[QUOTE=Helix Snake;48773399]
I hate to correct someone when I'm not 100% sure but reading the report, it doesn't look like they actually have "pictures of water", the spectral analysis is of the deposits at the bottoms of the RSL that water is thought to have formed. They still don't have pictures of the water actually forming the RSL.
Here's the part where they say "We don't know how the water is getting there" by the way (part 3. Discussion)
EDIT: I replaced instances of "Canals" with RSL, because they aren't actually canals. Canals are a different feature on the Mars surface (thought to be caused by water from a much more distant time in Mars's past)[/QUOTE]
I mean images of RSL like these, and that they now are confirmed to be caused by water.
[t]http://static.uahirise.org/images/2013/details/cut/ESP_031102_1380.jpg[/t]
[IMG]http://image.slidesharecdn.com/activemarspp-150302071152-conversion-gate02/95/active-geology-on-mars-11-638.jpg?cb=1425302000[/IMG]
[QUOTE](which we already knew were evidence of flowing water on Mars because of how they reform, we just weren't sure how it was possible).[/QUOTE]
No we've never had any evidence that it actually was water. There have been many hypotheses, among them one that suggests that it's extremely salty water, which is what the report is saying they have evidence of now.
I've always imagined the coolest species alive would be some kind of naturally space faring civilization, beings that somehow got out of orbit (or evolved in space) that moved around with some sort of giant solar fins, they feed upon the radiation from the sun for energy, kind of like a 'super plant' and small space debris in some sort of organic gas cloud.
I wonder how feasible that would be...
The Fermi Paradox rests on many assumptions. Also, based on the Fermi paradox, any other intelligent life would conclude our non-existence, considering we cannot even send people to Mars, and many people are saying manned spaceflight is dangerous and stupid, yet we think that because aliens are not building giant sci-fi galactic empires, they must not exist.
Here are just some assumptions:
1. Dyson spheres are "mathematically the most efficient mean of harvesting energy". Actually, the power generation rate of the Sun's core per cubic centimeter is closer to reptilian metabolism than to nuclear bombs. If you don't believe me, look up Sun's core on Wikipedia and the linked papers. The only reason why Sun radiates so much heat is because it is so large. This is why it is so hard to make a working fusion reactor - to achieve a fusion rate sufficient for a good energy density, you need densities and temperatures far greater than that of the solar core. So us fantasising about "harnessing the power of the stars" is like Homo erectus imagining that in the future he can control the lightning and make giant wildfires with them to cook lots of megafauna while we just use a match.
2. Dyson spheres are a creation of the thought of 1950s, which was about "bigger is better" and "future will be more centralized". The same paradigm that predicted Dyson spheres also thought the future of information science would be one big huge vacuum tube computer (Multivac, Univac etc.) that would handle all the needs, while the reality is that of small, power efficient computers everywhere in a decentralized network. [B]Why[/B] would an "advanced civilization" need to harness so much power by so unefficient means? A small, high temperature fusion/exotic matter reactor could probably produce energy far more efficiently and unlike solar power, you can divide it any way you want. Rather than megastructures, I think [B]microstructures[/B] are closer to the future. Theoretically, you can contain a sentient intelligence in a volume lesser than a grain of sand, so why not just do that? The trend has been to miniaturize and to make things small, more power efficient. Building a Dyson sphere would be an exact opposite of that if even possible.
3. [B]Why?[/B] Why would an intelligent race "colonize the whole galaxy"? The only reason why people reproduced like crazy in the past was child mortality. There has been a long trend towards less reproduction. Sure, our population is growing, but the big picture - birth rates are falling. Even in poor countries. In India the birth rate fell from 6 children per woman to just 2 in 50 years. The paradox assumes aliens would behave like a cancer and just "colonize" everything in their path. The trend in our society has been that with development, people are studying/having fun/careers etc. more and having few children. So apparently, Fermi's aliens have birthrates of 1950s India, technology out of 1950s science fiction, and an ability to last billions of years. You can as well make another "paradox" which disproves the existence of any life in the universe - If there is life in the universe (including Earth), WHERE IT IS? Why hasn't it converted every dead rock to copies of itself?
4. All these things assume that aliens are either exactly like humans, or logical nonsentient Borg-like machines. They also assume that "colonizing the galaxy" is [B]actually[/B] possible. They also seem to assume leaving the planet is easy. It is hard enough to do on Earth, on a Super-Earth type planet, the escape velocity could be too high for chemical rockets to even enter orbit, and most alternative propulsion systems have a far too low thrust level to put anything into orbit. Furthermore, the particular conditions of the planet will influence the thinking and "culture", if you can call it that, of the inhabitants. Most stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs, and their habitable planets are probably tide locked, with eternal day on one side and night on the other. If we lived on a red dwarf planet, we would not even know stars existed until the 19th century when the first explorers dare the trek the night side, because the only thing we see would be the local huge sun hanging eternally above us, occasionaly punishing us with flares (young red dwarfs tend to have short, but very intense flares). There are probably far more ice moons in the universe and they tend to be even stabler than terrestrial planets, so despite difficulties, intelligent life would arise on at least some of them. What would their cosmology be like? Their universe would have an icy roof and a hot center. They might never get the idea that they are living on a body in space. On worlds with thinner ice, maybe. What about worlds like Callisto, with a cold ocean below 200 km of 4 billion year ice? Life can begin there, when the moon was still warm and covered by liquid water and blanketed by a thick atmosphere, then eternally trapped under 200 km thick ice. Maybe it would remain unicellular, but slime molds are unicellular yet they can group and solve problems, like mazes. What if these microbes eventually form an intelligent global network? Such beings could be billions of years old, and despite being carbon-water based, absolutely nothing like humanity. We often presume the perception of time is the same for every organism, but really, it is dictated by our metabolic rate. These creatures, living on a thin trickle of radioactive heat, might take a hundred years to form a single thought. For every star, there might be as much as 100 000 rogue planets not orbiting any. Those planets might be heated by their radioactivity enough for an underground ocean. Life there would have a deficit of energy, but more time than us, not being subject to such trivialities as sun's heat increasing by 30 percent and boiling all our oceans. How would be communicate with them? Sure, intelligent life on such worlds may seem unlikely, but these worlds probably vastly outnumber our own. If such beings existed under the 200 km ice of Callisto, their only hope of space travel would be to get flung out of the solar system when the Sun becomes a red giant. This is an extreme, but there are many reasons why the intelligent's species enviroment would prevent it from ever leaving the planet. Hell, our Earth is very close to that.
Different enviroment also means different perception. What we consider the "real world" is only what our eyes and our instruments see. What if we were able to percieve the Universe down to Planck lenght? What if we saw all 11 dimensions including those curles up to incredibly small sizes? What if our home planet was surrounded in haze like Titan and we saw in infrared? If we ever become an "advanced civilization", we would probably modify our senses. Why expand outwards if there are interesting realms elsewhere?
5. It is a not just human, but Western assumption to presume time means linear progress from caveman to Star Trek. We spent a lot more time banging one rock against each other than inventing smartphones. Our present epoch is very much an anomaly. Hell, one can say we actually went backwards since the 1960s manned space exploration wise, as we were flying to the Moon and suddenly even LEO is becoming "too dangerous and expensive". Sure, but you might say, it takes just one 1950s sci-fi technology using, fast breeding alien empire to control the galaxy. But what are the actual odds? According to quantum mechanics it is theoretically possible to walk through a wall unharmed yet it probably never occured in the history of the known universe. It would take a fantastically unlikely set of conditions to enable this sort of empire. But most importantly, what would be the POINT? Sure, stars die, but if heat death is true, they will eventually die everywhere, so miniaturizing and lowering your energy requirements is the way, not to waste energy radiating heat away with swarms of metal junk.
6. What is "intelligence"? What is "civilization"? It seems to pretty much mean "whatever thing we awesome humans do because we are so awesome". Apes, dolphins, parrots, even corvids, have been proven to be fully self aware beings, with corvids even recently being discovered to comprehend death [url]http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/murder-crows-learns-death[/url] . Are they not intelligent because they do not build complex things like we do? Ah, but we didn't do either until about 60 000 years ago, with behavioral modernity [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity[/url] , yet we were already physically fully Homo sapiens sapiens at that time. There might be other boundaries, like the Singularity, that we cannot even imagine to comprehend just like our ancestors before behavioral modernity could never quite comprehend the way a car or a spaceship works, despite being self-aware, curious, emotional creatures. Basically, when progress occurs, it occurs in bursts. Also, it generally happens for a reason. We would probably not have orbital rockets without WW2. Most stars in the galaxy are stable, long lived red dwarfs. Intelligent beings there probably would have no [B]need[/B] to develop. Why, on a totally stable planet? Climate change was what got us from the trees to savannas where our brains really started developing, remember. A "perfect" planet is not necessarily the best for intelligent life. Earth is barely big enough for plate tectonics according to one theory and we are definitely closer to the inner edge of the habitable zone now (we would be closer to the middle 4 billion years ago when our sun was just 70 percent as bright as today). We are definitely not on some anomaly, fine tuned planet. It seems perfect at first glance, because it is ours. Furthermore, there are mostly solitary creatures that are quite intelligent, like squid, yet asocial, why not a solitary intelligent species? There is no reason why beings should build cities or cinemas or rockets just because they clearly recognise their name and reflection in the mirror. Intelligence and sapience are not a yes/no distinction - mammals like cats and dogs clearly display emotion and feeling despite not recognising themselves in the mirror. Orangutans are less intelligent than chimpanzees but more sentient than them, because chimpanzees only recognise their reflection half the time while orangutans always recognise it. There can easily be alien species that are less intelligent, but more sentient than humans, or the opposite. Watts's Scramblers are just one side of the coin - there might be aliens that rely far more on their "gut feeling" than logic.
7. Searching for radio signals and saying their absence means absence of aliens is incredibly silly. To hear our signals at Proxima you would probably need a radio dish larger than the Solar system. Besides, even if we accept radio as the ultimate form of communication (it is absolutely not, laser trumps it, and do not forget radio is the least energetic EM band so for best efficiency aliens would send messages as gamma ray lasers) omnidirectional transmission is incredibly wasteful and insecure. Hell, we barely use broadcast anymore except for FM radio that fades away after 100 km and cell tower that have a range of - even modern humanity generally uses tight focused beams of radio waves that are transmitted from satellite to the satellite dish and nowhere else. Here is an article that writes about this [url]http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jan/27/aliens-cant-hear-us-astronomer[/url] . So aliens would have to use not just technology from 1950s scifi, have 1950s third world birth rates, but use 1950s media as well to be detectable! That is, if all our signals did not fade to noise after Saturn [url]http://www.damninteresting.com/space-radio-more-static-less-talk/[/url] . Ok, technically you could detect the signals at Alpha Centauri, if you used a satellite dish 30 000 km wide. So no, if the universe is full of aliens, it does not mean it will be "full of semi-comprehensible radio messages". Enrico Fermi was a good physicist, but he should have stayed clear of making comments on astronomical matters. [B]Space is big. Remember that.[/B]
In conclusion, what really Fermi paradox says is that there are no other humans in the universe. It speaks a lot more about our human nature and our presumptions, assumptions, antropomorphic bias and complete lack of comprehension when it comes to the sheer vastness of the universe than it speaks about intelligent aliens.
Got excited again for a second. Thought "ANOTHER ONE?!"
[QUOTE=proboardslol;48987760]Got excited again for a second. Thought "ANOTHER ONE?!"[/QUOTE]
What :D?
[QUOTE=Swebonny;48772773]It is flowing water.
[url]http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2015/EPSC2015-838-1.pdf[/url]
They now got evidence that those previous pictures of what looked like water is actually water, although very salty of course.[/QUOTE]
But how can they be sure it's not urine?
I still believe in my own idea of some drunk FUI alien landing on mars to take a leak.
He's dead, Jim.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48987733]fermi paradox is silly[/QUOTE]
that's a p good first post
while you're here, do you know if anyone is working on ways to encode or read information in a gamma ray burst? I thought that they happened during the collapse of a star, so how would they hypothetically be created to send a message?
[QUOTE=Lick;48988178]that's a p good first post
while you're here, do you know if anyone is working on ways to encode or read information in a gamma ray burst? I thought that they happened during the collapse of a star, so how would they hypothetically be created to send a message?[/QUOTE]
You don't need a gamma ray burst to create gamma rays. Gamma rays are basically just higher energy X-rays. In fact it is quite debatable where X-rays end and Gamma rays begin. Some would consider Gamma rays originating from a non-radioactive decay source to be just high energy X-rays. So you basically just need an X-ray tube [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_tube[/url] or a radioactive isotope. 19th century technology. You can say we already began the trend to move to shorter wavelenghts - noticed how Wi-fi and satellites use Ghz frequencies instead of Mhz of FM radio and Khz of AM radio? The reason is bandwidth - submarines for example communicate with radio waves of just a few Hz, so their communication is very slow. If you managed to modulate gamma rays, you would get the ultimate bandwidth, in the exahertz range. The reason why we are not doing this is because radio waves are safe and still sufficient for our needs. Gamma ray communication would not be a good idea for communication between places on a single planet, as you would be basically encoding information into cancer causing beams - that is, if our atmosphere did not block it after a few meters.
Note that these would not necessarily much stronger than a radio transmission, so I am not suggesting GRBs are alien transmissions. The thing is, most modern technology is aimed at communication only with the target and nobody else. You do not want others to eavesdrop your calls. So it is not at all surprising we don't see alien radio noise, considering we are emitting less and less every years despite our information network exponentionaly expanding.
[QUOTE=catbarf;48761939]Life began on Earth [B]4.6[/B] [I]billion[/I] years ago. We have undergone repeated, random extinction events over the course of the history of life. If that long chain of evolution were a hundredth of a percent slower, we would currently be in the Middle Paleolithic 380,000 years ago, not even cavemen.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=ghghop;48988453][/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=ghghop;48988453][/QUOTE]
Indeed. Here is the history of the Earth, converted to 24 hours [url]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/4f/eb/cb/4febcbe760a42351447746b3edf36a65.jpg[/url] .
Modern humans appeared in the last 4 seconds. And we would never leave the Paleolithic without behavioral modernity. Consider the Neanderthals - smart, had signs of culture, respected and buried their dead. Yet they died out, without ever achieving behavioral modernity.
Consider the time of existence of Earth. The Hadean, Proterozoic and Archean together are 4 billion years. That is 10x than the lenght of Phanerozoic, or the era since the appearance of first major animal and plant life. Even the biggest skeptics in regards to extraterrestrial life generally agree that worlds with Archean-type, primitive unicellular life can be fairly common. So if an aliens came to our Solar system, the likelihood that they came right now is almost zero. It is far more likely that if aliens even saw Earth, it was through a Voyager style (well, a bit better but you get the idea) probe (there might be 1000 probes like that in our Solar system right now and we would not know anything, as probes generally don't use their main engines after gaining the initial velocity and any maneuvering thrusters would be far too faint to see) making a flyby sometime in the Proterozoic and seeing Earth as just another random planet with an near anoxic atmosphere and a lot of pond scum, with the highest life form being microbial mats. So I would say it would be more surprising if they came here now.
It should be said that even Mr. Fermi himself probably didn't take this "paradox" that seriously. It was basically a passing thought he spoke to his friends at a conference as a reaction to the Roswell/UFO craze. He mused about it in one paper that was mainly about cosmic radiation: "On the Origin of Cosmic Radiation", but it really got turned into some kind of "statement on the nature of the universe" by Herbert York:
[QUOTE]In 1950, while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fermi had a casual conversation while walking to lunch with colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York.[21] The men discussed a recent spate of UFO reports and an Alan Dunn cartoon[22] facetiously blaming the disappearance of municipal trashcans on marauding aliens. The conversation shifted to other subjects, until during lunch Fermi suddenly exclaimed, "Where are they?" (alternatively, "Where is everybody?"). Teller remembers, "The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi's question coming from the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life."[23] Herbert York recalls that Fermi followed up on his comment with a series of calculations on the probability of Earth-like planets, the probability of life, the likely rise and duration of high technology, etc., and concluded that we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over.[/QUOTE]
From Wikipedia.
By the way guys, how can I star a post?
[QUOTE=catbarf;48758878]It can use all the energy from the star, but thanks to thermodynamics its total heat output has to be the same or greater, so it should be just as visible as a regular star in the IR spectrum. An object that emits no visible light but glows like a star in the IR is generally considered to be signs of a Dyson sphere.[/QUOTE]
That's ridiculous. Nothing states that the heat can't be used too.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48988661]"...flyby sometime in the Proterozoic and seeing Earth as just another random planet with an near anoxic atmosphere and a lot of pond scum"[/QUOTE]
Our flyby of mars is occurring as of now. To our knowledge, with similar qualities as your aliens had thought of us, quoted above.
So as of our current flybys, that puts mars around 3.5-11 hours old on our 24 hour/4.45 billion year clock you provided. That makes me believe mars is sprouting its life as of now, so 10 hours/2 billion-ish years later, my kids, 20 million generations down, might get a chance to play with the fishes on mars.
Exciting.
I love these kinds of articles and the people who post in them, they're very thought provoking.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48988661]By the way guys, how can I star a post?[/QUOTE]
New users need 30 posts I think it was before they're able to rate posts.
[QUOTE=find me;48989183]Our flyby of mars is occurring as of now. To our knowledge, with similar qualities as your aliens had thought of us, quoted above.
So as of our current flybys, that puts mars around 3.5-11 hours old on our 24 hour/4.45 billion year clock you provided. That makes me believe mars is sprouting its life as of now, so 10 hours/2 billion-ish years later, my kids, 20 million generations down, might get a chance to play with the fishes on mars.
Exciting.
I love these kinds of articles and the people who post in them, they're very thought provoking.[/QUOTE]
I believe the general consensus on Mars is that if it was life supporting then it was likely far in the past and if there's any life left on it then it's most likely simple life at best.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48988661]By the way guys, how can I star a post?[/QUOTE]
You need like 30 to 40 posts before you can star/rate a post.
But, anyways, I don't suppose you're a scientist? This thread has been crazy scientific.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48987733]-logic-[/QUOTE]
That was a very good and thought out post. I'm going to save it and maybe even translate for some of my non-english speaking friends. I agree that we anthropomorphise extraterrestrial life a lot, and that they need not match our expectations of society and sentience. I never thought about Dyson Spheres not being very practical, but I guess that's true.
I'm not sure about the idea of aliens that don't expand though - most life on Earth will reproduce for as long as it is able, and consume resources with no regard for sustainability (there are exceptions, but this is the general trend). It's really weird how ecosystems containing multiple species seem stable (given how "destructive" this instinctive behavior is), but the moment you introduce a specie from a different ecosystem, one that isn't native, the ecosystem falls apart and the "balance" just disappears.
"Eat, reproduce, repeat" is an instinct that makes a lot of sense in a world where everything is either trying to eat you, or out-eat you. If we assume that at least some aliens have formed through natural selection, then barring some technological miracle, they will be subject to the same laws of evolution as we were, meaning they will most likely have the same instinct.
I see four possible outcomes:
1) The aliens become the apex predator of their world. The clear advantage over all other forms of life means the "reproduce forever" instinct is no longer a good idea, but they will still possess it. Their world overflows with alien babies to the point where economy is struggling to sustain it. This makes other planets attractive for their resources and land. So kinda like us.
2) Same as (1), but through combination of science, global coordination (government?), and conscious choice not to reproduce, the alien population remains at a level that their planet can support without major strain. This doesn't mean that they live in some kind of utopia; For same reasons as (1), they might still colonize other planets, but the alien population would disperse, rather than expand, meaning there could be as little as one alien per planet. They could frollic in the fields, hunting local wildlife and having not a care in the world, or they could be controlling an army of drones and shaping landscape because they feel like it.
3)The aliens become an apex predator, and fill the planet, but are simply unable to live their planet. They go extinct for various reasons, but life on their planet goes on. While other sentient life forms evolve on the planet, none of them leave it, and they all go extinct for pretty much the same reasons. If we were to pick a random point in time and look at the planet, fauna-wise it would be like Earth before humans. There would be very advanced animals. Maybe they would be so far evolved that compared to our animals, they would seem biologically immortal and immune to most forms of harm. But 99% of the time there would be no "human-like" intelligence.
4) Either an "apex animal" is not an evolutionary necessity, or their world found some effective survival strategy that does not involve reproducing indefinitely. Then no species would reach a point of unsustainability, and there would be no pressure to develop intelligence. Neither sentient nor non-sentient life would have any reason to leave the planet.
Even without human-like intelligence, it seems that the need to expand just follows from how evolution works. I'd say space is secretly filled with alien life that could range in complexity from bacteria to humans and range in form from carbon-based organic life to robots made of crystal to formless self-replicating chemical reactions. The thing is, they are there and either communicating through means we cannot detect, or they do not communicate at all. If space is NOT filled with alien life, then we have a very misguided ideas about evolution and stochastic processes, and our planet is unique in some very strange ways.
Nikita, this only really applies to the thin veener of life on the [B]surface[/B] of the Earth. 99 percent of Earth's biomass are microbes in the deep crust that cannot really do "competition" - they reproduce once in a thousand years and they evolve for longevity, not fast reproduction. Dawkins "selfish gene" idea has saturated the popular consciousness for such a long time that people forgot about the cooperative aspects of evolution. Take for example your mitochondria - they used to be free living microbes, billions of years ago. Or slime molds and how these single celled creatures can group together in times of need and display some intelligence without needing a nervous system. Your understanding of how life works on Earth is too simplified, and applies only to those organisms that have the luxury of an enviroment with abundant food and sunlight to compete for - you don't see much predation in extremophiles. Your assumption that only an "apex predator" can become intelligent is faulty - humans were scavengers and prey for millions of years, as Australopithecus and Homo habilis. Our hunter past is relatively recent - in fact our physical vulnerability and "non-apex predatorness" was what made our intelligence evolve and outsmart the big cats and other animals that were having us for dinner - sure, meat helped our big brains, but we were already eating it as scavengers. Homo habilis was the smartest animal at that time, yet he was far from an apex predator.
Your second assumption is that a species continues their "evolutionary habits/destiny" when they become sapient, while all trends suggest this is not the case. Modern humans are far more compassionate and sensitive than our brutish ancestors, despite events such as WW2 (which was basically a reaction [B]against[/B] this trend). Stone age humans only included their tribe in their "empathy group", medieval humans included their brothers in faith and people of the same nationality/race, modern humans are slowly going for a more inclusive, global society. There are deviations from this trend, like the Khmer Rogue, but overall, I would say, yes, we are becoming more humane. And what does that mean? It means we are actively punishing and excising our "animal nature". Based on your logic, we should be exterminating all life right now, and trying to extract as many resorces from the Earth as we can. Cynics would say, but we are already doing that, but I am more optimistic - most people today are generally for protecting the nature, at least some standard of humane treatment of animals, etc. Basically, the Fermi paradox would only apply if billion year old godlike species still behave like instinct bound animals. But we are not bound by instinct, that is why we call ourselves "inteligent life". Consider that in the 1700s, just 300 years ago, public's idea of "good fun" in France included throwing cats into fires in public [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat-burning[/url] and public executions. Even a totally amoral species would recognise that filling the galaxy like a cancer will only hasten the heat death of the universe and they will ultimately gain nothing from it.
The reason why insects breed like insects is that they don't know of any smart way to live. Noticed how the more complex animal is, the less it breeds. Extrapolating trends is also dangerous - theoretically, bacteria should have filled the observable universe by now, but there are limits to growth. Linear extrapolation predicts that in the year 2600, there will be enough humans on Earth to make it glow red hot from all our body heat, but clearly, this is impossible. Life might be competetive, but it is not some apocalyptic Von Neumann swarm.
Consider this. I'll allow myself a bit of anthropomorphism, to demonstrate a trend. Many people think we are already taxing the Earth enough. Many people are even expressing the sentiment that mankind should die out and that they are a scourge on this planet. Even if aliens were humans, can you [B]really[/B] imagine humanity disassembling a whole solar system? Wouldn't that be unethical? Would most people be OK with disassembling Venus, Mars, or the Moon and destroying billions of years of priceless natural history? Considering our history was one of increasing sensitivity and I personally consider destroying whole planetary systems to create metal junk unethical [B]right now[/B], could a billion years old alien species really consider such an action? Spacefaring aliens probably would not share our moral code, but they would have [B]some[/B] moral code. Could aliens that operate on a "slash and burn and shit everywhere" survive even until the industrial revolution let alone galactic colonization?
Invasive species do mess up ecosystems, but upon doing that, they generally end up starving to death or dying in other self-inflicted ways. Ecosystems can work with even the most vicious animals, because behaving like the Hitler of the animal kingdom does not get you a game victory screen, but your own extinction. So nature already has a filter for the "bad boys".
Space is [B]BIG[/B]. There is enough room for everybody. Most people don't realize this. Our solar system alone, if we include the Oort cloud would probably be able to sustain trillions of trillions of sapient beings. It might be there are no "galactic civilizations" because the universe is not yet old enough for that. Besides, for an advanced species, why would they colonize the Earth? A 4 billion years old species would be as more advanced to us as we are to bacteria if it develops at all, do you think they would still live on planets? Why not just use spacetime engineering and create an entire universe in a wormhole to fulfill all your whims? Even if your desire is endless reproduction, you can just reduce your energy requirements and explore the microscopic realms.
Besides, how would you know, if they have colonized Earth that they did it? Consider this - our present structures are far less durable than ancient stone temples. It would only take a few thousand years for all buildings to be flattened [url]http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html[/url] . Besides, why would aliens colonize the Proterozoic or Archean Earth? It wouldn't really be suitable for surface habitation. If, for some weird reason, they preferred "natural" energy resources, the most efficient way of colonizing would be to burrow down in the outer core and bask in the pure radioactive heat of our planet. Are we really thinking that a "galactic civilization" would build buildings of stone and mortar and leave waste condoms or something? I always found this "red giant Earth" picture funny [url]https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Sun_Red_Giant.jpg[/url] . Most of our artificial structures will not survive a few centuries let alone the death of the Sun.
There is also no reason to presume an alien intelligent species can even last a billion years, we have existed as a technological civilization for 300 years and we already almost destroyed ourselves two times. Could it be that the dream of billion years old aliens/mankind is just as silly as the dream of the immortal Roman Empire? We naturally avoid thinking of death. I have read serious papers on how humanity could survive the heat death of the universe, but is that [B]actually[/B] possible? We hate each other's nations because they stay in our way or don't meet our moral ideas, we almost started a global nuclear war and we had 2 world wars in a single century yet we are worried about the heat death?
To extend on your argument, I now propose the Michal's paradox. Where is all the life? You don't even need sapience for complex structures as evidenced by the complex structures that social insects build, why haven't they evolved to construct spaceships and overrun everything in the universe, converting everything into a piece of itself? The truth is, Fermi paradox works better with nonsapient rather than sapient life, as nonsapient life generally breeds fast and acts by instinct (but this is not black and white again - in this regard gorillas or dogs are closer to humans than to bacteria or insects, as I said, sentience is not a no/yes thing).
In the end however, it should be kept in mind that the Fermi paradox is [B]not a scientific theory or principle or a law of nature[/B]. It doesn't really make predictions that can be checked, as the evidence it wants for intelligent life is very vague and dependent on the worldview and bias of the observer. It is like Zeno's paradoxes - seemingly clever and "deep" yet ultimately meaninigless and ultimately not relevant to the real world. Fermi's paradox is not about science, it is pure philosophy, and one derived from a remark someone made to his friend. I think people find comfort in stuff like this as it is a nice excuse to declare there is nothing interesting in all the 40 billion light years of our observable universe without going further than the Moon. Many "predictions" and hypotheses that made perfect sense on paper turned out to be totally wrong - before the Voyager flyby, some scientists actually didn't want to put a camera on it, because "taking photos is not serious science" and scientific papers were predicting smooth cue ball white ice surfaces for the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It turned out they were totally wrong, Io is a volcanic maelstorm, Europa and Ganymede a potentional abode for life and even poor inactive Callisto has interesting impact formations and a possible ocean.
Most recently, Pluto was expected to be a dead ice ball, and the scientific justification for New Horizons was to find "pristine" surfaces, "unchanged from the early solar system". Instead, we found one of the most interesting worlds in our solar system, with a surface about as young as that of Earth and one that is most likely still geologically active. Just because we know the basic laws of physics doesn't mean we can figure everything out by "clever" philosophical paradoxes, simplified models and elaborate descriptions that only exist in the head of the author.
What we really need to understand the universe is [B]observation[/B]. The best theory can turn out wrong if it does not actually describe reality. In 1950 when Mr. Fermi stated his paradox, there were no exoplanets discovered and many people thought our Solar system might be the only one. We only discovered the first exoplanet in 1991, after many, many false positives. So, in his age, he might as well have said "If there are other planetary systems, where are they?". So his paradox proves nothing other than the infant state of our knowledge.
[editline]27th October 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;48989506]But, anyways, I don't suppose you're a scientist? This thread has been crazy scientific.[/QUOTE]
I might pursue a science career/education in the future, but as of present time, no. Just someone who has been wondering about the universe since I was a child.
[QUOTE=Killuah;48988761]That's ridiculous. Nothing states that the heat can't be used too.[/QUOTE]
Are you familiar with the second law of thermodynamics? Using heat produces more heat, you can't convert heat to useful energy in a closed system as that would be reducing entropy. It is possible to produce useful energy from a heat gradient, as in a thermocouple, but that process produces even more heat.
Whether we're talking about a Dyson Sphere or the ISS, the heat has to go somewhere. You can't just 'use' heat and make it disappear.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48987733]In conclusion, what really Fermi paradox says is that there are no other humans in the universe. It speaks a lot more about our human nature and our presumptions, assumptions, antropomorphic bias and complete lack of comprehension when it comes to the sheer vastness of the universe than it speaks about intelligent aliens.[/QUOTE]
What everyone who comes up with these long-winded solutions to the Fermi Paradox seems to miss is that we're talking about the scale of the observable galaxy. We are not making assumptions about what a [I]single[/I] individual alien race will look like. We are asking why, with all the myriad possibilities of the universe, there's nothing that meets the (not even terribly restrictive) criteria that would make it observable.
So it's possible, or even likely that an alien race would have declining birth rates, would prosper in mental exercises rather than procreation, and would stay home rather than expand? What about the ones that don't?
It's possible that a Dyson sphere (or [I]literally anything else[/I] at an observable scale, the sphere is just one of many possibilities) isn't maximally efficient, and an alien race could try a different method? What about the ones that do anyways?
Leaving your own planet is extremely difficult? Even if a hundred alien races don't leave their planet, what about the one that does?
Advanced species tend to self-destruct or otherwise fail before achieving that level of technology? Where's the one-in-a-thousand that doesn't?
The assumption being made here is that [B]nothing[/B] out there in the galaxy fits these criteria. Nothing evolved to ever be able to colonize other planets. Nothing built megastructures visible from a distance. Nothing visited our solar system and left any trace of its existence. And all it would take is [B]one[/B] species like Niven's Moties or Watts's Scramblers or Heinlein's Bugs and we'd have a galaxy overrun with life. Either intelligent life is extremely rare to begin with (as the Paradox postulates), or you are assuming that [B]every[/B] species will behave in specific ways that leave no trace of their existence.
If you propose that intelligent life is common but we can't detect it, you are claiming that intelligent life exists but all species follow a whole slew of arbitrary rules that [I]just so happen[/I] to align in such a way that we see no evidence of these other civilizations. That would be one hell of a lottery-winning coincidence, and an answer that relies on an extremely improbable assertion as a premise isn't a good answer to the Paradox. It works fine as an explanation if you start with the premise that intelligent life is extremely rare, because then probability isn't working against you, and it's plausible for a handful of species to evolve along the trends you suggest. The more common you suggest life is, however, the less likely it is that it conforms to these hypothetical trends that prevent detection.
It's a technical possibility, but 'intelligent life is actually common but for billions of years and across 100,000 light years has always behaved in ways that leave no evidence' is on the same level as 'fairies are everywhere but always hide before you can look at them' as far as plausible explanations for our observations go.
What you don't realize, is that Watts's Scramblers or Heinlein's Bugs are a [B]fictional species[/B]. Besides, what makes you presume we would be able to observe them when we were not even able to observe geological features on Pluto until this summer? The whole point of Watts Scramblers was that they are non-sentient, therefore them contacting anyone or making themselves visible would be pointless for them - their only goal is survival.
I already debunked this argument in my previous posts - "but it only takes one swarm species to overrun the whole galaxy?". The thing is, we [B]don't observe any such species in real life[/B]. Insects, contrary to popular portrayal, do not overrun everything. There is no species on Earth whose mode of operation would be "eat everything". Even locusts have limits. You are basically envisaging an idealized "selfish gene" species that simply [B]doesn't exist[/B].
You are making an analogy of the concept of alien life to fairies, except we obviously know there is life on Earth, which is in space, and abides by the same physical laws. So the concept of intelligent alien life is something a lot more plausible than gods or teapots orbiting the Sun or fairies. To believe otherwise is to believe different laws apply on Earth than in the rest of the universe.
Why is there no insect species on Earth that evolved to make spaceships by instinct and overrun the universe?
Even if I accept your premise, you assume that we would be able to see that evidence. What you don't get is that until your instruments get precise enough, there can be evidence everywhere you look and you won't see it. Until 1991 we saw no extrasolar planets anywhere. If you lived back then, you could say extrasolar planets are fairies. Why, if they exists, isn't there at least ONE planet massive enough to show up with 1960s technology? Based on this "logic", you would be able to say extrasolar planets don't exist, because if they existed they would be everywhere. Oh, but technology marched on, and since 1991 we indeed began to see them everywhere.
Fermi's paradox is basically a deaf man saying sounds don't exist.
There is also the question of - if your Scramber type aliens disassembled everything they came to, we wouldn't be here. So, they might exist, but not in our galaxy. Due to universal expansion, there are places you will [B]never be able to go, no matter how fast you go[/B]. So this might be a case of "if Scrambers existed near enough to reach us, we would never evolve".
Also, I mentioned these aliens would have to behave as if out of 1950s sci-fi. Super advanced, eat-everything aliens would not use Dyson spheres or radio signals. If they are automatons that only do what is efficient, they would use the energy sources and communication methods I mentioned. Due to their nature, they would not be ones for friendly conversation either. We wouldn't see them until they arrived and ate our planet.
The thing is, you can use the logic of Fermi's to lead to things like solipsism or Boltzmann brains or other absurdities. Technically speaking, I have no proof that anyone else in this universe is a sentient being. The fact that someone behaves like one is not a proof he actually has any subjective experience. Based on some absurd interpretations of probability, it is far more probable for me to be a floating brain in a vacuum after heat death who [B]thinks[/B] he is a human being on Earth rather than to be an actual human being! Fermi paradox reminds of the "Doomsday Argument", which says, given that stars are predicted to last until 100 trillion years in the future, and we are living just 14 billion years after the Big Bang, it means the universe must end much sooner because "it is very unlikely for us to exist so close to the beginning of the universe". It pretty much discounts any other simple explanation (like the fact most of the star bearing era will be dominated by red dwarfs and not produce a humanlike species) to declare "we are doomed, because probability".
My simplest explanation is - we simply don't have enough data, and when possible evidence comes, like the recent weird stars that has something blocking quarter of its light, we always go for any other explanation, no matter how implausible, as not as it is not aliens. I am not saying we should not be skeptical, but Fermi paradox pretty much requires the evidence be handed to us on a silver platter. It seems to me that nothing short of little green man landing on the White house lawn would satisfy hardcore Fermi believers.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999622]Besides, what makes you presume we would be able to observe them when we were not even able to observe geological features on Pluto until this summer? The whole point of Watts Scramblers was that they are non-sentient, therefore them contacting anyone or making themselves visible would be pointless for them - their only goal is survival.[/QUOTE]
I remind you that the original statement of the Fermi Paradox was essentially 'why aren't they here already?'. In Blindsight the Scramblers are exploring the solar system and just happen to arrive in our technological future. If they'd shown up just a million years prior then there would be no human race. We're talking about 'observation' as in seeing direct evidence, the most obvious of which would be their presence in our solar system. Other possibilities would include artificial structures on a stellar scale or the manipulation of energies at that scale, both of which should be observable to modern telescopes. We can accept that our technology isn't good enough to peer at individual planets yet.
And we haven't even touched von Neumann probes or any other myriad ways an alien race could manifest in our solar system without actually having to come here.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999622]I already debunked this argument in my previous posts - "but it only takes one swarm species to overrun the whole galaxy?". The thing is, we [B]don't observe any such species in real life[/B]. Insects, contrary to popular portrayal, do not overrun everything. There is no species on Earth whose mode of operation would be "eat everything". Even locusts have limits. You are basically envisaging an idealized "selfish gene" species that simply [B]doesn't exist[/B].[/QUOTE]
You're now saying all extraterrestrial life must be analogous to Earth life- what was that about making assumptions about how extraterrestrial species must act?
We're not even necessarily supposing a 'swarm species'. A species with an annual population growth of just 1% and the capability to travel between stars slower-than-light would be filling the galaxy elbow-to-elbow in just a few million years, a blink of an eye in the age of the universe. For your answer to satisfy the Paradox, [B]every[/B] species must stall its population growth and [B]every[/B] species must stay in its home system and [B]none[/B] of them can build something on the scale of a Dyson sphere.
This is an awful lot of extremely specific assumptions about what all life in the galaxy looks like. All it takes is one exception to throw everything off. To even begin to entertain the idea of a galaxy teeming with life, you need to give some airtight explanation for why [B]every[/B] species [I]must[/I] follow these rules and patterns you're setting out. Not why some particular species might stay home instead of expanding and exploring the universe, why [B]all of them[/B] would do so. A hundred thousand species could be staying comfortably at home- and one imperialistic or unthinkingly self-replicating one would ruin everything. You've yet to give me a coherent reason for why that species [I]can't[/I] exist, you've given me reasons why it might [I]probably not[/I] exist, but at this scale that's not good enough. With enough species and enough time, if it's a possibility then eventually one will get it.
To use a historical analogy, the Celts in the British Isles did a fine job maintaining their own population within their own geographically insular area. They weren't exploring and conquering. But the Romans were. Don't tell me how the Celts got along fine, tell me why the Romans can't exist.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999622]So this might be a case of "if Scrambers existed near enough to reach us, we would never evolve".[/QUOTE]
Which would suggest that we're in an area of the universe largely empty of other intelligent life. Which is one answer that satisfies the Fermi Paradox. What does not satisfy the Fermi Paradox is 'maybe aliens are all over the place but they're just really really good at hiding all trace of their existence for extremely specific, convenient, largely arbitrary reasons'. Occam's Razor retorts with 'maybe they're just not there'. I'd sooner buy the Berserker Hypothesis because at least it can account for the lack of evidence.
What you are not realizing that a desire to act a certain way does not necessarily mean it is actually possible. Just to get a species like us you need an easy energy resource like fossil fuels, easily accessible ores, if we ever fall back to the stone age we are [B]never going back again[/B]. The universe never gives second chances on this scale. From where your swarm species will get energy? Also, the Fermi paradox assumes that light speed is the limit, the truth is we never managed to get faster than 16 km/s. [B]Practical[/B] limits might be much lower than the theoretical ones - even the best theoretical antimatter drives are only predicted to reach about 0.3 c.
Did you ever read my earlier post? You are talking about a species that is even less probably than our own. Your super efficient, magical species might exist, but the probability might be so low universe is too young to contain any. You presume "everything that might happen has happened". What if your hypothetical species is just science fiction bullshit that has no real probability to exist in the real universe.
As a side note, I find the thought of there being no aliens in this particular area of the Galaxy to be very plausible. What I find silly is to think that "because we don't see constructions from imaginations of 1950s scifi writers, the whole observable universe is empty of sapient life". You don't seem to realize how unlikely it might be for a species to get spacefaring. Earth without fossil fuels? We never get the industrial revolution. Earth without easily minable surface ores? We never move beyond the stone age. There are so many things that might have fucked up in our development that it is almost a miracle we even got as far as we got, yet you entrain universe-controlling drones as a reasonable possibility.
What I am suggesting is that the vast majority of intelligent life may be way more like crows or orangutans than us. Most life will be relatively primitive life, most non-primitive life will not be sapient, most sapient life will never achieve technology, because it requires a fantastical set of circumstances to get technological life. To get spacefaring life, it might be even harder - we might be the first one to get to orbit, or perhaps, the most advanced species yet have only got to our point before dying out. So basically I believe in a variation of "rare Earth", except I don't believe Earth is necessarily the ideal planet for life, [B]but[/B] the necessary conditions for complex technology are probably very rare and conditions for space colonizing might be almost impossible. Try think of how your swarm would evolve and how many odds would it have to beat to actually colonize the galaxy. We are unlikely enough, let alone Scramblers. That however, doesn't mean the universe hasn't borne other minds worth listening to.
You probably only read my second post, which was admittedly a bit weaker than the first one as I considered the possibility what if they are like us. I am not proposing any "Zoo hypothesis". If you have read my first post, you'll see I mentioned many reasons why galactic empires might be a figment of our imagination, from natural conditions, to development of intelligence. I didn't say "aliens don't come here because they don't want to colonize", I said that later as another possibility. I think people underestimate the improbability of technology and space travel. I also mentioned your argument, as even walking through wall is "theoretically possible" yet it doesn't mean it actually occured in the lifetime of our universe.
As for Dyson spheres, I mentioned how they are far from being the most efficient way of manifacturing energy. I am not saying there cannot be civilizations capable of building one, I am doubting the sanity of the concept itself. An "efficiency maximizing swarm" would definitely not build them because they are a stupid fucking idea.
To boil it down there are 2 possibilities:
1. Fermi is right and we are the only, God chosen intelligent species in the universe.
2. Our ideas about "future civilization", aliens and development are just as stupid as medieval writers fantasising about going to the Moon with flasks full of water that evaporate in the sunlight as propulsion and we have no actual idea of how aliens would behave or do.
I feel option 2. is the most likely one. We are apes that believed in crystal sphere cosmology just 2000 years ago yet we act smart and think we can imagine what a 5 billion year old species would do. We haven't even known what is on Pluto 5 months ago, what is on Mars 50 years ago and we think we have information to say "We are alone in the universe, because of a thing a smart guy said in the 50s".
Sorry to get sarcastic and unpleasant but I am becoming a bit frustrated with trying to say just how little we know.
If we manage to travel our local group of galaxies, last 5 billion years, and explore the universe down to Planck level and find absolutely nothing, then I would say we would be right to say: Where is everybody? Right now we just seem stupid.
Yes, we can see galaxies 14 billion light years from us. We cannot however see any detail, even on bodies that are 1000x closer to us than any star, without sending a probe. We do not even know what we are even looking for anyways.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999907]What you are not realizing that a desire to act a certain way does not necessarily mean it is actually possible. [/QUOTE]
I didn't say it necessarily means it is. I said there are many, many possibilities, and you seem to think that coming up with a viable explanation for why one species would behave a certain way necessarily means all of them would behave that way. That's not good enough.
And I'm not sure why you keep doing this 'science fiction bullshit' line. I'm not proposing fanfiction-level Mary Sue super-aliens. I'm proposing aliens that a. have a rate of population growth above zero, and b. have the desire or instinct to go beyond their home system. If we're talking about hundreds or thousands of intelligent species like some propose, the idea of just one meeting those criteria doesn't seem unreasonable.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999907]Just to get a species like us you need an easy energy resource like fossil fuels, easily accessible ores, if we ever fall back to the stone age we are [B]never going back again[/B]. The universe never gives second chances on this scale. From where your swarm species will get energy? [/QUOTE]
Well, I can't say I've ever heard fossil fuels used as an argument against the development of spacefaring civilizations, so points for originality. But it's not a deal-breaker. There are plenty of viable energy sources that may not apply to Earth- in Jupiter's magnetic torus electrical power is plentiful, on Mercury or Venus the solar flux is intense. A Hot Jupiter, as have been observed around several stars, would have both. There's no reason to assume the rest of the universe has the same energy source limitations as Earth, or that fossil fuels form a necessary part of the energy development chain of complex life.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999907]Also, the Fermi paradox assumes that light speed is the limit, the truth is we never managed to get faster than 16 km/s. [B]Practical[/B] limits might be much lower than the theoretical ones - even the best theoretical antimatter drives are only predicted to reach about 0.3 c.[/QUOTE]
Where'd you read anything about light speed? I remember a number of articles from back when the Paradox was big news in the late 80s, discussing the timeframe of galactic colonization with sub-0.01C drive technology. The bottom line was that whether colonization takes a million years or a hundred million, it's still very little compared to the age of the universe, and rate of population growth is more important from a colonization standpoint (as opposed to a von Neumann probe exploration scenario).
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999907]As a side note, I find the thought of there being no aliens in this particular area of the Galaxy to be very plausible. What I find silly is to think that "because we don't see constructions from imaginations of 1950s scifi writers, the whole observable universe is empty of sapient life". You don't seem to realize how unlikely it might be for a species to get spacefaring. Earth without fossil fuels? We never get the industrial revolution. Earth without easily minable surface ores? We never move beyond the stone age. There are so many things that might have fucked up in our development that it is almost a miracle we even got as far as we got, yet you entrain universe-controlling drones as a reasonable possibility.[/QUOTE]
All this about Earth after you made such a big deal of not anthropomorphizing aliens. I'm entertaining von Neumann probes and expansionist aliens as a reasonable possibility because we're talking about the possibility of widespread intelligent life across an enormous expanse of time. We're discussing the premise of intelligent life being common, taking a few liberties with technological level (while remaining firmly within our understanding of physics) isn't much of a stretch.
If we start with the premise that intelligent life is extremely rare in the universe and arises extremely rarely, then we're not having the same discussion anymore. That's the 'Great Filter is behind us' solution to the Fermi Paradox. Before you were arguing that the Fermi Paradox is invalid, which would mean intelligent life could be everywhere and we wouldn't know it. If you're really just arguing that intelligent life could exist out there, then you're not disagreeing with the Paradox. It's a thought experiment, not a rule- if you're thinking of reasons why aliens might exist [I]despite[/I] the lack of evidence, then you've already acknowledged and grasped Fermi's point.
[QUOTE=MichaelPoole;48999907]What I am suggesting is that the vast majority of intelligent life may be way more like crows or orangutans than us. Most life will be relatively primitive life, most non-primitive life will not be sapient, most sapient life will never achieve technology, because it requires a fantastical set of circumstances to get technological life. To get spacefaring life, it might be even harder - we might be the first one to get to orbit, or perhaps, the most advanced species yet have only got to our point before dying out. So basically I believe in a variation of "rare Earth", except I don't believe Earth is necessarily the ideal planet for life, [B]but[/B] the necessary conditions for complex technology are probably very rare and conditions for space colonizing might be almost impossible. Try think of how your swarm would evolve and how many odds would it have to beat to actually colonize the galaxy. We are unlikely enough, let alone Scramblers. That however, doesn't mean the universe hasn't borne other minds worth listening to.[/QUOTE]
At this point I think we're talking past each other a bit.
You're essentially repeating one of the proposed solutions to the Paradox (life is rare, most life is non-intelligent), which I think is a pretty huge departure from your statement before that the Paradox is invalid because we wouldn't recognize intelligent life right under our nose. I overwhelmingly agree that life is probably out there, and it's probably extremely simple, and if complex life exists it's probably extremely rare.
That's not a contradiction to the Paradox, it's an acknowledgment of the Paradox's central point, which is that our direct observations suggest that, for whatever reason, intelligent life is not extremely common and just out there waiting for us. The idea that intelligent alien life is extraordinarily rare, allowing us to plausibly say that whatever life evolved followed the patterns you suggested that would prevent them from overrunning the galaxy, is really pretty reasonable.
I only disagree with the idea that the Paradox is invalid because it anthropomorphizes aliens, or makes assumptions about their nature- it really doesn't. Much ink has been spilled on the subject, and while there's no magic bullet refutation to the Paradox, there are still plenty of viable solutions that satisfy our observations without just throwing up our hands and saying 'I guess aliens aren't real'. The Paradox does [I]not[/I] imply that alien life is impossible, it just implies that alien life has to have a pretty good reason for why it's not here already, and rules out some Hollywood scenarios. It just means that we're more likely to run across long-dead ruins or alien primordial soup than we are to run across intelligent aliens at a comparable level of technology just so conveniently in our neighborhood.
[QUOTE=catbarf;49000142]You're essentially repeating one of the proposed solutions to the Paradox (life is rare, most life is non-intelligent), which I think is a pretty huge departure from your statement before that the Paradox is invalid because we wouldn't recognize intelligent life right under our nose. I overwhelmingly agree that life is probably out there, and it's probably extremely simple, and if complex life exists it's probably extremely rare.
[/QUOTE]
I actually stated both. We wouldn't necessarily recognise it because intelligent life is not necessarily a space empire. We wouldn't recognise human level civilization if it was just 10 light years from us, and we wouldn't be able to recognise a non-technological intelligent species anywhere unless we actually visited the planet. Complex life does not have to be rare for that. I am criticizing our assumption that intelligent life = tool using interstellar empire builders. I used example of an intelligent lifeform locked in the ocean of an ice moon or on a Super-Earth as an example of a species that might never be capable of leaving the planet. I am proposing that vast majority of intelligent life in our universe might be that type, and since we haven't even gotten a man to another planet yet, we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we are destined to become an interstellar empire that lasts trillions of years or believe such things are even possible.
As for hot Jupiters, you are missing my point. A stone age level species needs an [B]easy and accesible material and energy source to advance[/B]. Pure metals that can be easily mined with primitive tools or easily processable ores. A rich deposit of iron will not be any good for a stone age level species if it lies 5 km below the surface. What I am saying is that the hardest step might be to get off your planet.
And for the opposite extreme, extremely advanced aliens might be far beyond us to even recognise. Do bacteria recognise humans?
My point is, we [B]don't know shit.[/B] Singularity might be coming in just 30 years and by definition we couldn't really know what would come after it.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
