Mathematical Reasoning Why Aliens Will Probably Never Visit

a reply to: babybunnies

we’ve been telling the immediately local universe that there is intelligent life here.

Simple reason aliens won't visit... no one like a liar.

originally posted by: Archivalist
Appending thread title for accuracy:

"Mathematical reasoning why aliens will never visit."

"Mathematical reasoning, created by an individual who is part of a less than 1 Kardashev civilization, why intelligent life, as they know it, will never make an interstellar voyage to the planet of said less than 1 Kardashev civilization. This reasoning utilizes knowledge and engineering that they have developed and explores those options as if no others exist."




-=-= "There are other continents on this planet, but those people will probably never come here. Why not? Your arms would get tired after swimming a few miles. There are thousands of miles between them." =-=-

I appreciate your methematical reasoning. You sure do know a lot about interstellar travel options.

What interstellar travel options? The universe is ridiculously big and the incentives for travelling across it are fairly minimal. Honestly why would aliens bother? If you're any kind of physical based lifeform that experiences time like we do, just why?

The universe is big and empty and full of nothing that sustains life as we know it. It's not like an ocean. The islands in space are billions of miles apart and from what we can tell mostly free of the things that life requires. I just don't understand the fascination with space either way. The Earth has everything needed to sustain us yet people are so obsessed with a big empty, dark cold nothingness. # space. # Mars, # the moon, # aliens, # space. We let the world die around us while we look up at other dead worlds and a big dead emptiness. Thinking there's something better than the only thing that will ever sustain us. There's no hope for humans in space. No aliens no magical earth like world we can all just hop skip and jump to. there's only Earth for you me and everyone else alive right now.

One problem I see with your theory (and kindly correct me if I'm wrong) is that you assume the rest of the universe is 13.8 BYO. I'm not disputing that. We obviously live in the most recent part of that 13.8. So why is it that if we're 4.6 BYO, everything else had to exist before us. If the universe can exist before us but not create us until 9.2 billion years, why is it the universe couldn't have created other systems in our time frame.

I think for your point to be more valid, one must find out the average age of other systems and galexies in order to show that in fact they did exist before us. If 2/3 of time exsisted before we began, how many other places in the universe didn't exist for the first 2/3 of time.

The sad thing is that given the size and age of the Universe, there's a chance that if Julius Caesar had access to a radio telescope he might possibly have heard something. We, as a civilisation, have only been around for a fraction of a second. Who knows how many times the voices of long-dead other planets have flared for a moment in the sky, only to gutter and die?

a reply to: babybunnies

What if these Aliens are not extraterrestrial in nature but extradimensional?

That kind of sinks rather a few of the arguments presented, and/or the math behind such.

Just a thought.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

If there was alien contact in the time of Julius Caesar the news would have been suppressed.
Even today the world is just not ready for that possibility to be entertained.
The Earth was flat for many people till the middle ages.

a reply to: babybunnies
What's the probability of an anagram of "The Golden Ratio"
being this: "Alien, Thor, God, E.T." ?

I don't believe kilowatt power non-directional radio waves are detectable at a 20-100ly range. They do indeed fade into the background noise.

a reply to: FlyingFox

If we rely on the "Hollywood basement" for our information all we may hear is superhet Clinton choreography.
I'm not sure where the noise floor is for a pure Soliton based communication channel?

originally posted by: Zcustosmorum
There are counter claims and thus different ideas to every claim made on this subject, for example and if my understanding is correct, the estimation of stars in the observable universe is something like 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, and even then some people say that's an under calculation.

With numbers like that and our limited knowledge, you could say that it's practically impossible for their not to be other life out there.

However, until more is known, it's a case of pick whichever theory you like best

Sure, but even with that many stars, the OP's argument could be that the closest alien technological civilization is too far away from us for contact to be likely.

I agree that there are almost certainly other technological civilizations in the universe -- and maybe in our galaxy -- that are existing at this same moment of time with us. However, the density of those civilizations might be so sparse, and the reality of space travel technology (even advanced technology) might be lacking the ability to travel far distances in a reasonable amount of time that we and an alien race might as well be on two desert islands separated by 5000 miles of water with only dugout canoes.

So while the answer to the question "is there other intelliget life in the universe existing right now at the same time as us?" might be "Yes", the idea that we may come in contact with them is far less likely. And even if the inhabitants of one of those islands has a motor boat and a radio, they still may be so extremely far away that never happen upon us.


The tl;dr version:
While the size and scope of the universe almost gaurantees that there are other technological civilizations out there "right now", that same size and scope of the universe may also mean that those technological civilizations are too far away from us for contact to be likely.

Is there an edge to the Universe? What possibilities lie if you did live near the edge? If there isnt an edge and you lived 13.7 billion light years away from our present point in time and space would you just see 13.7 light years further or would you be able to cross the boundry into "outside the Universe"?

Closed or open??

Gahhhhhh I need more coffee!

/shambles out door in pjs and slippers

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Or any other civilizations that do emerge/have emerged may simply come to understand the limitations of using radio waves as a communication medium on the cosmic scale and have now graduated to other means of communication that is above our technological prowess to detect.

originally posted by: crayzeed
Go have a word with a certain Mr Drake.

As I said in another thread about the Drake equation (in a post arguing the same concept as the OP) I don't think the Drake equation really has a distinct factor for how many technological civilizations exist "right now".

It doesn't take into account that the ability for a civilization to make itself known or to find other civilizations may only last a short time and (more to my point) the odds of that "short time" overlapping with our own "short time" may be slim.

So I (nor the OP of this thread) have an argument with Drake over the idea that life in the universe -- with the time of possible existence for that intelligent life to be "smeared" over the course of the past few billion years of the universe -- is/was probably extremely common. HOWEVER, life existing "right now" is probably far less common.

Anyway, here is that post in that Drake Equation thread that is similar to this current thread's OP:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Or any other civilizations that do emerge/have emerged may simply come to understand the limitations of using radio waves as a communication medium on the cosmic scale and have now graduated to other means of communication that is above our technological prowess to detect.

Who says there is a faster way to communicate, just because science fiction says so doesn't mean you could what if the speed of light is an absolute maximum what then.

a reply to: Archivalist

"They also believe in invisible beings in the sky that know when you've been good or bad, but think kids who believe in Santa are crazy, but I digress. "

Santa exists to sow the seeds of doubt in adults...

i read somewhere that considering the age of the earth their was enough time for the planet to go from a molten ball of lava to our current level of technological advancement 3 or 4 times. maybe aliens have visited, but they met the global civilization before us on their last swing through the neighborhood

originally posted by: babybunnies

Let’s take a look at probability. Given our own Sun is 4.6 billion years old out of a 13.8 billion year old universe, that’s only 33.33 %, or about one third. We already missed two thirds of the time during which things existed in the Universe, before our sun was even created. That’s 9.2 billion years, it’s also a really, really long time during which many things could have happened.

Actually to help you out a bit it is estimated that the first 4 or 5 billion years the universe was much different than today with nothing more than massive stars going super nova in very short periods of time as the other 91 natural elements were created. What this means is earth has been around for about 50% of the universe's workable time for planets/life etc.

Out of the millions of species on Earth, only a handful have evolved to the point where they can use tools, and only ONE has above average intelligence useful for learning science and math. Out of the 7 billion people on the planet with this ability, only a few thousand of those people have the advanced knowledge to be able to send communications into space, or for that matter, spacecraft.

I would say trillions...not millions of lifeforms on earth over the last 4.5 billion years. The key here is life happens anytime conditions are right. Even when earth wipes most of it out it comes back and we know life started very early in earth's history so I think it is safe to say it is rather common when the conditions are correct.

The problem comes when we talk about species. Those little pesky things come and go all the time last about 2 million years or so and really doesn't give very much time to get things done when we talk about exploring the universe. On earth with trillions of lifeforms we have had only one get to the moon in 4.5 billion years...Doesn't demonstrate much success for other places to have life shooting out into space either.

This is where we need to look at things that evolution and planet limitations do not affect as they do for life in general. I suggest any alien life will come in the form of machines. This could explain the UFOs we see that are just small crafts that do crazy things...no need to protect fragile life if there is no life on the ships. It is estimated that self replicating machines can cover the universe within 2 billion years, billions of years after their life form creators have come and gone.
If I was going to guess I would think our only interaction with aliens will be their machines.

The universe is largely thought the be about 93 billion light years across. So for 0.000000002 % of the time that Earth has been around, civilization has been sending out a random signal to 0.0000000025% of the Universe, hoping someone will hear it at the particular time in their own development that we assume is similar to the 0.000000002% of the time that we’ve had communication ability.

And wondering why no one called back, or came to visit.

The universe is actually endless, but the matter from the big bang is expanding, so yes we are in kind of a bubble of expansion. Your math above doesn't make sense to your title. It should read "why they haven't visited yet". The other key thing to think about as to why they may never will visit us is that random signals are short lived in they typically will only be about 200 years or less before technology gets to the point that we do not have signals just transmitted outward in any direction and they become very controlled and focused to the point that signals are no longer transmitted into space.

a reply to: wmd_2008

Whilst the speed of light in a vacuum, is a fundamental constant central to much of physics, particularly Einsteins theory of relativity, which is the problem really, something like the Albercurrie drive concept may then allow us to circumvent the speed of light in rather a more interesting fashion.

Keep in mind that today's science fiction is becoming tomorrows science fact as the pace of our ability to utilize technology to release our dreams quickens as we approach the singularity.

As to FTL communication purposes well possibly something like the ansible device portrayed in science fiction may be capable of instantaneous or faster-than-light communication via two(or a group) of entwined identical particles following the concept of instantaneous quantum teleportation(in principle).

Need to get them to your destination through which is where technology like the Albercurrie drive comes into play and could also account for the reason we fail to intercept any alien communications via the very nature of the communication device employed for the job at hand.

There may be no broadcast signal in the classical sense we understand.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: wmd_2008

Whilst the speed of light in a vacuum, is a fundamental constant central to much of physics, particularly Einsteins theory of relativity, which is the problem really, something like the Albercurrie drive concept may then allow us to circumvent the speed of light in rather a more interesting fashion.

Or maybe it won't. Maybe the speed limit really is "c".

That would be one explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Changing or circumventing the variables would still seem to be the ticket though.

The math is sound enough behind the Albercurrie drive concept(far as I'm aware), its the material science issues and energy requirements that are currently beyond our ability to produce.

What if the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that any civilization that does employ radio signals as a means of communication is destroyed soon after doing so by some unknown factor that we have as of yet to encounter?

Considering we have only really been broadcasting our presence via such signals since the 1930s.

a reply to: andy06shake


It is my contention that space travel may be difficult, even if there are some ways to bend the "rules" regarding FTL travel.

The reason why I think this is because if zipping around the galaxy (or hopping between galaxies) were as easy as driving to the store for milk, we probably would have noticed aliens "driving past" by now.

I'm thinking it is both a combination of what the OP says (that technological civilizations existing right now at the same time as us are sparsely distributed, AND that space travel is not that easy, even with Albercurrie drives and such. Those two factors combined might be the explanation Fermi is looking for....

That is to say, there may be a lot of civilizations out there right now, but they are far away and it's difficult for them to reach us, even with some form of FTL travel.