Theories on why we haven't found alien life yet

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Profile lunkerlander
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Message 1969474 - Posted: 9 Dec 2018, 12:26:26 UTC

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Profile William Rothamel
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Message 1969506 - Posted: 9 Dec 2018, 15:09:46 UTC - in response to Message 1969477.  

Too Too far away
No solicitation to nearby stars
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Profile cRunchy
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Message 1969643 - Posted: 9 Dec 2018, 21:12:51 UTC - in response to Message 1969474.  
Last modified: 9 Dec 2018, 21:16:40 UTC

Perhaps

7. Some religions are right and the earth is the only cradle of aware life.

8. Too much background noise from even the nearest star.

9. The universe is shrinking and not being center of any place special signals are coming in at so many different frequencies we are just missing them.

10. ET or intelligent life has not reached industrial levels required to send a signal.

11. ET. Sent signals with the answers to life, the number 42 everything that reached us 5000 years ago but we were too incapable to receive.

12. Time and universe are vast and we shouldn't imagine other life forms parallel our own evolution... It may be that many advanced cultures happened 10 million years ago and that we are at the end or lull.

13. We are just unlucky ;)

.
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Profile Vladimir Shavlak
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Message 1972353 - Posted: 28 Dec 2018, 21:13:42 UTC
Last modified: 28 Dec 2018, 21:32:20 UTC

Мы не можем найти внеземные цивилизации только потому, что мы ищем то, что мы хотим найти, то , что в пределах нашего понимания (мы видим то , что видим, мы понимаем то, что мы понимаем), или то , что нашей цивилизации навязали много тысячелетий назад, своего рода программа ,что это правильно, а не то что нужно искать. Мы в корне отличаемся от них.
(надеюсь перевод будет правильным, чтоб сохранить мою мысль.)

We cannot find extraterrestrial civilizations just because we are looking for what we want to find, what is within our comprehension (we see what we see, we understand what we understand), or what our civilization has imposed many millennia ago, a kind of program that is correct, and not something to look for. We are completely different from them. (I hope the translation will be correct in order to preserve my thought.)
VVV&Z
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Message 1972360 - Posted: 28 Dec 2018, 22:16:53 UTC - in response to Message 1972353.  
Last modified: 28 Dec 2018, 22:29:33 UTC

We are completely different from them.

Of course. It would be very strange if we aren't.
However life and intelligent life make footprints that could be detectable no matter how different they are.
Biosignatures like planets having an atmosphere with oxygen and other elements that carbonbased life create.
Technosignatures like radio communication and many other means of communication.
But our universe is huge, very huge, and actually almost empty...

Anyway. NASA had a workshop on this topic last september.
NASA and the Search for Technosignatures: A Report from the NASA Technosignatures Workshop
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1812/1812.08681.pdf

Oh. Eric J. Korpela from SETI@home is one of the authors:)
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Profile Gordon Lowe
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Message 1972566 - Posted: 29 Dec 2018, 23:28:56 UTC - in response to Message 1972451.  

Other lifeforms may use ESP for all we know

I think advanced life if it's anything like us at all probably does use ESP. I've always thought our brains' capacity is far underutilized, and ESP, while far-fetched in today's human evolution, I think is something on the horizon for us.
The mind is a weird and mysterious place
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Profile Bob DeWoody
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Message 1972655 - Posted: 30 Dec 2018, 18:01:18 UTC

My favorite theory is that ET is actively avoiding sending any signal toward our solar system. Why? you ask. Just take a good look at what we have done to our planet.
Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.
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moomin
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Message 1972691 - Posted: 30 Dec 2018, 21:44:22 UTC - in response to Message 1972624.  

Admittedly that report is dated 2014, but when I look back at the claptrap, idiocies, and total garbage that many theoretical physicists have trotted out over the last year, nothing seems to have changed much. e.g. Oumuamua is an ET light sail etc.
That some scientists are carried away about ET and their eventually contact with us is of course mostly speculations.
Like Oumuamua and Avi Loeb's speculations about it.
For instance postulating that an ET light sail using as propulsion is ridiculous.
As an sailor as I am, I know that sailing ships doesn't tumble around like Oumuamua did!
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Profile Gordon Lowe
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Message 1972869 - Posted: 31 Dec 2018, 23:57:06 UTC - in response to Message 1972624.  

Lots of good reading links in your post, Chris.

I guess I fell into the 10% trap, but I never really thought 90% was being unused. I always thought it was all interconnected, but that we have a lot more potential "power" up in our noggins than we've tapped.

These poor fellows below are having a bad day. I've always wondered why dinosaurs didn't develop better brains, especially given their extremely long reign on earth.


The mind is a weird and mysterious place
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Message 1972984 - Posted: 1 Jan 2019, 17:15:31 UTC

Some "lovely" implausible theories as to why E.T. hasn't been found.
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Message 1973597 - Posted: 5 Jan 2019, 10:50:03 UTC - in response to Message 1969474.  

9) Because we ruined our eyes trying to read that scaled-down image. :^)

Here is a much larger/more readable version.
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Message 1973652 - Posted: 5 Jan 2019, 18:07:55 UTC - in response to Message 1973600.  

Chris as I have often stated Aliens are here and they are on open display over in the politics boards.
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Message 1973657 - Posted: 5 Jan 2019, 18:28:05 UTC - in response to Message 1973652.  

Chris as I have often stated Aliens are here and they are on open display over in the politics boards.
Yep, alien I am, but E.T. I'm not. :-)
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Message 1977295 - Posted: 27 Jan 2019, 8:15:03 UTC - in response to Message 1973657.  
Last modified: 27 Jan 2019, 8:17:18 UTC

My theory is time-lines.

It is possible in the past billion years that some amazingly advanced space faring race existed but petered out well before we could have heard any message in our last 50 years of listening.

Perhaps they sent a message but it went past us in 1930?

In a way it is the same as the comprehension of the vastness of the universe argument.

Or perhaps an advanced space faring race will happen after we fade.

Or maybe it is us that will be the first.. or at least within our possible time-line.

I wouldn't expect too much until we have the capacity to put a working group and tech on the Moon or Mars.

It will take either a 'worldwide collective' or a 'single minded vast nation' to do either of these. (Or capitalist \ financial cabal :))


P.S. I am glad some people have taken on board the universe might be shrinking rather than the accepted idea it is expanding.

Not because I believe it is shrinking but because I think in the fluidity of a vast universe with localised and universal gravity all our measurements should be looked at with suspicion.


I don't believe in the fantasy (a sort of replacement folk-lore for gremlins) that aliens have visited us and helped build the pyramids, hidden amongst us or done some rude probing of us.

We are still children at this so I wouldn't expect much soon.

However SETI exploration and data does have many other uses.

SETI is the epitome of looking outwards and wondering...

Let the looking outwards and wondering continue.

(... and if there is a little myth in there... why not :) )
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Message 1977360 - Posted: 27 Jan 2019, 19:00:00 UTC - in response to Message 1977301.  

Or perhaps an advanced space faring race will happen after we fade.

Again we wouldn't know about it. It's almost as if you are saying life comes and goes, so why bother about anything?


Not being negative.

You clipped the bit about "maybe it is us that will be the first.." interstellar race.

Time-lines are important when searching for events.

You wouldn't look for the migration of buffalo on the plains when they are happy grazing in the hills.

If you had just 1 second to search (a parody of our 50 years) within the yearly migration and you had no choice about that second you would miss what you desire to find.

You may however discover lots of other things.

I would say it is a stoic way of looking at things... but then stoicism was a Greco-Roman reason based spiritual belief who's believers were hunted down and annihilated by Constantine's Christian followers.. :(

The latest theories are that the remnants of Atlantis left behind knowledge that helped the Egyptians construct the pyramids.


I have no doubt that some civilization existed we now call "Atlantian" and that some volcanic or natural event overwhelmed them. It is quite possible some of the survives ended up in early Egypt and took some ideas with them.

As to helping build pyramids. I doubt that. I think the Egyptians were quite capable of putting one block of stone upon another.

In a similar vein there is an idea that South American Incan society was founded by people from the borders of India and China given similarity of iconography, cultural values and even stonework.

Again these are time-lines but we shouldn't assume our localised earth bound time-lines are a match for the enormity of space.

Perhaps a different lens is required?
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Message 1978005 - Posted: 31 Jan 2019, 17:04:09 UTC

There's a lot of space and time to hide in. Why couldn't we find one single airliner in the Indian Ocean or Amelia Earhart 't airplane in the Pacific Ocean. Just too much space out there and way too little search equipment that for all we know isn't looking for the right kind of signal. And we may be the only civilization in this part of our galaxy at this time. Those are my guesses. But, even so, I truly doubt that this is the only planet that has, or has ever had living beings living on it.
Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.
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Message 1978629 - Posted: 4 Feb 2019, 20:16:56 UTC - in response to Message 1978089.  

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Message boards : SETI@home Science : Theories on why we haven't found alien life yet


 
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