Originally posted by freestonew
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

Hey, thanks for turning the thread into another "loony-fest".
I wonder what it would be like to read something interesting, thought provoking, based on some reasonably solid ideas, without one of these guys popping in and excreting their "knowledge".

Members that are using threads as opportunities to play the role of mystic, or alien, or psychic or alien liaison, should be shuffled off to the farthest corners of the ATS boards.,

Originally posted by FafnirsFang

Hey, thanks for turning the thread into another "loony-fest".
I wonder what it would be like to read something interesting, thought provoking, based on some reasonably solid ideas, without one of these guys popping in and excreting their "knowledge".

Members that are using threads as opportunities to play the role of mystic, or alien, or psychic or alien liaison, should be shuffled off to the farthest corners of the ATS boards.,

I'm in complete agreement with you!
Even though I believe in free speech, etc, etc ... sometimes it simply annoys me no end that I go to so much trouble and effort to create a thread that is science based and attempts to stay as far away as possible from quackery, mysticism, pseudo-science and plain out-and-out mumbo jumbo ... and yet promulgators of such 'excrement' still still manage to find me and lower the quality of the thread

Hi 'reality',

Originally posted by My_Reality
However, if we use human history as an example, it is quite possible that other intelligent life would exhaust natural resources before they get to that point. Consider the problems we are experiencing in the present with limited natural resources.

This is a bit of a side issue but it comes up too often. If one investigates the yields of food stocks and minerals mined they are and have mostly consistently gone up on a year to year basis. This is easily verifiable even if misguided beliefs to the contrary are not so surprising given popular media misinformation. Our expansion is not being held by by and lack of resource capability and it will not be the determining factor of whether we do or don't as have the resources to sustain current growth levels for centuries.

If humanity fails to colonize the stars it will have nothing to do with a lack of resources or for that matter a global nuclear war. Despite all the rubbish you see on TV humanity is quite a bit past the point were we can destroy ourselves so completely that we could cease to exist as a sentient race. Whatever we do might slow us down years or centuries but we are talking about billions of years so that's utterly irrelevant.

Unless the governments of the world are hiding highly advanced technology(which is in the realm of possibility), I do not think that humans will reach the stage of colonizing other planets. It is debatable if we could colonize an asteroid in the asteroid belt to harvest the raw materials on said asteroid(iron, nickel, etc.)

As you seem to to be mostly arguing from a false presume the conclusion is wrong. Whether governments holds high technologies in storage or not is equally irrelevant ( stealth aircraft changed nothing, ditto for most technologies) as planetary colonization is about will; we have had the technology since the 70's and it's only gotten cheaper since.

I would love to see alien intelligence. If that intelligence was hostile, I would still be amazed. However, as I stated in an earlier post, Intelligence in nature is absurdly rare. The arrival of alien intelligence on Earth would confirm to me only the fact of the insignificance of our little solar system in the universe. But it would still be great!

Again, great thinking in your post.

If you want to judge yourself insignificant that is fine ( you know yourself better than i do so who am i to disagree with your expert opinion) but i would like to request that you afford the rest of humanity the simple service of letting us decide our collective or individual worth.

All thus humanity bashing is sickening. Those who can't stand the rest of the members of their species should start doing some introspection and leave our business to us.

Regards,

Stellar

i think the simplest answer is tech intelligence is rare. We're just too far apart in space & time to come into contact.

The other options for me are

all tech civs eventually destroy themselves, ,maybe through some unforseen tech advancement which accidently destroys them. We too are heading for this same fate. quite depressing.

or

all civs that hit the tech singularity dont interact with pre-singularity civilizations like us. Something weird might happen at the tech singularity. Like they find a way to migrate to a nicer universe. Perhaps theres millions of civs all in a parallel universe waiting for us. Our universe only contains pre-singularity civs not capable of interstellar travel.

[edit on 17-5-2010 by yeti101]

If universe is infinite, it means there are infinite numbers of
- civilizations
- failed civilizations,
- aggressive civilizations
- friendly civilizations...

... there are infinite number of me sitting and writing exactly this and infinite number of you reading this.

Originally posted by yeti101
i think the simplest answer is tech intelligence is rare. We're just too far apart in space & time to come into contact.

The other options for me are

all tech civs eventually destroy themselves, ,maybe through some unforseen tech advancement which accidently destroys them. We too are heading for this same fate. quite depressing.

or

all civs that hit the tech singularity dont interact with pre-singularity civilizations like us. Something weird might happen at the tech singularity. Like they find a way to migrate to a nicer universe. Perhaps theres millions of civs all in a parallel universe waiting for us. Our universe only contains pre-singularity civs not capable of interstellar travel.

[edit on 17-5-2010 by yeti101]

Having considered all the preceding options, comments and points of view, in my mind, the simplest explanation to account for the vast emptiness "out there" is simply that every technologically developing civilization reaches within a very short period of time their own instance of singularity. This may be an absolutely unavoidable outcome and the ultimate price that must be paid for the gift of technology.
Perhaps this singularity hits each and every developing civilization at such an early point in their development and long before they have the capability to make determined interstellar migrations.
Take us humans as an example ... our rate of technological progress is demonstrably accelerating at an incredible rate and I can definitely see the likelihood of something like AI or machine intelligence being created much sooner and easier than say, a capability for sustained interstellar travel.

Fermi Paradox

As I see it, there are 3 types of civilizations that humans might recognize as intelligent. Anything above #3 is by its very nature, unrecognizable.

1. Pre-radio. Any civilization incapable of at least radio transmission is essentially invisible. In the near future humans will be able to image Earth sized planets and get a sense of what sort of chemistry is going on there. That might betray hydrocarbon industrialization that was typical on Earth just before the 20th century, but it's a long shot. The Milky Way galaxy could be overflowing with such planets and humans would not know it.

2. Earth clones. An exact clone of Earth as it is now, literally in every detail, would be invisible to humans here, even if orbiting a neighboring star. Even if through some magic human beings knew exactly where to look, SETI's Allen Telescope Array would not see another clone of Earth on its interstellar doorstep. The Milky Way galaxy could have billions of exact clones of Earth and humans would not know it. The detection technology is not quite there yet.

3. Humans x^y. An advanced civilization goes silent in its communication event horizon. Electronics get faster and use less power as they progress. Such a civilization goes dark to human attempts at detection.


White Elephant Physics

It is obvious that physics is missing a great deal of understanding. Over 90% of the observable universe is simply missing. Dark energy, dark matter, and the White Elephant that is the singularity of the Big Bang should be a clue in the Fermi Paradox. If string or M theory are correct, there are several unseen physical dimensions to the universe. In principle, the birth of this universe was a one-way event, according to current human understanding. If a truly advanced civilization is able to engineer its own universe, such a process might be a one-way migration. Super civilizations may simply drop out of our universe, never able to return.


Meaning of Life

Biology is 100% fatal. No matter what advancement is made, nothing beats entropy and thermodynamics. This universe is running down and is going to die a cold dark death. If a civilization jumps from one planet to another, it is only delaying the inevitable. If such a civilization takes over an entire galaxy, replacing indigenous populations, eventually that civilization has to fight itself for diminishing returns. Again, the inevitable conclusion is fatal. The only way out is to ditch biology and leave this dying universe behind.


Pre-exodus

Advanced civilizations that hang around are not detectable by human beings. The physics that they employ is far beyond human understanding. They are mature enough to know that every living thing takes its own path, like a biologist that watches a predator kill its prey, and possibly even die out. If a race dies out, it is meant to do so, and something else will take its place. Such civilizations engage those that attain their peer status, with some luck and a lot of work, humans may get there someday. I would not expect the gift of a black monolith or some sort of cosmic Rosetta Stone. Rather, like obtaining a cell phone allows communication with another person with a cell phone, inventing advanced communication technology using presently unknown physics will open a channel in itself.


Meaning of Everything

Ask not what the universe can do for you; ask what you are to the universe. Nature can not build an iPod or a Corvette without a biological entity as intermediary. Intelligent biological beings are transient structures in what may be a system of energy evolution. It may be that certain types of universes can only come to be through extreme forms of pandimensional intelligence, far beyond the capability of mere biochemical life. Universes external to this one may employ structures that have no analog here. Gravity, electromagnetism, etc., may not exist and reality there may have no correlation to experience here. ET may simply change context.

DE

this is a very interesting article and a good read

now here is my question. is it possible that a technologically advanced civilization CREATED us? and to them we are the equivalent to an ant farm? or an experiment or possibly a resource?

what if Earth isn't our home world? what if we were sent out to colonize a different parts of the galaxy and when we got here the economical/political/social/cultural center of out once great civilization failed and we were stranded here with literally nothing but our selves. or perhaps we were conquered and are now slaves and our technology only progresses at a rate that our "owners" allow, and are keeping us ignorant so we don't figure out the truth. are these also possibilities?

Thanks for a wonderful, thought provoking thread.

I have never given this much thought before reading through these 13 pages, i always assumed that there would be other civilsations out there without wondering why we hadnt seen them. However i do think there are plausible mechanisms for why this would be the case.

As to why we havent yet seen an advanced race, i dont believe that radio communication would be detectable by humans at interstellar distances. This is for two main reasons. Firstly, the strength of signal coming from an Earth-like civilisation would be too weak to pick up. Secondly, the period within which radio communication is used is short.

Working within the Fermi paradigm, I was thinking about the most efficient way in which an advanced civilisation would want to colonise the galaxy. That also led me to think about the reason *why* a race would want to colonise the galaxy.

In terms of who might be out there, there is a tremendous first-mover advantage. The race that advances first will be able to wipe out their competition. There will have been a region in the galaxy which was best suited to the formation of intelligent life, and so it might be likely that a single race had sufficient advantage to dominate and wrest control. Following that, this race would then turn to colonisation.

Now, the prime evolutionary drive of all lifeforms is survival and replication. I will therefore assume that an alien race would also be most pre-occupied with survival and replication. While colonising other planets eliminates the possibility of a race being eradicated by most natural and/or cosmic means, it does not protect very well against eradication by virus or hostile bacteria. In much the same way that a pandemic could conceivably occur on Earth and wipe us out, efficient space travel would also mean that viruses could spread quickly between colonised planets.

The goal of an alien race would therefore not only be colonisation, but the continued evolution of its base DNA in order to give themselves the best chance of overall survival. They would probably want to accomplish this in the most efficient manner possible.

The most efficient way i could think of (in my brief period of reflection) would be seeding through the use of Von Neumann type mechanisms. However, they would be looking for a diversity of life form. So IMO the seeding would be accomplished using a base of their DNA which held the essential traits of the race, but allowed maximum evolution by using the amazing process of evolution in nature rather than designed or experimental evolution in labs. This would be both an efficient and effective means of evolutionary progress, and guarantee the largest diversity.

So now we get to Earth. Could we be the result of this alien seeding program? In the case of DNA seeding, it could be that the Von Neumann program would seek out the most advanced species, by whatever criteria, and seed those species with the base alien DNA. The result, on Earth, would be the evolution from apes to the more intelligent humanoids. Could this be why the 'missing link' is yet to be found? There may not be that link, we may have made that evolutionary jump through such a DNA seeding.

Once we are advanced enough, we will discover the method of communication used by the alien race (as mentioned by others, possibly some form of quantum entanglement or similar), and then be able to communicate our presence. It would not be efficient for them to look for us, they could put their resources to better use and allow us to find them once we are useful to the galaxy.

Once we have found them, we will then be part of this galactic race which has the same master DNA but a wide variety of genetic forms in order to allow the greatest chance of survival of the master DNA.

Thats my brief theory, formulated while reading all of your responses but adding a hint of evoluionary theory. Feedback is, of course, most welcome!

Originally posted by Xeven
I do believe there is other life out there. If you look at all the life that has existed on earth. Only one has become intelligent enough to begin to fathom the idea of talking to other intelligent beings.

That does not play well for there being lots of intelligent life out there.

Life may indeed be abundant in the universe but intelligent life may be an aberration.

Maybe the e.t.'s pick up our satellite signals and can view earth through all our cameras and can see that "wow earth is a chaotic planet, why go to that prison planet full of corruption"? Maybe we'll see them in 2012, who knows, im just speculating. If I get the chance to explore some other planet, i'm goin! "Whos coming with me man? Whos coming with me?