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Silly question of the day: Why haven't Aliens visited us if they exist?

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posted on Feb, 28 2017 @ 03:22 PM
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originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus




I did not say life was a fluke, I said intelligent life.


but it's just evolution...isnt it ?



Where there is life, and where there are forces causing that life to change, then there is evolution.

However, I don't think intelligence is always an inevitability of evolution. Look at our own planet, for example: evolution was going on for 3 Billion years before complex life began. For most of the history of life on Earth (until maybe 800 Million years ago), life was limited to single-cell life and very simple multi-cell life.

Complex multi-cell life with specialized and organized organs that could support larger brains came about later, but it does NOT seem that evolution was on a constant incremental-but-clear 3.5 Billion year path toward that complex and more intelligent life. Instead it appears that life was stuck in the "simple" mode for the first 3 Billion years, not really doing much in the way of gaining complexity through organization, even though evolution was still a force of change to that life over those first 3 Billion years.

What I mean is that it appears life dawdled around for 3 Billion years before some factor caused it to relatively recently organize into more complex life. Some other simple life out there in the universe might just remain relatively simple, despite the forces of evolution being present.


Heck, some people don't even think humans are the pinnacle of evolution on Earth. It could be argued that sharks are a more successful species (evolutionarily speaking) than humans are -- or maybe even cockroaches. Intelligence may be helpful, but it is not necessarily the be-all and end-all in evolution.

Intelligence might be one way for a species to become successful (evolutionarily speaking), but it may not be the only way.


edit on 2017-2-28 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 1 2017 @ 11:02 PM
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a reply to: neoholographic

"They" have and are. Just looking for love in all the wrong places.



posted on Mar, 5 2017 @ 10:45 AM
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They touched down at Kfc and asked to see the Colonel. Us regular folk arent worthy of intergalactic communication



posted on Mar, 6 2017 @ 11:17 PM
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originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus




I did not say life was a fluke, I said intelligent life.


but it's just evolution...isnt it ?



Where there is life, and where there are forces causing that life to change, then there is evolution.

However, I don't think intelligence is always an inevitability of evolution. Look at our own planet, for example: evolution was going on for 3 Billion years before complex life began. For most of the history of life on Earth (until maybe 800 Million years ago), life was limited to single-cell life and very simple multi-cell life.

Complex multi-cell life with specialized and organized organs that could support larger brains came about later, but it does NOT seem that evolution was on a constant incremental-but-clear 3.5 Billion year path toward that complex and more intelligent life. Instead it appears that life was stuck in the "simple" mode for the first 3 Billion years, not really doing much in the way of gaining complexity through organization, even though evolution was still a force of change to that life over those first 3 Billion years.

What I mean is that it appears life dawdled around for 3 Billion years before some factor caused it to relatively recently organize into more complex life. Some other simple life out there in the universe might just remain relatively simple, despite the forces of evolution being present.


At those earlier dates, it 's really hard to be quite sure. And the planet wasn't very hospitable for the first billion years or so.

When it did become hospitable, that was largely due to the effect of the microbes themselves terraforming it.

But the time gaps are a compelling argument against finding intelligent life on any given planet. 3 billion to get to vertebrates. Going off the Wiki article it looks like animals large enough to be thought of as an "animal" only go back 500 million years or so.

en.wikipedia.org...

Primates only go back 10 million years.

en.wikipedia.org...

Sapiens only go back maybe 200 thousand

en.wikipedia.org...

And then Sapiens capable of building any kind of society worth remembering only go back maybe 10,000

en.wikipedia.org...


So if you encountered Earth at a random time in its history, after it had cooled down, what are the odds you'd find humans? Maybe one in 300,000 ? Not great odds.




Kepler Satellite Telescope research has given us a working number of somewhere around 10 billion approximate Earth sized planets orbiting their stars withing the "habitable" zone in the milky way. Who knows how many of those would turn out like Venus (which I think meets the criteria, but I'm not sure)?

If one in ten of them have the right mix of chemicals, that would give us a billion candidates. Divide a billion by 300,000 and you get 3,333 planets with human like intelligent life on them right now.







Heck, some people don't even think humans are the pinnacle of evolution on Earth. It could be argued that sharks are a more successful species (evolutionarily speaking) than humans are -- or maybe even cockroaches. Intelligence may be helpful, but it is not necessarily the be-all and end-all in evolution.

Intelligence might be one way for a species to become successful (evolutionarily speaking), but it may not be the only way.



It doesn't matter what the "pinnacle" is.


The question is whether every habitat with life (and other basic conditions like abundant water and oxygen) has a niche for intelligence. Where there is a niche, some life form is just about certain to eventually emerge and fill it.

Note that humans/primates are not the only intelligent lifeforms on Earth. Some crows/ravens exhibit intelligence on par with a primate, and can use their feet as basic hands to manipulate tools. (And birds being descended from dinosaurs, this technically means a dinosaur has evolved these abilities.) Some breeds of octapus have been observed to use quite a bit of ingenuity, tool use, and self and social awareness.

If humankind had not shown up, one of those breeds would probably have gotten to technology sooner or later.



posted on Mar, 7 2017 @ 08:50 AM
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originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus




I did not say life was a fluke, I said intelligent life.


but it's just evolution...isnt it ?



Where there is life, and where there are forces causing that life to change, then there is evolution.

However, I don't think intelligence is always an inevitability of evolution. Look at our own planet, for example: evolution was going on for 3 Billion years before complex life began. For most of the history of life on Earth (until maybe 800 Million years ago), life was limited to single-cell life and very simple multi-cell life.

Complex multi-cell life with specialized and organized organs that could support larger brains came about later, but it does NOT seem that evolution was on a constant incremental-but-clear 3.5 Billion year path toward that complex and more intelligent life. Instead it appears that life was stuck in the "simple" mode for the first 3 Billion years, not really doing much in the way of gaining complexity through organization, even though evolution was still a force of change to that life over those first 3 Billion years.

What I mean is that it appears life dawdled around for 3 Billion years before some factor caused it to relatively recently organize into more complex life. Some other simple life out there in the universe might just remain relatively simple, despite the forces of evolution being present.


At those earlier dates, it 's really hard to be quite sure. And the planet wasn't very hospitable for the first billion
years or so.

It was certainly hospitable enough for the life that existed here 3 billion years ago. It may not have been hospitable to us oxygen-using complex multi-cell organisms (and oxygen is very useful for multi-cell animals, because it is a great catalyst for energy transfer processes), but it was just perfect for microbial life.


When it did become hospitable, that was largely due to the effect of the microbes themselves terraforming it.

Again, Earth back then had prime conditions for the type of life that existed here. The early microbes that gradually pumped oxygen into the atmosphere actually caused the planet to become toxic for them, because oxygen was toxic to that early life on Earth; they became the slow cause of their own extinction (although some anerobic life still exists on Earth today). As I mentioned above, oxygen great for more complex creatures such as fish, dinosaurs, shrews, reptiles, birds, weasels, and humans -- but nevertheless toxic to the anerobic type of life of the early Earth.





Heck, some people don't even think humans are the pinnacle of evolution on Earth. It could be argued that sharks are a more successful species (evolutionarily speaking) than humans are -- or maybe even cockroaches. Intelligence may be helpful, but it is not necessarily the be-all and end-all in evolution.



Intelligence might be one way for a species to become successful (evolutionarily speaking), but it may not be the only way.


It doesn't matter what the "pinnacle" is.


The question is whether every habitat with life (and other basic conditions like abundant water and oxygen) has a niche for intelligence. Where there is a niche, some life form is just about certain to eventually emerge and fill it.

Note that humans/primates are not the only intelligent lifeforms on Earth. Some crows/ravens exhibit intelligence on par with a primate, and can use their feet as basic hands to manipulate tools. (And birds being descended from dinosaurs, this technically means a dinosaur has evolved these abilities.) Some breeds of octapus have been observed to use quite a bit of ingenuity, tool use, and self and social awareness.

If humankind had not shown up, one of those breeds would probably have gotten to technology sooner or later.

I agree that intelligent life almost surely has come to be elsewhere in the universe. And among that group of intelligent life, some of that life would have developed technology, and among that life that developed technology, some may have used that technology to develop a civilization. However, some of those relatively intelligent creatures may not have developed technology nor grown into a technological civilization. As you said, ecological niches become filled with life by evolution, but there may be some planets where no niche exists in which intelligence needs to evolve.

a "Technological Civilization" -- or even intelligence, for that matter -- is not necessarily the inevitable outcome of life in general. In fact, it is possible that intelligence that gets to the level of creating technology might even result in the cause of the extinction of that intelligent life.

That also brings me to my point about timescales, and the fact that even in recent timeframes of the galaxy -- say a very short 500 million years -- Intelligent life could came and go, and we would never have the chance to contact us. There could have been a few intelligent ETs in our own galaxy over that past 500 million years (a very short amount of time in the history of the galaxy, and relatively short even in the history of Earth0 that have gone existent for some reason or other. They existed, but we may never meet them, because they exist no longer.

So between the idea that evolution may not always lead to intelligence and the idea that intelligence might kill itself off, AND the idea that the timescale of the history of potential life universe are so large and we have only existed within a minuscule part of that history -- I think it is quite possible that intelligent life with technological civilizations that exist right now (at the same time our civilization is existing) could be very rare, maybe only a thousand or so in the galaxy, which due to the size of the galaxy means that they could be very far from each other. And the number of those civilizations that could have space-faring capabilities or the capability to communicate with us in some form might even be smaller yet.

...Remember, I'm not talking about how many civilizations might have existed in the history of the galaxy; that number could be very very large indeed, given the number of planets and the timescales -- I'm only talking about the number of civilizations that might exists right now.

And that could be the answer to the OP's question: "Where are the aliens?" Than answer might be that civilizations that exist in our galaxy right now might be rare, and civilizations that exist right now and have the ability to potentially come visit us might be extremely rare -- even if life in general is practically ubiquitous across the galaxy and universe.


edit on 2017-3-7 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 7 2017 @ 09:13 AM
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a reply to: neoholographic

I think the reason they haven't stopped by and said, "Hi!" is because we are that neighborhood that you roll up your windows and lock your doors when you drive through. You gawk at the conditions and try not to make eye contact as you pass through on the way somewhere much nicer.



posted on Mar, 8 2017 @ 03:04 PM
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a reply to: neoholographic

In answer to the title of your thread...they have visited and still do.



posted on May, 3 2017 @ 12:38 PM
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a reply to: neoholographic

We are a wild-life preserve.

They are well aware of us...they might tranquilize and study us the way wild-life biologists dart a wolf from a chopper once in a while and take blood samples, asses health...maybe even tag one, but otherwise they consider the earth off-limits for interference.

An ultra-advanced civilization might see the human race as no more interesting or worth of interaction than a tribe of exotic monkeys. They might have examples of detrimental outcomes with interfering or contact between ultra-advanced life forms and significantly lessor life forms and have a strict no-trespassing policy.



posted on May, 3 2017 @ 12:47 PM
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a reply to: neoholographic

they could find us through consciousness if they were more evolved than us, a universal conscious that we are all plugged into, only we are unaware of it because we are but pups!

i feel if they were to visit they could probably do it by thought and they could probably travel from their planet to ours in an instant at the press of a button............. although there is the theory that we are all at the same level of intelligence and maybe there is trillions of civilisations just like us...... wondering are we alone, and whats with those UFO things, do you think its Jebus and his Merry men.



posted on May, 3 2017 @ 01:41 PM
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originally posted by: caladonea
a reply to: neoholographic

In answer to the title of your thread...they have visited and still do.


Not only that, they had been working on an extensive interbreeding program, in order to create a human-looking hybrid race. The last steps consisted on the obvious: infiltration.



posted on May, 4 2017 @ 01:30 PM
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a reply to: neoholographic

A more rational question is what could they be trying to accomplish by doing the things allegedly attributed to them?

One thing they've allegedly been involved in is moving of megaliths thousands of years ago. Experiments to replicate these have failed miserably indicating the official explanation doesn't hold up so this theory might be more viable than the so-called skeptics standing behind failed experiments.

Much more detail is required but this indicates they have an ulterior motive that goes back thousands of years. If they got here then and have been acting mostly in secret what could they be trying to accomplish?

Using us for research subjects? If they contacted us would it interfere with research?

If Humans are capable of impacting the weather through Climate Change then it is something that can be studied in action. Could the aliens have set the stage for that?

Could there be much more research that has been going on for thousands of years?

Either way disclosure is long overdue; but those in power aren't even pretending to do so.



posted on May, 7 2017 @ 09:21 AM
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What do aliens and military aircraft have to do with each other?

Oh, because if theres intelligent life it must be physically human sized and shaped....

Wishful thinking
edit on 7-5-2017 by BigBangWasAnEcho because: (no reason given)



posted on May, 7 2017 @ 01:56 PM
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originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: AugustusMasonicus




I did not say life was a fluke, I said intelligent life.


but it's just evolution...isnt it ?



Where there is life, and where there are forces causing that life to change, then there is evolution.

However, I don't think intelligence is always an inevitability of evolution. Look at our own planet, for example: evolution was going on for 3 Billion years before complex life began. For most of the history of life on Earth (until maybe 800 Million years ago), life was limited to single-cell life and very simple multi-cell life.

Complex multi-cell life with specialized and organized organs that could support larger brains came about later, but it does NOT seem that evolution was on a constant incremental-but-clear 3.5 Billion year path toward that complex and more intelligent life. Instead it appears that life was stuck in the "simple" mode for the first 3 Billion years, not really doing much in the way of gaining complexity through organization, even though evolution was still a force of change to that life over those first 3 Billion years.

What I mean is that it appears life dawdled around for 3 Billion years before some factor caused it to relatively recently organize into more complex life. Some other simple life out there in the universe might just remain relatively simple, despite the forces of evolution being present.


At those earlier dates, it 's really hard to be quite sure. And the planet wasn't very hospitable for the first billion
years or so.

It was certainly hospitable enough for the life that existed here 3 billion years ago. It may not have been hospitable to us oxygen-using complex multi-cell organisms (and oxygen is very useful for multi-cell animals, because it is a great catalyst for energy transfer processes), but it was just perfect for microbial life.


Microbial life is capable of surviving in a much wider range of environments than multicelled life.

en.wikipedia.org...






When it did become hospitable, that was largely due to the effect of the microbes themselves terraforming it.

Again, Earth back then had prime conditions for the type of life that existed here. The early microbes that gradually pumped oxygen into the atmosphere actually caused the planet to become toxic for them, because oxygen was toxic to that early life on Earth; they became the slow cause of their own extinction (although some anerobic life still exists on Earth today). As I mentioned above, oxygen great for more complex creatures such as fish, dinosaurs, shrews, reptiles, birds, weasels, and humans -- but nevertheless toxic to the anerobic type of life of the early Earth.



And no sooner do microbes ruin their environment, and they evolve to it. Evolution for microbes is super fast. If you are taking antibiotics and you don't finish the entire prescription the microbes in your body can evolve to become stronger against it in just one week.

Microbes have huge populations and short reproductive lifespans. But the changes they make to the whole planet take millions of years. Plenty of time for them to adjust.

Big lifeforms need more stability and large patches of terrain with the same characteristics, and they never reach a population size similar to a microbe.



posted on May, 7 2017 @ 02:22 PM
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originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: bloodymarvelous


It doesn't matter what the "pinnacle" is.


The question is whether every habitat with life (and other basic conditions like abundant water and oxygen) has a niche for intelligence. Where there is a niche, some life form is just about certain to eventually emerge and fill it.

Note that humans/primates are not the only intelligent lifeforms on Earth. Some crows/ravens exhibit intelligence on par with a primate, and can use their feet as basic hands to manipulate tools. (And birds being descended from dinosaurs, this technically means a dinosaur has evolved these abilities.) Some breeds of octapus have been observed to use quite a bit of ingenuity, tool use, and self and social awareness.

If humankind had not shown up, one of those breeds would probably have gotten to technology sooner or later.

I agree that intelligent life almost surely has come to be elsewhere in the universe. And among that group of intelligent life, some of that life would have developed technology, and among that life that developed technology, some may have used that technology to develop a civilization. However, some of those relatively intelligent creatures may not have developed technology nor grown into a technological civilization. As you said, ecological niches become filled with life by evolution, but there may be some planets where no niche exists in which intelligence needs to evolve.


Clearly the issue is not whether it "needs" to evolve. Evolution doesn't care about that.

It's whether an intelligent being could fill the niche more successfully. It's difficult to imagine a world with large lifeforms on it where intelligence wouldn't do any good.

Possible, sure. But how likely?





a "Technological Civilization" -- or even intelligence, for that matter -- is not necessarily the inevitable outcome of life in general. In fact, it is possible that intelligence that gets to the level of creating technology might even result in the cause of the extinction of that intelligent life.


If the niche exists, then filling it is inevitable eventually. All niches are eventually filled.



That also brings me to my point about timescales, and the fact that even in recent timeframes of the galaxy -- say a very short 500 million years -- Intelligent life could came and go, and we would never have the chance to contact us. There could have been a few intelligent ETs in our own galaxy over that past 500 million years (a very short amount of time in the history of the galaxy, and relatively short even in the history of Earth0 that have gone existent for some reason or other. They existed, but we may never meet them, because they exist no longer.


You can go back to my previous post and read the calculation that I did. It assumed technological humanity's total time on this Earth, from birth to death, was only going to be 10,000 years.

But you can do a simpler calculation. How many years old is Earth? 4.54 billion? Kepler's finding suggest 10 billion planets could be like Earth in terms of size, rockyness, and proper location relative to their star. If 1 in 10 of them have the right chemicals (water is likely for any rocky planet, because rocks contain oxygen and hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Giving us H2O)

I'll round 4.54 billion up to 5, because that will lower the odds, but not increase them. (Erring on the side of skepticism, as we should.)

So divide 1 billion candidate planets by 5 billion years, and you get 0.2. If the average technology society only lasts 1 year, then there should be approximately 0.2 planets in the Milky Way Galaxy out there hosting it right now.

If it lasts 100 years, then there should be 20 planets hosting it right now.

If it lasts 1000 years, then there should be 200.





So between the idea that evolution may not always lead to intelligence and the idea that intelligence might kill itself off, AND the idea that the timescale of the history of potential life universe are so large and we have only existed within a minuscule part of that history -- I think it is quite possible that intelligent life with technological civilizations that exist right now (at the same time our civilization is existing) could be very rare, maybe only a thousand or so in the galaxy, which due to the size of the galaxy means that they could be very far from each other. And the number of those civilizations that could have space-faring capabilities or the capability to communicate with us in some form might even be smaller yet.


Agreed, but a few thousand is a lot. And each one that makes it into space will probably search the rest of the galaxy to find other life bearing worlds.

The Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 180 thousand light years across.

Also, the odds of finding worlds with intelligent life on them goes up a bit if we consider they might colonize some of the empty worlds.



...Remember, I'm not talking about how many civilizations might have existed in the history of the galaxy; that number could be very very large indeed, given the number of planets and the timescales -- I'm only talking about the number of civilizations that might exists right now.

And that could be the answer to the OP's question: "Where are the aliens?" Than answer might be that civilizations that exist in our galaxy right now might be rare, and civilizations that exist right now and have the ability to potentially come visit us might be extremely rare -- even if life in general is practically ubiquitous across the galaxy and universe.



I suppose the real question is whether faster than light travel will turn out to be possible. In current physics, there really isn't a way to do it. But current physics isn't complete, and won't be until General Relativity is finally unified with Quantum Physics (at which point it still might not be complete).

If one civilization achieves FTL (faster than light) travel, they'll probably expand and colonize every possible planet, and intelligent life will become very common in space.


edit on 7-5-2017 by bloodymarvelous because: changed "humanity's time on Earth" to "Technological Humanity's time on Earth"



posted on May, 7 2017 @ 02:49 PM
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originally posted by: bloodymarvelousoriginally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

Clearly the issue is not whether it "needs" to evolve. Evolution doesn't care about that.

The environmental pressures that act upon an organism creates the need.

Changes to an organism are always occurring, but natural selection dictates whether those changes will be advantageous enough to the organism (relative to its environment) to become an agent for evolutionary change in that organism. Sharks have remained generally less affected by evolution because there was no pressure on them than that would force evolutionary change.

I was just casually equating "no pressure on them that would force change" to "no need to change".



If the niche exists, then filling it is inevitable eventually. All niches are eventually filled.

Maybe -- but "eventually" may take longer than the time a planet has life. A planet may have had life, but then became uninhabitable to that life before the that life had a chance to evolve intelligence.




You can go back to my previous post and read the calculation that I did. It assumed technological humanity's total time on this Earth, from birth to death, was only going to be 10,000 years.

But you can do a simpler calculation. How many years old is Earth? 4.54 billion? Kepler's finding suggest 10 billion planets could be like Earth in terms of size, rockyness, and proper location relative to their star. If 1 in 10 of them have the right chemicals (water is likely for any rocky planet, because rocks contain oxygen and hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Giving us H2O)

I'll round 4.54 billion up to 5, because that will lower the odds, but not increase them. (Erring on the side of skepticism, as we should.)

So divide 1 billion candidate planets by 5 billion years, and you get 0.2. If the average technology society only lasts 1 year, then there should be approximately 0.2 planets in the Milky Way Galaxy out there hosting it right now.

If it lasts 100 years, then there should be 20 planets hosting it right now.

If it lasts 1000 years, then there should be 200.

You calculations for assuming how many planets will evolve technological civilizations has no real basis.





I suppose the real question is whether faster than light travel will turn out to be possible. In current physics, there really isn't a way to do it. But current physics isn't complete, and won't be until General Relativity is finally unified with Quantum Physics (at which point it still might not be complete).

If one civilization achieves FTL (faster than light) travel, they'll probably expand and colonize every possible planet, and intelligent life will become very common in space.

A couple of points:

1. Assuming FTL technology exists, when we consider the vastness of the universe, the civilizations with such technology may be sparsely distributed.

2. "FTL capability" may not necessarily mean "unlimited and instantaneous travel to any point in the universe". It still might be difficult to travel the galaxy -- and more difficult to travel the universe -- even with FTL capability.

Given the two points above, an FTL civilization may be too far away and it would take too long to reach us for alien visitation of Earth to become an inevitable event, given a finite time frame....

...And the span of human history is certainly a finite time frame -- basically the blink of an eye in cosmological timescales.


edit on 7/5/2017 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)







 
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