• Where be aliens?-Exurb1a
    20 replies, posted
[video]https://youtu.be/7cidUaUCb5M[/video]
I've always been in the school of thought that its just as likely that we could be the most advanced civilisation in our galaxy. So if there is any other life they have to play catch up.
[QUOTE=MadBomber;51397286]I've always been in the school of thought that its just as likely that we could be the most advanced civilisation in our galaxy. So if there is any other life they have to play catch up.[/QUOTE] Or there could be other civs similarly or more advanced but unable to communicate with us. Randomly sending waves into space isn't exactly an effective way to do it.
[QUOTE=rndgenerator;51397327]Or there could be other civs similarly or more advanced but unable to communicate with us. Randomly sending waves into space isn't exactly an effective way to do it.[/QUOTE] Or they're smart creatures who realize that broadcasting their existence and position to unknown and possibly hostile civilizations isn't the brightest thing to do.
[QUOTE=MadBomber;51397286]I've always been in the school of thought that its just as likely that we could be the most advanced civilisation in our galaxy. So if there is any other life they have to play catch up.[/QUOTE] Even if there were more advanced civilizations in other galaxies, we should be able to detect them. Past a certain age a civilization blanketing a galaxy with dyson swarms is pretty likely and it'd be pretty obvious even from here. So it is pretty odd we can't find anything.
[QUOTE=Mattk50;51397438]Even if there were more advanced civilizations in other galaxies, we should be able to detect them. Past a certain age a civilization blanketing a galaxy with dyson swarms is pretty likely and it'd be pretty obvious even from here. So it is pretty odd we can't find anything.[/QUOTE] Or maybe Dyson spheres are simply structurally impossible to make? Why do we assume this is possible when we haven't even reached that stage yet?
He summed up the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation"]Drake Equation[/URL] & [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox"]Fermi Paradox[/URL] pretty nicely.
[QUOTE=_Axel;51397445]Or maybe Dyson spheres are simply structurally impossible to make? Why do we assume this is possible when we haven't even reached that stage yet?[/QUOTE] he didn't say sphere he said swarm swarms are perfectly possible to make; its just a ton of satellites [editline]19th November 2016[/editline] also the reason why there may not be swarms everywhere is because there might be even better methods of energy. in theory building a dyson swarm gets you kugelblitz blackhole generators.
I'm basically in agreement with the point he makes around 1:40 (aliens may be aware of us, but not interested), tho not necessarily because those aliens would be superior to us. Every time our knowledge about the universe has expanded, we've found that Earth is pretty average. So if that trend continues, we'll also just be a boring, run-of-the-mill civilization to whoever has the technology to spot us. Oh look it's yet more bipedal carbon choking out their water planet, never seen THAT one before. Unless the budget only allowed for rubber masks, in SciFi the "galactic community" is often depicted as a convention of vastly different, completely unique species, but I think with a sufficiently large sample size, patterns would eventually start emerging as they usually do, and humanity would fit into one of them as a completely forgettable example.
[QUOTE=MadBomber;51397286]I've always been in the school of thought that its just as likely that we could be the most advanced civilisation in our galaxy. So if there is any other life they have to play catch up.[/QUOTE] I've never really understood why nobody considers this a possibility.
[QUOTE=Rossy167;51398243]I've never really understood why nobody considers this a possibility.[/QUOTE] Well, one is that would just make us feel alone in the galaxy, and the other is that with how fucking big this galaxy is, the probability that there's another planet with civilization has to have some level of possibility, even if it's just one other planet.
You also need to understand that this all can only happen if we're not the only planet with life in the first place. Let's talk about [b] THE UNIVERSE LOTTO[/b], or as I like to call it, "Holy fuck how are we even alive?" First for life to exist, you need everything to be made. We got that out of the way, cheers. Then you need to get out of the chaotic area that is where the big bang probably happened, which is probably full of all sorts of shit like black holes and shit flying everywhere at the speed of light, tearing apart everything. Not to mention dark matter which doesn't really agree with the laws of physics, seeing as it keeps speeding up even though it's going faster than the speed of light, and may or may not have just disappeared. Then you need to make a star, well we've got billions upon trillions of those, so not difficult eh? Keep in mind how much emptiness there is in space, so we just cut down chances of life by about 90% right there. Then we need a planet! Not any planet will do, we need one that is just at the right distance from any star, then you need to give it the right elements, because there isn't just a "Make your own habitable world kit" flying around. I mean think about all the planets that are just gas, or too small, or too big, or formed wrong. I mean our planet isn't even a circle, it's like a really weird oval. Oh and we can only have one star, any more and we'd probably die of heat stroke. Oh and no meteors can hit us, otherwise rest in pizza planet. Oh and maybe a meteor should hit us, we need a moon. Well we don't, but it's kinda necessary for sea shit and it helps with gravity a little. Not a lot, but a little, and every bit helps. Speaking of ocean shit, we need water. Like, a lot of it. And not any will do, if we have water but the planet is full of bullshit that we can't drink, well that's fine and fucking dandy, but nothing will ever survive. So let's say we have the creation of the universe, and got the random bingo to get a star, and hit the jackpot with even having a planet at all, and it just happened to be at the right distance from that star that it wouldn't burn up or be too cold to sustain life, and had water, and an atmosphere, oh my I forgot that. Yeah an atmosphere is important, without it meteors will just fucking kill everything. All the time. Won't stop them all, the dinosaurs would like to say hello, but look at the moon. That shit has craters all over. Oh and we need it to breathe oxygen, and to keep out solar radiation, a lot of shit basically. So say we get all that, now we get to go into the random chance life even starts. I mean do you know how difficult and random it is to even create a single cell organism? These things just popped outta nowhere, and billions of years later they grew legs and shit. So say evolution happens, and nothing goes wrong for a shit load of time, and we get different species, which mind you isn't easy. I mean think about how complex a flower is, with how it breeds and how it grows, then compare that to a cat. A cat's brain is difficult, and it has a blood system, and organs, and other organisms to eat for nourishment. It has reproduction stuff, it has cute fur and whiskers, it also mews and is generally fantastic. Yeah that's all random, although maybe not the cute part, we did a lot of selective breeding. Then compare that to a human, we don't even understand ourselves yet. We look at our brains and go "gee I wonder how that works", and how do you think that was created? Fucking weird ass evolutionary bullshit. This is a 1 in a 100,000,000,000x500000 chance of happening here. Oh and the only reason we have sentience is because we're bipedal, and then we grew bigger brains, and then we traveled out of Africa into Asia, and managed not to freeze to death. If Homo Ergaster survived instead, we'd probably be really stupid still. Oh and we were lucky not to have done this on a small island. That would have sucked. THEN WE GET TO GO INTO THE GREAT GATE OF WHETHER OR NOT WE'LL EVEN SURVIVE, PASS THE GREAT WALLS OF CRAP, NOT BUILT A DEATH AI HELLBENT ON KILLING, AND GET TO THE STARS. Oh and we're not nearly as new as people would like to think, the universe and the creation of Earth are pretty close together if you think about it. Sure there's a lotta time in there, but keep in mind, ground zero is probably total crap and uninhabitable right now. So yeah, chances are even if there's other life out there, it probably isn't as intelligent as us. We're all alone right now. Is there a God? Maybe, who knows. Maybe we were made, or maybe the Universe made us through random selection and we're reality's biggest jackpot.
minilandstan I firmly disagree with many of the conclusions you come to based on your observations. The relevance of our planet not perfectly spherical being one of the weirdest. Stop imitating the speech in the video too.
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;51398167]I'm basically in agreement with the point he makes around 1:40 (aliens may be aware of us, but not interested), tho not necessarily because those aliens would be superior to us. Every time our knowledge about the universe has expanded, we've found that Earth is pretty average. So if that trend continues, we'll also just be a boring, run-of-the-mill civilization to whoever has the technology to spot us. Oh look it's yet more bipedal carbon choking out their water planet, never seen THAT one before. Unless the budget only allowed for rubber masks, in SciFi the "galactic community" is often depicted as a convention of vastly different, completely unique species, but I think with a sufficiently large sample size, patterns would eventually start emerging as they usually do, and humanity would fit into one of them as a completely forgettable example.[/QUOTE] Earth is pretty average? Out of every planet we've had image of, and even the ones scientists can infer their features of, we're the only planet suitable for living, other planets are barren rocks or hellish extremes of heat/cold. Earth is probably the galactic equivalent of a small and beautiful tropical island full of primitive natives. We just need to hope the space colonialists don't show up to build seaside resorts on our planet.
[QUOTE=_Axel;51397445]Or maybe Dyson spheres are simply structurally impossible to make? Why do we assume this is possible when we haven't even reached that stage yet?[/QUOTE] Dyson spheres probably, which is why i said dyson swarm. Those are possible with our current level of technology (but not our level of resources). Maybe what thrawn said hits the mark and dyson swarms stop being the best energy source after the first you build. [video=youtube;94iDdHRa2X4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94iDdHRa2X4[/video] Its certainly an interesting problem.
[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;51400846]Earth is pretty average? Out of every planet we've had image of, and even the ones scientists can infer their features of, we're the only planet suitable for living, other planets are barren rocks or hellish extremes of heat/cold. Earth is probably the galactic equivalent of a small and beautiful tropical island full of primitive natives. We just need to hope the space colonialists don't show up to build seaside resorts on our planet.[/QUOTE] It's obviously (still) special in the sense that we know it's got life on it, but if you look at the bigger picture, Earth's special status has been considerably downgraded over centuries: We're not the center of the world, the sun literally doesn't revolve around us. We're just one planet in a solar system full of planets, we're neither the smallest nor the biggest. It's neither special for us to have a moon companion, nor is our environment (average sun, pretty common for planets to be placed inside a solar system, neither our milky way nor our place in it is particularly noteworthy). There's exoplanets with similar proportions out there, and we've detected water on other planets. Mars may have even been inhabitable at some point. Not even amino acids, some pretty advanced building blocks for life, are particular to us, we've found that stuff on comets of all things. We've gradually come to realize that less and less stuff about our planet is special. I don't expect life to be the last exception standing. We're already at the point where people think it's plausible to find (remnants of) microbiological life in Mars' river beds or Europa's oceans. I'd expect Earth's special status to be downgraded to "only place with SENTIENT life" in a couple generations or so.
[QUOTE=Rossy167;51398243]I've never really understood why nobody considers this a possibility.[/QUOTE] It's a possibility, but given the probability with the size of the universe, not a very likely one. It's naive to think we're the most important beings in the universe, which is one of the reasons why geocentrism took a while to be superceded.
Another thing to mention about the Great Filter is that we don't know if we've passed it already. If something tends to kill off most species before they reach the ability to spread across the galaxy, it could be that they all tend to invent something that kills them all off, and that we just haven't invented it yet and will probably eventually invent it and kill ourselves off. OR it could be that the event that kills off most species before reaching that point is actually much earlier. Maybe early life tends to leach up all the resources on a planet and leave it unable to sustain any life, for example, and we just got lucky. So if we've still got the Great Filter coming up, and we haven't passed it yet, then things look bleak. Why would we survive where most species die? Or, we've [I]already[/I] passed it, in which case the worst is already behind us, as far as survival chances go. Or the Great Filter as a concept is flawed in some way and that's not how things work at all, there's some other explanation for why we haven't found aliens.
10 bucks says our evolution has been monitored by countless intelligent species and we just don't have the technology to observe their methods yet It'd make sense, as a spacefaring and galaxy-conquering something-or-other, to keep tabs on all of the petri dishes of the universe that could potentially become self-aware to the point of being a threat to your own existence. Espionage among humans has won entire wars for tribes and nations throughout history, so why wouldn't aliens be subject to the same rule? I mean, it's mostly sci-fi rambling, but it's deeply interesting to think about regardless
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;51398167]Unless the budget only allowed for rubber masks, in SciFi the "galactic community" is often depicted as a convention of vastly different, completely unique species, but I think with a sufficiently large sample size, patterns would eventually start emerging as they usually do, and humanity would fit into one of them as a completely forgettable example.[/QUOTE] I think you're underestimating the variety of life here. Look at all the crazy shit we have on Earth, weird symbiotic relationships, incredibly diverse types of life (fungi, plants, animals), and consider how different the world became simply by a mass extinction event that removed the dinosaurs. Consider that plants only came up with flowers and fruits like a couple of geological periods ago, together with [I]mammals[/I] and [I]birds[/I] showing up. Imagine if we had another mass extinction event, or even if we just waited another hundred billion years? If we eradicated all but the simplest life, I highly doubt we'd get the same fungus, plant and animal life we know today. Octopi have pretty much decentralized brains; who's to say the first intelligence in such a situation won't be in the form of tree-like structures that think, communicate and move so slowly we'll mistake them for dead? Maybe instead we'd get something analogous to super powered ants, not individually intelligent but highly intelligent as a hive? Hell, even if you just imagine that high intelligence first arrives in the ocean, that's quite a huge difference already... I just think it's way too limited to think that two legs, thumbs, and a brain is even close to being the only way to intelligence.
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