Where is everyone ? The mystery remains ...

reply to post by tauristercus



maybe they don't want to go slumming.

The OP's Thread and its contributions is thought provoking.
On a mundane level.... perhaps we have embarked on flight and space travel because we were surrounded by birds, and therefore tried to emulate them.
Perhaps other worlds have no birds or creatures that fly.
Perhaps we engaged in a cosmic war eons ago and , were almost wiped out ourselves aka the dinasour extinction, but we wiped out all other civilised advanced worlds?

Originally posted by xxcalbier

were a fluke but even with a million flukes the end is extinction.
there's no animal not one that wont eventually fall to this fate. and most don't last long at all

11 pages of replies so maybe this has been said but it seems like there could be at least a possibility of a fluke among millions of flukes that simply hasn't happened yet, at least in this galaxy. Maybe that will be us, maybe not...

Sorry if that doesn't make sense, it's Dimebonics.

Excellent post tauristercus

I see some of these possibilities:

1) They have not discovered us yet.
2) Highly advanced alien civilizations from different planets have some form of galactic government or protocols to protect life. They knew about us and saw what we do at each other.

What will we do if we find a highly invasive, violent, arrogant, greedy, predatory, destructive specie in our planet? We quarantine them, we avoid them, we make sure they don't get to us and destroy other life. I believe we are quarantined or being avoided because our technological advancement is not equal to our moral advancement.

We are a divided civilization who has nobody to represent us to the galactic order(if it exist). Maybe, just maybe, if we can all unite and be at peace with each other, then maybe we can have a seat in the interplanetary or galactic government. Maybe, only then will they show themselves. As for now... we are alligators to them that need to be avoided or quarantined.

Interesting that someone(a scientist hopefully) utilized the Drake Equation
and came up with an answer of TEN extraterrestrial "civilizations".

Interesting to me, because we have ten fingers, ten toes! I love that kind of primal simplicity- maybe in the future instead of earth kids singing "This little Piggy went to Market" they will sing "This little Piggy came from Sirius"....

I'm thinking here, too of Manly Hall's "Occult Anatomy of Man"... clues in our morphological makeup, etc.

TWELVE civilizations, on the other hand would dovetail nicely with JC having twelve "disciples".... humanoids created in a creator's "image".

Originally posted by odd1out
Yes, all of kinds of aliens have either visited/are visiting us, or have been communicating with us for millenniums. Unfortunately for us, alien life forms don't talk to ordinary citizens, only to governments. When they crash their spacecraft, they only do so where the military of the country they are visiting can clean-up the wreckage quickly before any common folk can find it. In a hundred and fifty years of photography, they have managed to escaped being filmed in any kind of detail that proves their existence. They live among us, yet they morph into beings that look and react to OUR environment as if it was there own. In short, every alien that has ever visited the earth falls in the same class as our governments do: elitists.
Just sayin...

edit to add PS...I'm still reading the OP, just responding to the blind faithers...

[edit on 11-5-2010 by odd1out]

Whoa, that's just so strange that you would judge ET's as elitists (it kinda trips me out, actually). It's one thing to judge other humans, but it's another to judge extra-terrestrials you've never even seen . You're a funny guy. Personally, I think it would make sense for ET's to contact our governments instead of just announcing their existence to the masses out of the blue. Surely, with all their advanced technology, they would at least know not to send the whole world into a mass panic . Sorry... you're just a funny guy. Props.

Peace, one love.

[edit on 13-5-2010 by Fangula]

Originally posted by tauristercus
that one would expect to be detectable.

I'm pretty sure you touched on this in the OP but I think the word "expect" speaks volumes. Of what could be nearly infinite possibilities we may not even be able to imagine what could be expected. I think this funny short story describes one possibility quite well... They're made of meat.

Anyway, excellent post. I'm really enjoying reading through the responses.

[edit on 5/13/2010 by doomsauce]

Originally posted by Blaine91555

We send out our first radio and television broadcasts just a few years ago and we are surprised the Galaxy has not fallen all over themselves to send out the Welcome Wagon?

I remember someone in a documentary about space that I watched recently saying that all of our current methods of wireless communication, like radio waves, would mostly disperse into nothing but back ground noise only two light years out. That's only half way to the nearest star. So if that's the case then in all likelihood there have been no messages from us for anyone else to intercept. On top of that if an advanced civilization WAS able to decipher our electromagnetic noises beyond 2 light years distance still they'd have to be within about 100 light years of us because that's about as far as our earliest radio waves would have traveled by now.

Hey OP, another brilliant thread

Face it everyone, it all points to either:

A. Humans are the most intelligent/advanced beings in the Universe, and developed shortly after Universe conditions became right for life. We're the first ones.

or,

B. We are part of a Galactic seeding effort, with a case of amnesia. They'll be back to check on us

Originally posted by Copernicus

Originally posted by one_man24
I think that it was just made for us to wonder at, and to show His awesomeness. But I won't be disappointed if there are other beings out there either.

So God has a ego and wants humans to be impressed by his creations to feel good about himself?

Could be, but sounds more like the ideas of humans to me...


[edit on 12-5-2010 by Copernicus]

I tend to think of it a bit more like a good friend showing another good friend something He has made and has really put His love into it. But you certainly are entitled to your view, as cynical as it may be.

hi all.

I have wondered about this too. I once read of, to me, an Astounding discourse from a Master spirit guide living in one of the Spirit afterlife planes, who was an Alien, being Channeled through a medium, discoursing to the class of students and in the question and answer section of the class, a student asked that Very Same Question, and this alien Guide had Answers.
[He was not a soul from the human race, his soul was from another race, from another star, living in *its* heavenworld.]

In my words, from Memory....

"where are they; why cannot we find their radio transmissions", the students asks, of alien races in the Galaxy.

he replies.

THERE AREN'T ANY! [that have radio]
That is, there are many many many alien civilizations throughout the universe but in the local area near the earth, within a number of light years, the earth's civilization is actually AHEAD of most of the others, there are several, now, nearby, that are progressed enough to have steam trains and ships, but most are still in the tribal primitive state.
In the Larger Universe, the Galaxy as a whole, there ARE a few
civilizations that are what you call "super civilizations" but not many.

the Real Reason why there are so so few advanced civilizations is that
planetary embodiment is only a stage that exists early in a civilization!
[childhood]. Most races collectively evolve so that they live in higher dimensions only, and this is the natural end-state of all races.
The earth's civilization, the human race, is near that time when all the souls will live ONLY in the spirit worlds and no one reincarnates back to a physical earth.
[Childhood's End; something like Clark's idea!]
[the Racial Larva, using a physical planet to live on, is about to become a Butterfly, to leave the home "bush", to fly away to a Etheric
planet, made up of subtle, not-physical, matter of higher dimensions.]

[The entire universe is a "kindergarten" for races to begin their path of progression, only a place where intelligent life begins. Every planet's race will sooner or later collectively leave the planet via death, never to reincarnate again]

[The Guide goes on to tell what "dark matter" is! He says it is the thought forms of all of the thoughts, on physical planets, and in the spirit worlds. Essentially too, Dark matter is what heaven is made up of, the "material" that makes up the afterlife realms and the astral planes!]

So there you are, for me one of the most impressive channellings that i have ever read.

and...if that prophetic year of 2012 actually brings "wipe out" earthchanges, to us all, well...it is graduation time, time for the human race to join the galactic federation and to near-instantly be able to visit any race in the Universe, and to live in the etheric, non-physical worlds!

freestone

I'll leave my own personal theological viewpoints out of this. In my opinion the answer to the Fermi Paradox is actually quite simple and the paradox itself answers its own question.

The paradox itself is making quite a lot of assumptions. We are first assuming the universe is 15 or so billion years old. However we do not really know that to be fact. That is an estimate based upon the speed of light, radiological decay etc.etc. The mathematics that produce these estimates are beyond the scope of my post; however they are only theoretical and based on what we know or believe to be true.

I can also use the same argument for the age of our own planet and that of our civilization. We simply do not know and we are making educated guesses.

The OP, in relating the Fermi Paradox simply is asking us 1 question. “Where are they?”

Since we are humans and like to theorize and speculate let’s use the paradox to answer the Ops question. This time however let’s take our assumptions as fact. The universe is 15 billion years old. The earth is 4 billion years old and it takes several million years for a life form to evolve under the right conditions.

In our own timeline we have really only just begun to search for life outside of our own planet. We can barely take a picture of something within our own solar system and not know whether we are looking at a shadow, rock formation, or signs of an ancient civilization. Heck we can’t even put a colony onto our own moon or do a proper exploration of that celestial body and it’s in orbit around us.

Our 60 or so years in the field of space exploration is a nanosecond compared to the 15 billion or so years our universe has supposedly existed for. In the Fermi paradox our 60 or so years of technology is crap compared to the millions it would take to colonize the universe.

The answer is quite obvious and simple. We don’t know. We don’t have a clue. We don’t know Jack.

We will continue to be clueless until we are able to efficiently explore our own solar system not to mention our own galaxy. Unless a UFO lands on the White house lawn, makes its presence known to us, or through the use of our own technology we discover alien life forms, we will continue to be in the dark.

But don’t worry ”I live in my own little world, but that’s ok because they know me here.”


[edit on 13-5-2010 by photobug]

The way I see it is us trying to find their signals and evidence of their existence is like a primitive Jungle tribe looking to the stars when two people are communicating by mobile phones at either side of their land. They do not have the technology or the scope to understand what is happening and in the end are none the wiser. I think we are miles behind any civilization that could travel the galaxy and that probably is a good thing.
P.s It always reminds me of Independence Day, I loved it when Jeff Goldbloom hacks into the alien mainframe and give their systems a virus, I read somewhere that the Mac book had such a low spec that it would be like monkeys hacking into the pentagon with a computer made out of #e and bamboo

reply to post by tauristercus


maybe some other parts of the milky way are swarming with intelligence...just maybe in our part of the neighborhood there is no intelligence.

ever see a bird bent on plucking all its feathers out?

[edit on 13-5-2010 by reject]

@Doomsauce:

Loved the, "They're Made of Meat". Reminds me of the Piers Anthony Cluster series. It is populated with all types of sentinent beings, many of whom are repulsed by the other species and, in some cases, don't even recognize other beings as sentinent. In the series, certain beings are able to "transfer" their kirilian aura into others. One of my favorite parts is when it happens to a human for the first time and he sees his own body through an alien's eyes. He is disgusted by what he sees as a sack of meat.

Also, love the nod to "The Hitchhiker's Guide" in your signature - it's especially appropriate for this thread!

@freestonew
That's what I'm hoping for and believe will happen. I feel that is what happened to past civilizations that have disappeared...they reached the next level.

@OP
Some good conjectures. One note I'll make at which you hinted and others have posted is that we may not recognize other inteligent species. For example, there could be miniscule, crystalline beings existing right here on Earth in parallel to us. Of course, Fermi's paradox is concerned only with "technological" species, but we still must consider what we mean by technology. As you pointed out, some civilizations may be so advanced, that their technology could look like natural phenomenon to us.

I like to think about viruses and how they could be intelligent colonies with hive minds (ack...it's the Borg!). They adapt quickly to their environment, employ various means of locomotion, use stratagies to advance their cause, etc. Again, Piers Anthony has some great stories (admitted, they are Sci-Fi, but some still make some reasonable postulations) that see things from non-human, non-terrestrial perspectives. In the Cluster series, he posits that stars are sentinent beings that are so large and live so long that we aren't even a fruitfly to them. Their thought processes are completely alien to us.

Thanks for the stimulating post!

[edit on 13-5-2010 by CAP811]

[edit on 13-5-2010 by CAP811]

The way I have always seen it is this:

Extraterrestrials clearly exist. There are have been countless UFO sightings. To assume that none of these UFO's are extraterrestrial spacecraft is to say 100% of all UFO sightings are either outright lies, the result of dementia or something natural/manmade. It's hard to imagine 100% of these sightings being BS.

There have been many pictures taken of structures on the moon, other moons in the solar system, Mars, etc. Most are probably rocks...but 100% of them? Again, it's hard to imagine 100% are all delusions, and since all photos of other bodies are through government organizations, can we 100% trust the images are untampered with? I don't.

If the galaxy is teeming with life - which I believe - then that alone should squelch the expansionism. There is almost certainly a galactic regulatory body that is in charge of expansion, and we just do not know because we lack the ability to colonize. It would be like letting a caveman in a country club by allowing us in. We probably won't be given the knowledge until we have the ability - which surely won't be anytime soon.

There is no way that these societies communicate via electromagnetic waves. Far too slow and inefficient. To find societies with that technology, we'd have to:

1.) Find a society in the exact same stage of evolution as us
2.) The society would have to be willing to communicate by broadcasting signals to the stars
3.) The society would have to be aiming directly at us
4.) The signal would have to not degrade at all

This is almost impossible as the chance of a civilization existing at the exact same stage as us at a star right next to us aiming a signal directly at us with zero gas and dust to interfere and pollute the signal is almost impossible IMO. THAT is why we don't see the communication. We obviously lack the technology to detect how they communicate.

This is a simple concept to me.

Originally posted by tauristercus

Originally posted by Risen
There's been hundreds of thousands of spacecraft sightings just in recent times, and the recorded history of older cultures provides hundreds, if not thousands, more. Many speak in no uncertain terms about visitors from other planets, like the Dogon tribe and their visitors from Sirius B.

All those people know we're being visited by them, and so do the governments of the world, because they've psychologically conditioned everyone to think something so plausible is ridiculous. The only people who don't are those who look to the media for what to believe.

The purpose of this thread was not to dispute or deny the many instances over the years of 'alleged' sightings of what have been 'interpreted' as alien spacecraft but rather to highlight the seemingly incomprehensible fact that there is absolutely ZERO substantiated evidence, whether on Earth, in the solar system or in the galaxy of other extraterrestrial civilizations.

substantiated evidence?

Evidence with substance, there be plenty.
Text, audio, video, physical materials.
All substance evidence.

As pointed out, statistically, the galaxy should literally be crawling with signs, evidence and artifacts of these other civilizations and yet nothing has been found.

Yet millions of tons of evidence is clearly revealed.
What a burden on your soul.

Civilizations have been built where there was nothing.
Respect your elders and ancestors,
if you wish to be respected.

As for these claims that these visiting spacecraft are evidence of actual extraterrestrial civilizations out there, then one is hard put to explain just why we can see a spacecraft visiting us, but can see no other evidence out there of a supporting civilization.

Yet there is much evidence,
contactee's do tell us much more of what the people in craft are about.
Their civilizations, and how they have supported our planet.

rune.galactic.to...

After all, if they're capable of visiting Earth, then they're more than capable of expanding throughout the galaxy and colonizing it.

Yes children, many fold,
many star being races reside on this planet.

I don't for one minute believe that they just recently acquired space travel capability and the first thing they did was head straight to Earth for a visit !

Agreed, space travel many millions of years has been developed.
For some species it's been over a billion years.

tauristercus

Point 1 addresses the idea that we are the first to reach this level of technology. I do agree that 15 billion years is a long time for the first intelligent species to appear. But, I seem to recall hearing that with respect to the Milky Way, we are one of the older planets. Had to do with the idea the galaxies evolve outward. That is, the stars and planets closer to the center are newer. So, at least in our galaxy, we could be one of the older civilizations.

On the other hand, had the extinction event that ended the dinosaurs and led to the rise of mammels occurred even 50 million years earlier, one has to wonder where we would be today.

Hi Tauristercus, ( edit: Adding some more to the post now that i have read the entire thread)

Originally posted by tauristercus
The Fermi Paradox isn't so much about 'alleged' reports of crashed ufo's here on Earth ... though if one was to be found and authenticated as such, then that would be an answer to the Paradox.

Admitting that we know of at least one alien race wont really affect the paradox much in terms of it being a accomplishment ( we may need at least one to explain the cydonia/baalbek ruins; unless one believes that humans built it in pre flood era) given how many alien races we in the paradox should have run into. As Blaine however quite succintly points out Fermi ( as many other scienctist) try to make far too much of our collective ignorance thus creating paradoxes long before we even have enough information for proper speculation.

Instead, the Paradox is simply an observation that given the age of the galaxy (something around 15 billion years compared to around 4 billion years for life on Earth), that if any advanced extraterrestrial civilizations had evolved any time in the past, that if they had the capability and the will, that they could have colonized the ENTIRE galaxy, including Earth, long, long ago.

I agree that this makes sense but also that galactic conquest would not go uncontested either and that we may just happen to be in a galaxy ( or galactic cluster) where the balance of power is such that planets may not be changing hands very often or that we are in one where a alliance of sorts ( call the the federation if you like) is keeping a general peace or being distracted by events elsewhere. In galactic timescales we may simply not have registered on any one's 'to do' list just yet or be sufficiently isolated from events ( we are a good ways towards the rim so it can be called a 'backwater' ) to not have merited much interest?

More pessimistically life could be supressed by plague carrying von neuman type probes ( which could be biological too if your wondering) thus explaining the lack of colonization as well as the lack of neighbours. I mean that would be a logical solution for a race who doesn't want to share the galaxy with anyone but equally doesn't care to try colonize everything. In fact if any race attempted such a colonization process could it remain one race separated as it were by vast distances and perhaps giving rise to new species of sub species? Talk about a galactic semi civil war....

The fact that we don't see any evidence of ANY kind of colonization, radio signals, nothing whatsoever ... is the central heart of the Paradox.

Which is why some laugh at it. It's silly to construct a paradox based on the false premise that there is no evidence when there very cleary is evidence of structures and events on Earth that are hard to explain by other means. Then again perhaps we ARE the aliens and we have simply not re-established contact after some kind of disaster or war befell the planet? Perhaps their agents are at work on Earth and generally doing what the race in control of this area of space wants done hence the fact that we seem to be left alone? There really are many ways to 'explain' the silence by means of galactic politics ( presuming war being the extension of it as it is on this planet), time scales ( show on TV dealing with how fast even the largest human made structures on earth are destroyed by natural forces) , physics ( Rren pointed out, with what i consider good evidence, that we things may only be starting out now) and the simple scale of the universe.

The Fermi 'paradox' presumes much and ignores even more.

The galaxy has had more than enough time BEFORE humans arrived for thousands, possibly millions, of other species to have evolved technological civilizations. And as has been pointed out, all it would take is for just ONE of them to want to colonize the galaxy and by now we'd be neck deep in alien neighbours !

But that hasn't happened ... WHY NOT ??

There are still tribes living in the amazon and elsewhere that have had very little contact ( perhaps sufficient for the majority of the members to laugh at the few that actually saw aircraft and the like) with the rest of us and if that is possible on one planet given our limited space and significant populations i can at least imagine that our modern technological era ( give or take a few hundred years) can have gone largely unnoticed or that the last colonization wave simply passed us by for one reason or another. Perhaps one race controls this galaxy and we are on a preserve?

Obviously i wonder why von Neuman type probes have not overun the galaxy ( Someone must have made a mistake somewhere, right?) and have as many questions as Fermi but i wont like him and others deny even the little evidence we do have!

Either way thanks for putting as much effort as you did into this thread. I do appreciate the effort given what goes into 90% of threads( including my few) on ATS and i have not enjoyed reading a thread more in at least a year.

Regards and thanks,

Stellar

PS: Kudos to tauempire for some truly lucid postulations....

Faiol, some really good questions Fermi should have spent more time them.

Gorman91, you might want to consider writing professionally; your talent will be wasted here!

[edit on 13-5-2010 by StellarX]

Originally posted by MonteroReal

Originally posted by davidgrouchy
Great work tauristercus.

Here is my own poorly formed
andwer to the Fermi paradox and aliens.

(12) Due to the limitations of light speed the only
way aliens can visit us is to beam energy signatures
to our planet. Which they have done for thousands of
years, even millions. They are called plants. In the future
when we can do it, we will be able to experience other planets
as plants ourselves. The problem is that we don't treat our
visitors very well and the word has gotten out about us.
So even our very close cousins won't come visit us
in person. "All they do is eat or burn us."
Can't blame them really.

David Grouchy

Maybe we must stop eating plants =), that is what have them angry with us.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?