The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens?

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
a reply to: Gemwolf

I think we overestimate our importance. There are thousands of galaxies and possibly hundreds of billions of habitable planets-what makes our planet and our species so remarkable that aliens need to drop what they are doing, break the laws of physics as we know it and fly light years just to honk their horn at the locals?

Well, we sent a men to go play golf on a desolate moon. We sent a rover millions of miles away to take pictures of rocks on a red desert planet. Voyager 1 is still tumbling through space, doing who knows what (but supposedly collecting data), but still reporting back - 37 years later... We made the effort, why wouldn't any other "intelligent" species?

Point being, if Mars Curiosity discovered a tiny little flea trotting around on Mars, we'll all drop what we're doing and watch it... We made the effort to send a multimillion dollar craft with our limited technology 225 million miles away to go look for that Martian flea, and we'll get all giddy and excited about that flea...

One would hope that other intelligent aliens are just as curious as we are. (Most animal species on earth are curious by nature, so it's not a human thing - it's pretty much natural.) If the supposed aliens are not curious about us and our planet, then would we really want to bother meeting them?

a reply to: bluemooone2

Yea, I should have listed 4 as being in a simulation ourselves. It certainly would explain the schrodinger's cat paradox, amongst a ton of other things.

As a kid, I often wondered if the whole universe wasn't just one big holo-deck.

There may be universal laws that alien species cannot interfere with the systems of lower lifeforms to me this is the most rational explanation To why we haven't seen aliens it is simply illegal and unwarranted They cannot help accelerate or detoriate our evolution. We must learn to evolve ourselves

I think WHEN are all the aliens is a better question than WHERE.

There is a vast amount of time that alien civilizations could have
arisen and flourished WAY before this planet even began to form
its first crude life forms...

And if the precept of evolution-and survival of the fittest, holds
true for the rest of the universe, then whatever alien species of life
that rises to sentience, and could possibly become visitors to planet
Earth, must overcome that evolutionary instinct or it would be
quite likely that they would have perished.

Just take a look at our own species for example---our greatest
achievment is to devise ways to kill ourselves.

IMO, this is the greatest burden any species anywhere in the
universe will have to overcome BEFORE they will be able to
explore the stars...

a reply to: Gemwolf

Thanks for the post OP. Carl Sagan used to talk about
the same thing, specifically that although the odds of super
intelligent life in the universe is very high, because of the
limitation's regarding the speed they could travel at, namely
99% the speed of light, no matter what technologies they
develop.

However, there's a problem with this thinking, and Quantum
Physicist's are discovering this; paired sub-atomic particles,
appear to receive information at faster than light speed, which
has some physicists pondering the nature of the physical universe
again, and so it seems super advanced technology and a much better
understanding of the nature of the physical universe could allow
for travel instantaneously from almost anywhere in the known universe,
if these physicists hypothesis are indeed correct.

The other thing is that people just assume E.T.'s would make some
big announcement to our world, and most assume they would make
contact with a government or government(s) of the world, i.e.
take me to your leader.

But that's an assumption, whose to say that E.T.'s might decide to
make contact with individual persons not necessarily connected to the
government in any way. Just regular every day people, and in so doing,
these people sound crazy if they talk about their contact experiences,
so everybody assumes that no contact has been made, which might
be exactly what the E.T.'s want.

Rebel 5

originally posted by: MysterX
...
There may be a technological filter of some unknown type, put in place so its able to filter out all intelligent signals from ET and prevent us detecting them, however hard we look.

Maybe the moon? There's some strange facts around it.

Talking about the Drake Equation, REMEMBER, it is just the probability of COMMUNICATION with a non-terrestrial, sentient civilization.

There are other terms which need to be added.

For example, we've lived and studied dolphins for many years and we've had a chance to see that they do communicate (they do paired, random tricks), but we still have not been able to decipher their "language" and they're living on the same planet (of course they aren't trying to universally communicate, but still...).

An "alien" thought process may be so different that even if we received signals we may never be able to understand them.

Next we have the 'time synchrony' problem. By the time we get there or they get here, one or the other is dead, or has evolved to a 5th dimensional being or something making them undetectable, or out of the picture.

I think the time synch problem is one of the biggest aspects of ever communicating. Signals take so long to go back and forth that it's just not of any real value.

Good thread, though!

originally posted by: rebelv
a reply to: Gemwolf

Thanks for the post OP. Carl Sagan used to talk about
the same thing, specifically that although the odds of super
intelligent life in the universe is very high, because of the
limitation's regarding the speed they could travel at, namely
99% the speed of light, no matter what technologies they
develop.

However, there's a problem with this thinking, and Quantum
Physicist's are discovering this; paired sub-atomic particles,
appear to receive information at faster than light speed,

Quantum entanglement sends no information fast than the speed of light.

originally posted by: Triton1128
I don't see any reason why they would come here. Aside from "us".

Most precious metals would be much easier to obtain from asteroids or a satellite around larger planets. Water apparently is everywhere in our galaxy. So that makes our water world not so unique.

Exactly.

And a species just 500 years more advanced than us could probably image the Earth down to the size of a toaster oven from massive space telescope arrays many light-years away thus taking away another reason to need to visit.

If you can learn everything about the Earth from a distance you don't need to visit. That same energy expended in an interstellar trip could just build better telescopes and more powerful image processing computers.

The need for a visit is rooted in a 1950s view of space exploration.

a reply to: Gemwolf

The window is never really open for that long, in relation to that whole picture. Then to those that looked through, the widow and saw something, if it was realization of something, someone more advanced, this view would of most likely already transpired, only from the ones now viewed. So with that in mind, a some what backward civilization would not necessarily be contacted, if they were not at the proper level, to be contacted. Either those being contacted were advanced enough to contacted, or were so primitive, they would not be even able to comprehend, that they were contacted.

So either, we are not advanced enough, to realize their methods of communication, or the window simply has not been open long enough in the proper time period, for us to perceive their intelligent communications.

a reply to: pheonix358

We are beyond the grasp of an Ice Age causing us problems.

I think the best defense in the Universe would be to have the ability to remain undetectable. What if every civilization that advances to galactic levels along the way develops a clocking device, some way to remain undetectable by other living organisms. So maybe we ARE surrounded by advanced civilizations they just remain invisible to us...

We are already trying to develop technology to hide ourselves from visibility and we can barely move around in our own solar system...

a reply to: sirChill

schrodinger's cat paradox, what a ridiculous notion. The cat is either dead or it is not, there if you open the box and the cat is alive, there you have it. If you open the box and the cat has died, there you have it...

I think his brain was the paradox. That's like saying that because you can't see someone, they don't exist, until you do see them...

originally posted by: Brainiac
I think the best defense in the Universe would be to have the ability to remain undetectable. What if every civilization that advances to galactic levels along the way develops a clocking device, some way to remain undetectable by other living organisms. So maybe we ARE surrounded by advanced civilizations they just remain invisible to us...

We are already trying to develop technology to hide ourselves from visibility and we can barely move around in our own solar system...

How long can you hide.

It's just like the lock maker, how long till someone, picks his lock.

Oh, now I get it!

This thread is kind of a "safe place" for people who want to pretend that we don't have seventy years of documented alien contact.

I think that's neat. It sounds like swell fun!
You can ponder and speculate about what aliens should be like and how rare and distant they should be. That's much more fun than discussing the dreary reality of the technologically advanced alien beings that are actually here, and have been engaging and out-performing our military since the 1940s.

It is way more satisfying to use your imagination, conjuring up your own ideas about what first contact might someday be like....Ah, someday....!

Too bad that means they've had to shut out reality to do so. They could have just asked Betty and Barney Hill what first contact was like back in 1961.
They can still ask Travis Walton, he's alive and kicking. Or ask Whitley Strieber, or the Allagash four. Or ask me, I have encountered aliens directly, I'm more than happy to tell you how first contact went. No pretending or imagining required.

But don't let me wake you, go back to sleep.

a reply to: Scdfa

This thread is kind of a "safe place" for people who want to pretend that we don't have seventy years of documented alien contact.

Where exactly is that documentation?

But don't let me wake you, go back to sleep.

OK, don't let me divert you from your delusions. Dream on.

i would expect intelligent aliens to be intelligent. space travel is hard.
likely they (like we) would be interested in trading culture, knowledge and commodities when the time is ripe.

we too would be cautious in their shoes. you wouldn't want to upset balance of some alien world or start meddling with stuff (even to help) without comprehensive research. you could make things worse, which would be embarassing for supposedly superior and highly intelligent creatures. naturally they would be taking their time to study cultures, learn languages and technologies. maybe they don't want to rush it. human civilization is pretty new thing anyway and it still look so crazy and stupid even we aren't sure if we want to try contact people. maybe they want to wait us to mature. maybe they aren't ready yet. maybe they don't know what to do and how.

maybe the reason we have never heard any of their signals is because sending signals in in waves limits them to lightspeed while quantum entanglement systems make information transfer instant. it requires the entangeled particles to receive messages and you have physically move the entangled particles to your destination. the side effect of this is that it's VERY secure.

maybe there are still many kinds of signals in space from the short periods of rising civilizations, but space is too big for us to have any luck being in the right place the right time to receive them. maybe the only signals we could have receive passed away million years ago or maybe they are still on their way.

anyway, I like to think aliens don't have their heads up their assess and they are well aware how difficult it is to make contact and how they maybe shouldn't just hand over all their technology just to any people

or maybe they think they've already made contact

I said this before in a different thread. I highly doubt that any alien race ever visited us in recent times (like million of years to put in scale) or that someone will visit us in the near future (again million of years) because of multiple reasons:

1) Our age: All of humanities history is really just a blob in the time scale of the universe and we may vanish as fast as we get here without anyone every noticing it. The modern human is just barely 200k years old and modern civilization started about 6k years ago. Really the first true "modern" civilizations are only about 2000 years old. Now the true scientific revolution started barely 350 years ago and the first space-entering technologies (Radio signals) were developed not even 115 years ago. Now looking back in time, we are pretty amazing considering what we achieved in barely 100 years. I wish I could live a 1000 years to see whats next - who knows that might be possible in my life time! But in terms of aliens and space, we are not even a dust corn.

2) Real estate: The little blue planet .. awesome planet .. nice beaches .. water .. sun .. only one moon .. pretty stable climate .. location - let's move on. Earths location is not really prime estate - more like a house in the desert. We are on one of the outside arms of the Milky Way and there is really nothing around us (and we know that) including resources. Pretend you are an alien project manager and you get one mission to go anywhere in the galaxy to check it out .. a good project manager would look where you get the best resources for the cheapest price and that's pretty much close to the center of the milky way - probably that's where most of the alien civilization are located anyway or might have outposts. We would do the same thing. Once we have the capabilities you will see how fast we are going after these resources and it will bring humanity much closer to the center of the Milky Way - but I don't believe there will be fun trips to earth as long there is something substantial on earth that they may require (cull time?). Except of course, someone is already going to another destination and by chance passes through our solar system. But even than they would have to approach us since we probably won't be able to detect.

3) Communication: That's a good one. We "talk" for about 115 years .. considering that radio signals are subject to signal degradation they will just disappear in the background radiation. Like us, someone has to monitor all frequencies round the clock and understand a certain pattern within the noise. Now I really like the idea of different type of communication and we are changing as well. We just started using lasers to send data over vast distance - I believe the current record is 15million miles realtime two-way communication between earth and the Messenger probe. Who knows, maybe "Subspace" exists or one of those blinking stars is really a communication platform for ultra-wide distances. Overall I believe that it's utter non-sense to assume that Aliens will make the first contact because we send them the Lucy Show.

4) Assumptions: Intelligent life is probably plenty in the universe, maybe even in the galaxy but that doesn't mean they a full-fledged space program or even understand that they are on a planet. They might not be even curious what's out there. They could master all the technology advances, etc and still be grounded to their planet because of various reasons. They might also have a strict no-contact policy because they don't trust anyone. There are so many variables that everything becomes an assumption.

5) They might have been here already: Another interesting thought is that someone already visited us and didn't find anything - maybe some low life forms but nothing intelligent and they might have underestimated that Humans might evolve one day. So we are on the "No Life" list in the intergalactic library and why would anyone visit a bare planet again? So it would be up to us to tell them that we actually made something out of our planet. On another note we might be on the "DO-NOT-VISIT-LIST" considering what kind of creatures once where king of this planet (Dinos, who knows what was before them etc).


.. and there are so many more things why & why & why. All in all they conclude into assumptions - but for what it is worth - based on our today's understanding and technology advancements I don't think there is a lot of doubt that we understand that the Galaxy and the Universe is one big place and we are just one tiny bitsy little dust corn in it.

a reply to: Gemwolf

When you consider that for its 4.5 billion year history, Earth has only produced ONE species capable of technology for interstellar communication (that we know of), It stands to reason that allthough life may be abundant, intelligent life may not be. And perhaps most of the intelligent life forms that do develop destroy themselves relatively quickly. So we may have a universe peppered with life bearing planets, and VERY rarely one of those planets develops intelligent life. Lots of planets with bacterium level life, very few with multicellular life, VERY few with intelligent multicellular life.And the planets that do develop sentient beings are so separated by distance and time frame that they rarely if ever make contact. There may have been a planet 10,000 light years away that had intelligence 100 million years ago that destroyed itself in a war, and as a result we would never know they even existed because of time and distance. There may be intelligent life in the Andromeda galaxy that we will simply never detect because of the distance. The universe is a very big, and very old place. The chances that we would make contact in the space of one human lifetime, for that matter the lifetime of the human species is slim at best. And as far as Aliens coming here, this is only one system in 100 billion, and I am sure there are much more interesting places to visit than here. I would love to see alien contact but I dont think it will ever happen. We have a better chance of contact from beings from one of the infinite number of alternate universes that make contact with their analog in this one (UFOS?).

Astronomers will soon be examining the spectrum of atmosphere of planets to work out their composition. They will certainly be able to identify where flora is active. I wonder if they'll find radioactivity...