A Question Concerning The Existence Of Intelligent ET Life

I agree.
We should not be so arrogant as to claim
all we know is all there is.
Dark energy, dark matter,
we don't understand gravity or human consciousness.
We don't know if the universe is endless or finite.
Other dimensions are hypothesized but unproven.

The way science works is we find one piece of a puzzle
and this leads us to the next,
or we may trip over something else en route,
which leads us off in an entirely different direction to a totally unrelated discovery.

Big things at the moment in science may appear to have plateaued,
and indeed maybe the fairly "easy" stuff is what we have achieved to date.

The next jump in technology may require radically different thinking
and directing the resources at the right people.
However this is going to become increasingly more difficult
as the earth is becoming swamped with an expanding human population
each and every one clamoring for resources.

Originally posted by seabhac-rua
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.

edit on 2-6-2012 by seabhac-rua because: (no reason given)

Billions of system do exist . Hell,,If we exist ,at least one mirror earth-like-planet should exist. Off course the plausibility of tons of systems do coexist is high.

But,,,,,

The laws of traveling in interstellar space are the same for every Being.. Its too dam difficult... And because much older systems exist doesn't mean "they" have figured it out. Regardless living things are not meant to survive in space. Since '69 we've hit a wall. We are stuck in our own orbit and we will not be passing it anytime soon.

And light speed isn't possible, unless you(ET) can handle an uncontrolled even horizon.


If anything, Beings have only ONE option and its to send terrestrial machines to do all the work. Bottom line if "they" exist we won't know and neither would "they". Space is too big and too hostile.


Take care

Kandinsky:

Like others have pointed out, the odds of us existing at the same time as someone else and being within spitting distance are pretty remote. What these odds fail to address is whether life is necessary? By this, I'm asking if biology should be a benchmark of identifying intelligence? Could a long-lived, wide-spread civilisation realise its own mortality and invest itself in the perpetuation of its existence as non-biological intelligence?

In this scenario, organic intelligence would eventually become something like digital intelligence and be amenable to infinite replication and endless development as long as it had space to exist in. Imagine yourself as a digital entity as easy to copy as an mp3 file. Entropy would be one limitation. As such, time and space would be less of an issue than we like to imagine. Self-replicating *machines* could spread through systems and galaxies and contain the consciousness of life-forms that haven't existed in a flesh and blood sense for billions of years.

By 'machines' I'm operating under the limitations of our language; these would be like comparing a cave painting with the blue-prints of a space station. Also, if intelligence was translated into energy, would it be confined to the same space/time we are?

I think this is the future of any intelligent species as it seeks to insure its existence against the forces of entropy and the inevitability of endlessly collapsing civilization.

My boyfriend and I were talking about this thread today and I mentioned your post because it reminded me of our talks we had about life in the grander scheme of things. We believe that our souls go through a learning stage and that's when we are in bodies and on a planet. Once we have learned our lessons and have reached the next stage we then go through a purity stage because our souls are kinda dirty in a sense and that's another point where we are in bodies and on a planet. Different planets can be there to learn different lessons and go through other stages.
Essentially then yes we would be like an energy because in between when we are just souls we are essentially an energy.

reply to post by TheAnarchist

There is "some" evidence to suggest that children are born with residual vivid memories of past-lives, which is an idea strongly discouraged by modern theology and culture and so these memories quickly fade as the child develops a sense of consistent environment and is taught which thoughts are acceptable and which aren't - aka "conditioned", by all kinds of authority figures in home life, school life, social life and most cases "church life". Some children insist that they've even had lives on other planets, though most the ones I've come across only remember earthly things.

It could be bullsh*t, who knows. Maybe these kids just pick up this information from a very young age and have incredibly complex, deep and profound imaginations, like the skeptics believe. I don't think I was born with such memories, I can't remember the specifics of what I thought about as a child. But if each lifetime were indeed just a one-off, I imagine it would defeat the purpose of the experiences and evolution in general. I find it hard to believe a baby born in the middle-ages would instinctively know how to operate an iphone, but I've seen babies not old enough to talk pick up modern technology for the first time and work it out faster than my grandmother could. Is this evidence of consciousness evolution? Some form of esoteric progress? Maybe. Perhaps it is just crazy new-age bullsh*t. I can't test the theory because I don't know any babies born in the middle-ages.

In any case, energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change forms, and I'm not a scientist by any means, but I don't believe consciousness is exempt to that rule. And I believe consciousness has some role in deciding what life forms we come back as, or choose to experience. I believe that we all consciously chose to have a human experience before we were born, perhaps because we were ready for it. Maybe that's why life is perceived as so difficult for humans - maybe we're new at this. We're generally not very astute or intuitive about these things as a species, we're struggling. Maybe in our past lives we were "lesser" animals/beings, starting out as simple cells, and choosing the next grandest experience we could understand from that perspective. This mimics the concept of evolution, whereby biology progresses by "choosing" changes in its own structure. If nature can make choices, something seemingly unintelligent and unaware, then why can't "we" after death?

So maybe after this experience (after death), we will get to choose to experience what life is like an another planet. This is obviously the long way to extraterrestrial contact, but it's still an option I believe. And it gives reason and hope to that big starry night sky, regardless of whether we'll get there in this lifetime or not. It's absurd to think that we'll ever personally visit another planet in our own solar system, let alone the next galaxy, in our lifetime. If "life" ended after one go, that would render the universe completely and utterly pointless, and nature doesn't do things for no reason. No one life is long enough to learn all the secrets of the universe, but an infinite life, expressed as many trillions of beings and lifetimes, obviously is.

I agree with you whole post. A couple years back I remember watching this little interview with a young boy about 5yrs old and he remembered being a Fighter Pilot in one of the Wars. He remembered incredible information and was even shown picture of people and able to name them because they were members of his team. Also there are probably little things we left in our memory to help guide us along the path to make sure we are going to be learning the right things.

As I was saying in response to Kandinsky, I was talking to my boyfriend about this thread and I also mentioned your post as well. The spirit part I talked about in my responding post to Kandinsky can also be applied to yours. Your view point is basically, in a bit different words, the same thing that we were discussing and how we think our journey in this universe is.

I too think it would be nice if a higher intelligence made contact with us but as I said to Kandinsky, they probably just see us as going through the learning lessons in order to go onto the next bigger step in our evolution as souls/consciousness/energy

Originally posted by seabhac-rua
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.

Yeah, definitely there must be life out there somewhere some very primitive, i.e. bacterial, and some very highly evolved like us. My reasoning is if it happened here it will happen on any similar planet in the universe.

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.

Yeah, it's a no-brainer, really and describes me just fine. There is among scientist one small minority however who support the Rare Earth hypothesis, meaning that while life evolved here and eventually produced us a lot of things sort of conspired for that to happen and that elsewhere conditions may be not that ideal. I believe, for example, that we are lucky not only to be in the Goldilocks zone in our Solar system, but also at the outskirts of our galaxy, because the further in you go towards the central black hole the more chaotic it gets.

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.

Well, Rare Earth supporters would say, yes, potential for life, but Drake's Equation can't calculate for local conditions like a nearby star goes supernova and boom the potential for life or life itself is extinguished. There's a lot of hazards out there, asteroids, comets, supernovae, gamma ray burst, black holes, so maybe we are alone. Still, I think even if you try to account for every major disaster the number of potentially habitable worlds is just huge. So, no I am pretty sure we neither the first nor alone.

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?

Mainly, because of the distances and velocities involved. The nearest star system to us is Alpha Centauri at about 4 light years away. It's a logistic nightmare to plan such a trip even we could fly near light speed. And I am not sure our body would endure such velocities.

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.

True, but in just one century we went from flying first a few hundred meters at very low altitude and low speeds to breaking the sound barrier to finally "flying" to the moon. How far will we have advanced in another century, I have no idea and, sadly, I won't be around to witness. Already in my life, I have seen amazing progress.

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?

For me it is not that clearcut. Of course there are stars much older out there, but this does not mean that any civilization there has managed to survive and evolve. As I said, there are many hazards out there. Also, those older civilizations might have self-destroyed themselves. We have been around for only 2 million years and were lucky enough that no big asteroid like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs has hit earth.

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.

Theoretically possible and practically feasible are two very different things. We have no idea what traveling at light speed would do to our bodies never-mind traveling at FTL. For me the evidence for alien visitation just is not there. Certainly not in our age where you can fake and hoax everything. I am bit like Apostle Thomas in that regard; I need to shake hands with an alien to believe they are here.

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.

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.

edit on 2-6-2012 by Druscilla because: (no reason given)

Quote so people who skipped abit can see this cool post.

I would also like to add this hypothetical.
If the universe was infinitely big that would still only make it probable that there is other intelligence life not 100% maybe 99.999% but not 100% Ok i pulled the percentage out ofmy ass but still infinte just makes it probable.
Sadly i don't think were ever going to meet ET even though there are/have been 10000000000000000s of intelligent species out there at some point

reply to post by Blue Shift


If I saw a tree would I think it was the only tree in the world?
If I saw a tree would I think it is the only plant in the world?
If I saw a fish should I think it's the only fish in the world?
If I saw a fish with two eyes should I think it's the only fish with two eyes in the world

Take intelligence as a biological behaviour, an attribute. Just like anything else, if you see it once, there a very good chance you are going to see millions of other copies of it along with thousands of versions of it.
Intelligence is an attribute of biological systems and perhaps complex networked feedback systems of any type, biological or not.

On planet earth intelligence is VERY abundant. And there are multiple types of intelligence (ask any woman )?

So if I see a dog should I think it is the only intelligent animal in the world?
If I see a human should I think it is the only intelligent animal in the world?

If I see ANY intelligent animal on planet Earth should I think it is the only intelligent life form in vast vast vast universe that has existed for untold millenia?

OF COURSE NOT!

Intelligence is a common attribute on earth, there are just different type of intelligences. The existence of intelligence goes back to the invetebrates billions of years ago!

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.

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.

edit on 2-6-2012 by Druscilla because: (no reason given)

or maybe they already knew where we were a long time ago,because they put us here. They didn`t need to search the entire universe because they knew all along exactly where they left us.

It doesn't look like anybody 'put' us here as anybody who understand biology can clearly see that humans are just one type of human species that still exists from many precursors, some of which only recently went extinct, and that we share extremely close kinship with the rest of the organisms on Earth from apes right down to plants.
Please understand a bit about science before posting random ideas. Then again this is a forum where people think cats could be alien spies!

Now if you want to say aliens 'seeded' bacteria or plants that might be a theory but they would have had to wait a few billions years to get a result if the result was 'intelligent life that will go out looking for them'.

Not every efficient was it !

If there are aliens and alien civilisations that exist throughout the galaxy I'm sure they can detect us very easily if they want to. If you are talking about technology only slightly more advanced than us they probably have networked telescopes that stretch widths of 100s of solar systems across that could clearly resolve planets atmospheres.

In fact they would have detected life on Earth millions to billions of years ago, life is an open secret with a neon sign saying 'welcome to bountiful Earth'! They didn't need to detect our radio waves blah blah.

With more advanced technology they may have abilities we haven't even imagined yet.

reply to post by Tardacus


Sure, more Calvin Ball.
Maybe we ARE the aliens.

Maybe the whole universe is a created artifact on a lab bench and we're just an experiment?

Maybe the universe was DESIGNED so large just to give different sorts of intelligent life a chance to grow up without interference from other life.

What if god is a girl?

What if the Hindus were right?

What if we had developed tentacles instead of arms and legs?

What if we all had super powers?

You can go on and on and on and on with all these wild 'WHAT-IFs' of fantasy all you want.
"WHAT-IFs" are pointless since anyone can WHAT-IF anything with every WHAT-IF essentially being equal.

What if we had more eyes than we actually do?

What if we could all fly?

What if we could travel in Time?

Calvin Ball.

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.

reply to post by Druscilla


Citing the numbers in such a way is non too practical given that the abilities of any technologies they may have are unknown. One second for each star system? What if they don't even need to go there, or even stop?

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.

reply to post by PMNOrlando


People always use the "fly millions of miles to get here" argument as though it would actually be some kind of chore or trek to them.

Originally posted by Morg234

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.

(reply to post by Druscilla)

 

Citing the numbers in such a way is non too practical given that the abilities of any technologies they may have are unknown. One second for each star system? What if they don't even need to go there, or even stop?

Don't be so silly and rational, Morg! Heheh. Druscilla isn't aware that humanity itself is probably within 50 years of being able to single out, with instruments located HERE, those extrasolar planets which host intelligent ET life. That's why anyone suggesting that her hypothetical method of exoplanet exploration could be easily bypassed is obviously loony or playing 'Calvin Ball' or whatever... and 'her method', remember, seems to involve a single group of humans in a large ship, hopping from each star to the next using 20th century propulsion methods.

Will she come back and say this is "just a forum", that she's "just offering her opinion", so "why be so harsh", etc., all while continuing to remain blissfully unaware of the ridicule and condescension she routinely places into her own posts? Maybe!

I'm cool with people disagreeing, of course. It's inevitable, and should be done civilly. It's hard to that do, though, when ignorance steps into the room, starts laughing at others (as elsewhere on this forum), while pumping its fists in the air and shouting "knowledge is power." It's very hard not to respond to that.

Neat thinking on this.

The way we think/comprehend at our level now could be a far cry from another civilization thats(?),lets say 500 times more advanced,would not even have to be that even,,could be 100 times also.
The books would be re-written big time so to say.

We came a far way in a 100 years,cracking the atom,going to the moon,hubble,,the atom smasher,sending probes to mars and other planets,etc.
Imagine another race out there that has a 3-10 thousand years edge on us tech wise.
What we know compared to them="Our book would be thrown out the door" on what we know now compared to them.

Be neat to see us get along better on this planet, but man has a long way to go.
Our space shuttle would be a blimp/kite, if our tech was 5 times more advanced.

I do think we have been visted also,,some could be probes, a mothership taking an interest of study,,,many possibilities?

We all have seen to much strange stuff on shuttle flights and other missions,what gets me(?), NASA,,rebukes themself alot on discoveries and we just learned this and that,et.... But when it comes to UFO's?
Oh no,space ice,trash in space or such.

Hey NASA,,why do you give us all blurry crap images and say the other 90% never turned out!
Or give that show nothing yet digital quality?

hey sorry to gripe,,S&F for you...

M

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets

Originally posted by Morg234

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.

(reply to post by Druscilla)

 

Citing the numbers in such a way is non too practical given that the abilities of any technologies they may have are unknown. One second for each star system? What if they don't even need to go there, or even stop?

Don't be so silly and rational, Morg! Heheh. Druscilla isn't aware that humanity itself is probably within 50 years of being able to single out, with instruments located HERE, those extrasolar planets which host intelligent ET life. That's why anyone suggesting that her hypothetical method of exoplanet exploration could be easily bypassed is obviously loony or playing 'Calvin Ball' or whatever... and 'her method', remember, seems to involve a single group of humans in a large ship, hopping from each star to the next using 20th century propulsion methods.

Will she come back and say this is "just a forum", that she's "just offering her opinion", so "why be so harsh", etc., all while continuing to remain blissfully unaware of the ridicule and condescension she routinely places into her own posts? Maybe!

I'm cool with people disagreeing, of course. It's inevitable, and should be done civilly. It's hard to that do, though, when ignorance steps into the room, starts laughing at others (as elsewhere on this forum), while pumping its fists in the air and shouting "knowledge is power." It's very hard not to respond to that.

Lovely.
Have you been getting into Caffeine again?
Have fun with whatever it is that's got your blood pressure up.

As far as the benchmark I've presented; instant travel + one second full study of a system ... have any of you considered that could ALSO apply to remote observation?

Try not to hurt yourself thinking about it.

Further, take any system, hmmm, let's make it really really easy and say, hmm, our OWN solar system, and please tell me with 100% accuracy if we've mapped out every little nook and cranny, crack, crevice, asteroid, and Kuiper Belt planetoid to the extent that we can rule out that there is or isn't other life even in our own system?
Hmmm?

Now, please tell me about these wonderful Cracker Jacks toy surprise inside astronomical hardware suites that are going to be able to do something that we haven't even completely worked out in our own little solar system?

Sure, yeah, if there's ETs Waving a big red flag of overly conspicuous radio activity , IR, or some such other telltale that could be picked up by any other civilization equivi-tech to our own, then, yeah, sure.

I have not said there is not life elsewhere in the universe. If anything, I think I've made it pretty clear there's sufficient room for hundreds of billions of intelligent technological civilizations.
Count the galaxies
There's like 500 Billion galaxies, with about that many stars in each galaxy.
If there's just ONE civilization per galaxy you get 500 Billion alien species.

That thought should make quite a few people happy, eh, no?
Don't cry.

reply to post by Donegal_TDI


Slainte a cara.

I think along the same lines as you brother.

reply to post by Druscilla

Now, please tell me about these wonderful Cracker Jacks toy surprise inside astronomical hardware suites that are going to be able to do something that we haven't even completely worked out in our own little solar system?

We are in the very beginning stages of science and a class 0 civilization. Think of us as being in Kindergarten. We don't stop learning at Kindergarten. We don't know what algebra is because that comes after many years of learning and growth. Algebra is still something that we can learn over time but from a Kindergarten view point its mind boggling. ET's could be in any class of civilization from our level of 0 to at least a class 3 civilization. What they are capable of we probably can't even wrap our minds around.
100yrs ago flight wasn't something humans could not do but now look at how far we've come since then. We're just starting to get into space.
It really is silly to say that it's a bunch of big "what if's" (calvinball if you will) because we really are incapable of comprehending that kind of technology. We use 10% of our brains, on average, so really everything and anything is possible.

reply to post by TeaAndStrumpets


I like the Hynek quote.

It is very interesting sometimes to observe peoples reactions when the subject of UFOs is brought up whilst at a gathering of friends, for example. I find that some people will personally admit an interest in the subject, be it mild or whatever, on a one to one basis, but in a larger social setting they will avoid the subject or openly dismiss it.

reply to post by knoledgeispower


I'm not disagreeing.
If you look at my posts, I've said we're a class 0 and illustrated the primitive extent of our current understanding of the universe.

I've also set a benchmark as an illustration, just in case some don't really understand how enormously huge the universe is; the universe is so huge, that if you took one second to explore every star in the universe, it would take longer, much much much longer than the entire age of the universe itself to do so.

I haven't disagreed that there is or may be alien life elsewhere in the universe.
If anything I'm a pretty firm believer from a statistical stance that the universe is likely teeming with billions of other civilizations.

The point of my illustration and the benchmark, however, something that some seem to be missing and even taking offense over, is that the universe is so giahugic, so vastly large, that even with billions or hundreds of billions of concurrently extent civilizations all over the universe, because the universe is so huge, even if some lucky ET civilization could travel instantaneously, the chances are still extremely minutely tiny of any one technologically advanced ET civilization bumping into any other one ...
especially on an equivi-tech class 0 to class 0, or class 1 to class 1 basis, etc or such that the other even recognizes the other as even being sentient, or technological.

Yes, there's all sorts of what-ifs, but, what-ifs are masturbation. What-ifs are pornographic wish fulfillment scenarios.
I'm not denying that any sufficiently technologically space faring alien civilization could very well have some supremely fantastic technology.
Any sufficiently advanced technology beyond the understanding of an observer can appear to be magic in paraphrase of a certain quote.

I'm well aware of all sorts of what ifs. I've been reading hard sci-fi since i could read, and I'm always looking at and reading over quite a few more concrete what-ifs over at arxiv.org.

I make light of the what-if game because any child as illustrated in the Calvin and Hobbs comic can do the same. It doesn't take much of anything to play the what-if game.

Taking that what-if to the next level, such as is done over at arxiv.org and other places, trying to figure out how that what-if might be closer to a hypothetical 'maybe', with evidence pointing to or indicating with some authority that hypothetical 'maybe', is another thing.

I keep hearing over and over here also about remote observation, ie; through telescopes or other sensing equipment.
That's all well and good.
If we can detect somebody else out there, cool.
Something to consider, since our galaxy is about 120,000 light years across, is that if we do detect anyone else, they could be upwards to 120,000 years extinct, as the photon travels that is.
Where were we 120,000 years ago?
They'd be seeing us as we were upwards to 120,000 years ago while we see them upwards to 120,000 years ago. As the photon flies that is.

Exactly when did the earth get to be any kind of interesting enough to attract the attention of other alien civilizations such that whatever that kind of interestingness was could be detected and sensed from tens to thousands, to hundreds of thousands of light years away?

reply to post by Druscilla


I guess the whole premise of the OP is an if, and a big one at that.

For me, I have heard what i consider to be a contradictory argument many times: There must be life out there but there is no way they have been here. Ok, if you take an in depth look at the UFO issue there seems to be something real going on, no? Look at Hessdalen in Norway for example, or the UFO wave in Brazil during the 70's, or the Japan Airlines incident over Alaska in the 80's etc. There may be explanations for these, and many others, but I have yet to hear them. The extraterrestrial hypothesis is a contender, I think.