To begin with, let me refute your assumption that it is incumbent upon me to provide the explanation that you appear to demand. I owe you no such explanation - but perhaps you are a little more serious and ardent than I in your approach to the debate of this topic, so let me try to meet you at your own level. I'll gladly elucidate!

When I say of E.T.I., "I’m convinced that it’s a reality in innumerable regions of the cosmos", I don't mean to imply that I believe it must be so; rather, I see it at a strong probability. As I said, "I like to dream" that it is, and believe that it most probably is, in the same way that I like to believe that humankind has the ability to survive the next century, and most probably will. I suppose I ought to substitute "hope" for "believe". How would you feel about that?

Quote: "In the face of the absence of evidence, you (and a large majority of your fellow citizens) still hold on to your belief in these extra-terrestrial civilizations"

Your turn of phrase may be misleading. Whilst it may or may not be true that the large majority believe in (the likelihood of) E.T.civs, I would not conclude that it is a belief that they "hold on to". I'm inclined to think that the majority are too concerned about the immediate cares of day to day life to give E.T any serious thought.

Quote: "Indeed. But it does seem, that having an open mind to the possibility that there may be no other intelligent life in the galaxy does seem to be a view held by a vanishingly small minority in this community and in the population in general"

It's of no concern to me who thinks what about this, so long as the thinking remains in the realm of speculation, and for the present, that's where it stands. By the same token, I accept that your viewpoint is as valid as mine.

Incidentally I, also, have encountered a multitude of informed opinions and arguments. Your arguments are not unfamiliar.

You and I crunch in an attempt to discover the truth. Our hopes, whatever they are, are our personal property, and are of secondary importance.

Whatever the speculative arguments may be, for and against the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence, I feel justified in keeping an open mind - open to the possibility that, on one hand there may be no other intelligent life in our galaxy – and on the other hand that maybe an additional billion years of evolving, maturing, learning and technological development could have produced some unimaginably beautiful results - a philosophy, a view of existence, an awareness far from our capacity to grasp. - fred

Indeed. But it does seem, that having an open mind to the possibility that there may be no other intelligent life in the galaxy does seem to be a view held by a vanishingly small minority in this community and in the population in general.

If we are to stipulate the existence of intelligent life in our galaxy with "an additional billion years of evolving, maturing, learning and technological development", it is incumbent on you - it seems to me - to give an explanation of where they might be - giving the crushing reality of how far they should have moved in that odd billion years or so. With even the most conservative assumptions (travel at small fractions of the speed of light, long waits between moves from one star to the next, etc.) - a similar species to us with our intelligence, motivation and desire for exploration would take no more that 50 million years to colonize the entire galaxy. Which means the entire galaxy should have been colonized 20 times over by the civilization you are keeping an "open mind" about.


"Astronomer Ian Crawford recently wrote about this in Scientific American. His diffusion model leads to "full galactic colonization" in 5 to 50 million years (Sci. Am., Nov. 2000, p. 8), a small fraction of the age of the Galaxy. Naturally this all assumes human-like behaviour and motivation. The bottom line is that if even only a few alien civilizations have arisen in the 10 billion or so year history of our Galaxy, most of the habitable parts of the Galaxy would likely be colonized by now.

So, we are left with only a few possibilities.

Either -

1) This billion year old civilization is there, but they just like to keep to themselves and not travel much.

-or-

2) This billion year old civilization is there, and they actually are also here - but are hiding from us with their technological advanced capabilities.

-or-

3) This billion year civilization is just not there.

In the face of the absence of evidence, you (and a large majority of your fellow citizens) still hold on to your belief in these extra-terrestrial civilizations. As you so eloquently state:

[i]"Yes, I like to dream. It may or may not yet have occurred in our galaxy, but I’m convinced that it’s a reality in innumerable regions of the cosmos." fred</I>

All well and good, as long as we all agree that it is just a belief. A belief, it seems to me, remarkably similar to the belief in angels and heaven and gods and benevolent superior beings living in the sky that will bestow wonderful gifts upon us if we can only communicate with them through prayer or through radio transmissions in the hydrogen hole.

It is good to have dreams. Personally, I dream that we as a species will eventually realize that if we are to take our place among the stars, we need look no further than the resources of our minds and the strength of our will.

Fred, you said you have an open mind to either possibility, as do I. However, we clearly do have different beliefs. Both beliefs are without evidence.

You crunch in the hope of proving your belief that they are out there.

I crunch in the hope of proving my belief that we are alone in this galaxy.

That's part of what makes this so fun and interesting.

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- Skeptic - "... and there is no intelligent life in Washington D.C. either."

I’m sometimes in danger of considering humans technologically advanced. OK, so we are in comparison to our ancestors; but it occurs to me that, although 4 million years has seen some developments, I ought not to imagine that we have conquered even the foothills of knowledge. Whatever the speculative arguments may be, for and against the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligence, I feel justified in keeping an open mind - open to the possibility that, on one hand there may be no other intelligent life in our galaxy – and on the other hand that maybe an additional billion years of evolving, maturing, learning and technological development could have produced some unimaginably beautiful results - a philosophy, a view of existence, an awareness far from our capacity to grasp. Yes, I like to dream. It may or may not yet have occurred in our galaxy, but I’m convinced that it’s a reality in innumerable regions of the cosmos.

Are we the first? It's an interesting and entirely possible scenario, especially when you consider the part about heavy elements only coming into existence after the death of the POP I stars. We may be the first (As you said, some one must be first). We also may be one of the first. There could be a handful of emerging civilizations in our galaxy, but of course, this list of "could be"s is quite large.

How common are habitable star systems? Impossible to say at the moment. We only have one data point (our solar system), not enough for any statistical analysis. Also, our single data point is biased by the very fact that we could not exist in a system that did not support life. However, we know that our Sun is common. NASA is currently addressing the issue of how common Earth may be with a series of fascinating, planet finding missions beginning with KEPLER and SPITZER.

http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/
http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/index1.html
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/documents/SearchforEarth-LikeCDB59.pdf

However, the issue of how common our moon (which turns out to be very important for life here) is, will likely remain for a some time. Although, if these missions can find Mercury sized planets, perhaps it is not such a leap to find Luna sized moons.

As for the Fermi Paradox, I have never found it very convincing. It is a vast over simplification, makes many erroneous assumptions, and then draws far-reaching conclusions not even supported by its own assumptions. It's hardly water tight

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Realistically, leaving emotion out of the equation, and basing a decision purely on Science, can we truly rule out the chance that, despite what we may think or hope for, are Humans the First Species in our Galaxy to acheive this level of technology?" Jim

Actually, "leaving emotion out of the equation", the Fermi Paradox is a quite compelling argument that (for at least this Galaxy) we must be the first.

Any scenario that postulates a relatively frequent occurrence of intelligent life (let's say the most common variables outlined in the Drake equation) must then explain why the Galaxy has not been completely colonized by now. The Galaxy is so old, that even if you assume star travel at a small fraction of the speed of light - The galaxy should be completely colonized by now. Where are they? They should be obvious. They are not here, we cannot find them when we look for them, even when we look really really hard for 40 years, ergo - the most likely explanation is that we are the first.

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- Skeptic - "... and there is no intelligent life in Washington D.C. either."

You make some very good points. However, I like to believe that there may be planets in other systems which have more favorable conditions for the evolution of life. It is possible that life on this planet has grown, adapted and evolved relatively slowly. All the same it will be interesting to see what others with a more scientific background have to add.

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Kolch - Crunching for the BOINC@Australia team since July 2004.
Search for your own intelligence...

Please don't ask why, as I have no answer, but when I was sat in traffic today I was thinking about Intelligent Life, technology, civilisation and the age of the Universe..and this started from observing a Guy using a PDA in a Car beside me..(Yes I think I am Mad)

Anyway, something occured to me that has not before, the possibility that despite no matter how unlikely it may be, could Humans be the first Intelligent species to achieve the level of technology we have?

As I thought of this I thought that I needed to justify this train of thought and started to consider what would be required for an Intelligent species to achieve our level of technology, and was quite surprised to realise that in all probability no species is likely to have arisen and then rose to our level more than a couple of billion years before us, despite the Solar System only being 1/3rd the age of the Universe.

The reason for this is heavy metals. When the Universe was young it contained stars that possessed only one type of star, and all these were metal poor as 99.99999% of matter in the then Universe was Hydrogen and Helium, these types of Star are known as Population I stars and in the Universe today these are all Dwarf Stars as the more Massive stars have ended their lives by now.

These massive Pop I stars then seeded the Universe with the heavier elements we are all familier with today and thus gave rise to the Population II stars that our Sun is part of.

Given the dynamics of the Universe and the way Stars work, planetary systems would not have formed for about 50% the age of the current Universe, so that means that no planets with the natural elements to support a technically advanced civilisation until between 6 and 7.5 Billion years ago (depending on the accepted age of the Universe you Use). As our Solar system formed some 4.5 to 5.5 Billion years ago, it does open the possibility that our solar system is one fo the first capable of supporting our levels of technology and beyond.

Now when you expand this thought you come to one startling conclusion..Someone has to be the first!!

At this stage things get more subjective than objective as we need to consider Humans from a 3rd party perspective.

Earth is not unique, the natural processes that occur on our home world occur on every world in the Solar System, and every world that undoubtably exist in the Universe, so one then has to consider what occurs during the life of a planet. Forgetting life for a moment, we know that techtonic activety and asteroid/comet impacts are common place, and the latter often have devastating global consequences. The history of life on Earth clearly shows multiple Mass extinction events clearly linked to impact events, some of which annialated more than 80% of species and families of life on the planet.

Thankfully for us life is resiliant, however one must then question whether life could have evolved another technically advanced lifeform in the past had it not been so interupted. We won't know the answre to that, but we can speculate.

This also introduces an intriging realisation, life on other worlds must undergo a similar trial of existance, and thus it is highly possible that on other worlds life has constantly been curtailed from evolving beyond a critical stage by natural events, and this then does raise the spectre that Humans are indeed the first Technically advanced civilisation to rise to the challenge, at least in our Galaxy, which is all that is worth nus considering as communication with any outside it is impossible.

Now I know I have skated over some of the issues here, but I think I have ocovered the gist of my thought process, my question is is this....

Realistically, leaving emotion out of the equation, and basing a decision purely on Science, can we truly rule out the chance that, despite what we may think or hope for, are Humans the First Species in our Galaxy to acheive this level of technology?

I used to be convinced that this could not possibly be the case, and had dismissed such thoughts when raised by others, but I had never really seriously considered it before, but now I am leaning toward the chance that this indeed the case, I will be thinking about this more, but I am curious to know what others serious and considered thoughts are on this matter.

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