Are we alone?

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Profile Steven Meyer
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Message 943453 - Posted: 28 Oct 2009, 22:23:51 UTC

We scan the skys for evidence of other life on other planets. Yet, if "they" were there, wouldn't we already know it?

I stumbled upon the following in a site that provides views of Earth and Luna, as well as a "Random New Earth" each day.

You will find the following here, if you scroll down past all the UNIX "incantations".

The ideas provided here and at that site are for some hopefully lively discussion, not to trample on anyone's beliefs, hopes, or dreams. So let's not digress into a flame war, please.

- - -

There are no other intelligent species, certainly not in our galaxy and probably not anywhere in the universe. This is the inescapable conclusion from the Fermi paradox.

Amateur astronomers hoping to share their love of the sky sometimes speak of "the friendly stars". Certainly anyone who comes to really know the sky cannot look upward without seeing old friends visited before, friends to call on again and again, whether with a telescope, binoculars, or just lying in a grassy field on a warm spring evening, taking in the heavens with that venerable instrument, the human eye.

Yet learning more about the universe makes it seem, in many ways, less friendly. For the stars are not lamps hung in the sky to guide us at night, but raging nuclear furnaces separated by emptiness so immense our minds cannot grasp its extent. To study astronomy is to encounter violence beyond the human experience: stars which explode, incinerating their planets, or burn out into eternally dark cinders; sources of radiation so intense they outshine whole galaxies, powered by black holes that swallow entire stars; gravity that crushes atoms into subatomic particles or into nothingness; whole galaxies that explode, collide with one another, and devour their neighbors; a universe born in a creation fire still glowing today and destined—we know not which—either to collapse and be crushed from existence or expand into an eternity of darkness and cold. Awesome it is to contemplate, but awful in its seeming hostility to life.

Awesome because what we discover in the sky seems so alien to our own experience. Awful because to look at the sky is to ask, in the larger sense, "What is my place in the universe?". We look upward from a small globe teeming with life and see an endless void: empty, lifeless, and violent. To learn that not just one's own personal existence, not just all of humanity's experience, but that life itself appears insignificant and irrelevant to the universe is to stand humbled under cold and unfriendly stars.

Look upward to the Sky; look downward at the Earth. Upward, blackness punctuated by points of fire, worlds by the dozens in our neighborhood, and all of them lifeless. Downward, a globe not just home to a multitude of living creatures, but fashioned by life: its life-sustaining atmosphere itself created and maintained by life. Earth is not merely home to life; in a real sense it is alive, but alone.

But are not the stars home to other forms of life, perhaps other intelligent species already sensing our electromagnetic birth cry and preparing to welcome us into the galactic community? Almost certainly not: there is every reason to believe we are alone in the galaxy, and perhaps in the universe.

The meaning of life is to live. To live is to expand the scope of life itself, by replicating, by adapting, by modifying the environment, and by evolving into other forms of life. We are the inheritors of more than three billion years of ceaseless global molecular experimentation, of competition among individuals and species, of a relentless expansion of life into new environments and emergence of new capabilities. How can we have the arrogance to believe, so recently evolved ourselves to a stage that we can truly be said to think, that we are unique—that no other intelligent beings see our Sun as a star in their sky and, as arrogantly, consider themselves unique?

It was physicist Enrico Fermi who first remarked, "If they existed, they would be here". Life expands its own scope. Life on Earth extends from the mid-oceanic ridges where the Earth's very crust is born, to the peaks of the highest mountains and the most remote regions of the Antarctic. In the span of one human lifetime, transcending the limits of our bodies through the cleverness of our minds, our own species has descended to the deepest points in the ocean, visited the most remote places on the planet, learned to fly in the air and then beyond into space, and on July 20, 1969 set foot on another world which had never before been host to life. Products of billions of years of ever-expanding life, the very molecules of which we are made drive us to spread life ever further. Already, our robot proxies have visited all the major worlds of our solar system, seeking life and finding none.

Is it reasonable to expect that life will cease to expand at the very moment it becomes capable of spreading further, outward, onward? That after billions of years and countless quadrillions of organisms, life will remain huddled on one small planet, awaiting the day when the Sun dies and ends it all? No. Already we have taken our first steps outward. Once the expansion begins in earnest, it will spread exponentially. It took three billion years of evolution before life managed to assemble individual cells into complex creatures, then only a quarter as long to evolve beings capable of carrying life to other worlds. Using only technologies we currently possess, and traveling no faster than the Voyager probes already bound starward, we could begin to explore the galaxy. Even at so slow a speed—requiring between ten and a hundred thousand years to travel between stars, if each new outpost launched its own emissaries of life onward, life would spread everywhere in the galaxy in only 300 million years—less than half the time it took the first multicellular creatures to evolve into beings audacious enough to think such thoughts. Using technologies likely to be developed in the next century, founded on scientific knowledge already in hand, life could populate the galaxy in just 4 million years—comparable to the time it took the first hominids to radiate from the Home Continent to the farthest corners of the Home Planet.

Four million or even three hundred million years is an eyeblink of time compared to the 10 billion years elapsed since the galaxy reached the stage where beings like us could develop. If intelligent life is common then why, over the billions of years that preceded our appearance, has no species evolved earlier already filled the galaxy?

"If they existed, they would be here", said Fermi. So where are they? Nowhere in evidence. Intelligent beings with technologies advanced millions of years beyond our own, spread to the far ends of the galaxy, should not be difficult to detect. We already possess the means to detect even primitive technological civilizations like our own at a distance of hundreds of light years.

If they existed, they—the first intelligent species to expand outward among the stars—would be here. And since we look around and see nobody but ourselves, then it is only reasonable to conclude, "We are here, so we are them." We evolved here and we have not yet begun to sow the seeds of life among the stars, but surely we will. Three billion years ago, one planet, the Home Planet, came to life. Slowly life spread across the Home Planet, gaining complexity and diversity until it could think of going yet further.

In a short time on the cosmic scale, beings throughout the galaxy will gaze at the friendly stars in their skies. They will look upward and see, not a hostile and lifeless galaxy, but one teeming with life—the legacy of the planet that came to life and then brought life to a galaxy. They will not be human, no more than we are Australopithecus or fish or bacteria, yet they, in their number and diversity trillions of times beyond the scope of life on Earth, will be our children, inheritors of our coming to understand the meaning of life and the role we humans are to play in its grand pageant.

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Message 943495 - Posted: 29 Oct 2009, 1:16:36 UTC

Is there life elsewhere in the Galaxy? My belief is that it is almost certain that there is life elsewhere in the Galaxy.

Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the Galaxy? My belief is that this is probable.

Is there another technological society elsewhere in the Galaxy (the only kind we can detect BTW)? This depends heavily on how long technological societies last. This one has already avoided one disaster (early use of nuclear weapons on a planetary scale), and is possibly heading for a second (global climate change). How many early technological societies would have fallen to the first, or fallen more quickly for the second?

Then there are natural disasters such as a huge asteroid hitting the planet. We haven't developed enough detectors to know if there is a huge asteroid with our name on it. A nearby supernova would not do us much good either, but based on where we are, this is a bit unlikely.


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Message 943512 - Posted: 29 Oct 2009, 2:10:02 UTC

Life will rarely, if ever, expand beyond it’s birth solar system because of vast distances and E=mc^2. So using Fermi’s observation that they are not here as proof that they are not there seems flawed.

What is life? Stripped of all the ethical and theological considerations that we insist placing on it, life is just chemistry. That’s all. If we accept that the basic elements of life (principally hydrogen, oxygen and carbon) are universal and we if we assume that the basics of chemistry are also universal then life is universal. And life always tends towards increasing complexity where conditions permit.
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein
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Message 943519 - Posted: 29 Oct 2009, 2:53:48 UTC

Are we alone?


No...

Another Fermi Paradox discussion. Can anyone here tell me another paradox beside Fermi which saying 'there is no intelligent species, certainly not in our galaxy and probably not anywhere in the universe' ? Then I'll take seriously about 'we have a chance to be alone on this universe'


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Message 943524 - Posted: 29 Oct 2009, 3:44:14 UTC

Everyone seems to love the Fermi Paradox. However it does make an unwarranted assumption. That being that interstellar flight is going to be the result of intelligent life. We aren't there yet and are a very long way from it. The better conclusion from the paradox is that because they aren't here, it isn't possible.

The galaxy teems with life.

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Message 943530 - Posted: 29 Oct 2009, 3:48:23 UTC
Last modified: 29 Oct 2009, 3:49:26 UTC

Je suis le defaut dans l'armure
Je suis la lucarne dans la prison
Je suis l'erreur dans les calculs
Je suis la vie

Saint Exupery, Courrier Sud (accents omitted)
Tullio
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Message 943565 - Posted: 29 Oct 2009, 5:49:28 UTC - in response to Message 943530.  

Je suis le defaut dans l'armure
Je suis la lucarne dans la prison
Je suis l'erreur dans les calculs
Je suis la vie

Saint Exupery, Courrier Sud (accents omitted)
Tullio


*smile*



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Message 943576 - Posted: 29 Oct 2009, 8:27:53 UTC

I can't belive we're alone. Would be such a waste of space;-)
I belive they are out there. And I think that maybe some of them already know about us. But they see what's going on here and keep distance. Like the vulcans in star trek, you know? ;-) I dont't think that mankind is yet ready for alien encounter.

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Message 943857 - Posted: 30 Oct 2009, 14:33:31 UTC - in response to Message 943453.  

"If they existed, they would be here"

Perhaps we have met them, and they are us.

I question the Universe for humanity or humanity's children alone. I don't have to leave earth to know that humanity is a minority population of life on earth, let alone be so bold as to proclaim life, created or evolved, must follow a scientific, technological path to be deemed "intelligent".

No, I'd disagree that the Universe is exclusively "our playground". I'd also disagree that life (of any magnitude of intelligence) has to exist within a certain range of earth-centric "ecologies".

Besides the questions or comments inspired by the OP's article, If other intelligent "non-human" life is found to exist - where are we on the "clocks of relative progress"?

While we're busy conducting research, and living out life here on earth, perhaps we are part of an experiment? That would be classic. :-)
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Message 944435 - Posted: 1 Nov 2009, 16:00:50 UTC - in response to Message 943453.  

I didn't understood one thing:
If the aliens exist, what should they have done to show us their existence?
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Message 944462 - Posted: 1 Nov 2009, 18:10:21 UTC - in response to Message 944435.  
Last modified: 1 Nov 2009, 18:12:03 UTC

I didn't understood one thing:
If the aliens exist, what should they have done to show us their existence?


Drop us a line . . .

Something like "Hello from Alpha Centauri."

Isn't that what we are looking for with our S@H program?

Mandaci un messaggio. . .

Qualcosa di simile a "Ciao da Alpha Centauri".

Non è che quello che stiamo cercando con il nostro programma di S@H?
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Message 944528 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 2:25:29 UTC

If you're anything like me, and I know I am, you'd believe it's impossible for there not to be life elsewhere in the universe. There are too many galaxies with a myriad of stars and many of those stars have multiple planets in orbit around them. More and more are being discovered every day. Soon the capability will exist to discover rocky planets the same size of the earth that are within life support range of their parent stars.

Until physical proof is manifested the answer to the question is faith based on the same principle of, "Is there a god?" I believe the former will be proved first.

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Message 944589 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 8:58:07 UTC - in response to Message 944462.  

They have to drop us a line?

Who told you that they didn't send it?
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Message 944606 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 13:12:34 UTC - in response to Message 944589.  

They have to drop us a line?

Who told you that they didn't send it?


Hmmm... It seems to me that if there were such a signal already here, we would have already known it as someone's Work Unit would have returned a result with the signal noted.

Are you suggesting that the signal was too obscure to be detected by something as primitive as FFT analysis?

... or that the signal is from a part of the sky that SETI is not looking at?

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Message 944621 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 14:56:07 UTC - in response to Message 944606.  

Yes.
May be that the signal was too advanced for our technologies.
The signals may be a form of energy that we not yet know.
Like if in 1800 or before we wanted to detect electromagnetic waves
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Message 944626 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 15:39:14 UTC - in response to Message 944621.  

Yes.
May be that the signal was too advanced for our technologies.
The signals may be a form of energy that we not yet know.
Like if in 1800 or before we wanted to detect electromagnetic waves


Or, in the 20th century, if they were communicating with gravity waves...

EM and Gravity are the only two things that will have the range needed.

We have pretty well looked at EM and are starting to look at Gravity, beyond that is anyone's guess.

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Message 944636 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 16:57:07 UTC - in response to Message 944626.  

EM and Gravity NOT are the only two things that will have the range needed,
they are the only two that scientists know and can explain.

There may be others forms that we don't know

example: if in 1800 I had said that in the future we could talk amongst ourselves with machines that send messages (at that time unknown: cell phones, computers) I would be considered insane

Same is for any discovery: types of energy, ...

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Message 944653 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 18:19:23 UTC - in response to Message 944636.  

EM and Gravity NOT are the only two things that will have the range needed,
they are the only two that scientists know and can explain.

There may be others forms that we don't know

example: if in 1800 I had said that in the future we could talk amongst ourselves with machines that send messages (at that time unknown: cell phones, computers) I would be considered insane

Same is for any discovery: types of energy, ...


A lot has been learned/discovered since 1800 in the area of physics.

Indeed, in 1800 scientists were wondering why the sun had not burned out because there was no known chemical reaction, or extrapolation of possible chemical reactions, that would account for the energy output of the sun for as long as the sun had obviously been "burning".

It wasn't until the mid-1800's that we had the first long-range --beyond visual range-- communication via telegraph, which was one of the first applications of our growing knowledge about EM.

I am not a physicist, but have spent decades talking with physicists at work. As far as I know, there is no room in the current theories for another type of energy beyond EM and Gravity that will have the required range for interstellar communications.

If there are any physicists out there, please put your two-cents worth in. I am wondering if there is anything known about the unification of EM with Gravity that would theoretically provide a medium for long range communication, just as EM unified Electricity and Magnetism to provide our current medium.


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Message 944700 - Posted: 2 Nov 2009, 21:32:44 UTC - in response to Message 944653.  

there is no room in the current theories for another type of energy beyond EM and Gravity


There is no room in the CURRENT theories, but future scientists can prove the existence of other rooms.
In fact they did not demonstrate the impossibility of it non-existence.

Is only a matter of time, if in 2012...
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Message 944778 - Posted: 3 Nov 2009, 4:00:17 UTC
Last modified: 3 Nov 2009, 4:27:58 UTC

The Unified Field Theory is the Holy Grail of physics. It was attempted by Einstein. who failed. More recently the Grand Unified theories unified the EM force and the nuclear forces, both weak and strong, but gravitation remains a mystery. There are papers and papers attempting it in connection with strings theory but I doubt I shall see it in my lifetime. I am running Einstein@home which attempts to find gravitational waves but nobody knows a practical way of generating GW, so we can only receive and not transmit. So even when the LHC will be up and running the query is open. Anybody wanting a Nobel prize can try to unify all 4 interactions. But remember the Ockham razor: entia (fields in this case) non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (beyond necessity). Maybe the 4 fields are all necessary.
Tullio
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