What are we looking for.

let me start by saying, im an engineer not physicist or astro physicist or astronomer etc... my only exposure to this sort is solely required astronomy classes i had to take and the mathematics involved.

at the risk of sounding ill-informed let me say this post is more of a philosophical query than anything.
_______________________

1) we are constantly looking for 'intelligent life forms'
why? really why? what is the point, what do we hope to achieve, what cant we do without finding these 'intelligent life'. if weve figured out the big questions, why not keep going solo and keep pushing forward. what makes us think those life forms will unveil or expose something we dont already know or at least theorized.


2) why do we insist on looking for ourselve when trying to "detect" those 'inteligent life', what makes us think they will have similar physiology. i.e. means to see hear breathe and [need of energy as we know it. ]
if we send videos, data, writting, sound clips, what makes us think they take in information as we do? why assume they will "see or hear" what we sent up there. what if they are absolutely nothing like us, so much so we dont even think they are 'alive' (in the generic term). what if they "see" using something we cant even imagine.

3) if the oceans are any indication of how life can flourish in the most remote and inhabitale regions of the planet, deprived of oxigen, light and 'nutrients'; why do we look for life on 'earth-like' planets. meaning planet that have similar 'surfaces' as earth. why would it be far fetched to assume life may be thriving on Saturn or Jupiter or mercury. if life is flourishing at oceanic depths where the earths core meets the surface, and toxic gases and heat would make life impossible, yet we see the opposite, why not assume there is life on say pluto or venus or ceres or the moon but were just looking for human like species. surface dwellers.


4) were only .1% different from chimps, and we have phones that can start our motorized vehicles. look at us and look at the smartest xhimp alive today. now imagine meeting an intelligence that is 100% smarter than us. what then? would we even understand or be able to imagine what it does?

5) theoretically, time is not linear. in essence if something can happen, it will happen and has already happened. meaning, if we created a time machine in the future, we would already have seen or observed such indications . remember that .1% difference from chimps, imagine what a really advanced race at 100000% our brain capacity. would they already have found us. what makes us think they havent?

5) and advanced race, logically would rather stay secluded from outsiders. an advanced race would create paradise on their homeworld and remain there. an advanced race would not have doubts, need to conquer,war, wouldnt yearn anything or have any more questions. movement would seem pointless if theyve conquered all questions. why do we think they would allow us, less advanced to polute whatever system they have worked for eons to achieve . an advance race would work toward using as little energy and emitting as little as posible, not create a Dyson sphere...


6) lastly, is there anything ive asked here which scientists havent, or should not have asked themselves long ago?

**** ive taken some artistic freedom with a small portion of my claims to illustrate some points.

What are we looking for?

A tangible, real, provable reason to stop all religious war.

Unless the aliens meet us and they are latter-day saints. Then we are ******. Just kidding.

Knowledge is more valuable than any material object in existence.

We are inherently inquisitive and romantically observant.

We're looking to boldly go where no mans gone before.

a reply to: odzeandennz

Deep down, I am hoping that we find a planet made out of bacon.

a reply to: odzeandennz
I think for us to find intelligent life, or to land on a planet is that is inhabited with other life forms, would be the daybreak of a new disaster.

To add to your observations; what do we have to offer our newly found neighbors?

We don't travel to find life forms bearing gifts, we go out looking for what we can rape, pillage, or steal.

We have no regard to the damages we do to our own planet. We treat it as if it is disposable. What intelligent life form would let us anywhere near their planet?

If we did manage to land on their planet, I am sure the prime directive is to kill us before we multiply.

Why did the chicken cross the road? All predators are inquisitive and want to explore their environment, originally probably because they wanted to find something to eat. And it's quite natural to start out trying to find life like ourselves. That's all we really know about. We have limited resources, so trying to figure out what kind of life might live on gas giants and devise ways to look for it is, at least at this stage, a waste of time.

And not to put too fine a point on it, we need to find another place to live. Not because we are "wrecking the planet" or any self-flagellation like that. In the greater scheme of things, we aren't, but the planet is going to go all lifeless on us eventually no matter what we do or don't do. Then the Sun will go nova and it will be all over. Species all attempt to survive, and I believe our exploratory nature is part of that. At some deep level our species knows we have to get off this rock, and some of what you see is our early attempts to do so.

originally posted by: Brotherman
We're looking to boldly go where no mans gone before.

i feel i should be worried that in a no go zone. lol sorry joking. to the op i think its just simply curiosity to try to explore and find out what really is out there

originally posted by: eisegesis
Knowledge is more valuable than any material object in existence.

We are inherently inquisitive and romantically observant.

without application, knowledge is trivia.

i can know every school of mathematics, but without application , that knowledge is just trivia.

being inquisitive and romantically observant is fine. we can observe and query our own planet.
think of this, were landing on comets, yet are discovering new species. we envy mars, yet we cant cure one of the antagonistic ailments keeping us from reaching. why not advance ourselves first and actually know the earth we live on first.

a reply to: odzeandennz

To ask why we look for specific markers, familiar life, rather than trying to find any life at all, no matter how apparently strange and unfamiliar, is reasonable. The answer is simple. We have only the frame of reference provided by our own home world, and the evolution of the species which dwell on its surface, in its oceans, and in the deepest recesses of the ground beneath our feet.

We only know of our own species, in terms of intelligent life, and to be fair, our intelligence can be called into question all too readily, given the awful things we do to one another, and the planet upon which we all live. A poor example of intelligent life we may be, but we are the only one we have so far. Until we encounter intelligent life which does not resemble us, from a planet which does not resemble our own, the trend for searching for long lost cousins of ours in the depths of space, regardless of how utterly pedestrian and therefore idiotic that is, will remain in place.

Another issue which plagues us at present, is how fundamentally bad we are at using our resources, both on the material and financial level, and on the human level as well. If all the resources currently dedicated to murdering one another, and inventing pretexts upon which to justify that action, were funnelled into advancing propulsion techniques, the things that hold us back from travel in the stars would be the work of decades, rather than centuries to complete to a satisfactory standard.

As it is, we cannot even visit a relatively local object like Mars, without months or more of travel time. That is like taking half an hour to get from ones bedroom, to ones bathroom. Even when we finally pierce the envelope of the solar system, and send a human being to another star, we will not have gotten off our own block, and therefore will not be able to say that we have seen enough, and learned enough, to properly and broadly predict where life may, or may not occur.

But the question of why we look at all is not a reasonable question to ask, unless one lacks either the wit, the soul, or the imagination necessary to answer it for oneself. Why did explorers head out in ships, over vast distances of open ocean? Why did continents get discovered, why were cures for diseases found, why was the electric guitar invented, or the automobile?

These things came to pass because a human being decided one day that they would, decided to refuse to accept the norm, the present, the regular, and took a trip into the fantastic, absurd, sometimes even the improbable. We are explorers, inventors, and discoverers of things. We do these things for the same reason that our deep ancestors stopped living in trees, for the same reason which saw the expansion from the West to virtually everywhere else on the globe, for the same reason that lead archeologists to exhume mummified remains from tombs in Egypt. That is to say, that human beings have always been curious creatures, never satisfied in the main with the daily grind, always striving for an answer or at least a diversion from whatever becomes commonplace.

This drive at the species level is what drove us to become more than the apes we descend from, to do more, to see more, to learn anything at all of the world beyond our field of view. It may seem to be simplistic to suggest that the only real reason to look beyond our atmosphere for information we would like to have, is that we are naturally curious, that we are programmed that way at the genetic level, but simplicity is no barrier to the truth. Boiled down, we explore because we can, because we desire to do so, and when everything else is stripped away, that is all that matters.

We can justify that curiousity these days, because the fruits of previous curious efforts tell us that if we live and move on more than one planet, or even multiple star systems, that we are less likely to be wiped out by a single cosmic event, like an asteroid impact, or the death of our home star. But in reality, even if our species was not threatened by being present on only one world, curiosity would drive us ever outward. We are at our most productive, we are most alive as a species, when we are about the business of discovery, because of all the traits we possess, our curiosity is easily the strongest.

a reply to: TrueBrit
i agree with most of your points there. im very imaginative, i have the wit and soul to know that necessity is the mother of invention. we were explorers and were inventors to facilitate our immediate needs. weve done so for very long.

were now at a mind capacity to ask what are we looking for, why are we looking.
if we have evolved so far as to be able to question what we are looking for ultimately, then we should be able to have an absolute answer. if we cant answer that, then we dont know what were looking for. meanwhile, as it stands right now, the earth isnt lacking anything we need that is only available 50 light years away.

but i do see what youre trying to say. we are innately curious. however, our species evolved such cognitive levels where we can ask why are we innately curious.

If we made contact with a more advanced life, they would force us to follow their religion by sending missionaries with colonizing armies. Maybe you would be forced to bow down to an actual spaghetti monster or else. Would be an interesting prospect for atheists.

We are "here" ... and now either looking for "now what?" or "no thanks, oblivion please."

a reply to: schuyler

Your post was brilliant...I wish I could give it 50 stars...

Well stated...

And I agree, our destiny is in the stars...our good earth will one day be left a burned cinder from our bloated then collapsing sun...
It is of paramount import that we reach into the darkness for our salvation...
Neophytes and short sighted minds know nothing of immortality and it is only through traversing the expanses of space will we, as a species, survive in perpetuity...

The current crop of world rulers have turned their covetous gaze earthward instead of skyward...despite knowing our sun is not eternal and our extinction imminent if we don't relocate.

The US government sadly defunded the return voyage to the moon and chose to alter its primary mission...I will let the head of NASA, Charles Bolden describe its new priority set:

a reply to: malevolent

i wouldnt let any man boldly go where no man has ever gone before. hehehe.
joking aside.

i would like to know why we chose to look up instead of down at the oceans. why didnt we advance marine propulsion instead and explore the earth.

it cant just be curiosity. curiosity then not only makes us think there is something outhere, it makes us imagine whats out there even though we have on 1 reference point, us. it makes us theorize on how to calculate what could be outhere and makes us accept those calculations.


--
lets assume there was life that started immediately after the big bang, to by the time the earth formed, how advanced would that civilization be.

suppose a galaxy is 10 light years away from us, but formed 20 light years before we did, and life formed 5 light years after, there would be a civilization 15 light years ahead of us with only 10 to travel to discover us. or better yet, would we now be receiving whatever transmissions they sent out to look for intelligent life.

what if they did and it atrived on earth, but were so different that we think its just a cool breeze on a summer night... trivial but yea.

a reply to: odzeandennz

in my opinion for the longest people have looked at the stars and tried to explain them so we have come to a point where we can go to them in some form of way. why they arent exploring our own world more idk it would be better to know about the place were all living on than to try understanding something so far away, so thats why i think its just curiosity

originally posted by: Christosterone
a reply to: schuyler

Your post was brilliant...I wish I could give it 50 stars...

Well stated...

And I agree, our destiny is in the stars...our good earth will one day be left a burned cinder from our bloated then collapsing sun...
It is of paramount import that we reach into the darkness for our salvation...
Neophytes and short sighted minds know nothing of immortality and it is only through traversing the expanses of space will we, as a species, survive in perpetuity...

The current crop of world rulers have turned their covetous gaze earthward instead of skyward...despite knowing our sun is not eternal and our extinction imminent if we don't relocate.

The US government sadly defunded the return voyage to the moon and chose to alter its primary mission...I will let the head of NASA, Charles Bolden describe its new priority set:

Obama's outreach to the Muslim world encouraged them to kill each other with renewed vigor.
So much for pie in the sky policies which produce only darkened rainbows and hornless unicorns.

People who say we should NOT explore, that we need to fix ourselves up first, are really missing the boat here, almost literally. First, if that's the criteria you use, it will never happen--ever. You are ALWAYS going to find something to criticize, some reason to not move forward. There is always going to be opposition to what you want to do, whether it's religious, save the whales, or give me welfare first.

Second, exploring has its own rewards that are beneficial to everyone. For example, the early NASA missions made great strides in miniaturization in electronics, and fallout started the computer revolution. In a very real sense, without the Mercury space program, Apple would not have been invented when it was. All that technological progress is very much related. The fact is we don't know what advantages we will find until we actually look. Not looking assures we will find nothing.

From my perspective, I don't much care whether you want to "go along" or not. I intend to use my treasure to do so. And what you need to do is lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. Your opposition is not tolerable.

a reply to: schuyler

please keep in mind im not against exploring, nor mentioned that in OP.

im happy with exploring. people before us were searching for better land, vegetation, room, resources, etc. we knew what we were looking for when we were explorers in the beginning.

now it seems, there is no real answer and the counter is we need to explore more , its our nature or advances we make in trying to be explorers. thats fine. what exactly now are we hoping to find, and if we do find it, then what?

what if we find an answer to our very own 'theory of everything ', whats after that.

since we're still discovering new species on earth, suppose an advanced and intelligent life came to earth tomorrow and discoverd 30 new species in the deepest oceans here on earth , 8 of which are not only smarter than us but knew humans existed this entire time.

how would we feel when we had more intelligent life forms here on earth already?
were still discoveing new creatures and life here on earth. there are so many that would astound us if we came up close with them.

is it the journey or whats at the end of the journey which drives us? mind you we're not entirely sure what the goal of the journey is. so far all i heard was its our nature etc...

originally posted by: odzeandennz
a reply to: schuyler

im happy with exploring. people before us were searching for better land, vegetation, room, resources, etc. we knew what we were looking for when we were explorers in the beginning.

now it seems, there is no real answer and the counter is we need to explore more , its our nature or advances we make in trying to be explorers. thats fine. what exactly now are we hoping to find, and if we do find it, then what?

what if we find an answer to our very own 'theory of everything ', whats after that.

Who knows? We really did not know what we were looking for before. Columbus was in search of Eastern spices. He was wrong. We "explored the Moon" and it caused a computer revolution, completely unintended. It was not the goal. It is the very nature of exploration that we don't know what we are going to find. That's the beauty of it. You needn't answer the question, "Then what?" The question will be: "What's next?"