A Question Concerning The Existence Of Intelligent ET Life

I would just like to put this idea out there for discussion.

Nowadays quite a lot of everyday people will readily admit that they have no problem accepting the idea of life existing someplace else in the universe.

Most people are quite aware(to some degree) of how big our galaxy is and the fact that there are planets orbiting other stars much the same as ours and so on.

When I ask somebody 'do you think there are intelligent beings out there' the answer is always 'yes' followed usually by something like 'there has to be, the universe is huge, we can't be the only ones!' Even hard core UFO skeptics will admit this, indeed most rational people will, but many will state that they do not believe that any ET's have visited Earth however.


The oft quoted Drake Equation states that there must be millions of systems out there inhabited by intelligent life, and I must admit it is quite exciting sometimes to gaze at the sky on a starry night and contemplate this.

What I would like to ask people to think about is this: if there is life out there, intelligent life, and you accept this to be true, then why would you think that there are no civilizations who have mastered inter-stellar travel?

Mankind has only been flying machines in his own atmosphere for a little over a century. It wasn't too long ago when we were living in a very primitive manner(there are still humans who do). We haven't had advanced technology for very long, we're a relatively young species tecnologically speaking, and we've a long way to go.

There are star systems out in space far older than ours, there are planets orbiting those stars which are also very old. If you believe that there is life out there you must accept one of two things: Either there are civilistaions out there that are far far older and more advanced than ours. Or: We are the most advanced civilization in the universe! Well I think you can probably guess which one I accept?

Faster than light travel is theoretically possible, we know this, we just don't know how to make it happen, yet. Has somebody else out there learned how to do it? Just because we can't do it doesn't mean other advanced civilizations haven't cracked it, indeed it would be arrogant to assume otherwise, don't you think? Imagine a civilization which has been at an advanced technological level for thousands, even millions, of years? We would seem very primitive to them, yet to ourselves we are the top dogs, kinda funny really, like watching a child who thinks he/she is the centre of the universe.

Anyways, all I'm saying is this: If you believe there is intelligent life out there then why is it too much to accept that they may have visited us, and maybe still are?

Thanks for reading.

Somebody on this site, and damn I wish I could quote them to give them credit, said how would you explain to man who had just discovered fire how a microwave oven works?

I adore that analogy as a spark of hope for what is possible to come in the future.

On top of that, a lot of fantastic medical technology was discovered by accidents, such as X-Rays or penicillin, and I like to bolster my hope for interstellar travel with those examples of human curiosity leading to mastery.

Yep, they're out there, and so advanced they would appear to us as god like.

I dont go on the idea of wizzing around space at faster than light speed though, there is too much junk out there. I think they will have the ability to enter coordinates and just appear, no travel involved.

reply to post by windus


Indeed, we have a lot going for and against us. That man you speak of who recently discovered fire didn't have to get an R+D grant or a licence to do it, and he wasn't taken to court by another caveman who claims to have patented the idea three winters previously?

Originally posted by VoidHawk
Yep, they're out there, and so advanced they would appear to us as god like.

I dont go on the idea of wizzing around space at faster than light speed though, there is too much junk out there. I think they will have the ability to enter coordinates and just appear, no travel involved.

Space warping, and worm holes. These both are considered a FTL travel method. The idea of actually sitting in a machine and trying to drive it up to a speed approaching and exceeding the speed of light is so 20th century dude, we're way past that(on the blackboard anyhow )

The note on patents is a good point here!

The barriers in the way of any of our modern inventors and discoverers is funding and, essentially, permission.

Funding to get research done, researchers in, an equipped lab, materials to work with and the list goes on...this is a familiar barrier.

On top of that you got me thinking about permission via patents and copyrights and who owns what, and permission for lab space, or to own or experiment with certain materials...is there any freedom to experiment with space fairing materials? I'm guessing no. (NOR FUNDING. hey let's shut down the whole shuttle project....argh).

I think the power or dare I say responsibility to still create interstellar travel possibilities lies in the mathematicians in our society. The theories to make vast distances at our disposal could be discovered and really concretely developed...that is my hope. A good friend of mine fiddles with equations for fun and has happened to re-discover a lot of existing mathematics that he had never learned because they were advanced and he is hilariously not in school for maths.

So he gives me hope that others are tinkering. Perhaps a wicked solid framework of theory is what we need to happen first, to then inspire any kind of 'make it happen' funding.

Anyone know about any permissions - copyright, patents etc - regarding theories and equations and whatnot? Curious now.

Yes, the universe is astoundingly vast.
The vastness of the universe does indeed set probability quite high for millions, if not billions of intelligent technological civilizations absolutely thriving across the universe.

Still, the very same vastness that makes this probability, is the very same thing that makes it quite improbable that any one intelligence will ever bump into any other.

There can be Billions of civilizations, all of them even having instantaneous travel, but, because the universe is so vast, running into the exact place and time in space that another civilization is extent, is extremely improbable.

Take just our galaxy, of some 300-700 Billion stars.
Average that to 500 Billion just for grins.

If you could travel to every single one of those 500 Billion stars instantaneously, and survey the whole star system in just one second before jumping to the next, how long would that take?

That's 500,000,000,000 seconds.
divide that by 60 for minutes = 8,300,000,000 minutes. 8 billion minutes
divide that by another 60 for hours and we get = 138,300,000 hours
divide by 24 for the number of days = 5763889
and then divide by 365 for years = 15,791

That's over 15,000 years to explore our galaxy and our galaxy alone in spending only one second at each star.

Multiply that 15,000 by the 500 Billion other galaxies there are out in the known universe and even taking one second at each star would take longer than the age of the universe itself to explore the universe.

There’s a lot of space. How would they know we are here?

intothecontinuum.tumblr.com...

Humans on Earth have been transmitting radio waves for over 100 years. The furthest these waves could have traveled away from Earth by now is about 100 light years. Thus, in communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations we have only managed to cover a region 200 light years in diameter around the Earth. Relative to the size of our Milky Way galaxy, which stretches about 100,000 light years in diameter, this is like comparing the area covered by Los Angeles to the surface area of the Earth! Since transmitted radio waves have not had the power to get through Earth’s ionosphere until about the 50s this distance is even smaller still. Nevertheless, after about 1 light year radio waves would probably be indistinguishable from the background radiation anyway. Perhaps this provides some justification for the Fermi paradox.

reply to post by windus


Yeah that had never occurred me either, can you copyright a scientific or mathematical theory? Probably not. But you can classify it, just say it's in the interest of national security etc.

If there are intelligent beings observing us then it's no wonder why they would choose to keep their distance

Originally posted by Druscilla
Yes, the universe is astoundingly vast.
The vastness of the universe does indeed set probability quite high for millions, if not billions of intelligent technological civilizations absolutely thriving across the universe.

Still, the very same vastness that makes this probability, is the very same thing that makes it quite improbable that any one intelligence will ever bump into any other.

There can be Billions of civilizations, all of them even having instantaneous travel, but, because the universe is so vast, running into the exact place and time in space that another civilization is extent, is extremely improbable.

That's true. And probably the best argument for them not being here.

reply to post by Druscilla


My brain had come to that conclusion a few years ago as well. This makes me miserable, frankly. But I also believe that the adventure of just seeing other things in space is well worth the travel, even without any extra terrestrial neighbours to speak of.

Also, small life forms from bacteria to animals would be lovely to find.


reply to post by Pauligirl


Pauligirl makes a great point here to which I will add that now that most of our signals are digital and are transmitted globally by bouncing around us from satellite to destination, our planetary noise rarely transmits even those few hundred light years off the globe anymore. Our communication is globally reflected, basically, and we don't cast signals into the vastness of space anymore, nearly at all.

Personally I don't believe in aliens. I believe what people are seeing are demonic in nature. I believe in fallen Angels. If their truly were ET's, as others have said before and I agree with, they wouldn't fly millions of miles to get here and then just grab a few core samples and leave.

life definitely no doubt in my mind the universe is just to big as for intelligence that is debatable I mean how do you define intelligence by the technology you posses or by what you do with said technology? especially with a developing species like humans give us enough tech to destroy ourselves or enable us to enter the galactic community that would be an intelligent et to me the rest would just be microbes right nasa? (sarcasm)

I believe we have been and are being visited, whether or not these beings are extra-terrestrial or something else.
However, there is a difference between being technologically advanced and finding Earth amongst trillions of other planets in the vast expanse of space.

In addendum to the edit on my previous post where I showed over 15,000 years to explore just our galaxy with instantaneous travel, and with total exploration of each star in just one second ...

By the time that 15,000 years is done, and one got back to point of origin on Earth, human civilization could very well be extinct.

The question also arises, what if a similar feat of galactic mapping carried out a million years ago, or a billion years ago?

Sure, life on our planet as such it was would have blipped on the survey, but, not as such that we would have showed up as intelligent or technological.

It all boils down to being in the right place especially at the right time in a universe that's over 14 Billion years old as we reckon.

If every single galaxy had at least one intelligent technological civilization, there'd be over 500 Billion intelligent technological civilizations, but, between galaxies, the distances are quite very astoundingly vast, and each civilization would likely be more concerned about investigating its own local galaxy as opposed to sniffing around other harder to reach places like other galaxies.

Even if there were 2 or 3 or even a dozen intelligent technological civilizations per galaxy, chances of any running into each other, depending on when and where they are in the universe is still quite very small.

Originally posted by PMNOrlando
Personally I don't believe in aliens. I believe what people are seeing are demonic in nature. I believe in fallen Angels. If their truly were ET's, as others have said before and I agree with, they wouldn't fly millions of miles to get here and then just grab a few core samples and leave.

There are arguments for and against both of those theories. For all we know, they could be abiding by some sort of universal government that says we must advance on our own to a certain point before they can reveal their existence publicly.
Check this lecture out though, I think you may enjoy it.

Originally posted by Druscilla
Yes, the universe is astoundingly vast.
The vastness of the universe does indeed set probability quite high for millions, if not billions of intelligent technological civilizations absolutely thriving across the universe.

Still, the very same vastness that makes this probability, is the very same thing that makes it quite improbable that any one intelligence will ever bump into any other.

I don't know, but to me, that sounds a little anthropocentric. Just 150 years ago we barely knew the importance of washing our hands, yet plenty of people seem to think that we've somehow unlocked the most significant secrets of the universe and of space travel since then. I would politely disagree....

Fermi, using more sophisticated math which accounts for the expanding civilizations' increasing footprint, concluded that "they" should be here by now. And that was even if assuming only a very modest rate of expansion, with hundreds of years passing between stellar hops. So where does that leave humanity, psychologically? We think they're out there... and we all love talking about the Fermi paradox and the various reasons "they" are not here yet... and we all love the idea of intelligent life just staying where it's at and waiting for us to find it... but what's it going to take to get people comfortable with the idea of other civilizations possibly finding us first?

I've always liked this passage by Hynek:
"I have attended many gatherings of scientists, both formal and informal, at which the subject of UFOs has been brought up incidentally, either by chance or sometimes 'innocently' by me in order to observe the reaction. I have found it amusing thus to set a cat among the pigeons, for the reaction has been out of keeping with the traditional 'weigh and consider' stance of mature scientists. Frequently the reaction has been akin to that of a group of pre-teenagers watching a movie scene of exceptional tenderness or pathos quite beyond their years to appreciate: giggles and squirming suggest a defense against something the scientists cannot yet understand. It has seemed to me that such exhibitions by mature scientists are more than expressions of pity for the uninformed. Perhaps they are expressions of deep­-seated uncertainty or fear."

(Personally, I think he's onto something!)

reply to post by Druscilla


Your reasoning is flawed. You are assuming that they would need to physically explore all (or many) star systems to locate other intelligent species because that is basically what we would have to do at this point. But if you are agreeing that their technology is sufficient to explore the galaxy in ships instantaneously, then their life-detection capabilities should be as superior to ours as their travel methods are to ours. A hundred years ago, we had to explore every square inch of our planet to determine what life lived where. Now we identify marine life miles away using sonar, survey our skies with radar, fly drones over the forest and see every creature with flir cameras, and use radio telescopes and spectrometry to identify objects and composition of stars billions of light years away. The advances we will make in a million more years is what they may have already. I think they know where the intelligent life is without having to visit every star.

Insightful thread. The thing is, galaxies are moving away from each other (except for galaxies close together in clusters), so even if there are life forms out there capable of interstellar travel, we're only getting farther and farther away from each other. That's the paradox of the universe! You'd think, due to the immense vastness of space the odds of life should be great, but taking into account distances, I wonder if we will ever meet...I just hope I'm alive to see that day.

EDIT: Also, if it took approx. 13.5 billion years for life to end up appearing on only one planet, that must mean we're an incredibly rare occurrence. But a self-centered view like that won't suffice since we are just an infinitesimal part of it all.

reply to post by greybeard1


I'm pretty sure the premise of instantaneous travel, combined with absolute survey of a solar body plus any system around it in a single second covers the whole remote sensing gig.

Change instant travel in my premise to immediate remote survey with all the detail you could ever want, all done in just one second, and it will STILL take over 15,000 years of combined seconds to 'explore' the entirety of just our galaxy.

Do we have the technology right now to explore any planetary system to any level of detail compared to what I've described in even one minute, or a year's worth of study time? No.
We still don't know all there is to know about our OWN solar system.

Thus, regardless of how good our remote sensing and surveying might currently be, or potentially become, even up to total and completel survey of a system in finite detail all in one second, it would take a great deal more than the benchmark of 15,000 years I've set to explore the entirety of just our galaxy (what we can see of it) in detail.

Toss in as many scientists studying as many systems all at the same time as you want, and it would still take a monumental amount of time.

I'm not saying that stumbling on the chance of encountering other intelligent life is impossible. I am, however, saying that even with optimal benchmarks like instantaneous travel with the ability to complete a total system survey in one second, it's extremely improbable.

Now, step back and look at it using the slow, very low resolution methods we currently have.

It's not impossible, no, but, the universe is extremely vast, and fantasizing that anyone out there even looking for anyone else finding one or the other on purpose or accident has a very low probability for success.

It'd be akin to putting two people here on earth, alone with no other people, each person on opposte sides of the planet from each other, and telling them to then go find each other.
On top of that, each person might on might not exist during the same time period as the other one is searching. The other person on the planet might have been around 1000 or 10,000 years ago, or they might show up in a 100, or 1000 years.

That's 2 people, one planet.

For a whole galaxy? The numbers are astounding.