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originally posted by: MysterX
originally posted by: ausername
All of those potentially habitable worlds out there and not one within our reach.
Good thing too... For the inhabitants of those worlds.
Perhaps not within OUR reach no...but given the figures, probability would be very high that they are well within the reach of the most advanced among the species out there.
The 100 Million figure is still fairly arbitrary, even if it isn't a guess as such. It could be a LOT more than that, or a LOT less too, but even taken down to absurdly low figures, say 500,000 planets with intelligent life...we have to remember that these 500,000 worlds would certainly not have developed all at once.
They would be spread apart not only by distance, but also by time - developmental time.
We can begin to understand the impact this has if we're asking the logical questions about ET species having visited Earth in the past or on an ongoing basis.
Even if we make wild assumptions about developmental differences among these 500,000 intelligent species, such as saying each species is only separated in major technological achievements by an arbitrary 10 years.
e.g. Radio is discovered by species 1, then also independently discovered by species 2 10 years later, then by species 3 another ten years later, and species 4 10 years after that and so on.
That means a developmental time difference between species 1 discovering radio, and species 500,000 discovering it of 5 Million years.
If we on Earth are somewhere in the middle, technologicaly speaking...species 1 would have discovered radio around 2,500,000 years ago from our perspective.
Can you imagine what species 1 might have been discovering and working on, when we were hunter gatherers?
I can.
Imagine what we could do technologicaly, if we have a head start on a species on just 100,000 years never mind 2.5 Million years.
These are all arbitrary figures of course and will no doubt be completely different in reality, but the principle is sound and is certainly going to hold true. There are going to be 100s of 1000's, perhaps millions of species in our Galaxy alone that are up to millions of years ahead of us.
That kind of advancement is unimaginable to us, it would not be godlike, it would be so far beyond that as to be incomprehensible to us (although i'd personally welcome the opportunity to experience such technology if it ever presented to me).
Now...scale these numbers up to the estimated 100 Million planets reported by Jadestar, and increase the developmental time differences from species 1 to species 250,000 (us for example) by 200 X...from our perspective, the hypothetical species 1 could have been discovering radio 500 Million years ago.
The arguments over what some ET species could and couldn't do or where they could or couldn't visit because we ourselves cannot yet achieve the same becomes completely ridiculous when we think of how different and far apart chronologically we are sure to be.
If we are still here and progress technologically in a linear path..where do you imagine we would be and what we could do in 10,000 years, never mind much longer?
originally posted by: nerbot
a reply to: JadeStar
Complex life does not automatically presume intelligence.
WE are proof of that.
originally posted by: gort51
Well, we are still finding new "Alien" life on Earth almost every week. New deep sea species, new bacteria, new deep forest dwellers....amazing what could be out there.
originally posted by: gort51
Well, we are still finding new "Alien" life on Earth almost every week. New deep sea species, new bacteria, new deep forest dwellers....amazing what could be out there.
What interests me as a lay person, is that these scientists are finding many "Dwarf Stars", the small red ones which seem to have small rocky planets around them.
Now, with my limited intelligence, my understanding is that Stars go thru a "Life" cycle, and specifically, our Sun is mid life. As our Sun ages and it consumes its hydrogen and then helium elements, it grows to a Huge size, and unfortunately consumes its smaller close orbit rocky planets and any life therein...eg Earth, Venus etc.
My understanding is that these stars, once they finish their cycle, reduce in size and become.........Red Dwarfs.
I presume, that in the action of growing to a huge size, and exiling great volumes of Cosmic/Heat rays etc.....that these stars would literally burn or blow the Gasses off the Gaseous Giant planets, thereby exposing their inner rocky core (if they have one, logical would say they do).
So......are all these Red Dwarf stars in our galaxy, ALREADY stars that have almost finished their life cycle, have already consumed their "Life" giving goldilocks, class M planets, and the current rocky planets orbiting them, are the dead left over of once huge gas planets??
Hence, they are a dead star system, with dead rocky planets...which may have moved closer in orbit due to the more dense mass Red Dwarf??
I dont think we should be looking for life in dead star systems, if indeed they can be considered that.
We should be looking at youngish (2-4 billion Earth years old), bright yellow/white stars, with a full complement of rocky and gas planets....just like ours.
Or have I the wrong end of the stick and am completely wrong.?
we need to understand how OUR life began -- and we don't.
originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: Xtrozero
But don't forget, 'The habitat zone' or the so-called 'Goldilocks zone' is only suitable for life that resides on our world, and life with similar requirements...and even then, as we know the life here has a very broad range of habitats and requirements from freezing to boiling, from acidic to alkaline..in fact, Earth has some life that would do quite nicely on many other worlds that we consider hostile to Humans and most other species originating from Earth.
In other words, The Goldilocks zone is for life that has similar environmental requirements to ourselves..and is not applicable to life that would have different requirements.
With the amount of life that must be out there, it's a certainty there are going to be a portion who have similar environmental needs to ourselves and a portion that has completely different needs, who would then of course have their own version of a 'Goldilocks zone' different to ours.
originally posted by: Rainbowresidue
a reply to: MysterX
Star for you!
How right you are!
We could achieve so much more even today if we weren't limited by rules etc. by TPTB. They have a reason for holding us back,I just haven't figured out yet completely what it is ... control perhaps? They already know of aliens visiting earth, and are gaining knowledge/ technology from them...
Anyways,one way or another we will be traveling/inspecting other stars and their planets in the future.
( Whatever will happen in history to cause TPBT to fall.)
That''s the next step,and it's inevitable.It's our destiny.
We've been building up to this for many decades.
To infinity and beyond!!!