. we have one shot at this, and most likely other civilisations (if any) had one shot too. if we havent learned how to colonise other planets by now after having used up half of our most abundant fuel source, then how can we hope to do this as we enter the time when the environment, oil depletion, climate change etc. are all conspiring against us?

id dearly love to travel forward in time about 100 years to see what earth is like. i wonder if it will be 'lights out' everywhere, except some fires etc. i dont see how we can transfer to alternative energies to make electricity - i just dont see how it could happen on anything but a tiny scale.

plus, all the equipment, power lines, solar panels etc., how would they be manufactured? they couldnt be, so as electronics etc. broke down, they couldnt be replaced.

the more you think about it, the worse it becomes.

PS wouldnt it have been amazing if there were ancient monuments standing on mars and abandoned cities? that would have been excellent.

as it is, i think we may just be a one off. an anomoly in a universe that is full of gas giants, stars and dark matter - and little else.

[Madpaddy]

None of us exist.

As THHGTTG said,

The universe is infinite therefore there are an infinite number of planets. There are a finite number of inhabited planets.
Any finite number divided by infinity is 0.

Therefore you do not exist and any people you meet are merely the biproducts of a deranged imagination.

[NeoPeasant]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('archaen', '
')When you put your thinking cap on what is it you can truly say about an high tech alien civilization?

The three things that came out of this meeting were:

1. Their survival will be more important than our survival

If an alien civilization has to choose its survival over ours it will be us biting the bullet everytime. Species don't survive by being self sacrificing.

2.Wimps don't become top dogs
Lets be realistic, a race that is technologically inclined is going to have to be the master over its environment. The species that has the chutzpah to break out of its gravity well will be agressive, intelligent, ambitous and ruthless when necessary.

3.They will assume the first two about us and rightfully so

Combine this with the fact that the ships we know will work for interstellar travel are in and of themselves a terrible weapon. Just do a basic energy calculation of a fully loaded space shuttle traveling at 50% C using the old equation KE = 1/2*m*v^2. lets see here KE = 1/2*24,948 kg *(1.5*10^8 m/s)^2 = 2.807 * 10^20 Joules of energy. That is about 67,000 gigatons of energy stored on the ship which can then be directed at the planet.

It is impossible to tell if a ship visiting your system is friendly or on suicide run to take out your civilization. The other thing about relativistic weapons, you dont see them tilll they are almost there thanks to space time distortion.

It takes just a few logical steps to get the interstellar golden rule

"Do unto others as they would do unto you, and do it to them first."

Kind of reminds me of George Bush's war rhetoric .

[Licho]

Interesting paper:
http://www.ufoskeptic.org/JBIS.pdf

[MikeB]

edit

[tmazanec1]

Getting life is probably VERY rare. Think of how complex a bacterium is! Then it took a long time (a sizeable fraction of a star's lifespan) to evolve our civiziation from said bacteria. I think F sub L is the limit...we may be the only lifebaring planet in the Milky Way.

[archaen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f a race had mastered interstellar travel and went searching for resources, they probably would avoid the already "infested" planets. The galaxy would be like a big apple tree with some of the apples (planets) already rotten with indigenous species that have dug up and dispersed the minerals, sucked up and burned the hydrocarbons, fouled the air and water and converted the once vast forests into vast deserts.
The alien scientists would probably designate our planet as a wildlife refuge, and allow our civilization to march ahead to it's inevitable squalid ending.

[PhilBiker]

I share Professor Stephen Hawking's views on the subject.

[TrueKaiser]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('archaen', 'B')e careful what you wish for in the detection of intelligent life department. I read a book by Charles Pellegrino(A physicist from Brookhaven national Labratories) called the Killing Star. In the book he has an actual transcript of a discussion taken from the Valkyrie Brainstorming sessions(including Isaac Asimov, Richard Tuna and Jill Tarter) about Alien Civilizations and what we know about them and can expect from them.

We know with our current level of physics that is possible to have interstellar travel with antimatter drives which can propel objects up to a theoretical 92% the speed of light. The only down side is that we dont know if the matter density between the stars is too thick to safely travel at these speeds. It follows that if a technological race developed before us discovered thsi fact, then it would feel safe in communicating its presence; as it would be very hard for someone to destroy them. But our universe is totally silent, even out to safe distances of 100,000 light years or more. Remember, our universe is very old, and the chance that we are the first technological race to rise up is miniscule(this is taking the position that we are not the only technological race). If it was safe to transmit your location we would have most likely intercepted a signal from a race that developed thousand to millions of years before us. Now why would one be afraid to transmit your location in the universe?

When you put your thinking cap on what is it you can truly say about an high tech alien civilization?

The three things that came out of this meeting were:

1. Their survival will be more important than our survival

If an alien civilization has to choose its survival over ours it will be us biting the bullet everytime. Species don't survive by being self sacrificing.

2.Wimps don't become top dogs
Lets be realistic, a race that is technologically inclined is going to have to be the master over its environment. The species that has the chutzpah to break out of its gravity well will be agressive, intelligent, ambitous and ruthless when necessary.

3.They will assume the first two about us and rightfully so

Combine this with the fact that the ships we know will work for interstellar travel are in and of themselves a terrible weapon. Just do a basic energy calculation of a fully loaded space shuttle traveling at 50% C using the old equation KE = 1/2*m*v^2. lets see here KE = 1/2*24,948 kg *(1.5*10^8 m/s)^2 = 2.807 * 10^20 Joules of energy. That is about 67,000 gigatons of energy stored on the ship which can then be directed at the planet.

It is impossible to tell if a ship visiting your system is friendly or on suicide run to take out your civilization. The other thing about relativistic weapons, you dont see them tilll they are almost there thanks to space time distortion.

It takes just a few logical steps to get the interstellar golden rule

"Do unto others as they would do unto you, and do it to them first."

Kind of reminds me of George Bush's war rhetoric .

Wouldn't it be ironic if the human race finally pulled itself together and over came peak oil just to be relativistically buck shot out of existance?
Im not saying this scenario is true or even likely; but if you have a signal from an intelligent race in proximity, the discusion from above becomes applicable.