I was just sitting here watching the documentary "In the shadow of the moon" and for some reason this idea popped into my head. Now im abosolutley certain many, many, better and brighter people have thought of this. But what if there is alien life, but it has not yet broke the bounds of it's own planet? Or it is like us and just beginning to? What are we to do if we encounter a species like this? If they are primitive would we share our knowledge? Or if they are on par with us would we cooperate with each other? I personally have no answer. It seems to me that encounters like this with our own species (I.E. Europeans encountering Native Americans) the good and the bad encounters seem balanced.

---

Acheron, Carl Sagan raised this possibility in his Cosmos series, too. (I wouldn't have remembered that, but just saw a rerun two days ago.) It's very unlikely, but as Sagan said, "After all, somebody has to be first."

It's also very possible that we're the most advanced technical civilization within X lightyears. Put in any number you like for X. We could easily be the most advanced within, say, 50,000 lightyears, or the most advanced in the galaxy. That would make us "first" for all practical purposes, no matter how many others had done it before us and then vanished in time. We have no way to know how often tech civilizations arise, or how long they last.

As to your last point, I personally hope we find another civilization, but that it's at a comparable technology level and no closer to us than a few hundred lightyears, and that fasther-than-light spacetravel remains forever impossible. Knowing someone else was out there, and having long, slow conversations with them, might be inspiring and helpful. But actual contact in the sense of a Vulcan ship landing here...? Consider:

For the Amerindians, the Europeans brought only genocide and cultural extinction. There was nothing good about it for them.

---

"Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else." (Han Solo)

Acheron, Carl Sagan raised this possibility in his Cosmos series, too. (I wouldn't have remembered that, but just saw a rerun two days ago.) It's very unlikely, but as Sagan said, "After all, somebody has to be first."

Sagan didn't fundamentally believe this though; in fact, he was probably the most vehemently convinced astronomer in the world that the universe is "teeming with life"... Indeed, his personal estimates regarding the amount of civilizations are now considered a bit rosy.

He was basically saying that a long-term SETI effort is worth it no matter what the end result is: Either conclusion (that we are alone or we are not) will profoundly affect the way we view ourselves and our place in the universe.



As far as encountering an intelligent civilization that is more primitive than we are; this is so unlikely as to be virtually statistically impossible.

Human civilization has only existed for ~10,000 years. That's a breathtakingly tiny window considering that the age of our planet is 4.5 billion years and that life has existed here for at least 3.8 billion years. The chance that there exists another civilization whose technological evolution overlaps within the same tiny window (meaning they are equal or primitive to us) is incredibly remote, even in our entire galaxy.

And even if they existed, SETI would really be unable to detect them; we aren't really capable of detecting radio leakage analogous to Earth's (despite a recent article by Seth Shostak, the answer is "no"), and if we were, such leakage would dissipate so much and become so weak as to become virtually undetectable within 50 or so light years.

Remember, the ages of stars differ on the order of millions, hundreds of millions, if not billions of years.

Essentially, encountering an intelligent civilization which is more primitive than us is simply not a real possibility. Encountering a civilization that has existed for "only" 500,000 or a 1 million years longer than we have would mean they're only "a tiny bit older" than we are in terms of the timescales of the universe. The Star Trek scenario isn't viable.

If any alien civilizations really exist at all, they're likely to differ from us by tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or maybe even billions of years.

Taurus, I agree completely with your post above. So much depends on the last two terms of the Drake equation, i.e. how often tech civilizations develop, and how long they last.

The following is a quote from Sir Fred Hoyle, from a speech he gave in 1964.

"It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only."

(Quoted from Richard C. Duncan at: http://dieoff.org/page125.htm)

Absolute statements like this are often proven foolish in the long run, but it's hard to argue with Hoyle's basic idea. If humans vanish today, and after a few hundered or a few thousand millenia another species with similar talents and drives comes along, many of the resources Hoyle mentions will be much harder to find than they were for our ancestors. On a galactic scale, Hoyle may well be right, for the most part.

---

"Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else." (Han Solo)

Wow, great discussion.

Have you guys considered that another civilization close to our technology timeline could take a very long time to detect? SETI should stay up and running for thousands of years.

---

Taurus, I agree completely with your post above. So much depends on the last two terms of the Drake equation, i.e. how often tech civilizations develop, and how long they last.

The following is a quote from Sir Fred Hoyle, from a speech he gave in 1964.

"It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only."

(Quoted from Richard C. Duncan at: http://dieoff.org/page125.htm)

Absolute statements like this are often proven foolish in the long run, but it's hard to argue with Hoyle's basic idea. If humans vanish today, and after a few hundered or a few thousand millenia another species with similar talents and drives comes along, many of the resources Hoyle mentions will be much harder to find than they were for our ancestors. On a galactic scale, Hoyle may well be right, for the most part.

Hoyle was obviously a deep thinker...
...but apparently he didn't consider solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal.. ;)

Heck, theoretically we could harness the power of the entire sun directly (Dyson Sphere anyone?)...

Wow, great discussion.

Have you guys considered that another civilization close to our technology timeline could take a very long time to detect? SETI should stay up and running for thousands of years.

Well, SETI is based on the fundamental assumption that the civilization signaling us will be much older than we are. The burden of communication is on *them*; heck, even the burden of knowing that the other side of conversation exists is on them.

If we're the oldest civilization in the galaxy, then SETI is doomed to failure....or along your line of thinking, perhaps several thousand years from now, the burden of communication will be on Earth's civilization.

Again, you have to consider the statistically impossibility that two civilizations would exist in the same galaxy within a few hundred or thousand years of overlapping existence). I'm not even certain there is such a thing as even a single star in the entire Milky Way galaxy that is within a few hundred or a couple thousand years of the same age as our Sun... Like I said, the timescales of the universe are on the order of millions of years.

But also consider that we are less than a decade away from being able to perform a comprehensive analysis of the atmospheres of Earth-size planets orbiting distant stars and the ability to detect life on those planets (by virtue of their atmospheres).

If we were to detect such a planet, I'm pretty confident that sometime sooner or later some group or another would transmit a message to that world. Perhaps even a steady radio signal to be left going for years...

And all that can potentially happen within the next ten years.

If ET's age is even within 100 years of ours, then one would assume they may have already detected our planet and its biosphere and may be doing the exact same thing themselves.

So a transmitting ETI need only be a few decades older than we are, perhaps as little as 100 years, to know of our existence and be transmitting to us.

Since it's far more likely that a transmitting ETI has been able to detect our planet for a million years and more, that's a big head-start, and it's much safer to assume that if they exist at all;
- They already know that we (life on Earth) exist too, and they've probably known for a very long time.
- They've had plenty of time to plan, build, and start a comprehensive, long-term signaling effort likely to succeed at contacting any intelligent civilization that might exist on Earth.

....on the other hand, they've also had plenty of time to send a physical probe here, even if they don't have faster than light travel; hence, the Fermi Paradox. One possibility is that they sent a Von Neumann probe that would set up inconspicuously on our moon or perhaps in orbit around our planet at a Lagrange point, and monitor the unfolding history of our planet, waiting for the right time to make its presence known.

This is the basis for movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Jill Tarter has mentioned more than once before that Earth's lagrange points have never been investigated and that telescopic scans done in the past would have been be unable to detect even large artificial objects.

Others have said that a physical probe is unnecessary since ET might have the ability to know all it needs to know about us without ever actually having to send a probe to our planet.

Seth Shostak doesn't put much stock in the Fermi Paradox though... He once said (not verbatim) "Polar bears have had thousands of years to travel to my backyard, but they're not there. So that must mean that polar bears don't exist."


....man, just realized I'm waaaaaaay off topic here. Sorry about that. :(

... But what if there is alien life, but it has not yet broke the bounds of it's own planet? ...

It is more likely the other way around.

Our Sun seems to be an 'afterthought'.

Most stars seem to have been created some 7E9 to 9E9 years ago. Our Sun is only about 4.6E9 years old.

---

Split personality - who, us?

Taurus wrote:

" ...man, just realized I'm waaaaaaay off topic here. Sorry about that. :("

LOL I disagree, Taurus. You're just thinking freely--exactly what the topic calls for.

ET may be so utterly alien that it has no motive to even attempt to communicate with us. Unlikely, but conceivable. It's also possible that, as John Stahle suggests, we're so late to the party and so primitve that we don't matter to ET. We bring nothing new, and aren't likely to survive another century anyway. Consider that in some human cultures with high infant mortality rates a child isn't named, and hence not a person, until reaching some arbitrary age. Our civilization may not have reached its "naming day" yet.

---

"Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else." (Han Solo)

I think a lot of the other life on other planets are dinosaurs that never met the fate of ours. Therefore we won't be hearing from them for a long time. lol

Or maybe the other life are still stuck on the "we are the center of the universe" concept. Therefore they aren't looking for a signal from us. lol

I bet millions of planets are like the 2 above examples of why we won't ever find a signal from every planet. Even though they are actually full of life. But I'm sure somewhere someplace and evenually sometime in the future we will find some just like us.

And I doubt we will ever cross the galaxy to actually see them. We will develope a distant communation system and share information. Which would still be great. :)

Taurus wrote:

" ...man, just realized I'm waaaaaaay off topic here. Sorry about that. :("

LOL I disagree, Taurus. You're just thinking freely--exactly what the topic calls for.

ET may be so utterly alien that it has no motive to even attempt to communicate with us. Unlikely, but conceivable. It's also possible that, as John Stahle suggests, we're so late to the party and so primitve that we don't matter to ET. We bring nothing new, and aren't likely to survive another century anyway. Consider that in some human cultures with high infant mortality rates a child isn't named, and hence not a person, until reaching some arbitrary age. Our civilization may not have reached its "naming day" yet.

Or maybe they have already detected us and sent the message via a signal on a frequency we aren't looking for. ;)

I think a lot of the other life on other planets are dinosaurs that never met the fate of ours. Therefore we won't be hearing from them for a long time. lol

If intelligence of the kind capable of transmitting and receiving radio signals is relatively rare, then that might be the case.

The rate of mass extinctions might preclude one major group of non-intelligent creatures, like the dinosaurs, from dominating a planet for too long, as occurred on Earth numerous times throughout its natural history.

Then again, complex animal life might be quite rare as well; since microbes were the only organisms on Earth for 80% of the history of life, it seems likely that most planets hosting life will merely be hosting microbes.

Or maybe the other life are still stuck on the "we are the center of the universe" concept. Therefore they aren't looking for a signal from us. lol

If they have science, this is doubtful; if they're capable of radio transmission, it's a moot issue.

Again, I'll repeat what I said above-
Our civilization has only existed for ~10,000 years and the realization that we are not the center of the universe is not necessarily new, though only seriously scientifically explored within the last ~500 years.

Since stars (and their planets) differ in age on scales of millions, hundreds of millions, and billions of years, it's not statistically possible for there to exist a single civilization in the galaxy within the same relative age and technical capability as ours. The classic sci-fi Star Trek notion of numerous interstellar civilizations interacting on the same technological level is simply not possible.

If they're not intelligent enough to have science (like Dolphins and Chimpanzees), then they're not intelligent enough to entertain the concept that they might be the center of the universe in the first place.

All you need to realize that your planet is not the center of the universe is a simple optical telescope like the kind that Copernicus used ~500 years ago. If they've detected radio in the electromagnetic spectrum, then they already know they're not the center of the universe.

I bet millions of planets are like the 2 above examples of why we won't ever find a signal from every planet.

I bet you're right about the first case; I'd guess there are probably plenty of planets with animal organisms throughout our galaxy...maybe even millions. But SETI isn't looking for those worlds anyway.

Great discussion!

I would like to postulate an analogy.

If you look at a corn field just after it was planted, soon you will see shoots pop up and then soon after most shoots emerge from the soil.

If the field is the galaxy, and each seed are potential civilizations in the galaxy, then some civilizations will spring up sparsely around the galaxy, and latter the galaxy will be replete with civilizations.

I cannot help but to speculate that our civilization is one of many but among the first in the galaxy. The more we tarry in detecting ET the more sparse the galaxy seems.

Its also interesting to note that after a time then no new plants emerge in the field but they all grow up. So if we are among the late comers in the galaxy, then we should detect ET in our lifetime, else we are probably more closer to the first civs in the galaxy.


I have to disagree with one point someone made. That we will never detect extremely faint signals. The detection of radio signals is limited only to the power supplied to the amplifiers. Thus there was a certain country that gave the embassy of its rival country a wooden plaque. The plaque had a very simple transmitter in it. In fact the transmitter was passive, comprising of a wire in a cylinder and no power supply. Then the country build a very large building next to the embassy. The building housed a very powerful receiver, so secrets could be revealed. The moral of the story is that no matter how small a signal is, it can be detected.

---

As to your last point, I personally hope we find another civilization, but that it's at a comparable technology level and no closer to us than a few hundred lightyears, and that fasther-than-light spacetravel remains forever impossible. Knowing someone else was out there, and having long, slow conversations with them, might be inspiring and helpful. But actual contact in the sense of a Vulcan ship landing here...? Consider:

For the Amerindians, the Europeans brought only genocide and cultural extinction. There was nothing good about it for them.

As for the Amerindians, while there was some genocide and some cultural extinction, most integrated with the Europeans. Also note that the Spanish integrated the indians in society to convert them (loss of culture) and the British tried to keep them from society (wars). Thus there are no reservations in California. But now reservations have casinos, so can't say it was 100% bad.

Contact with a more advanced ET society would definitely change ours in very dramatic ways. I'm sure that's why Rodenberry came up with the prime directive.

So choose which way to go, accept the more advance society or resist it.

---

There is as much chance of a civilisation being the same age as ours being more technically advanced as there is of being at the same technological level or less technologically advanced.

It is foolhardy to suggest a same aged civilisation wont be more technically advanced than us.

The ancient Greeks had started to stumble upon the potential use of steam. If they had of gone on and developed steam power, goodness knows where we would be now technologically. But the Greeks failed to develop this potential and, the use of steam was lost on humanity for near on 2000 years!

Now if a same aged civilisation had of developed steam around the time the Greeks here didnt, their industrial revolution could have happened 2000 years ago.

---

If you look at a corn field just after it was planted, soon you will see shoots pop up and then soon after most shoots emerge from the soil.

...
I cannot help but to speculate that our civilization is one of many but among the first in the galaxy. The more we tarry in detecting ET the more sparse the galaxy seems.

Its also interesting to note that after a time then no new plants emerge in the field but they all grow up. So if we are among the late comers in the galaxy, then we should detect ET in our lifetime, else we are probably more closer to the first civs in the galaxy.

The problem is, that analogy doesn't really fit our galaxy.

When you plant a corn field the way you say, all the corn is planted at around the same time. The stars in the Milky Way weren't all formed at the same time; not even close. In fact, of all the stars in the galaxy, our Sun is relatively young, ~4.5 billion years old. Most stars in the Milky Way galaxy are older, ranging from slightly older to much older.

And it's not the case that after a time, no new stars emerge but all "grow up"; stars are constantly growing old, dying, and being reborn in nebulae. In fact, the heavy elements in your body were forged in a supernova.

You're right, we are latecomers to the galaxy (since the Sun is relatively young and our civilization is only thousands of years old), the "new kids on the block"... ;)

If there are no other civilizations and we're really the first, then we are left with an incredible riddle; why didn't any civilizations ever arise before us? If this really is the case, then intelligent life must be a breathtaking fluke, a freak occurrence which only happens once in billions of years among billions of stars in a single galaxy.

I have to disagree with one point someone made. That we will never detect extremely faint signals. The detection of radio signals is limited only to the power supplied to the amplifiers.

Well, if you're referring to my post, I never said "never." ;)

But the fact is that we don't possess the practical capability to detect radio signals of the same kind and strength as the human radio leakage we've sent into space over the last several decades. You don't have to take my word on that, Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute covers it pretty well here;
http://www.seti.org/news/features/finding-them-finding-us.php

There is as much chance of a civilisation being the same age as ours being more technically advanced as there is of being at the same technological level or less technologically advanced.

It is foolhardy to suggest a same aged civilisation wont be more technically advanced than us.

The ancient Greeks had started to stumble upon the potential use of steam. If they had of gone on and developed steam power, goodness knows where we would be now technologically. But the Greeks failed to develop this potential and, the use of steam was lost on humanity for near on 2000 years!

Now if a same aged civilisation had of developed steam around the time the Greeks here didnt, their industrial revolution could have happened 2000 years ago.

That's a good point that a civilization the same age as Earth's wouldn't necessarily be at the same technological level as ours. Who knows where we'd be if the Roman Empire hadn't fallen the way it did?



...But, it's all a moot point.

It's foolhardy to suggest that any civilization in the galaxy would be the same age as us anyway. It's just not statistically possible.

When you plant a corn field the way you say, all the corn is planted at around the same time. The stars in the Milky Way weren't all formed at the same time; not even close. In fact, of all the stars in the galaxy, our Sun is relatively young, ~4.5 billion years old. Most stars in the Milky Way galaxy are older, ranging from slightly older to much older.

And it's not the case that after a time, no new stars emerge but all "grow up"; stars are constantly growing old, dying, and being reborn in nebulae. In fact, the heavy elements in your body were forged in a supernova.

Well, right, but we don't know that every star system produces a civilization or life. Our Sun is alone, but most star systems are binary. That could be a criteria for life. So I did not refer to stars but civilizations. To equate stars with civilization might be generally acceptable, but in the long run it might prove to be inaccurate.

Well, if you're referring to my post, I never said "never." ;)

But the fact is that we don't possess the practical capability to detect radio signals of the same kind and strength as the human radio leakage we've sent into space over the last several decades. You don't have to take my word on that, Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute covers it pretty well here;
http://www.seti.org/news/features/finding-them-finding-us.php

That's true today, but we certainly can make receivers more powerful as years and centuries go on. I would think a solar orbiting receiver with its own nuclear power supply would pickup fainter signals than Earth based ones.

---

It's foolhardy to suggest that any civilization in the galaxy would be the same age as us anyway. It's just not statistically possible.

Depends on the scope you looking at. If your scope is in centuries then your probably right, but if its in millenia then you might find that civilizations occur like most social economic entities. That is along a bell curve, hence statistics.

Being an absolutist in this subject, in which we have to speculate so much, does not help the discussion.

So to make an assumption that most civilizations the same age as ours is at similar technical level is way to think of the subject without worrying too much about the how you got there. So its not foolharty, just an assumption. You can always change your assumptions.

With every thought experiment you have to start with assumptions. This is just the nature of logic.

If I assumed that all civilizations the same age as ours could be of any technical level along the technical spectrum. And that that distribution is even. Then I could be just as easily foolish. More importantly it does not help the thought but extinguishes it.

---

Well, right, but we don't know that every star system produces a civilization or life.

You're absolutely right, and indeed, astrobiologists are fairly confident that the majority of stars are *not* capable of producing life or even a civilization.

If that's the case, then the odds are continually reduced that a civilization is close to ours in age since the total number of possible civilizations is reduced.

Think of it this way:

Imagine there are 100 civilizations in the galaxy.

Now imagine you and 100 of your relatives play a national lottery with the odds of winning at 1 in 200 million. Obviously more than one person can potentially win so long as they have the right combination of numbers.

Now, say you are a winner.

The odds that even 1 other person in your group of 100 is also a winner is so remote as to be virtually nonexistant.

Now let's go back to the 100 civilizations.
The odds of one of them being around the same age as ours (within thousands of years) are much greater than 1 in 200 million. They're closer to 1 in many billions depending on the average time it takes for a civilization to arise in any one star system in the first place.

The point is, the less civilizations that exist in the galaxy, the less likely it is that one of them will intersect the Earth's in terms of age within thousands of years when there are potentially anywhere from millions to billions of years difference in the age of their planets.

Well, right, but we don't know that every star system produces a civilization or life. Our Sun is alone, but most star systems are binary. That could be a criteria for life. So I did not refer to stars but civilizations. To equate stars with civilization might be generally acceptable, but in the long run it might prove to be inaccurate.

Not sure I follow your logic here...

If we don't use the age of a star as an indication of how long life has evolved on any given planet (and therefore, we don't extrapolate the time it took intelligence to evolve on Earth), then aren't you saying it's even *LESS* likely for a civilization to be within even a few millennia of ours??

If we assume that a civilization can arise at any point in time during the lifespan of a star, then you're actually making the odds even worse that a civilization is close to ours in age; you're increasing the the range of possible ages on scales of billions of years.

If every civilization in the galaxy took an average of 3.8 billion years to develop, that gives us a very narrow range in terms of how old we can expect civilizations to be. Since stars differ in age dramatically, there would still be scales of differences in millions and hundreds of millions of years; in some cases, the differences would be 1-2 billion or more.

If there is no "average time" it takes a civilization to arise, and a civilization is equally likely to occur at any point in time in the lifespan of its star whether its 10 million years after a star is formed or 6 billion, then the range is mindbogglingly more vast; the range of possible ages is essentially equal to the age of the oldest existing stars in our galaxy. The odds are dramatically less likely that a civilization is within a few millennia of ours in age.


Here's another example to consider:

Suppose an intelligent civilization had independently arisen on Mars and was there right now.

Even though Mars and Earth are the same age, the course of evolution on Mars was independent of Earth and unfolded in a different, unique way. Events that caused mass extinctions on Earth, like the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, didn't occur on Mars.

Earth and Mars are both 4.5 billion years old, and let's assume that life arose on both worlds at around the same time, around 3.8 billion years ago. If we assume that there is no general average amount of time it takes for an intelligent civilization to arise, then Mars's civilization had almost 4 billion years to arise. Meaning it could be anywhere from 4 billion years to 1 year older than ours!

The odds that it would be even within a few thousand years of ours in age are so staggering as to be nearly impossible.

...and that's for a planet right next door to us!

Depends on the scope you looking at. If your scope is in centuries then your probably right, but if its in millenia then you might find that civilizations occur like most social economic entities. That is along a bell curve, hence statistics.

Not sure I understand what you mean here.

BTW, I'm no "absolutist"... I'm just describing the rationale behind current radio SETI projects like SETI@Home and the work of the SETI Institute.

They're all based on the fundamental assumption that a transmitting civilization will be much older than ours; on scales of millions of years. Even if there were other civilizations in the galaxy that *are* close to us in age, SETI does not expect or have practical means to detect them; SETI is only listening for older civilizations. If there are no other civilizations in the galaxy significantly older than we are, then SETI is doomed to fail.

That's the fundamental basis of SETI.

Since we're all here crunching for SETI@Home, I'd think we all hope that basis is accurate. ;P


Statistics isn't a bad way to make logical conclusions.
Indeed, statistics is what gives us all hope that we're not alone in the first place! Even if intelligent life is extremely rare, statistics makes it seem likely that we're not the only examples of it in a galaxy of 200 billion+ stars...

Ralpher wrote:

"As for the Amer-Indians, while there was some genocide and some cultural extinction, most integrated with the Europeans."

My friend, I don't know what version of history you're reading. I doubt there are any American Indians alive today who would agree, and I doubt any historians familiar with this issue would, either. Active and occasionally violent confrontation between individuals, tribal governments, and white culture and government continues to this day.

---

"Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else." (Han Solo)