Humans alone in universe, depressing study finds

a reply to: Subsonic

As far as we know, we are alone in the known universe. It's a powerful notion to think this blue planet might well harbour the only intelligent life for as far as the eye can see out to space.

*If* it's true should we celebrate and dance to the only music in the 'known' universe? Should we laugh knowing that nowhere else has a sense of humour? Should we stop fighting and start working towards keeping this unique world healthy?

I have no doubt that the universe is life supporting. 500 million seems like a good number for "life-supporting planets," IMO. The real question is: is it intelligent, tool-using, space-faring life, because -- if it aint -- all their base are belong to us.

Life is cool, life is great, but if it develops on a rocky planet with 15 percent greater mass than ours, it is going to have a hell of a time blasting itself into orbit.

And that's just one example.

I posted a similar story a few days ago and gathered similar reply's. I'm good with that. Maybe we should restate this as: there is no evidence of any type 1 or type 2 civilizations (so far) and move on from there.

A human galaxy will be alien as hell in a few million years regardless, thanks to the speed of casualty. Maybe we are just the first ones to the party?

Take care out there, folks. Precious cargo on board.

That is the same Oxford study that has a thread over here in Aliens and UFOs forum.

Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation re-hash. Play with the numbers and make it look like we all alone in the bad, old world.

Nice that this is printed prior to James Webb Space Telescope launch. Even TESS is going to find more targets for JWST. So my feelings are that they are using bad and incomplete data, and reaching a faulty conclusion.

Throw in some trendy terms and, "Oh look. We are alone and they are too far away we'll never see them..."

If we are all alone, we should be cleaning up this place because I am tired of swimming in # and drinking micro plastics! If we are so unique then I think we have already done ourselves in before even learning to crawl.

I think this study shows bias. I mean we don't know...there are hundreds of reasons we haven't found life yet. We haven't even, really had a good look at most of the Milky way. We have no idea.

Hundreds of reasons? Maybe.

Here's a youtube video by a big thinker who has thought through most of them:

youtu.be...

a reply to: 0zzymand0s

I agree it's definitely intuitive that LIFE exists out there as microbes and whatever else. Even our 'observable universe' doesn't tell us what we want to know. For example, we haven't seen any planets or moons with atmospheric signatures of organic life. We know how to look for signs of intelligent life too and obviously haven't seen any yet until we see the signatures of plant life.

At the same time, we haven't really studied much in the scheme of things. 20 years ago and we didn't know how rife exoplanets were. Now we're counting them in the thousands and thousands and writing lists with scores of exoplanets in 'Goldilocks zones.' There'll be even more in the next 20 years.

We could locate a planet with plant life and its signatures tell us that no intelligent, manufacturing life exists there. Thanks to the lazy-ass speed of light, the planet could be more advanced than us and we're only seeing it in its pre-Cambrian stage.

Nobody really knows, but 'Science' has the edge because it's actively studying the probabilities and possibilities. The rest of us are going off intuition.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
If we are all alone, we should be cleaning up this place because I am tired of swimming in # and drinking micro plastics! If we are so unique then I think we have already done ourselves in before even learning to crawl.

There are way too many people in this world (primarily poor people, but the rich are not immune) who have no sense of pride or ownership in the planet. They don't care about the mess they make, because for whatever reason -- including that they're waiting to be taken to Heaven to meet Jesus -- they treat the planet like a cheap rental car.

They're not necessarily wrong. I have no offspring, so I have no real investment in keeping the Earth nice and pretty for whoever might be around after I'm gone. On the other hand, why make a filthy, crappy temporary situation like existence on this planet even worse by burying everything in garbage? It may not matter later, but it matters now. After I'm gone, of course, everybody can go to hell.

originally posted by: NarcolepticBuddha
a reply to: Subsonic

I don't believe it for a minute

care to expand on this, or are you just like the next guy gives the information middle finger?

a reply to: Blue Shift


That hippy spirit was drilled into my skull back in 70s. Along with the metric system! Look where both have got me? Eating ice cream on the couch with a plastic spoon watching bike races in other countries doing the conversion in my head and tossing my plastics out the window to join the great plastic mosh pit in the sea.

I am not that bad. We have homeless camps and it just looks like it would smell bad. They don't care but I do. Fault of mine. I am trying real hard to keep my impacts as neutral as possible. As Jules says, "I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be the Shepard."

Think about it. You step off your interstellar space ship and find people ankle deep in plastic and crap, would you really want to meet their leader and shake their hand??

I think it was the Sumerians who said the Gods came down from the heavens and found them as animals digging around in the mud! As soon as they left we couldn't wait to get nekked and back to poking around in the mud!

It's just a study. By pushing one part of the equation to the other side we get "life all over".

However, the sad fact is that unless and until we find life off our pin-prick planet, we are alone. I just hope in my lifetime irrefutable proof is found, otherwise I'll miss a pretty good party, eh?

originally posted by: Subsonic

A new study from the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University, aptly named "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox," suggests that humanity is alone in the observable universe, putting a damper on the theory that there is intelligent life somewhere in the known universe.

"When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial ex ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it," the study's abstract reads. "This result dissolves the Fermi paradox..."

Humans alone in universe, depressing study finds

Sounds to me like the authors of this study are making plenty of assumptions of their own, but then again with something like the Drake Equation, you pretty much have to inject speculation if you're going to get anywhere. It's otherwise an essentially unsolvable equation.

I've always thought that if we are indeed the only intelligent life in the universe, that the likelihood of 'God' actually existing and having created Earth and humanity in his image goes up dramatically. If, however, we find intelligent life elsewhere, then religion is, for all intents and purposes, dead, as that would prove that intelligent life is a natural phenomenon throughout the universe. If we're really all there is though...well... then I think I should probably start going back to church!

Better odds than casino wins, lottery etc...100% assured we are not alone....and never were

originally posted by: Itisnowagain

Well - if they are human then chances are they will not be friendly!

All life looks to continue itself, not just humans. If you're walking in the jungle and a tiger eats you, you can't get pissed at the tiger.

The last study suggests that there are at least two trillion galaxies in the known universe each with about 100 billion stars, and most stars have planets orbiting them.

And you really think we are alone?

originally posted by: ATSAlex
And you really think we are alone?

You find a marble in a box, but you have no idea how it got there. How many boxes do you think are necessary before another marble shows up in a different box?

originally posted by: ATSAlex
The last study suggests that there are at least two trillion galaxies in the known universe each with about 100 billion stars, and most stars have planets orbiting them.

And you really think we are alone?

It's hard to imagine, isn't it, that we might be alone in all that expanse.

But, picture the largest beach in the world, Praia do Cassino Beach in Brazil. It's about 150 miles long, trillions upon trillions of grains of sand. Yet, it is entirely possible that out of all those trillions of grains of sand, not one grain of rice can be found growing, not one.

originally posted by: Subsonic

A new study from the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at Oxford University, aptly named "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox," suggests that humanity is alone in the observable universe, putting a damper on the theory that there is intelligent life somewhere in the known universe.

"When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial ex ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it," the study's abstract reads. "This result dissolves the Fermi paradox..."

Humans alone in universe, depressing study finds

Sounds to me like the authors of this study are making plenty of assumptions of their own, but then again with something like the Drake Equation, you pretty much have to inject speculation if you're going to get anywhere. It's otherwise an essentially unsolvable equation.

I've always thought that if we are indeed the only intelligent life in the universe, that the likelihood of 'God' actually existing and having created Earth and humanity in his image goes up dramatically. If, however, we find intelligent life elsewhere, then religion is, for all intents and purposes, dead, as that would prove that intelligent life is a natural phenomenon throughout the universe. If we're really all there is though...well... then I think I should probably start going back to church!

Quite pretetious a species, as to think we could even recognize intelligent life, if it landed on our heads.
Plants are displaying intelligent behavior, that can sometimes be compared to complex animalistic behavior, as discussed in this excellent thread by Blendsy: It's a Plants Life

a reply to: Nothin

Plants? With thumbs and fire?

Again -- the universe is probably full of life. There may be Avatar like planets out there for all we know, with rainforests and cute little aliens to shag with but if they don't do high tech and they don't build rockets to escape their own gravity well -- we won't know they are there until we go.

It's a fairly simple concept: the factors that had to go our way to make our baby-steps space-faring civilization possible are orders of magnitude less likely than winning Powerball every week for a whole year. We've got a relatively stable star, a magnetosphere to protect against cosmic rays, a vacuum cleaner Jupiter to suck up most of the debris, a perfect moon, just enough iron, and so on.

If a rocky planet is just a little more massive than Earth they'd never blast their way out of their own gravity well: a prison planet. A little less massive? -- No magnetosphere. A little more water? No fire.

Life is great and all, but if it can't leave its own cradle and explore the stars it is irrelevant to the conversation, vis a vis -- "aliens." That's all I'm saying.

And spacefarers that are far enough away to have developed in the interim between shining the light we see and the light that has yet to reach us? All of them? Really?

What are the chances?

Imagine a bunch from Oxford (no less), putting their name on a diatribe like this.

We are most likely soon to find out that life is the norm for the universe. Where that life gets to live, will make it harder or vastly easier to advance.

originally posted by: apydomis

originally posted by: NarcolepticBuddha
a reply to: Subsonic

I don't believe it for a minute

care to expand on this, or are you just like the next guy gives the information middle finger?

Sure I'll expand on this,

Give me some grant money and I'll do a study on any subject that can't be easily proven or disproven.

originally posted by: 0zzymand0s
a reply to: Nothin

Plants? With thumbs and fire?
...

Why would anyone searching for intelligence, assume that it had to have certain characteristics, like: Opposable thumbs and the mastery of fire?

Our pretense, is our weakness.