"Why would aliens want to visit us?"

Can you come up with a mathematical model of a species which would evolve to be intelligent, in any ecology, without having evolved a strong curiosity as well? It just doesn't sound like it would happen. Relativistic distances are also not much of a problem when you're dealing with billions of years. The Universe has been hospitable for some time, with high metalicity solar systems being around for a few billion years now. Most likely, aliens have us observed and chartered, but they don't want to interfere with a "stone age" specie

[ 24 October 2005: Message edited by: fast_twitch_neurons ]

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Most likely, aliens have us observed and chartered, but they don't want to interfere with a "stone age" specie[s]

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Originally posted by Schop:
Even if there is intelligent life, its almost impossible that they would have the ability to find or contact us. That would require them to be literally RIGHT next door. The odds aren't good.

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Traveling at about 50,000 miles per hour (faster than any spacecraft to date), it would take about 470 MILLION YEARS to just get to the nearest star (four light years away). Just that one star is at a nearly incomprehensible distance from us.

So, a spacecraft manages to get to that nearest star after nearly a half billion years of travel (with countless generations of people born and dead on the ship) and we get to that nearest star and...oh, I guess there's no one here!! Well, buck up!! On to the next star!!

The distance across the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years (and the space between the billions of galaxies is far, far greater than that).

So, yeah, while there is undoubtedly intelligent life out there, mankind will likely never have contact with it prior to the sun's expansion and destruction of planet Earth.

On that light note, what's on TV tonight?!

[ 25 October 2005: Message edited by: Sven ]

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The distance across the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years (and the space between the billions of galaxies is far, far greater than that).

So, yeah, while there is undoubtedly intelligent life out there, mankind will likely never have contact with it prior to the sun's expansion and destruction of planet Earth.

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Originally posted by Policywonk:
Dolphins probably don't think much of us though.

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Originally posted by Policywonk:
As for extraterrestrial intelligence, contact doesn't have to be physical. We can already communicate at the speed of light in a vacuum and radio and television signals have been spreading outwards for decades.

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Originally posted by abnormal:
It's not that simple. First problem is relatavistic distances. Even if intelligent life had evolved within a few life years and we assume that it survived for a few billion years, what's the probability that it's the same few billion years that Earth supported life. Worse yet, what's the probability that it's the same few centuries that mankind has been capable of recognizing them?

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A scheme for classifying advanced technological civilizations proposed by Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. He identified three possible types and distinguished between them in terms of the power they could muster for the purposes of interstellar communications.

• A Type I civilization would be able to marshal energy resources for communications on a planet-wide scale, equivalent to the entire present power consumption of the human race, or about 1016 watts.
• A Type II civilization would surpass this by a factor of approximately ten billion, making available 1026 watts, by exploiting the total energy output of its central star. Freeman Dyson, for example, has shown in general terms how this might be done with a Dyson sphere. Finally, a
• Type III civilization would have evolved far enough to tap the energy resources of an entire galaxy. This would give a further increase by at least a factor of 10 billion to about 1036 watts. Carl Sagan pointed out that the energy gaps between Kardashev's three types were so enormous that a finer gradation was needed to make the scheme more useful. A Type 1.1 civilization, for example, would be able to expend a maximum of 1017 watts on communications, a Type 2.3 could utilize 1029 watts, and so on. He estimated that, on this more discriminating scale, the human race would presently qualify as roughly a Type 0.7.
  

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A Link

What if there were several civilizations communicating with each other now across interstellar distances ?.

SETI is listening on a select number of radio frequencies, but what if the aliens were utilizing something like our own internet protocols - a high level interstellarcom layer encapsulated by something like TCP/IP and data link layer where collisions with planets and asteroid belts are dealt with by re-transmitting packets of data and sending through different paths where if one is congested or blocked entirely, for example with electromagnetic storms, super-novas etc etc. Maybe thousands or millions of different paths at any given time are being used, and we not only haven't figured out the bit encryption methods, we don't know what or how many protocols they're using on what might be perhaps hundreds, thousands or even millions of different radio frequencies. We could be smack dab in the middle of a transmission right now and not know it.

[ 25 October 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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The speed of light is pretty damn slow when it comes to interstellar distances. They're just finding out now that Lucy is "expecting."

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

Who is Lucy?

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posted by CMOT Dibbler: Who is Lucy?

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
OK, now what does our earlist ancestor have to do with light years?

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*sigh*

Ok....light travels at the speed of, well, light.

Assume that you had a space ship that could go beyond the speed of light.

If you traveled into space the (reflected) light from earth would be getting older and older, and, you would be travelling backward in time.

Example:

The sun light hitting your face now actually left the sun 8.333 minutes ago. If someone turned off the sun, we wouldn't know for over 8 minutes. Get it?

Assume:

Light travels at 186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year.

The light from the A bomb dropped onto Japan 60 years ago has only travelled 60 light years into space. If you lived 61 light years away and had a telescope powerful enough you would see Hiroshima fully intact.

RB is insinuating that our nearest neigbours are so 'far out' even if the could see earth, they would be seeing a very primitive earth because it takes so long for the light to propagate from us to them.

Edited to add.

I see RB was talking about 'that' Lucy but our neighbours will find out about my Lucy first

[ 25 October 2005: Message edited by: Yukoner ]

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posted by Yukoner: ... I see RB was talking about 'that' Lucy but our neighbours will find out about my Lucy first

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[ 25 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by fast_twitch_neurons:
I disagree.

"Why would aliens want to visit us?"

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Can you come up with a mathematical model of a species which would evolve to be intelligent, in any ecology, without having evolved a strong curiosity as well? It just doesn't sound like it would happen.

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You say "any ecology", but i don't think you really considered the possible variety of ecologies. Suppose their body type doesn't easily travel? If they're vegetable, they can't - and probably wouldn't even consider - leaving their planting-place. If they're aquatic, the physical difficulty of travel through air - let alone vacuum - may not be cost-effective. If they're microscopic, exploring one planet may be sufficient change for the lifetime of a species.

Or... Suppose they didn't evolve in a hard-luck environment - and thus, didn't need weapons to kill food and rivals; didn't need tools to build shelter. Suppose they used the big brain in co-operation instead of competition; put their effort into biology, rather than mechanics. Suppose they haven't mucked up their planet. Suppose they're content, don't feel lonely and don't need to find others 'out there'.

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Originally posted by nonesuch:

Why mathematical? Where is it carved in kryptonite that intelligence is interested in mathematics? It might be - or not. Dolphins, as has been mentioned, obviously aren't. Nor was clever H. sapiens, until quite recently.
It's possible to be curious about many, many things besides technology.

You say "any ecology", but i don't think you really considered the possible variety of ecologies. Suppose their body type doesn't easily travel? If they're vegetable, they can't - and probably wouldn't even consider - leaving their planting-place. If they're aquatic, the physical difficulty of travel through air - let alone vacuum - may not be cost-effective. If they're microscopic, exploring one planet may be sufficient change for the lifetime of a species.

Or... Suppose they didn't evolve in a hard-luck environment - and thus, didn't need weapons to kill food and rivals; didn't need tools to build shelter. Suppose they used the big brain in co-operation instead of competition; put their effort into biology, rather than mechanics. Suppose they haven't mucked up their planet. Suppose they're content, don't feel lonely and don't need to find others 'out there'.

The way humans are at this moment is not necessarily the only way intelligence can be.

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Your brain rocks! Have you ever considered writing Sci Fi?

[ 26 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
That's right. Because, as we all know, Yukoner is millions of years old.

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Originally posted by Policywonk:
We can already communicate at the speed of light in a vacuum and radio and television signals have been spreading outwards for decades.

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Have you ever considered writing Sci Fi?

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It's very possible that a sufficiently advanced technology just might find a way around what we see as impassable distances. We might as well. For all we know, the knowledge currently exists, but nobody has put it together in the right way yet.

Aside from that, sheer statistics imply that somewhere there is life out there. 100B suns in our galaxy, 100B galaxies that we know of. Who knows what other forms of life might exist as well?

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Originally posted by Zoodles:

... there's none here...

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Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,

And things seem hard or tough.

And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,

And you feel that you've had quite enouuuuuuuuugh...

Just

re-

member that your standing on a planet that's evolving,

And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour...

That's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,

The sun that is the source of all our power.

The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,

Are moving at a million miles a day.

In an outer spiral-arm at forty thousand miles an hour

Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars,

It's a hundred thousand lightyears side to side.

It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand lightyears thick,

But out by us it's just three thousand lightyears wide.

We're thirty thousand lightyears from galactic central point,

We go 'round every two hundred million years.

And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions,

In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,

In all of the directions it can whiz.

As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light you know;

Twelve million miles a minute, that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember when your feeling very small and insecure,

How amazingly unlikely is your birth,

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,

'cause there's bugger-all down here on earth!

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[ 26 October 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

A closely related theory which was alluded to in passing in earlier posts is the Fermi Paradox.

There is also an interesting but controversial book titled Rare Earth which looks at what makes our solar system so hospitable to life but only on one planet, the Earth.

So it is possible to put forth good arguments either way as tp whether intelligent life exixts anywhere else in the universe.

[ 26 October 2005: Message edited by: Bobolink ]

fp is the fraction of those stars which have planets

ne is average number of planets which can potentially support life per star that has planets

fl is the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop life

fi is the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop intelligent life

fc is the fraction of the above which are willing and able to communicate

L is the expected lifetime of such a civilization

Only the rate of star formation is even remotely understood of all these variables. The Drake equation is useful only so far as it tells us how total our ignorance is on this subject.

[ 26 October 2005: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]

That means they either can't contact us or simply do not exist.

But the argument is a bit more sophisticted than a simple declaration that faster-than-light technology is "impossible."

It rests with a variety of assumptions about what civilizations should be able to achieve, given what we can imagine is feasible and given that there have been about a billion years for such civilizations to explore the galaxy.

At this time, intergalactic travel must be considered beyond the realm of what would be seen as possible. But surely, if it was possible, much of the arguments below about why they have chosen not to contact us would also apply.

We can assume that a civilization will be able to achieve interstellar travel with slightly more sophisticated technology currently in our posession. If one assumes even a small fraction of the speed of light is achievable, and that a migration to a neighbouriung star system would be achieveable at something like a pace of once every 500 years, then a civilization should be able to populate the entire galaxy in something like 100 million years. Perhaps even in substantially quicker time.

But there has been likely a billion years for this to occur and so far no sign of visitation, and every indication that the life here on earth (at least from the level of simple life) is terrestrial in origin.

The typical response is that either we are in an unexplored part of the galaxy or that for some reason, aliens are choosing to mask their presence from us.

I doubt the former - if possible, clearly the entire habitable galaxy would have been explored by now. And I doubt the latter.

The latter assumes that aliens have some sort of "Star Trek"-like Prime Directive which prohibits contact with relatively primitive species. But this also assumes, to extend the "Star Trek" analogy, that these aliens - ALL of them - are peaceful and logical Vulcans and not conquering Klingons.

In the end, you'd have to assume that ALL alien species, if plentiful and capable of interstellar travel, are playing by some code of conduct.

I don't buy that, it's an argument from lack of evidence.

I think the more likely truth here is that if there are intelligent alien species out there, it is too difficult to travel to neighbouring star systems. In the end, we are like stranded shipwreck victims on islands with no way to get too far away.

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Originally posted by Johnny_Canuck:
The Fermi Paradox suggests that if there were intelligent life out there, they would have contacted us by now. It seems clear they haven't.

That means they either can't contact us or simply do not exist.

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...or they are aware we exist and simply don't care. It is entirely possible that space is teeming with life, Earth could be one in a trillion planets wil life but we could be so primitive that they couldn't be bothered trying to reach out to us.

Imagine an ant colony. Do they know humans exist? I doubt it. What is a human is standing right over their colony, could they see us? Could they even comprehend what were were?

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Originally posted by Sven:

Traveling at about 50,000 miles per hour (faster than any spacecraft to date), it would take about 470 MILLION YEARS to just get to the nearest star (four light years away). Just that one star is at a nearly incomprehensible distance from us.

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It would take a long time for sure, but not 470 million years. Closer to 80,000 years for Voyagar 1.
Wikipedia talks about this under "Distance travelled."

I think that given how many stars there are out there that it would be very unlikely that there isn't intelligent life somewhere. Just look at Earth. Life grows everywhere, when given a chance. Even using very low values in the Drake Equation you get 13200 planets with intelligent life. Use the values that a fair number of scientists agree on and you get 600000.

Now, I don’t think will we ever communicate with this intelligent life or even find it. Humans have only been around for about .000005% of the history of the earth, and have in civilizations for even less time then that, about 10 times less in fact. To catch a planet in that small time frame in the hugeness of space is like hoping to be dropped some place on the earth and seeing a lighting bolt hit right in front of you. Possible, but highly unlikely.

But like they say in the lotto ads “You never know”

[ 27 October 2005: Message edited by: ouroboros ]

I think it's okay, in such situations to say "I dunno."

Some things I wonder about. The earth has had a rather interesting atmosphere for quite some time, and atmosphere that would be detectable to an alien race not too much more technologically advanced than we are.

No one has left a note.

Again, based on not a heck of a lot of information, it seems that while microbial, single celled life might be "easy" to get going, the step to multi-celled organisms takes a long time. A real long time. How many billions of years of our history did it take before some ape started using sticks to dig for grubs?

The shear numbers would seem to indicate that we can't be alone, but the same numbers would make it hard to believe that civilizations would exist at the same time, and at close enough proximity to allow for communication.

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No one has left a note.

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[ 28 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings from some object created by an advanced civilization, a civilization far out in space, a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology, you simply cannot discount that possibility." - Michio Kaku, PhD., one of the world's leading theoretical physicists

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[ 29 October 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
I don't want humanity to be the only child in the cosmic nursery.

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some times it does not matter what we want, the universe will not conform to our expectations, our wishes.

As to whether there is ET inteligent life, I don't now if there is I don't know if there is not. But I agree with the atomic scientist. "they would have visited us by now" is a reasonable evaluation. Given the age of the universe, the number of estimated planets, habitable planets, and the expectation of civilisations to occur on habitable planets a probability of ET intelligent life can be calculated (probability is approx. one). This link lists some co-efficients to represent variables in an equation.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
The shear numbers would seem to indicate that we can't be alone, but the same numbers would make it hard to believe that civilizations would exist at the same time, and at close enough proximity to allow for communication.

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[ 02 November 2005: Message edited by: Francis Mont ]

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"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

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Civilizations Within the Cosmos

[ 03 November 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

A spaceship lands in the desert in Arizona. The aliens get out and start exploring around. One of them comes across this old abandoned gas station and starts trying to converse with a gas pump.

alien: "We are your friends. We must meet with your commander"

Of course there is no response from the pump.

alien: "We come in peace. Take us to your leader"

Silence.

Frustrated, the alien pulls out his ray gun and zaps the gas pump which explodes sending the little green spaceman arse over tea kettle back out into the desert. He lands at the feet of one of his comrades.

alien (brushing himself off): "Whatever you do, dont . . ."

Late one night, an alien spacecraft landed near a deserted gas station. After a bit, one of the aliens came down the ramp, looked around, and walked over to one of the gas pumps, where he demanded, "Earthling! Take me to your leader!"

The gas pump, of course, did not reply. The alien became agitated and again demanded, "Take me to your leader!" The gas pump remained silent.

Frustrated, the alien went back to the spacecraft where he was confronted by the captain who wanted a report.

"I contacted an earthling - but he would not cooperate."

"Hmmm. I will deal with this earthling myself," said the captain.

"Yes sir. Be careful sir, I have a feeling there could be trouble."

The captain left the ship and approached the gas pump. "Earthling, you will cooperate. Take me to your leader." The gas pump remained unresponsive. "Very well." The captain drew his blaster. "If you do not respond by the count of three, I shall be forced to fire on you......One. Two. Three!" ZZZZZT!

WHAM! The gas pump exploded, knocking the alien ass over tea kettle. The captain jumped up and got back to the ship as fast as his whatever's would propel him.

"Quickly! Make ready to depart!" shouted the captain.

"Yes sir. What happened sir?"

"I fired on the earthling and it responded very forcefully," replied the captain.

"Sorry sir, I was afraid that might happen."

"How did you know that there would be trouble?" the captain asked.

"Well sir, I assumed that anyone who can take his pecker, wrap it around his feet and stick it in his left ear was probably going to be one mean bastard.

1 turns to the other:

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Originally posted by arborman:
Two tired looking aliens in orbit.

1 turns to the other:

"Well, I'm sick to death of this. 53 years of research, and all we know for sure is that 3 in 10 like the probe."

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Was Essa Babylonian?

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
That's right. Because, as we all know, Yukoner is millions of years old.

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Seriously when did the idea that we lived in a huge universe become a part of mainstream science and who was responsible for getting it into the mainstream?
Isn't it possible that all the equations are wrong and the universe is pin size?

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CMOTD just wants it to be pin-sized so he can pose as an angel and dance on its head.

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