If Intelligent Life Exsists In Our Galaxy Then........

a reply to: alldaylong
Well thought out except you are assuming all life will die out in a certain timeframe.

Like you said 2.5 million years is the blink of eye comparatively evennjust to our earth. Yet in thay timeframe we are exploring space in our own solar system. Even within a hundred years we could be exploring other solar systems if current propulsion experiments pan out. If we colonize another planet, even just nearby, chances of oue own survival increase exponentially.

Now our only known example of life has plans to colonize mars in basically a blink of an eye. Making our survival more likely.

Imaging a civilization that survived 2 blinks of an eye at only 5 milion years old. Technology would be so advanced as to be far beyond our capability to understand. Travel to other stars might become a simple thing.

With only one known example to go by anf the success of that example why assume allvothers will just die off.

a reply to: Blue Shift


Your argument is extremely flawed, you basically seem to be saying because they are not obvious they don't exist. Yet how could any intelligent species become obvious at our current level of technology.

There is absolutely NO reason to assume any other itelligent life would have to be obvious to us, or that there even could be a chance that it would be obvious.

We have only just barely started a search for planets like ours. As another poster put it we are gradually moving beyond what we know of as detectable technology in basically an infinitesimally short timeframe in comparison just to our earth let alone the universe. We haven't left our solar system and are just now coming up with ways to detect many non solar planets and possibly meaaure their atmosphere in the near future.

Exactly what about our current level of technology would make detection of intelligent life obvious?

This is also taking into account what is very likely a limited view of habitable planets. A limited view of what we consider detectable or proof. We may have observed such prroof already but not known what we were observing. We HAVE detected unknown radio signals as well that could be such proof.

There is in no way to say if life existed we would have obvious proof now. That ccompletely goes against any kind of logical or scientific thinking. If we had such a limited view of only accepting the obvious long ago we never would have crossed oceans, it was obvious it went nowhere by sight. We never would have learned of cells, DNA, viruses because it was not obvious they existed. We never would have learned we rorate around the sun because by observation the opposite was obvious.

That is not a valid argument by any stretch of the imagination.

originally posted by: NoRulesAllowed

I give you a box with hundreds, no, thousands of tiny balls.

You grab into the box, pick one ball.

You put it in your mouth and find it's sweet, it's candy.

Common sense/reason would say you did NOT pick the ONLY candy ball from a box of thousands of balls made of something else, say rock. (Although a priest might tell you so : )
Common sense should tell you chances are high there are more in there, when you grab into the box next time it's *reasonable* to assume you'll get another candy. A valid THEORY (although of course not proven) would also be that possibly ALL balls in the box are made from candy.

The most far-off theory would be that there was only one ball made from candy, the one you picked. Funny thing, if we take this analogy, some people seriously believe that.

But what if we taste the 8 other balls right next to that ball and they aren't so sweet? And what if every sample we can get turns up empty? That is more analogous to the situation. We happened to pick the ball made out of candy and so we are able to entertain the idea that there may be more candy balls. If you picked the poisonous ball, then you wouldn't be here to make the point.

if you want to continue the discussion, can we switch to playing cards?

originally posted by: ZetaRediculian

originally posted by: NoRulesAllowed

I give you a box with hundreds, no, thousands of tiny balls.

You grab into the box, pick one ball.

You put it in your mouth and find it's sweet, it's candy.

Common sense/reason would say you did NOT pick the ONLY candy ball from a box of thousands of balls made of something else, say rock. (Although a priest might tell you so : )
Common sense should tell you chances are high there are more in there, when you grab into the box next time it's *reasonable* to assume you'll get another candy. A valid THEORY (although of course not proven) would also be that possibly ALL balls in the box are made from candy.

The most far-off theory would be that there was only one ball made from candy, the one you picked. Funny thing, if we take this analogy, some people seriously believe that.

But what if we taste the 8 other balls right next to that ball and they aren't so sweet? And what if every sample we can get turns up empty? That is more analogous to the situation. We happened to pick the ball made out of candy and so we are able to entertain the idea that there may be more candy balls. If you picked the poisonous ball, then you wouldn't be here to make the point.

if you want to continue the discussion, can we switch to playing cards?

Wouldn't Alec Baldwin's Schwetty Balls be more seasonal and festive?

nebular hypothesis?

earth in fluff cloud presently

i can't help but expect intelligent life forms to be abundant wherever there is a fluffy nebula, or star nursery...

originally posted by: Eunuchorn

originally posted by: Totemic

Extremely intriguing ideas.

I'm almost convinced this has been going on for a long time already & we are just an unlucky propagation of the Human Virus sent out amongst the stars.
Or maybe humans are used as dumb slave animals throughout the multiverse & they use earth like worlds in the armpits of galaxies to grow us into large communities of manual labor monkeys.

I don't care where the spaceship takes me so long as it's away from here.

Thank you.

Yeah, I often wonder myself if, as you say, we aren't just one of the offshoots that has lost touch with our origins.

Your idea about manual laborers is a little frightening. A civilization who's ethics regard beings of our sort in much the way we view wild animals or even domesticated stock. Let us tame the wilds and build infrastructure able to support billions, then replace us with their own more advanced progeny.

I don't see that as likely at all, but it's intriguing as speculative science fiction and does make some sort of sense.

As far as your last comment, me too. I'm ready to go as well. Too much strife over extremely petty things. Earth maybe a sort of proving grounds where the soul either takes steps towards goodness or steps towards evil and where are religions often aren't a great prescription for the positive outcome.

I know I still have a lot of spiritual evolution ahead of me, but I feel like it past time to move on from the quagmire that is Earth.

As long as I'm treated "humanly", I'll go anywhere and won't mind if I'm treated like a fifth class galactic citizen.

I wonder if humanity was offered a voluntary mass exodus to pleasant, well managed "preserves", where we would be allowed to acclimate to other species and advanced technology as non-voting probationary members of galactic society, how many would go? What if safety and a pleasant life were assured, but there was no money, no way of gaining power over others. Nothing to exploit or steal. Just ongoing education, interactions and opportunities for personal and spiritual growth? How many then?

What would Earth societies look like if people open and well suited to such a life left? If we returned decades later as ambassadors between our galactic brethren and those who remained behind, how receptive would they be to our message?

When we stop seeing ourselves as the pinnacle of creation and start to consider what our place might be in a galactic community of species far more evolved than us genetically, technologically, culturally, governmentally, politically and spiritually; the options for us may look nothing like our science fiction where aliens are often hostile and we always come out on top in the end.

I'd be fine being near the bottom of the galactic order, as long as I had the opportunity to learn and grow as a ward of the greater galactic community.

To catch up with the thread:

There is no reason, at all, to assume that other intelligent species should be detectable by us with current or even currently envisioned technology. We ourselves have only been detectable by our level of technology today for maybe a century or two. With the direction our communications technology is heading, radio wave detection may be impossible by a civilization with our current level of technology in a century or less.

At tops, a three century window in the lifetime of civilizations that may have roots that go back millions of years.

On the other hand, as technology increases and a species becomes less detectable by primitive methods, their ability to detect other civilizations grows exponentially. We could be the equivalent of a person chained to one spot in absolute darkness and wearing earplugs trying to detect others in a football stadium by feeling around. We group around in a very confined vicinity, while thousands of others with advanced night vision goggles see us sitting at midfield quite plainly.

With their advantage, they can even come in real close, wave their hands in front of our blind eyes and deftly move out of the way if we happen to grope in their direction.

That we have yet to detect other species via our public, scientific methods tells us nothing about the numbers of "others" out there. At the same time, if they are plentiful, it's easy to imagine that we have been detected by many of them and that they have the capability to study as as closely as they wish with out making their proximity undeniably evident.

As far as the "life is so rare it may be unique to Earth" argument, you know what? People are still free to propose that because no matter how much plentiful life looks exponentially more probable to many of us, we still lack the data points to actually swing the pendulum in either direction decisively. However, the pendulum is moving towards life.

Decades ago, we had no actual evidence of planets outside our solar system or any idea how prevalent they might be if they did exist. Now we do, though our technological limits mean that we still have much to determine about many elements of planet formation in other solar systems and the prevalence of worlds that are in the right place, or the right size and of the proper composition to be amenable to life.

We still do not have indisputable proof that life ever existed or evolved any where else but on Earth. However, we are one discovery away from that initial question on life elsewhere being answered to the affirmative. It could be fossilized or living microbes on Mars, Europa or some other body in our solar system. It could also come in the determination that some exo-planet in it's star's habitable zone shows chemical markers in it's atmosphere that could only have been produced by life.

It doesn't have to be a signal, any proof of life beyond Earth slaughters the "unique is life to Planet Earth" hypothesis completely. Of course, it may be replaced with "unique to this tiny corned of the galaxy" for those that insist that we just have to be uniquely special among God's creation, but the numbers will fall sharply in favor of the arguments that life is common, even if it takes centuries or millennia to develop a solid understanding of just how common it is and what forms it might take.