Intelligent LIfe

[GaijinPunch]

I don't smoke grass anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm not for a little pondering. I watch plenty of documentaries... some of the science family. And this is just one of those things that keeps me up some times... how tiny the Earth is in comparison to the universe.

I like what Stephen Hawking stated recently in Into the Universe. That basically, there's no statistical reason why there would be no other intelligent life out there somewhere, but that we should probably avoid it.

What say you?
I guess I'm of the camp that they're out there, but haven't been here.

[CMoon]

I hate how the Discovery channel (which at least used to be more educational) has become the ghost and ufo channel. Why not rename it the Superstition channel?

(I also think choice 3 & 4 are basically the same thing for most people--4 is just the more cautious version.)

[MmSadda]

They're still here - have you ever looked at a cat's eyes? those are totally alien eyes. I'm just sayin.

[Acid King]

I'm with Hawking. With the size of the universe, there is a pretty good chance there is some intelligent life out there but I don't think they've been here and that's what matters. Unless we can contact them or they contact us, their existence is meaningless to our existence on earth.

[Dragoforce]

In before Drake equation. It's bullshit you know.

I voted number three, mostly because the universe is so big that assuming there is no life except on earth is extremly close-minded. That said, I hope we don't encounter any other civilizations. There have been very few, if any instances in our history where a technology wise advanced civilization met an inferior and the inferior advanced civlization survived.

[kernow]

I voted number three, mostly because the universe is so big that assuming there is no life except on earth is extremly close-minded.

yes

I love space, big aint it. awesome

how tiny the Earth is in comparison to the universe.

It might as well not exist. it is literally nothing in comparison.

[captpain]

In before Drake equation. It's bullshit you know.

That's "ARE ALIENS THERE = YES", right?

[Jon]

I hate how the Discovery channel (which at least used to be more educational) has become the ghost and ufo channel. Why not rename it the Superstition channel?

Don't forget gems like American Chopper and Deadliest Catch. Its not a whole hell of a lot better but I will watch the National Geographic channel any day of the week.

I voted #4 btw.

[Davey]

That said, I hope we don't encounter any other civilizations. There have been very few, if any instances in our history where a technology wise advanced civilization met an inferior and the inferior advanced civlization survived.

I'd be more worried about us destroying ourselves. People would freak the fuck out.

[Joe T.]

Oh you guys didn't know? Some fat aging nerd named Dan Burisch already talked to aliens, battled illuminati, and saved the world from certain cataclysm. He even has a website (clearly he was too busy saving our asses to put much time into design here) where you can buy DVDs which explain the whole deal.

[RGC]

.

[DEL]

Sure its gotta be out there. But Space and perhaps more importantly TIME are too big for us to coincide. I think Douglas Adams had it right when he wrote in The Hitchhikers Guide that a huge army of aliens heard about us, made the trip and when they arrived...were swallowed by a small dog.
No, its time really. That's the Killer from Manilla.
EDIT:- If you wanted to make the trip to a planet with intelligent life, you may as well have a direct link to that planet through a wormhole, otherwise forget about it. (The likelihood of that is pretty low isn't it).
Travelling at near the speed of light it will of course take years to reach the nearest planets and literally hundreds of years will have passed back here on earth by the time you arrive back. Which would have the question "What's the point?!" bouncing round the astronauts' heads , when everyone they ever knew is long since dead.

[TidusBlade]

In before Drake equation. It's bullshit you know.

That's "ARE ALIENS THERE = YES", right?

It's just, "ARE THERE INTELLIGENT ALIENS IN OUR GALAXY = PROBABLY MORE THAN ONE". It's just so inaccurate, pretty much all it's factors are still unknown, like "the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets", hell, we're still discovering new stuff like this in our own solar system, how can we come up with an average, even more so when our solar system seems to be quite an uncommon type. It also assumes that other intelligent civilization, if existing, would "develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space" which assumes we can detect their signals. Maybe they developed something differently, maybe they just don't care about sending signals. That and the last term, well really the whole thing except for the first two terms we have no idea about. Yes, we can make wild guesses but they're just guesses, the opinion used to be that Earth was the only planet in which life in any form was possible but now there's a possibility since Europe *might* have water under it's crust and the same goes for some other moon, I think it was Neptune's Triton but I could be wrong.

I voted for "Probably, but I need empirical evidence." As I said, there's a possibility that life exists or has existed or conditions for it's existence have been met in our own solar system, and if that's just our own, what about the other 100 billion stars in our own galaxy. Afaik most can't host life since most stars are brown dwarfs but still, there's a possibility that life in some form exists besides on Earth.

Maybe it'll follow another path unlike Earth, which went evolution and eventually reached us. (Please don't start a Creationism vs Evolution flame war <_<) I dunno much about early stages of life on Earth or anything related but I do know that it took billions of years and boatloads of luck. So when it comes to intelligent life, if we just take what we know, the possibility of *intelligent* life seems very very slim but it's not impossible, or else how would we be here.

In my opinion, there's probably quite a variety of life around the galaxy, obviously we haven't out there or anything, but this is just me personal opinion/prediction based on what I know. Most of it would probably be just like early life on Earth, nothing more than microscopic single celled things or multi celled ones, there's quite a variety of them so the fact that some can survive temperatures too hot or too cold for humans means that there's more possibility for life out there. That's just assuming that life actually started here on earth, afaik it hasn't been proven that life did originate from here and we don't know how life in any form can happen from just non living materials like rocks and sand sitting there doing nothing. Some people say aliens spread life or it came from somewhere else somehow, hell, maybe even god dropped those organisms here in the first place, I don't think it's been confirmed but yeah, I think it's safest to say that it started here. If god did it, who knows, maybe he just placed life here. Taking that into account and the really slim chances of intelligent life forming our way, I'd say intelligent life in our galaxy is unlikely, if I had to say yes or no I'd say it doesn't exist here, but chances of it existing in other galaxies is very likely. Even more likely would be that many planets are in the process, even though most won't make it. It took 5 billion years for us, and the universe has only been around for a little less than 14 billion years. Maybe we got there quickly even. Considering that life was impossible during the early periods of the universe, I'd say there hasn't been too great a chance for intelligent life like us to develop, so any out there would most likely be too far away and not yet at the stage where they could take control over solar systems and a galaxy. Maybe faster than light travel is absolutely impossible, and we'll never get to see or meet any other intelligent life even.

As for weather aliens have visited us, I doubt they'd be interested. For most of history, the earth was just filled with water I think, and maybe they just don't care, there's no way to figure out what they would want from here. For humans it's curiosity, maybe not for them? It's not impossible, just highly improbable, and if they did, maybe they just treated it like any other planet, either ignore it, or maybe they catalogued it or something.

tl;dr version: Nobody knows, and I think life is plentiful, but intelligent life very very rare.

[Mortificator]

The idea that (in a universe existing for 14 billion years and containing 9E21 stars) biological matter has only existed in one star system ever is much more difficult to defend than the idea that life can be found in places other than Earth.

Intelligent life is more subjective, and it's been argued that there's none here either. If the kind of thinking that humans have is useful for survival, though, there's no reason other lifeforms couldn't independently evolve it as well.

[CMoon]

You wanna meet aliens? Only costs $1000 to take this training course and then you too can go meet them!

http://www.cseti.org/programs/Trainings.htm

[Jockel]

I don't see a reason why there shouldn't be aliens.
Especially if the universe is endless, and most people agree on that.

[ROBOTRON]

Do being exist on other worlds? Most likely. I'd like to believe it. Have they been here fooling around with my wife? I dunno, I need proof.

[Jockel]

Look into her womb.

[ROBOTRON]

Look into her womb.

hmmm...i saw alien dna.

[gct]

Look into her womb.

hmmm...i saw alien dna.

You sure it wasn't robot DNA?

Even after Goldiloxing, there must be zillions of planets with conditions similar enough to have supported carbon-based life as we know it. Formation of biological precursor molecules as I understand is largely stochastic and given the age of the universe I would say it surely happened many times all over the place already. A different argument would be whether actual life forms more complicated than a simple protein can evolve by Darwinian processes, yet even molecules "competing" for a limited number of atoms in a primordial soup based on chemical affinities can be said to be Darwinian in a sense. Given enough time, this could surely lead to life and civilizations even.

That said, I don't think there are any civilizations with intergalactic technology near enough to us at this same moment to make any significant difference to the course of our own history. We'll either kill this planet and/or kill all of ourselves before we're spaceborne and off to kill the next inhabitable planet we find. And as someone mentioned before, we're screwed if we actually do meet any space aliens who are technologically advanced to reach us. Personally I think Pioneer or whatever it is a bad idea if there are space dudes out there... "Hey technologically superior aliens! Here we are, come and conquer us!"

[Mortificator]

That was actually the premise for Battlefield Earth (or, The Huge Book That Scientology Guy Wrote).

[Acid King]

"Hey technologically superior aliens! Here we are, come and conquer us!"

I'm curious where the presumption that the aliens will be hostile conquerors comes from. If they've mastered intergalactic space travel, their intelligence and society are literally light years beyond mankind. There's no reason to presume they would want to destroy us because they would have nothing to gain from it. Realistically, they wouldn't need hostile intentions to conquer us because if we were to come into contact with a technologically superior alien race, we would be busy bickering amongst ourselves about who can have access to their technology and how it could be used by humans to conquer other humans. That would just entangle them in our horrid geopolitical shitstorm and what would the point of that be?

[bcass]

I don't see a reason why there shouldn't be aliens.
Especially if the universe is endless, and most people agree on that.

The universe isn't endless. The most recent calculations estimate that there are approx. 500 billion galaxies contained within it, and that it's still expanding. With approx. 100 billion+ suns per galaxy, the statistical probability of life elsewhere is significant. The big question is will humanity be around long enough to ever encounter any?

[BryanM]

The coincidence of wants is a big problem. Being in the same place at the same time is rough - entire civilizations of space aliens have already come and gone during our time. Sending out an ass load of probes going near light speed, or being able to travel faster than light, really are necessary to find "intelligent" life out there. Since someone else would have accomplished these things already if possible, they're either impossible to do, they're hiding, or we're in a bad smelly neighborhood no one wants to visit.

In more practical matters, we have a planetoid right in the solar system that might have complex life: Europa. Europa should be a #1 priority. Drill baby drill.

Even if there is large life down there, it probably won't be any freakier than the stuff in our own abyss. Space whales are probably not possible there - getting oxygen or whatever from water is an inefficient process (unless... they're HYDROGEN POWERED whales? I should research this possibility), but if they did exist, they'd probably look a lot like our own whales. Natural selection* already is biased to the ideal form for a niche. If it'd be helpful to a fish to have extra eyes and tentacles, it would have them.

I find this idea extremely depressing - that aliens would be boring looking. The stupid insects would just be bigger or smaller depending on the fuel in the air. Wouldn't that be fucked up? Fly ten decades in an ice box, come to the New World, and then still have to put up with mosquitoes?

Creatures anything like us.... well, our bodies developed around the spear, and our bodies started from the lemur (descendant of our grandfather, Coward Fish... and his arch-nemesis, Carnivorous Coward Fish).... so we can assume that such a creature would have to have also grown around an external weapon.

Then when fat and happy, eventually evolved the capacity for more complex language. Communication is key to extremely good cooperation. Cooperation is key for overcoming predators, and to kill and eat the rival tribes of your species. And in the end, language is thought. If you can't say it, you can't think it.

So uh, crappy Star ____ style bumpy headed humans or giant space elephants? Man screw this. I'm going to go watch Alien and the magical alien monster that can metabolize air into flesh...

* And it truly is a miracle natural selection even works at all. In the miracle of a mutation raising breeding chances by x%, the odds of that mutation eventually becoming common place is about 2x%. Note that x is always less than 2.

That's "ARE ALIENS THERE = YES", right?

It's basically a listing of fractions you could in theory multiply together to estimate the number of verifiable worlds with life. Things you can only guess at (not really estimate) as we have a sample size of one.

So it's just "ARE ALIENS THERE = MAYBE". Very useful thought exercise, no?

[gct]

What isn't there to gain by harassing a weaker civilization? We haven't seen it happen on a planetary scale but it has happened all through human history and still goes on today.

Granted humans (at least the ones who hold political power) are warlike and it's not fair to say that represents the nature of all life in the universe... but I still doubt any advanced civilization became powerful and developed intergalactic space travel solely by being nice to its neighbours. Because if they were nice all through their history, they're bound to meet a neighbour who would beat them down. Game theory may apply here.

Anyway, I haven't really thought any of this through carefully... it is just banter for myself after all.

[BryanM]

What isn't there to gain by harassing a weaker civilization? We haven't seen it happen on a planetary scale but it has happened all through human history and still goes on today.

Anyone capable of faster then light travel probably can also rearrange those pesky atoms into whatever they need. And capable of building their own robot slaves. And robot women.

Without scarcity, there's really no impetus to fight besides to be a jerk. In a society focused on nothing but unbounded procreation, the only enemies they'd have would be other enormous blobs, during the heat death of the universe. Something like us would register a little lower to them than a bacteria does to us.

[Acid King]

What isn't there to gain by harassing a weaker civilization? We haven't seen it happen on a planetary scale but it has happened all through human history and still goes on today.

Granted humans (at least the ones who hold political power) are warlike and it's not fair to say that represents the nature of all life in the universe... but I still doubt any advanced civilization became powerful and developed intergalactic space travel solely by being nice to its neighbours. Because if they were nice all through their history, they're bound to meet a neighbour who would beat them down. Game theory may apply here.

Anyway, I haven't really thought any of this through carefully... it is just banter for myself after all.

I'd wager that most of the wars fought on earth have predominantly been over control of territory and resources. If a civilization can get around the engineering problems involved with building a craft that can travel at or beyond light speed, as well as the ability to sustain life for extended periods of time and at those speeds, what resource could we have that they could want? We would be like insects to them and even humans leave insects alone when they aren't a threat.

I guess there are other reasons they could be hostile. Maybe they want to eat people or the earth is in a location of strategic importance. Really, the most important thing is the one that is impossible to know and that is why they are exploring at all.

[CMoon]

My problem with 'aliens here on earth' and all those UFO sightings is the difficulty of traveling between the stars. To our knowledge, faster-than-light travel is impossible. If there are intelligences out there that possess this sort of technology, I can't see how we would be of any interest to them.

[TLB]

Threads like this are awesome when you've had a few beers. I can only imagine how much fun it must have been for GP when he was a stoner.

I don't have much of an opinion. I'm not educated enough on enough things to make a guess, but just by having a rough idea of the size and scope of the universe, I'd probably call heads.

[GaijinPunch]

First of all, I had a long as post that my browser ate. Shit.

Some nice posts, many to which I have no good retort. TidusBlade definitely wins the best first post ever. I also like the whole "maybe we're the first" aspect, but of course, no way to really know. I guess to me that's the whole frustrating part. We've known about galaxies in general for less than 100 years... and exo-planets for what -- 15? I think we're ages away from even half-light speed travel even though there are some good candidates.

I'm curious where the presumption that the aliens will be hostile conquerors comes from.

White people slaughtering the Indians
Japanese raping the rest of Asia
Nazi German
Etc. etc.

Drake Equation

On History Channel's "The Universe" (which isn't bad but it's hit & miss per episode) one astrophysicist put it well, "it's a good idea... however it was based around many things we simply did not know". The prime example would be not only the local goldilocks zone, but a galactic one as well (which would count out a whole shit load of stars in most galaxies). However, with 200 billion in ours, knocking out even half leaves you with a lot.

There was a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy on some site. One of the comments I thought was cool: "We could be looking at thousands of civilizations right now... none of which is aware of another."

Faster than light speed travel

Indeed, linear travel across space-time as proven by Einstein, is not possible. However, there are a few accepted theories... some with observational evidence: matter bends space time (gravity), worm holes are at least mathematically proven, and there was at least one case when space-time itself traveled faster than the speed of light (the first .0000000000000001 or so second after the Big Bang). Now, whether any of that can be manipulated again... not for a while, if ever.

Why we've seen no visitors

This is similar to Stephen Hawking said he has proof that time travel is impossible: We've never seen visitors from the future. He actually recanted this, btw. But, even if some sickly advanced civilization exists and could get here, I'd assume there would be hardships in actually finding us. If the Sun was a head of a pin. The Milky Way alone is the size of the continental US. There's a lot of shit in the middle. Then you have all that time dilation to worry about when getting here.