Are there any super intelligent civilizations in the Universe?

Is it possible alien civilizations are billions of years ahead of us technologically?
The universe started with a big bang about 15 billion years ago, our solar system about 5 billion years ago and human life started only a few thousand years back.

A lot of things could have happened in these 15 billion years. Intelligent life and technologically advanced civilizations may have evolved on other planetary systems even before the formation of our Solar System! And that’s mind boggling to say the least! But one cannot discount this altogether.

But some would argue that the probability of life in the Universe is infinitesimal and probably still at the amoeba stage.

For arguments sake, lets imagine that primitive life happens once in the lifetime of a trillion galaxies, and out of those only one in a trillion ever evolves out of its womb planet into a space-faring civilization. In this example then we are still left with an astounding 10 to the par 75 advanced societies - more alien cultures than the number of atoms composing planet Earth! Again, for some perspective on such a gargantuan number, there are more advanced civilizations partying it up around the galaxies than there are atoms in every single grain of sand on all the beaches and deserts in the world, and then some.
www.futurehi.net...

Unbelievable?

So, what do you think these advanced civilizations could have achieved technologically? Could the more advanced have anything to do with the development of those fascinating Pulsars’ and ‘Quasars’? Could they be moving heavenly bodies? Could they be harnessing the energy of white dwarfs and neutron stars, which they themselves have created? Could they be altering the fabric of the space-time continuum? Could they be moving through time and other dimensions? Would they be having a physical form? Could they have become units of pure energy?

Some will holler, “Bull. This is all claptrap science fiction".

But ask your grand parents if they thought man would ever be able to fly, let alone journey to the moon in their lifetimes!

Hypothetical and beyond logic some may say. But considering the age of the Universe, anything is possible. Evolution to higher life forms over a period of millions of years is a certainty and a natural consequence of the very manifestation of life.

But some would argue that this evolution probably works within natural boundaries and disappears into oblivion after reaching a certain level.

All said and done, this goes beyond imagination. Makes you feel infinitesmally small, doesn’t it?




[edit on 9-8-2006 by mikesingh]

(mod edit to add 'ex' tags and link to source)

[edit on 11-8-2006 by pantha]

Sure, it's possible... But, then, where are they!?

Personally, I've always thought it to be neat if pulsars were actually like navigation beacons for interstellar travelers.

If the Drake Equation is correct, then it is not only possible but likely that there are superintelligent civilizations out there in the Great Beyond.

But that poses another question, if indeed there are other civilizations out there then where are they? Some would say they are here watching now. I don't subscribe to that view, at least to the extent that they are in contact with elements within our various gov'ts...they may visit, just passing through if you will.

As a culture progress's, ideally the ethics of that culture would progress with it. So quite likely, no proof of course, they approach us with a hands off policy. Assuming that they are anything like us at all, of course.

Very possible, actually- quite impossible that there isn't.
Whether or not they have traveled to earth and visited here, etc. is debatable, but to debate the existence of other intelligent life forms in the universe is only arrogant of the human race.

Very arrogant indeed. All those billions and billions of stars, with planets around a large majority of them? Only our own arrogance would argue against there being other races out there. Some more advanced, some less so. Some successfully surviving the challenges of technological advancement, others not so fortunate.

Originally posted by seagull
If the Drake Equation is correct, then it is not only possible but likely that there are superintelligent civilizations out there in the Great Beyond.

Of course, the Drake Equation works so you can put in the variables as you wish - meaning you can get anywhere from zero to infinity on the amount of civilizations.

That's true, of course. If you are fair in your usages of the variables, it does point to a staggering number of technologically advanced civilizations possible, even likely, in the universe, or galaxcy on a smaller scale. But yeah, you can make the Drake Equation mean anything.

The Drake equation only applies to the milky way galaxy... (with an estimated 100 billion stars)
Hubble estimates 125 billion galaxies in the universe. (and who knows, it could be more than that?...), which would equate to trillions and trillions of stars and planets out there.

roll the dice...

I think that one should also consider the nature of societies.

Are human societies representative of how any society in general will evolve and change over time?

If they are, then a great number of potentially "super advance civilizations" that were out there at some point have long vanished before they could reach their potential. Either through all-out war, ecological destruction or whatever. Also, you can't rule out natural catastrophes that could kill off potential "super civilizations" before they achieved their "super" status.

IOW, I believe in this case the Drake equation needs another variable.

Harte

Where are they maybe there space shuttles keep burning up entering are atmosphere and there just grounded till they can fix the problem

So, great point, there 'should' be great numbers of intelligent 'systems', yet we don't detect them. Why? It's the basis of Fermi's Paradox, which is roughly as follows.

"The size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this belief seems logically inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it. Either the initial assumption is incorrect and technologically advanced intelligent life is much rarer than believed, current observations are incomplete and human beings have not detected other civilizations yet, or search methodologies are flawed and incorrect indicators are being sought."

So with all of that, he gives basically 2 possibilities. Either there are none, which seems so very unlikely, or we have yet to detect them, even though rationally it would seem there would be so very many, to the point of being impossible to miss.

And so the paradox is that the latter seems very much more likely, but evidence contradicts it.

Personally, I would also find the second possibility far more plausible. They are there, but we have not detected them. If you disagree, ok, I can accept that, be a skeptic if you like, as I don't think anyone really knows, we are operating almost beyond a point of what science and statistics can predict, as the uncertainty of the Drake Equation illustrates. But there are strong reasons to believe they should be out there. Many people, I would say most people who seriously consider these issues think they are there. Not that that makes it true, but that is the prevailing wisdom.

Now, if you use the presumption that they are there, why can we not detect them? This is where it gets more interesting. The answer has to be one of the following, we haven't looked hard enough, we have a flawed or inadequate detection method, or we are simply incapable of detecting them as they are simply undetectable. Or any mixture of those things.

Here is my opinion. It is a mixture of those three things. Very many intelligences have evolved and are evolving, and many many have evolved similar to ours. Some are radically different, and we simply wouldn't recognize them. Also, many like ours have evolved to the point of radiating signals all through space, yet we don't see any, why? And here is the answer to that. They do not do that for very long! Soon after reaching an intelligence that allows them to send such signals, if that is the path they have taken, they will soon stop doing that, or we would see them everywhere.

Why? When an intelligence reaches a certain point, which is not far from the point where the current human species is, it is very close to the end of it's existence in that form. That intelligence is highly unstable. That would explain why we don't see other intelligence in the universe. As soon as something gets intelligent enough to make its presence felt in the universe, it is shortly gone thereafter.

And where does it go? There are 2 possibilities. It can either destroy itself... Or it 'transcends' the current state of existence, to something far beyond what we can detect or understand. In other words, it basically just evolves out of existence. Or if you like, you can use the terms of the OP, such as "move through time" or "to another dimension". Some futurists will call it the "Singularity". The intelligence becomes intelligent enough to evolve itself at massive rates, and become something radically different. At any rate, it's all the same to us, as we have no idea where they go, it is beyond what we understand, and they are just gone as far as we are concerned.

I think this is what the OP is getting at, and I agree with him. John Smart wrote an excellent piece concerning the Fermi Paradox, read it here, and see what you think.

www.accelerating.org...

The Mesh

Fascinating read!

But we must remember that what we are theorizing and speculating is in our space-time continuum, It isn’t necessary that the advanced civilizations are in the same time slot. Time is relative and the entire concept may have a completely different meaning in other parts of the Universe.

And then, what medium are we using for communication? The electromagnetic spectrum – radio waves in particular. Are we barking up the wrong tree? We tend to think that this mode of communication is the universal technique, which is adopted by all technologically advanced civilizations. We may be very far off the mark.

Their technology may have advanced along completely different lines. Or they may have discarded this mode of electromagnetic communication perhaps millions of years ago! How can we in our present level of evolution even begin to imagine what their technology is? Can we even make a guess as to how we would be communicating millions of years in the future?

And remember, a signal can only be received from a civilization that is at our present and similar technological level or maybe up to a couple of thousand years ahead. Finding such a civilization is next to nix. It may not exist even in our galaxy. If it is in another, then perhaps they are in a different time continuum. As they say, the twain shall never meet!

So, is SETI going on a wild goose chase?

Many likely exist which share similarities to our civilization, but the odds of them being of an observable size or physical dimension akin to ours is improbable IMO (not counting, of course, the infinite parallel realities of our civilization on Earth).

[edit on 11-8-2006 by Dubious_Skunk]

[edit on 11-8-2006 by Dubious_Skunk]

It's also possible that other advanced civilizations don't place that much value on advanced technology but on advancing the spirit and mind. Other advanced civilizations may be sending out signals which we don't even know how to pick up yet because we're stuck with our primitive tools looking for a signal somewhere while all the super advanced people are quieting waiting for our species to grow up and be able to detect their presence.

If we're only using 2 percent or so of our minds, we may be like a bunch of monkeys in the woods wondering if there are a bunch of super advanced monkeys out there with bigger clubs and we never see the spaceships flying far overhead.

Originally posted by orionthehunter
It's also possible that other advanced civilizations don't place that much value on advanced technology but on advancing the spirit and mind.

That's a good point. It may also be possible that very advanced civilisations do not even have a physical structure or body as we know it. Many could have discarded the physical being and the society as a whole have only one 'centralised' ultra intelligent 'brain' which can project itself astrally to any part of the universe!

So maybe some of the UFOs could be astral projections by civilisations thousands of light years away? The idea seems way out and extreme. But can it be discounted?

Also, you can't rule out natural catastrophes that could kill off potential "super civilizations" before they achieved their "super" status.

IOW, I believe in this case the Drake equation needs another variable.

Actually, the drake equation already does have such a variable that takes into account the possibility that a civilization begins but then destroys itself in one way or another before we ever meet it.

Yep
As CH said

'' the surest sign that there is intellegent life out there, is that they havent contacted us ''

I'd like to see how other creatures have evolved on their home planets. Obviously they're not going to look exactly like us humans or our animals because we're specific to our planet. If life was found on a planet with a totally different environment to ours, the creatures would probably have evolved beyond our imagination! For example if another planet has different gravity, resources, size, etc. the inhabitants could turn out to be huge in comparison to us or anything we've ever seen!

And i'd also be interested in how their society has evolved, do they have organisation like us; countries, cities, houses, families? What is their version of freedom, or do they work in drones? It's fascinating to think about but I don't know what the chances are of us discovering this in our lifetime. I guess we can always hope!