Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

[Reach]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

I would certainly think that if advanced life forms came to Earth, enduring the tremendous feat of traveling hundreds of millions of light years to get here, they would end up revealing themselves to more than just conspiracy nut jobs and people completely incapable of taking good quality pictures or videos. Also, I would hope they would have some other purpose to their journey other than performing rather uninformative anal probes and harassing crazy people with their flashing lights.


Our observable universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars. That leaves us with an astronomically large potential for life elsewhere in the universe.

So yeah, I believe other intelligent lifeforms exist somewhere in the universe. It would be absurd if there were not. However, it's unlikely they would be able to find us even if they do exist, and even more unlikely they would be able to travel the distance to get here.


Edit: After reading the posts in this thread, Rubix pretty much ninja'd me so lmao

[Reincarnate]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

What really bakes my noodle is the thought of intelligent civilizations forming billions of years before us.

[Reach]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

What really bakes my noodle is the thought of intelligent civilizations forming billions of years before us.

I agree pretty much verbatim with what you posted before, and this.

It's an interesting point. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Given what we know about the evolution of the universe, there are serious constraints on how old a civilization could be, but they could certainly have arose a few billion years before we did.

This brings up a key point I think.

We haven't been a technological society for very long at all (Just over 100 years), and we already recognize our very finite resources. We can't maintain this type of pace forever without expanding out into space. We probably have no more than 1000 years without making serious adjustments in resource use and management. Thus, much of our future existence is contingent on several physical properties of the universe (e.g. Is warp speed possible? If not, we are doomed to collapse as our society is unsustainable here and on any near systems).

This means one of two things; 1. There have probably been millions of civilizations in this universe that came before us, and they've almost all fallen and completely collapsed before it was even possible to make contact with them in our tiny tiny window of opportunity,

or two 2. There are many other, some very ancient, advanced societies that still exist today that have expanded over vast distances across space, occupying large portions of galaxies.


If the former is true, we will most definitely never make contact. If the latter is true, contact is probably inevitable.

[Reincarnate]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

This is why I feel very lucky to be alive today. 13.7 billion years is a hell of a time for my atoms to wait around before eventually coming together to produce my conscious brain. And yet, I am alive during a time when life is intelligent, technology is advancing ever-so-quickly, discoveries/understandings of our universe are being made, and life is (relatively) stable to the point where I can live it well. I don't even want to think about what kind of challenges await our grandchildren as we continue to increase in numbers and drag our Earth through untold amounts of planetary stress.

Our civilization, even at this point, is not even a Type I Civilization yet (we're still a 0) and we're already in danger. Even if we're talking about opening up wormholes, you'd need about a Jupiter's worth of negative mass as energy in order to open up a 1-meter wormhole (which is already assuming a lot). That's obviously a feat we're nowhere close to being able to handle. It feels as if the technologies required to keep an intelligent civilization going are too difficult (if not impossible) to achieve -- intelligent civilizations either destroy themselves early or get mauled by extinction events (we've already been hit with a decent number of them so far).

Needless to say, I think we're pretty ****ed, and I think most civilizations that have formed or ever will form are also ****ed. Then again, all you need is one civilization to make it. Out of all the permutations, surely there would be at least one that has REALLY favorable conditions by chance alone.

[ledwix]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

To assess the probability of there being life somewhere, you have to take into account not just the number of star systems out there, but also the limiting factor, the chances of life forming in the first place. We don't have a good enough understanding of the process of life forming from non-life to assess those probabilities. So it looks like there is probably life elsewhere, but to say it is "statistically retarded" to say there might not be doesn't seem to be the case. It just seems like guesswork still to say that there are other civilizations.

You also have to take into account the lifetime of the civilization. Our civilization is only a few thousand years old, and we might end up killing ourselves in the next thousand years, anyway...so it's also quite possible that our galaxy has had many civilizations before yet houses no other ones than our own right now. Having said that, I have no idea what is the case, and neither does anyone else. The Drake Equation has far too large a margin of error right now.

[aperson]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

There isn't any intelligent life on this planet why would I expect to find it any where else??

[supermousie]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

I think it would be mathematically retarded to say life doesn't exist out in the deep freeze. Billions upon billions of galaxies are out there, and billions of stars live in there.
There has to be a planet out there which has suitable living conditions for primitive life. Heck, maybe some civilisation has been established- a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Most of the satellites chucked into space face the earth, so we can talk to our mates in Thailand, and so the FBI can spy on us. A small group of those are pointed to the stars- and I think there should be more doing that. Maybe those extraterrestrials know we're here, and are sending a message, but our tech is just simply too crap to pick it up. And well, if they're hostile, we're pretty screwed. We don't even have sonic screwdrivers yet.

I think if they do decide to visit earth for some cucumber sandwiches, it will be more of a 'Hernan Cortez visits South America' predicament. They'll arrive, say hello, take some precious resources- with compliments of the Homo-Sapiens, criticize our way of life, we get offended, then we get sick of them, and then respond in violence. We'll get wiped out in a matter of milliseconds, and 'hey ho', the aliens suddenly have the cucumber sandwiches all to themselves.

[Reincarnate]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

To assess the probability of there being life somewhere, you have to take into account not just the number of star systems out there, but also the limiting factor, the chances of life forming in the first place. We don't have a good enough understanding of the process of life forming from non-life to assess those probabilities. So it looks like there is probably life elsewhere, but to say it is "statistically retarded" to say there might not be doesn't seem to be the case. It just seems like guesswork still to say that there are other civilizations.

You also have to take into account the lifetime of the civilization. Our civilization is only a few thousand years old, and we might end up killing ourselves in the next thousand years, anyway...so it's also quite possible that our galaxy has had many civilizations before yet houses no other ones than our own right now. Having said that, I have no idea what is the case, and neither does anyone else. The Drake Equation has far too large a margin of error right now.

We actually have a very good understanding of the kinds of events that would have had to occur to lead from inorganic to organic life (abiogenesis). When conditions are right (such as the chemically-favorable conditions of early Earth), it's piss-easy to generate (in the words of Carl Sagan) "great gobs of this stuff" in a short time. Again, the question is really how many planets out there have suitable conditions.

[pokelda]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

judging from page 1 there are no intelligent life forms on this forum

[Rubin0]

Re: Your thoughts on intelligent life forms

Wow. Every single time someone says that there is no such thing as intelligent life it just gets funnier and funnier.