https://www.space.com/searth-extraterrestrial-life-major-funding-boost-seti
Would Earthlings be ready for this? I am tired of the wondering. If life is out there, I want to know NOW!!
Then again, it could be the end of us as a species. Humans can’t even deal with the differences between ourselves. To introduce another into this toxic mix could just tip us over the edge.
If there is intelligent, advanced, technology-utilizing life aside from us somewhere in the universe - and I am not convinced that there is - I for one hope that we never find it and it never finds us.
That some people think that such an encounter would be to our benefit is baffling to me.
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It's inconceivable to me that somewhere out there intelligent life doesn't exist; however, I do agree with you that if they found us it probably wouldn't be beneficial to us.
At night I like to gaze out into the sky and think someone is gazing back at me.
I've heard it said that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand in every beach on the planet. The odds that we are in any sense essentially unique is close enough to zero to call it zero.
Agree with you both about the hazards associated w/ arriving colonizers, because colonizers is what they would be. What would be left of our entire planetary biome would be in a small well contained preserve/zoo, maintained probably off-planet.
Our initial reaction wouldn't much matter.
I see no reason to assume it would hostile. It might be like our anthropological studies of isolated tribes in the Amazon forest. Is exploitation of resources and colonization even possible given the distance between stars?
shareThe assumption behind that is that space travel is easy, cheap, that habitable planets are plentiful, close enough at hand to reach. Those are large assumptions. Mine are that it will always be difficult, risky & expensive, and consequently those traveling here will not arrive with motives far removed from the basics of survival, propagation. Yes, they will certainly be curious & fascinated, but that won't be their main raison d'etre ici.
sharethe way I see it we will never meet due to the distance , only by radio possibly.
But if some alien society cracks crossing these distances faster than light , then all the billions of planets suddenly got a lot closer , and they would have a huge choice , so they wouldnt need to plunder out planet like a shipwrecked crew on a desert island
My assumption is that whoever gets here, if ever, gets here by sub-LS travel, which means slow, expensive, risky. Meaning there is intelligence within, say, 20-40 LY, wherein habitable planets are fairly rare by a reasonable reckoning.
Yours is that only by some fairly magical innovation FTLS travel for water bags down to germ cells, perhaps, becomes possible. Which, in present terms, is a fantasy. We are matter, the universe places fundamental limits, to the best of our no-longer-unsophisticated understanding, upon its structure, transformations, translations.
In the event that such innovations were possible, we would likely have long since been visited in the last, at least, 1/2 billion years or so, Our tree of life is singly & natively rooted, dating back ~3.8B or so years ago, leaving no reason to expect anyone has, to date, been poking around at us.
Where we agree is that an alien visitation is very unlikely.
I'm totally with you on the "FTL is a fantasy "
I didnt mean to sound like one of these "anything is possible if we put money in and wait for scientists to invent it" people , as an engineer they really get my goat :)
I just thought if Aliens ever do show up , they will have found some really bizzare method - like wormhole or something , but my money is still on "no civilization , even one 100x more advanced than us has ever done ftl"
I dont think they'll ever come sub light - thers probably more interesting places to go that they will have already mapped out . and are nearer to them .
I hear you. The problem even with the exotic concepts like wormholes is the unlikely prospect of getting anything through them un-atomized. I'm no cosmologist, but space is rough, we are dainty.
I do expect that the Earth would be fairly jaw dropping to any alien intelligence, just on general principles - all such planets as ours are likely diamonds, in the grand scheme of things.
For any intelligence to be able to find, especially experience, a non-native biome would be beyond exciting. Take the probability of incidence of intelligence, then add a bunch of zeros to the right of the decimal point.
My assumption here is that what is truly rare is animal life, microbial life far more common - which in our case required ~4B years of stability prior, that intelligence might be almost inevitable given enough time on a rocky planet in a habitable zone w/ oceans, plate-tectonics, a magnetosphere, etc., etc.
Good discussion !
yes indeed good chat
I've seen a few clips of Brian Cox and some others recently discussing Fermi equation , and how rare advanced biological life might actually be , although the numbers were mind boggling it was all stuff like there a 3x10 to the 50 stars in this galaxy alone , but when you rule out {x,y,&z} it reduces to 3x10 to the 15 so suddenly alien life seems less likely
I thought to myself thats still a mahoosive number!
I think it was all on a bbc podcast called "Infinite monkey cage" , a great show.
As you say Microbial life probly not uncommon, I wouldnt be surprised if they discovered it used to exist on mars
If they prefer Friends to Seinfeld, then absolutely YES they will divide us.
shareCoincidentally I just started rewatching the X files and I'm in the mood... Of course it will divide us in to those who don't wand to have anything to do with the aliens and those who want to have sex with them
shareI’ve never seen the X Files, but if it’s like The Shape of Water then I’m good.
shareIt depends how the media spins it...
share[deleted]
It depends.
If they're hostile against ALL humans, then we would unite to defend ourselves.
But, they can use a Divide & Conquer strategy which humans often use. For instance, they can ally with China which would further divide us and likely start WW3.
BTW, I believe they're already here because of the 3 military videos, repeated public government comments and launch of new UFO investigation agencies. Somethings up with all the military sightings and their switching off our nuke equipment.
3 military videos? Those were debunked by thunderf00t years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs
I'd be more worried about contamination from an Alien from another planet more than dividing us.. I see shades of scenes in PROMETHEUS for some reason, minus the dumbass fucking around with the baby snake..LOL
share