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Author Topic: A truly disturbing idea
Agent 204
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posted 05 April 2004 10:25 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I just finished reading The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski. The book brings forth a very troubling consideration about extraterrestrial intelligence.

The book is set in the late 21st century, a time when the Earth is beginning to recover from the ravages of humanity's technological adolescence, and also beginning to travel to nearby stars. Suddenly, the Earth and human colonies are bombarded with empty spacecraft at relativistic speeds. Of course, they're almost undetectable, and impossible to stop even if seen (because by the time reaches you, the ship is less than a tenth as far away as it was when the light left it, and may have diverted its path in that time). The result is catastrophic; the impacts on the Earth release enough energy to melt everything on the surface and boil the top five metres off the ocean's surface.

What's really disturbing is the aliens' motivation: simple self-protection. The authors propose that given that we know no details of the appearance or culture of an alien intelligence, we know three things:

quote:

1. Their survival will be more important than our survival. If an alien species has to choose between them and us, they won't choose us. It is difficult to imagine a contrary case; species don't survive by being self-sacrificing.
2. Wimps don't become top dogs. No species makes it to the top by being passive. The species in charge of any given planet will be highly intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
3. They will assume that the first two laws apply to us.

When you combine this with the fact that relativistic bombardment can wipe out a planet-bound species, then any species has to regard any species capable of relativistic travel to be a potential threat to its own survival. How, after all, are they to know who can be trusted? By the time an attack is detected, it will be too late to react (probably too late even to launch a retaliatory strike, even if the victims knew who was attacking them, which they probably wouldn't). So- the most rational response, upon discovering a civilization that is now or soon will be capable of relativistic spaceflight is to exterminate it. The universe is like an infinitely large version of Hobbes' "state of nature", with no end in sight.

Thoughts?

[ 05 April 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 05 April 2004 11:28 PM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That is truly depressing. They are as dumb as we are. You have ruined my whole evening. I will be thinking about that possibility all night.
From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
verbatim
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posted 05 April 2004 11:45 PM      Profile for verbatim   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't really have a quibble with #1. However, I don't think that "being top dog" would necessarily preclude the existence of other civilizations. For example, if you were worried that another civilization was a threat, you could simply destroy any attempt they made to leave their own atmosphere. There are also many other evolutionary survival strategies than simply eradicating all opposition, although granted they make a lot more sense within an complex interdependent ecosystem than in the infinite array of closed systems that the universe represents.

I think a paranoid alien neighbour is definitely a scary possibility, but I don't think it's a universal inevitability. There is more in heaven than is dreamt of in that philosophy.

{Aside -- I always thought Hobbes' (and Locke's, et al) state of nature was a rather childish abstraction, probably derived from a creationist origin. The simple fact is that independent actors don't spring up magically from the ground -- they arise from and within the context of pre-existing social communities. It's perhaps useful to posit a state of nature as a thought experiment, but the exigencies of human existence sort of preclude it ever being a real state of affairs.}

[ 05 April 2004: Message edited by: verbatim ]


From: The People's Republic of Cook Street | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
No Yards
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posted 06 April 2004 12:03 AM      Profile for No Yards   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The amount of energy needed to move a spaceship at relativistic speeds is probably way too great to make it a practacle weapon. You'd probably need something like a million H-Bombs per second energy source to get up to a speed close enough to "c" to make it feasable, and assuming it could be done, the civilization would have to be within a reasonable distance to make it worthwhile

What good would it be to attack us if that attack took 30,000 years to reach us? Surely within a 1000 years or so we would be able to defend against that sort of attack (remember a spaceship traveling at relativistic speeds could not only cause enormous damage to a large object by hitting it, but could have enormous damage caused to it by hitting a small object . . . put a cloud of dust in its way, and if it hit even one speck, it would be destroyed.

But, why would a civilization that advanced waste its time trying to travel at relativistic speeds, when it would probably be better spent figuring out how to use bends and warps in space-time to travel the same distances almost instantly, and likely using energies much more obtainable.


From: Defending traditional marriage since June 28, 2005 | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
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posted 06 April 2004 12:23 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Zebrowski always writes stories like that. Brute Orbits was about asteroid penal colonies developing their own civilization far outdoing Earth's. Cave of Stars was about religious fanatics (an extraterrestrial Vatican) attacking their immortal, serene descendents with primitive nukes.
From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Jacob Two-Two
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posted 06 April 2004 12:27 AM      Profile for Jacob Two-Two     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
But, why would a civilization that advanced waste its time trying to travel at relativistic speeds, when it would probably be better spent figuring out how to use bends and warps in space-time to travel the same distances almost instantly, and likely using energies much more obtainable.

Which leads into my point, which I heard somewhere and forever burst my bubble on the topic of alien civilisations.

The statistical probability of any particular alien life form being at a technological level that even vaugely approximates ours is too small to contemplate. If we knew the average "lifespan" of sentient life forms in the universe (from generation to destruction), then the technological period in which we could even have any hope of having a "contest" of any sort with them would be outlandishly tiny. It would be much more likely to encounter single-celled organisms some distant planet or beings so far beyond us that they would have no need to fear us any more than we might fear a new breed of crustacean we discovered in a deep ocean trench. Of course, they might just destroy us because they wanted our planet, just as we might destroy the crustaceans to use up its habitat.

[ 06 April 2004: Message edited by: Jacob Two-Two ]


From: There is but one Gord and Moolah is his profit | Registered: Jan 2002  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 06 April 2004 12:28 AM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It still sounds like us.
From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Anchoress
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posted 06 April 2004 03:09 AM      Profile for Anchoress     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't believe in intelligent life on other planets. I hope, but I don't believe.
From: Vancouver babblers' meetup July 9 @ Cafe Deux Soleil! | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 06 April 2004 03:30 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Isaac Asimov wrote in his book Extraterrestrial Civilizations something along the lines of what you said, Jacob - the odds are good that we've probably missed alien civilizations by a few million years and if they've done themselves in, then we're the only lucky buggers in this galaxy.

And if we do ourselves in, then the next intelligent life-form to evolve somewhere missed us by a million years.

.. and if by some lucky chance there are more than one intelligent species of life in this galaxy, the odds are high that we and they could be at such different stages of development as to make cross-communication useless. They might well regard us as we regard the dolphin - a species to be protected, and clearly intelligent, but with which we are incapable of meaningfully communicating.

[ 06 April 2004: Message edited by: DrConway ]


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 06 April 2004 06:04 AM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Jacob Two-Two:

The statistical probability of any particular alien life form being at a technological level that even vaugely approximates ours is too small to contemplate. If we knew the average "lifespan" of sentient life forms in the universe (from generation to destruction), then the technological period in which we could even have any hope of having a "contest" of any sort with them would be outlandishly tiny. It would be much more likely to encounter single-celled organisms some distant planet or beings so far beyond us that they would have no need to fear us any more than we might fear a new breed of crustacean we discovered in a deep ocean trench. Of course, they might just destroy us because they wanted our planet, just as we might destroy the crustaceans to use up its habitat.

Actually I think this is probably true, and is the major hole in the story. In fact, the two civilizations don't even have to be that far apart before the stronger needn't fear a paranoid attack by the weaker. All that is necessary is that they have dispersed sufficiently into their system's asteroid belt that a first strike can't be counted on to wipe them all out. Ideally, they should then inform their prospective opponent that they have done this. Nothing more, no threats needed, because the opponent would then see that a first strike would fail, and would instead produce a dangerous and possibly vengeful enemy.

A civilization that was far in advance of us would be a different kettle of fish altothether. They'd have little to fear from us, but I suspect that we'd have little to fear from them either, because interstellar distances are so vast that it would be impractical to come after our resources. This might change if some sort of faster-than-light travel is possible, but unless it is, even the most advanced civilization could do little more than send out small colonizing expeditions (on one-way trips). And if they knew of our existence (and how could such a civilization not know about us?) then they'd leave us alone, if for no other reason than that there's likely a lot of other star systems that don't have intelligent life. Sure, they could destroy us if they wanted to, but there'd be plenty of other systems without intelligent life that could be colonized much more easily.

Of course, if such a civilization conquered all the nearby systems, and still needed to expand, then we'd be in trouble, but, again assuming the impossibility of FTL travel, this scenario is probably much less to be feared than you might think (Thomas Disch's disturbing novel The Genocides notwithstanding). The light barrier would make it impractical to use interstellar colonization as a means of relieving population pressure at home, or as a source of additional resources. Any civilization that survives that long will realize that and will thus have learned to manage its resources well enough that any interstellar colonies would be self-sufficient.

Would we still have something to fear from them? Perhaps. Jung apparently thought so, no doubt inspired by what he'd seen of the destruction of non-European cultures. But if they left us alone, I think that the mere fact that we know of their existence should not be as disastrous for us as Jung seems to have thought. After all, we are able to recognize that the existence of extremely advanced civilizations is possible, maybe even likely, so we'd be a bit more prepared for the idea than would a society that had not developed this far. Nevertheless, if they did decide to colonize our system, the effects on our culture would be unpredictable, to say the least. And we can't necessarily count on such a civilization having adopted the Prime Directive.

So what should we do about it? First, I think we should continue to look for evidence of extraterrestrial life, and more specifically extraterrestrial intelligence. Pellegrino and Zebrowski's scenario is to be feared if, and only if, there's a civilization of a similar level of advancement to us within a hundred light years or so. And it's only really to be feared if they're close enough to detect our attempts at relativistic travel (e.g. the gamma rays produced by an annihlation-powered rocket like Pellegrino's Valkeryes). Were that unlikely scenario to be true, then we'd simply have to declare a moratorium on fast interstellar travel until we'd dispersed ourselves well into the asteroid belt, for reasons described above. Once we were sufficiently dispersed that they couldn't count on wiping us all out, we'd be safe.

For more on concerns about contacting extraterrestrial civilizations, look here (actually that whole site is excellent; I spent hours there when I first found it).

Sorry if I've given you all nightmares.


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Loony Bin
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posted 06 April 2004 10:54 AM      Profile for Loony Bin   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The statistical probability of any particular alien life form being at a technological level that even vaugely approximates ours is too small to contemplate.

Just love how humans, even in the face of the whole uncharted, unimaginable universe, think that we're the pinnacle of civilization and technological mastery.

Sometimes I wish Zeus were still around.


From: solitary confinement | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
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posted 06 April 2004 11:10 AM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Note that he didn't say that we were the pinnacle. He said that it is unlikely that anyone would be at our level of development. So some may be way more advanced, and some may be very primitive. It is actually more likely that if intelligent life exists elsewhere, they are far far more advanced than we are. They probably don't really need or want Earth at that point.
From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
mighty brutus
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posted 06 April 2004 12:20 PM      Profile for mighty brutus     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Anchoress:
I don't believe in intelligent life on other planets. I hope, but I don't believe.

Heaven knows there's barely any intelligent life on

this planet.


From: Beautiful Burnaby, British Columbia | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 06 April 2004 12:26 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
True story or urban legend?
The accused is about to be sentenced. The Judge says, "Do you have any final words to say in your defence?"
The accused carefully pulls out his wallet, flips it open and in a business-like way states the following: "Kirk to Enterprise, beam me aboard Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here."

And the accused was charged with contempt of court as well as the other charge(s). This story allegedy took place in Courtenay on Van. Island.

[ 06 April 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
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posted 06 April 2004 12:31 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Snopes!

[ 06 April 2004: Message edited by: Mr. Magoo ]


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 06 April 2004 12:43 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think you meant to do this Magoo:

"Beam me up, Scotty!"

BTW, thanks for the link.


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Polunatic
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posted 06 April 2004 12:50 PM      Profile for Polunatic   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I have no reason to believe there wouldn't be life and even intelligient life on other worlds but don't believe they would ever come here. If they had the capability and we had something they wanted, wouldn't they have already been here (X-File alert, X-File alert)? Unless of course we develop something they want in the distant future.
From: middle of nowhere | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 06 April 2004 01:02 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Carl Sagan and other SETI-types notwithstanding, I've always used the working hypothesis that we should assume that we're alone and that our species may never contact extra-terrestrial life.

There's a political side to this. If we think that we are on the only planet with life on it then, presumably (if we think that life is worth preserving), we have a duty to take care of ourselves and this planet. Life is worth preserving even if it is not our own. And I can't help but think that any advanced life form would share that view...provided their society wasn't divided into warring groups as ours is.

[ 06 April 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
dnuttall
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posted 06 April 2004 04:48 PM      Profile for dnuttall     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I suggest we would have a very hard time identifying 'intellegence' if we saw it. I read a short story called something like 'Man, the Earth Virus', which was essentially a conversation between stars, in which one star (we'll call that one 'Sol') had just discovered that planets could communicate. The other stars were sceptical that a energy system based on fission of radioactive materials and convection of magma could communicate with organisms that used fusion as a source of energy. The sun thought it was a problem in translation when the earth was musing, wondering if any of the organisms on it's surface could be intelligent.

Someone posted about the odds of finding an intellegence that was near our level. Those are the only ones that we could recognize.

Human empires last several hundred years (the US is due to collapse right now to match the average), and after the next collapse it will be a long time before the earth would be able to support a space program of any kind. The time between being able to send radio waves and not being able to will be less than 2 centuries, possibly 1 century. The DarkAges were a fairly small blip compared to the coming die-off (see URL=http://www.dieoff.com]www.dieoff.com[/URL] for details). They were the better part of 1000 years ago. If we assume we will be able to recover in the following 1000 years, then we'll be emitting no more frequently than 10% of the time. Thus the chance that another technologically savy species will be able to detect us is less that 10%, even if we beamed a signal strong enough to be detected directly at them for that entire period.

Check out the
Drake equation for more details.


From: Kanata | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Anchoress
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posted 06 April 2004 05:55 PM      Profile for Anchoress     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lizard Breath:

Just love how humans, even in the face of the whole uncharted, unimaginable universe, think that we're the pinnacle of civilization and technological mastery.

Sometimes I wish Zeus were still around.


Speaking for myself, it has nothing to do with thinking humans are the pinnacle of anything. I came by my opinion (which required the reluctant abandonment of twenty-five years of staunch belief in extra-terrestrial intelligence) after seeing a TV show (I think it was Daily Planet), where two scientists (I *think* it was an astrophysicist and an oceanographer, but I don't remember) came up with a computer program that analysed all the variables necessary for the evolution of higher life forms (*not* just the possibility of life).

After considering everything, including the magnitude of the star and the planet's proximity thereto; the range of possible gravities; the acceptable range of rotational speeds; the elemental make-up and availability of particular elements in the planet's crust; the necessity for a magnetic field within a particular range of magnitudes; the eccentricity of the planet's orbit and the tilt of its axis; the presence of an exterior gravitational force (such as the moon), etc etc etc, they concluded that just the possibility of enough of the requirements existing on one planet is infinitesimally small. Factor in that the coexistence of these elements does not guarantee the evolution of higher life forms, and the likelihood of other planets *even with animal life* shrinks to almost zero.

Of course, they could be wrong!

[ 06 April 2004: Message edited by: Anchoress ]


From: Vancouver babblers' meetup July 9 @ Cafe Deux Soleil! | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
beverly
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posted 06 April 2004 06:11 PM      Profile for beverly     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
And just when I was considering the possibility of learning another language this summer, and was consdiering Klingon

quote:
I don't believe in intelligent life on other planets. I hope, but I don't believe.

Any intelligent life on other planets would stay away from screwed up humans who have raped their planet.

I miss Zeus too. Especially the kewl thunderbolt thing he had going on.


From: In my Apartment!!!! | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 06 April 2004 06:26 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Incidentally, Asimov in the book I referenced above worked out that there should be on the order of 1000 potentially spacefaring species in our galaxy.

So where the blazes are they?


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 06 April 2004 08:25 PM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Staying away from us I hope.
From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 06 April 2004 09:56 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Anchoress:

After considering everything, including the magnitude of the star and the planet's proximity thereto; the range of possible gravities; the acceptable range of rotational speeds; the elemental make-up and availability of particular elements in the planet's crust; the necessity for a magnetic field within a particular range of magnitudes; the eccentricity of the planet's orbit and the tilt of its axis; the presence of an exterior gravitational force (such as the moon), etc etc etc, they concluded that just the possibility of enough of the requirements existing on one planet is infinitesimally small. Factor in that the coexistence of these elements does not guarantee the evolution of higher life forms, and the likelihood of other planets *even with animal life* shrinks to almost zero.

Of course, they could be wrong!


They certainly could. At the bottom of the Drake Equation page that dnuttall linked to, it says:

quote:

In summarizing their discussions, the conference members concluded that the number of communicating planets could range from fewer than 1000 to more than a billion. Most of them thought the higher number a more likely estimate.

Then again, this page suggests that there might be only 50; in the latter case it could be considered zero as far as anything we could gain (or lose) from contact with aliens, since the nearest one would likely be so far away that we wouldn't cross paths with them for thousands of years. The long and the short of it is, we just don't know.

quote:
Originally posted by DrConway:
So where the blazes are they?

There's a number of reasons we might not see them even if they're there. Just suppose, for instance, that HF/VHF radio became obsolete, or was eliminated as a delibrate policy, perhaps for reasons hinted at by Pellegrino and Zebrowski, to be replaced by something that wouldn't leak into space? Nearly all of our searches to date have used radio, but if the aliens aren't generating radio signals then our searches wouldn't find them. Of course radio will never become obsolete for astronomy, any more than visible light or UV will, but radio telescopes don't have to generate signals- just receive them. They'd know about us, mind you...

quote:
Originally posted by N. Beltov:

Carl Sagan and other SETI-types notwithstanding, I've always used the working hypothesis that we should assume that we're alone and that our species may never contact extra-terrestrial life.

There's a political side to this. If we think that we are on the only planet with life on it then, presumably (if we think that life is worth preserving), we have a duty to take care of ourselves and this planet. Life is worth preserving even if it is not our own. And I can't help but think that any advanced life form would share that view...provided their society wasn't divided into warring groups as ours is.


I suppose a strict application of Occam's Razor would require us to assume that they don't exist.

[ 06 April 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
HalfAnHourLater
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posted 06 April 2004 10:03 PM      Profile for HalfAnHourLater     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
We've been here all along...
From: So-so-so-solidarité! | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 06 April 2004 11:44 PM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
verbatim
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posted 06 April 2004 11:51 PM      Profile for verbatim   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, there you go. Aliens have been with us in Newfoundland all this time. That explains the accents.
From: The People's Republic of Cook Street | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
wei-chi
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posted 07 April 2004 02:55 AM      Profile for wei-chi   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I kinda like the way they handle the age of alien races in Babylon 5. In fact, the age of the races was a major plot point - the Vorlons and the Shadows being VERY old and essentially keepers of the galaxy; but in the end, the ANCIENT ONES show up and make the Vs and Ss look like toddlers. And humans like ameobas, I guess.

A fun series.


From: Saskatoon | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Rufus Polson
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posted 07 April 2004 04:24 AM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
While it's true that there are a lot of factors making it unlikely, in any given star system, that there will be life that's evolved very far, including some factors that we didn't really know about until recently, let's not forget the basic point:
Space is big. Really, really big.

Which means that, first, there are an awful lot of chances for that minimal probability to happen. But two, the places it happens will probably be very, very far away. We are probably not talking Sirius here, we're talking hundreds and hundreds of light years to the nearest. And they're probably using either drums or gravity generators to communicate. And even if they've been doing some travelling, there are thousands and thousands of stars closer to them than we are. And if it turns out that no matter how advanced your physics gets, you can't handwave the speed of light, then how much interstellar travel is anyone gonna do? A little bit perhaps, to say they can do it and to get a few eggs into different baskets. But there's not much point beyond that.

So, is there anything out there we could talk to? More than likely. Will we ever do so? Not until we develop self-replicating space probes and send them out on search for a couple thousand years. Or happen to get lucky.


From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 07 April 2004 08:46 AM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Or unlucky, if Pellegrino and Zebrowski are right...

As regards the idea of self-replicating probes (von Neumann machines), that might not be a good idea. In response to Frank Tipler's argument against the existence of alien civilizations (Tipler figured that if they existed their von Neumann probes would have reached us by now), Sagan argued that any species smart enough to know how to make them would be smart enough not to actually do it- because they'd convert the entire mass of the galaxy into copies of themselves within a couple of million years. This would be a Bad Thing (TM).


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Anchoress
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posted 07 April 2004 01:22 PM      Profile for Anchoress     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A la LEXX.
From: Vancouver babblers' meetup July 9 @ Cafe Deux Soleil! | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Jimmy Brogan
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posted 07 April 2004 02:11 PM      Profile for Jimmy Brogan   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
After considering everything, including the magnitude of the star and the planet's proximity thereto; the range of possible gravities; the acceptable range of rotational speeds; the elemental make-up and availability of particular elements in the planet's crust; the necessity for a magnetic field within a particular range of magnitudes; the eccentricity of the planet's orbit and the tilt of its axis; the presence of an exterior gravitational force (such as the moon), etc etc etc, they concluded that just the possibility of enough of the requirements existing on one planet is infinitesimally small. Factor in that the coexistence of these elements does not guarantee the evolution of higher life forms, and the likelihood of other planets *even with animal life* shrinks to almost zero.


There's an emerging school of philosophy that posits the ridiculous enormity of the universe is necessary in order to produce just one sentient species.

Now that's a disturbing idea.

[ 07 April 2004: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]


From: The right choice - Iggy Thumbscrews for Liberal leader | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
dnuttall
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posted 07 April 2004 06:12 PM      Profile for dnuttall     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Only because we haven't found it yet. We'll keep looking, though.
From: Kanata | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
HalfAnHourLater
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posted 07 April 2004 09:02 PM      Profile for HalfAnHourLater     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by dnuttall:
Only because we haven't found it yet. We'll keep looking, though.

The Universe or Newfoundland?


From: So-so-so-solidarité! | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Rufus Polson
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posted 08 April 2004 06:36 PM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Keenan:

As regards the idea of self-replicating probes (von Neumann machines), that might not be a good idea.
. . . because they'd convert the entire mass of the galaxy into copies of themselves within a couple of million years. This would be a Bad Thing (TM).

So build in a limit. Say you want a few thousand probes and only feel like building a few. If you tell each probe to build six, and then each time one builds a probe it builds them with instructions to build one less probe than its instructions said, then (not including probes that die before they build more) each probe will give rise to a shitload but nothing like an infinite number.
1st probe builds 6
6 probes build 5 each -- 35
35 probes build 4 --140
140 probes build 3 -- 420
420 probes build 2 -- 840
840 probes build 1 -- 840 more
Grand total = 840 + 840 + 420 + 140 + 35 + 6 + 1
= 2282 probes end up existing from building one.

If you need a bigger number, start from 7. But clearly for any useful number of probes, the number of iterations is small enough that if you're careful about the robustness of that particular instruction there's pretty much no chance of them ditching it and doing runaway replication instead.

But in any case, the self-replicators eating the universe scenario fails for the same reason bacteria haven't eaten the whole world. Replication happens in conditions favourable enough for the means available to do it. Probes would be able to work with things like meteorites for raw material. But there's no way they could eat stars, and if they didn't have magical transmutation devices they'd be out of luck with comets, and they wouldn't be built to successfully so much as land in any size gravity well without splattering, so they couldn't eat planets. And, also like real life, many of them would be destroyed before they could reproduce. Still, they might clear out a lot of asteroid belts if you didn't build in a limit.


From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 08 April 2004 06:56 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Interesting idea, kind of like the telomeres on mammalian chromosomes. And I guess if you kept the number low enough you'd minimize the risk of a mutation that "immortalizes" the line of probes, in the same way that a cell line can be "immortalized", leading to cancer. Could it be made fail-safe, though?
From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 08 April 2004 08:50 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Keenan:
Interesting idea, kind of like the telomeres on mammalian chromosomes. And I guess if you kept the number low enough you'd minimize the risk of a mutation that "immortalizes" the line of probes, in the same way that a cell line can be "immortalized", leading to cancer. Could it be made fail-safe, though?
Not if you follow the Linnerian principle which states:

I have no friggin' idea what you people are talking about.


Carry on.


From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Rufus Polson
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posted 09 April 2004 03:04 AM      Profile for Rufus Polson     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Keenan:
Could it be made fail-safe, though?

Build it into the hardware somehow?
I doubt it would be a big problem. Cells are designed to replicate slightly sloppily, and you still only get cancer after millions and millions of replications, and at that usually only if you're in an environment with many chemical or radiation stressors (e.g. cigarette smoke, high-UV sunlight, the thousands of chemicals modern societies use)--people didn't used to get cancer much, even the ones who lived a long time.
Design something to replicate very precisely, put the key replication-number instruction in something fairly macro and solid compared to typical software, and I'd say you could be pretty confident.
And of course they're all sending back signals. If you start getting signals from probes that your records suggest should not be getting built, you send something faster after that one and any immediate descendants, and kill them. Presumably we've got an oz. of sense and these are unarmed probes.


From: Caithnard College | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 09 April 2004 10:07 AM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sounds reasonable, though if the "mutation" happens a thousand light years away then there's be huge numbers of these "mutant" probes by the time we even knew there was anything wrong.

I think you're probably right about the chances of it happening in the first place, though. So maybe it is worthwhile to consider something like this.

As for other risks, it seems unlikely that aliens who found one of our probes would be able to determine its origin, unless it included some sort of message (or was intercepted quite close to here, in which case they'd probably know of our existence anyway).


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
WingNut
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posted 09 April 2004 11:38 AM      Profile for WingNut   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Just love how humans, even in the face of the whole uncharted, unimaginable universe, think that we're the pinnacle of civilization and technological mastery.

Sometimes I wish Zeus were still around.



Yeah, me too.

Despite all our paranoia of the other, the only thing that is going to destroy the human race is the human race.

[ 09 April 2004: Message edited by: WingNut ]


From: Out There | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 09 April 2004 01:21 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A better way of saying it is, "right now, the most likely thing to destroy the human race is the human race". So naturally we should be giving the lion's share of the attention to environmental problems. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that we should ignore other potential risks. And by the way, I don't think an alien attack is anywhere near the biggest of these other risks either; a much more serious threat is the one discussed in this thread.
From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 09 April 2004 01:31 PM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Keenan:
A better way of saying it is, "right now, the most likely thing to destroy the human race is the human race". So naturally we should be giving the lion's share of the attention to environmental problems.

Yep a lot quicker than a space rock. Who knows maybe that would be doing the planet a favour.


From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 09 April 2004 01:38 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Actually, the planet will eventually recover from just about any catastrophe, whether it's one caused by us or not. The question is whether we will recover. And that's not a question I want to put to the test.
From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 09 April 2004 03:07 PM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The question is whether we will recover.

The only way the planet will recover if we don't.

I really think that mankind can(has) royally messed up the planet, comitting suicide at the same time and taking many other species with us.

Will the planet survive? Maybe become another Mars. Very dead.


From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Tommy_Paine
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posted 09 April 2004 03:49 PM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, all this doom and gloom aside, I remain optimistic.

I think we should reach out across the vastness of space in effort to establish communications or more with other intelligent life.


After all, they might be tasty.


From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 09 April 2004 05:03 PM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
ReeferMadness
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posted 09 April 2004 05:03 PM      Profile for ReeferMadness     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'd think that any civilization that lasted long enough to become space-faring would have had to come to grips with how it treats life or it would wipe itself out first. I think a far greater danger would be that the aliens wouldn't recognize us as intelligent life and simply take what they want regardless of the consequences to us (i.e. the way we treat other life here on Earth).
From: Way out there | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 09 April 2004 09:32 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by clersal:

The only way the planet will recover if we don't.

I really think that mankind can(has) royally messed up the planet, comitting suicide at the same time and taking many other species with us.

Will the planet survive? Maybe become another Mars. Very dead.


Not necessarily. The Earth has had a lot of big dieoffs in the past. The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs was the most famous, but even worse was the mass extinction at the end of the Cambrian- over 90% of all species on Earth were wiped out. Eventually the handful of surviving organisms evolved into other forms, and the Earth's biodiversity was restored.

The problem is not that we are likely to destroy all life on Earth (though it's not impossible, of course). The problem is that we run the risk of destroying our civilization, and possibly our species (along with a lot of other species, of course). But from the planet's point of view this would be just another mass extinction, like so many in the past, but caused by something different this time. It's not a big deal for the planet- just a big deal for us.


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
clersal
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posted 10 April 2004 01:27 AM      Profile for clersal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Not necessarily. The Earth has had a lot of big dieoffs in the past. The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs was the most famous, but even worse was the mass extinction at the end of the Cambrian- over 90% of all species on Earth were wiped out. Eventually the handful of surviving organisms evolved into other forms, and the Earth's biodiversity was restored.


Agreed however this was a natural disaster and not done purposely. but then again I think that maybe Ma Nature screwed up a bit with humans and we are a disaster. Still makes me gloomy.

From: Canton Marchand, Québec | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Tackaberry
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posted 10 April 2004 10:37 AM      Profile for Tackaberry   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Instead of relativistic space craft, say bow and arrow. And instead of late 21C, say 5000 BC or something.
There were more than one village.

Perhaps there are motivations stronger than logic in life? Such a simple answer, so rarely considered.


From: Tokyo | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
No Yards
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posted 10 April 2004 01:37 PM      Profile for No Yards   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thinking more about the senerio presented, this would be highly unlikely, as the logical outcome would mean that there would only ever be one civilization existing in the universe . . . the first one reaching the means of relativistic speeds would destroy all other civilizations they come across.
From: Defending traditional marriage since June 28, 2005 | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 03 September 2004 06:36 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That doesn't make it that implausible. We haven't run into any other civilizations yet, so we have no information about their abundance. Maybe this is happening now, and they just haven't found us yet.
From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
britchestoobig
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posted 03 September 2004 08:31 PM      Profile for britchestoobig     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I have a background in evolutionary anthropology, though I dropped it years ago to be a teacher.

I'm not sure that intelligent life is all that assured:

When I was in university, I read a lot of Stephen Jay Gould and I have to say I agree with him in his frustration about our common axiom of evolutionary "progress". The idea of inevitable progress comes directly from the European Judeo-Christian background of modern science.

Soon after Darwin's "Origin of Species", with its misundersting of the struggle for existence...likely stemming from the term "nature, red in tooth and claw", European scientists began to theorize about the ladder of life...conveniently classifying other ethnic groups . It was a belief system that dove-tailed nicely with European colonialism as they both developed.

(the history of science is every bit as important as science itself)

Until you accidentally evolve self-conscious intelligence like our own, nature can be pretty value neutral.

Before man, if our earliest ape ancestors had been forced into competition for scarce resources against wolves...would the apes have won (remember early ape fossils are pretty tiny)?

And just because the wolves would have won...does that ipso facto (jeez, been awhile...hope I just used that right!)...anyway would that mean ipso facto that *wolves* would have evolved into an intelligent species? Our anthrocentric view, the value we place in ourselves...biases our view. But there isn't really any such guarantee.

The biggest thing about evolution that people seem to forget is luck.

Evolution progress through selection on random mutations. Quite simply, if a mutation arises that can be inherited - and if it isn't immediately lethal to the organism, as most mutn's are - if it can be inherited it goes through the test of survival of the fittest:

Does the mutation provide benefits to the offspring ***within its current environment***? If so, it gets passed on.

But is there anything ineherent in the environment that would produce the conditions necessary for a species to get onto the path towards some future intelligence?

And then, even when an organism has mutations that provide it a better chance of survival a further layer of luck. The environment has to remain conducive to that organism.

Say you have the perfect evolved fish. What if that fish lives in an inland sea that dries up due to tectonic uplift...did being the perfect fish help?

Our earliest fossil evidence for life is about 3.5 billion years old. The first era of life ended 450 million years ago with the explosion of multicellular life forms (Pre-Cambrian explosion, see Gould's "Its a Wonderful Life" - itself a wonderful book). But think about it: for 3 BILLION (!) years, the only organisms on this planet were single celled. Multi-celled organisms were an accident, if the exact sequence of random mutations, luck,and environment needed took that long to happen...why not longer? Or not at all in the lifetime of the Sun...

But we *do* assume the inevitability of intelligence. Its part of our cultural story. How many of you see variations on this theme:

Of course, first its always a white man. But second, it wasn't a ladder like that at all. That ladder is the image that captures our cultural assumption.

That is the sort of image that is reflective of our scientific mythology....

Different species of Hominids co-existed for 100's of thousands of years on the African continent...contrary to what was once believed. We didn't compete each "older" species into extinction, at least not for some time.

Lastly on progess: In evolution, species that are heavily specialized tend to be the least adaptable, the least likely to evolve into new species and more likely to simply go exctinct.

Maybe in a way our (malingant?) cultural specialization will soon bring about similar results?
(terrible job of proofreading sheesh!)

[ 03 September 2004: Message edited by: britchestoobig ]


From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 03 September 2004 09:18 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
You're quite right in saying that it's not assured. Well, if the universe is infinite, then it is assured, but it's not assured that it exists close enough- in space or time- for themselves and us ever to become aware of each other. Gould does indeed make this claim, and I'm inclined to agree with him (Dawkins wouldn't, though).

Evolution does indeed tend to produce specialization over time, but there are many ways of specialization that have nothing to do with intelligence. Some ciliates- like Paramecium- have the most sophisticated cell structures of all known lifeforms, but I doubt one of them has ever posted on babble, never mind written the Critique of Pure Reason. Ants, bees, and termites have developed social behaviour that is far more sophisticated than their apparent intelligence would seem to allow- by "simple" hardwired behavioural patterns.

But Gould has said something else (sorry, I can't find the reference right now). He said, more or less, that social evolution involves Lamarckian aspects not found in biological evolution. Organisms appear not to be able to influence the way their genes mutate, but we have at least some control over how our memes mutate. (I don't think Gould used the term "memes", BTW, because Dawkins coined the term and they didn't like each other very much).

So if this is the case, intelligence might yet turn out to be adaptive... if we can learn to manage it better than we do right now. Fortunately, the way culture evolves seems to allow an outside chance that we will.

quote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
britchestoobig
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posted 03 September 2004 09:45 PM      Profile for britchestoobig     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
You're right about Lamarkian evolution and human culture...

But Lamarkian doesn't mean guaranteed...nor does it mean "better".

Say our current hyper-growth phase leads to a burnout (bad pun) before we develope viable alternatives to oil. As others on babble have worried about it, given the current situation we could be looking at a Dark Age.

But herein lies the rub, if the resources that lead to our specialized technological culture have been exhausted who's to say our Dark Age2 grandchildren will be able to develope into a more sophisticated culture? Lamarkian evolution would allow them to develope culturally, and even technologically...but they may never be able to make large enough intuitive leaps to solve the problems that currently elude *us* at our highest point of human technological sophistication (and we with all our oil, all our copper and aluminum)?

---

(because while I say I don't believe in alien civ's I'd be major BS'ing if I said I didn't find it as interesting as the rest of you) Quick aside on another point made above :

When you say that other civilizations might be "millions of years" more advanced than us...what does that mean? Does technology necessarily steadily improve?

Are there physical limits to what can be done? The question of light speed is familiar, but what about energy sources...anything better than hydrogen fusion? Any weapons better than fusion bombs? How far can we go on improving materials - are their millions of years of possible improvements on molecular structure?

Good thread!

[ 03 September 2004: Message edited by: britchestoobig ]


From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 03 September 2004 10:20 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by britchestoobig:
You're right about Lamarkian evolution and human culture...

But Lamarkian doesn't mean guaranteed...nor does it mean "better".


No, of course not. But it offers the possibility of improving many orders of magnitude faster than would be possible by genetic evolution. Whether this will be fast enough to get us out of the mess we're in right now remains to be seen. I still have hope that it might.

quote:

Say our current hyper-growth phase leads to a burnout (bad pun) before we develope viable alternatives to oil. As others on babble have worried about it, given the current situation we could be looking at a Dark Age.

But herein lies the rub, if the resources that lead to our specialized technological culture have been exhausted who's to say our Dark Age2 grandchildren will be able to develope into a more sophisticated culture? Lamarkian evolution would allow them to develope culturally, and even technologically...but they may never be able to make large enough intuitive leaps to solve the problems that currently elude *us* at our highest point of human technological sophistication (and we with all our oil, all our copper and aluminum)?


Again, I don't know. It's an open question. And given that we don't know, we'd be well advised to avoid testing that hypothesis.

quote:

When you say that other civilizations might be "millions of years" more advanced than us...what does that mean? Does technology necessarily steadily improve?

No, not necessarily. But if interstellar travel is ever possible (I'm not counting on FTL, but travel at relativistic speeds still seems to me to be a possibility) then any civilization who develops it may well produce numerous "daughter civilizations", which will then evolve in virtual isolation (barring FTL travel or communication, of course). It is likely that some of those will continue to develop technologically. And biological evolution will continue as well, though the selection pressures will change (and possibly be subject to conscious influence, if genetic engineering becomes sufficiently well understood).

Representatives of a civilization millions of years older than ours could be extremely diverse- one colony might be enormously advanced technologically and/or socially, while another might revert to a level of development ranging from barbarism, to feudalism, to... They might be "like us but smarter", or they might be something we simply don't have the concepts to describe.

quote:

Are there physical limits to what can be done? The question of light speed is familiar, but what about energy sources...anything better than hydrogen fusion? Any weapons better than fusion bombs? How far can we go on improving materials - are their millions of years of possible improvements on molecular structure?


Better than hydrogen fusion? Matter-antimatter annihlation, though it remains to be seen if it can actually be harnessed. Pellegrino worked out an idea for the "Valkyrie" starship described in the novel (it's on his website if you're interested). Better than annihlation? I have no clue. I presume there's a limit somewhere, but I don't know.

Better than fusion bombs? A rather odd use of the word "better", but I suppose that cobalt bombs might fit the bill. Good way to sterilize a planet so that you could terraform it in a century or so.

Pellegrino has expressed concern that the development of interstellar spaceflight might turn out to be a bad thing, because the different isolated societies might turn out to be a threat to one another in the same way he imagines different species would.

John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes (1953) gives a similarly pessimistic account of the compatability of two intelligent species.

[ 04 September 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 03 September 2004 10:46 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I thought The Chrysalids was a decent sci-fi.

I don't know. That's easy enough to say. But what are the odds that the first interstellar species we make contact with are as desperate as we are or will be in the future?. I'd say that if they're that technologically advanced to travel or send projectiles our way, then why should they bother doing something as immoral/amoral as wiping us out ?. I know, it doesn't fit with all those sci-fi movies we've viewed as kids where the U.S. or Japanese military has to pull out all the stops to save us.

A mathematician once estimated the number of earth-like planets out there. In this universe and galaxies that we know exist, he suggested that there could exist as many as 13 million earths for every human being.

And string theorists are suggesting that parallel universes may exist afterall. Eleven of them!. They're calling it the theory of everything.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Klingon
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posted 03 September 2004 11:16 PM      Profile for Klingon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
P'Tachk! No life on other planets?! Where do you think I am from, down the street?!

Radio emissions travel indefinitely. But the message of the signal breaks up after a time, depending on how powerful it is (wattage), frequency and the integrity.

This is why it is so hard for radio telescopes to decipher background static, solar radiation (which can in some cases scramble radio signals), quasars, pulsars etc. Apparently a leading US astronomer in the early 20th century got a look at various flashing lights in space and interpreted these as beacon lights from deep space craft. What they are in fact are pulsars.

What is used in the Star Trek galaxy is sub-space communication via accessing what's called a "tachyon grid." It's not all-super fantasy. Apparently, it's been mathematically concluded that the existence of tachyons is quite possible (although physically they have never been identified). These are sub-atomic particles that supposedly exist in a state of flux between matter and energy (like most sub-atomic particles) and travel faster than light, since they have no measurable mass.

That can make communication almost instantaneous over hundreds of light years.

However, harnessing this would take fission, converting matter to energy in sub-space in a controlled manner and organizing the tachyons in a way that can carry a signal, transmitting it in the right direction at the right frequency, and then turning the energy back into matter at the sub-space level without losing or distorting the signal and transferring it to photons/electrons where it can be heard or seen.

Even if it's possible, the technology to do this is but a gleam in some sci-fi writers' eyes. Don't expect to see it any time soon.

As for life on other planets, I do believe it's possible, and, if it does exist, it just makes sense given the size and diversity of the universe. But also given that our solar system is way out on the edge of an arm of the galaxy, where distances between stars is so great and interaction so remote, it may be so far away that we will never find it, and it won't find us, assuming it is even there and it is looking.

But I think "life" may have a whole lot broader definition than we're used to. There may be life; it may even be "intelligent" by our definition. But it is by necessity compatible to us in terms of communication or evolution.

It might be possible, for example, to have a highly evolved sentient virus that might even be able to travel beyond a planetary atmosphere by using solar winds or gas compound clouds as carriers. It doesn’t mean it will ever be able to communicate with us, or that our existences will be at all mutually relevant.


From: Kronos, but in BC Observing Political Tretchery | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 03 September 2004 11:34 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

I don't know. That's easy enough to say. But what are the odds that the first interstellar species we make contact with are as desperate as we are or will be in the future?. I'd say that if they're that technologically advanced to travel or send projectiles our way, then why should they bother doing something as immoral/amoral as wiping us out ?. I know, it doesn't fit with all those sci-fi movies we've viewed as kids where the U.S. or Japanese military has to pull out all the stops to save us.


You might well be right. If the civilizations' points of origin are far enough apart, then by the time they actually encounter one another they will likely have colonized a number of planets in different star systems, so annihlation ceases to be a good strategy (since you could miss a colony somewhere, which might wreak furious vengeance on your own civilization).

quote:

A mathematician once estimated the number of earth-like planets out there. In this universe and galaxies that we know exist, he suggested that there could exist as many as 13 million earths for every human being.


Maybe... but civilizations in other galaxies, or even in the more distant parts of our own, likely would never cross paths with us.

A more useful question is how many advanced civilizations might exist in our own galaxy. There's something called the Drake Equation that addresses the question. Very hard to come to any conclusive answer, given the unknown factors. Interesting, though.

quote:

And string theorists are suggesting that parallel universes may exist afterall. Eleven of them!. They're calling it the theory of everything.

The idea of a "theory of everything" has been around for a fair bit of time, ever since they discovered inconsistencies between general relativity and quantum mechanics (don't ask me what the inconsistencies are, I'm just taking the physicists' word on this one). Some way must be found to reconcile them, by modifying relativity, quantum mechanics, or both. String theories are one possible solution to this problem, but I haven't a clue how to properly judge them on their own merits.


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 04 September 2004 01:14 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Keenan:

The idea of a "theory of everything" has been around for a fair bit of time, ever since they discovered inconsistencies between general relativity and quantum mechanics (don't ask me what the inconsistencies are, I'm just taking the physicists' word on this one). Some way must be found to reconcile them, by modifying relativity, quantum mechanics, or both. String theories are one possible solution to this problem, but I haven't a clue how to properly judge them on their own merits.


Neither do I, really. As far as I can tell, there are physicists working to develop particle accelerator experiments in at least two world locations right now. There is a very large particle accelerator tube being built somewhere in Europe at great cost and will provide some advantages over an American one being used now. They plan to observe previously unknown components of "dark matter" thought to comprise a large portion of all matter in the universe.


I believe that quantum physics is currently used to measure and describe particle, or sub-atomic physics. Relativity theory is used more in measuring interstellar phenemenon on a very large scale.

String theory seeks to unify the two general areas of physics into a grand unified theory...I think.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 04 September 2004 01:27 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Time to blatantly plagiarize myself again.

General relativity involves the study of gravity, and thus very BIG objects. Quantum mechanics involves the study of electromagnetism as well as the weak and strong nuclear forces and so deals with very SMALL objects.

Since microscopic particles do not feel much of any kind of gravitational interaction with each other, gravity is effectively ignored on the quantum scale.

Similarly, because quantum effects are virtually nil on the large scale (we do not see ice cubes in a glass of water suddenly appear outside the cup, as we would if quantum tunnelling was evident on a macroscopic scale), general relativity can ignore quantum mechanical effects when dealing with large masses and the distortions of spacetime that such masses produce.

And so GR and QM are two solitudes each in their own domain.

But try to put them together and it doesn't work. A quantum mechanical description of gravity using the same process as you use for quantizing electromagnetism produces nonsense results. Part of why this is, is because on extremely small scales, the universe is not a smooth spacetime continuum as GR posits. Instead, it's a violent foam of particles appearing, disappearing, moving about, and in general frantically blipping in and out from one moment to the next. However, we see a smooth spacetime continuum on large scales because this foam "averages out" to zero. This is a bit of a hand-waving explanation, I admit, but just trust me.

This is the fundamental incompatibility that people can't shunt over, get around, or do away with unless there's something wrong with the conception of the building blocks of matter.

String theory shows why quantum mechanics is likely incorrect as to the basic nature of matter, and its new description exactly wipes out the nonsense results from a quantum description of gravity. For the curious, the argument runs as follows:

In quantum mechanics, basic particles like the electron, mu meson, and tau as well as the quarks are all treated as essentially pointlike objects with no spatial extent except that due to the inevitable smearing out of their wavefunctions as a result of the uncertainty principle. This description is OK, but is part of why quantizing gravity messes things up. If you instead take the equally reasonable view that the fundamental particles are spatially extended by a small amount, i.e. they are NOT the most fundamental building blocks of matter, this wipes out the problem of quantizing gravity.

Very powerful stuff.

[ 04 September 2004: Message edited by: DrConway ]


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
aRoused
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posted 04 September 2004 08:03 AM      Profile for aRoused     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I can't believe this great thread slipped under my radar up until now.

So I'll just randomly interject.

After all those pessimistic scenarios, novels and stories presented at the beginning, may I recommend "First Contact".

Written in 1945, it presents just such an encounter scenario, but with a hopeful rather than pessimistic ending.


From: The King's Royal Burgh of Eoforwich | Registered: Dec 2001  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 04 September 2004 09:25 AM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Carl Sagan's Contact is also a fairly optimistic scenario. Sagan tends to operate under the assumption that any civilization warlike enough to be a threat to us would have destroyed itself before it could develop interstellar spaceflight. Whether he's right or not is another question, of course; if a civilization (ours or someone else's) develops "daughter civilizations" in virtual isolation, some of them might revert to a more savage way of life while retaining some or all of the technology that got them to another world in the first place. Such societies could be extremely dangerous, even to other civilizations of the same species.
From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Jimmy Brogan
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posted 04 September 2004 10:35 AM      Profile for Jimmy Brogan   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Trying to discern limits to the possible has usually been a mugs game.

The accelerating expansion of the universe was unknown 10 years ago. Physicist have been running for cover ever since.

They call this universal anti-gravity 'dark energy', which should give you a clue about how much is understood about it. I mean if it's driving everything in the universe apart faster and faster every second then there's got to be exponentially more dark energy coming into existence every second to accomplish this feat.

We have progressed to a point where our questions get a little bit better, but real answers continue to be illusive.

[ 04 September 2004: Message edited by: JimmyBrogan ]


From: The right choice - Iggy Thumbscrews for Liberal leader | Registered: Nov 2002  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 04 September 2004 12:04 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
My understanding is that the idea existed well before that but was not mainstream, because their observations weren't precise enough to distinguish between competing theories, so by Occam's Razor the "inflationary universe" theory should be set aside. It's just that recently they've had to dust off the old theory because more recent observations don't seem to fit with a constant rate of expansion. At least I think that's the story; anyone know better?
From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 04 September 2004 04:20 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The premises of a "socialist" novel regarding an advanced civilization on Mars:

quote:
1) The natural resources on Mars are poor and will soon begin to run out. Mars is faced with two inexorable alternatives: either its socialist civilisation will enter a phase of degeneration i.e. take the path to its destruction, or it will save itself at the expense of the widened exploitation of the natural resources of other planets. Already in 35 years the shortage of resources will adversely affect it.

2) There is no choice. What is necessary is the immediate colonisation of Earth and Venus. Earth would be preferable; there may not be enough time and energy for Venus. But Earth is populated by the human race, with whom it is impossible to reach a Peaceful agreement because of biopsychic incompatibility — this was shown by the experiment on Leonid N.

3) Strictly logical calculation shows (as one of the heroes of the novel says) that sooner or later, 'after long hesitation and the fruitless and agonising squandering of our energy, the matter will inevitably lead to the same formulation of the problem which we, as conscious beings who foresee the course of events, should accept from the very beginning: the colonisation of Earth requires the complete extermination of earthly mankind . . .'

The conclusion: if the Martian — higher — form of socialism is to survive and flourish, it must sacrifice the lower — earthly — form of life.


The novel is Red Star by A. Bogdanov, someone whom Lenin wrote about in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism as having 'gone off the rails'...

Edited to add: Eventually, Martian love of humans saves the day. How Feuerbachian!

I found this in an essay by Ewald Ilyenkov

The Metaphysics of Positivism - Ilyenkov, E

[ 04 September 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
britchestoobig
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posted 04 September 2004 04:27 PM      Profile for britchestoobig     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sorry, brief aside related to what Beltov just posted...

Have any of you read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson? I got it from the library this summer as a brain-candy book and quickly discovered that the author's intention was to allude the problems of our near future.

I really enjoyed it and found it to be both technologically and psychologically sophisticated.


From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 04 September 2004 05:08 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No, I haven't. I've got a copy but it's one of several on my "to read" list.
From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
DonnyBGood
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posted 05 September 2004 12:16 PM      Profile for DonnyBGood     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think that these suppositions are false.

Aliens who could travel at the speed of light or close to it would benefit from the relativistic effects of time delation. So a thousand year journey would seem like hours to the people on board who, the theory goes, would not age.

But their commanders at home would. So would their relatives friends and societies. For their to be any social cohesion in a civilization with light speed capability they would also have to be virtually immortal or at minimum have very , very long lifespans - say at least a million years for the civilization to have any extra solar system scope.

Long lived sentient beings would either go mad with boredom or develop a much higher conciousness and have not only vast knowledge and power but also wisdom.

Why would they destroy other lifeforms holus bolus?

A couple of movies that illustrate this type of thing are the origional "Stargate" and another little regarded alien abbduction "true story" film "Fire in the Sky".

In the latter the aliens are amphibian-like and have an interest in DNA and life forms. Amphibians like some frogs can suspend their life functions for years. So this lends a certain veracity to the idea that a star hopping race of aliens would have to genetically engineer capacities for long life and some autonomic form of suspended animation.

Would they not also look to avoid destroying the equivalent of a galactic "rainforest" like earth? Would they not have a great reverence for life and its diversity for practical as well as spiritual reasons?

The negative suppositions were used in the movie "Independence Day" but the problem is that the energy trade-off doesn't work. To get across the vast reaches of space to simply plunder a planetary system is not cost effective from an energy efficiency point of view. In advances technological planets you have the same problem as the locusts of the US army are having in Iraq and had in Vietnam. A peaceful civilization is more productive and will provide more of the essentials through some form of trade rather than through imperialism.

I guess the question for SETI and others is then why haven't the social eqiuivalents of the phonecians showed up?

[ 05 September 2004: Message edited by: DonnyBGood ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Agent 204
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posted 05 September 2004 12:33 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by DonnyBGood:
I think that these suppositions are false.

Aliens who could travel at the speed of light or close to it would benefit from the relativistic effects of time delation. So a thousand year journey would seem like hours to the people on board who, the theory goes, would not age.

But their commanders at home would. So would their relatives friends and societies. For their to be any social cohesion in a civilization with light speed capability they would also have to be virtually immortal or at minimum have very , very long lifespans - say at least a million years for the civilization to have any extra solar system scope.


There's no reason, though, why we should suppose that they're cohesive empires. Rather, colonists from the home planet would form "daughter civilizations" on planets of nearby stars, which would essentially be new societies. My fear (whether these civilizations are our own descendents, or descendents of another civilization somewhere out ther) is that some of them might revert to a more barbaric, warlike way, while retaining the technology that got them where they are in the first place. Such a society would be a threat to all others around, including its ancestral planet if that were still close enough to reach.


From: home of the Guess Who | Registered: Nov 2003  |  IP: Logged
Baldfresh
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posted 05 September 2004 01:42 PM      Profile for Baldfresh   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Great thread!

Too much already discussed that I would have jumped in on, so I'll simply leave another reading suggestion: 'Bordered in Black', a short story by Larry Niven. It will haunt you. (It fits in well with the topic at hand, of course, but I'll leave it for you to discover on your own rather than give a poor synopsis)


From: to here knows when | Registered: May 2004  |  IP: Logged
DonnyBGood
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posted 05 September 2004 01:59 PM      Profile for DonnyBGood     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There another problem with Sci-Fi and that is that it is devilishly difficult to write a story about the arrival of benign and helpful aliens.

I never got into it but there was a TV series a few years ago that started off with this premise only have it to morph into some sort of aliens-with-a-secret-agenda-of -conquest type thing. Was it - hmm - Babylon 5?

Oh well.


And I'm only half a century old. What havoc would 10,000 centuries play on memory?

[ 05 September 2004: Message edited by: DonnyBGood ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Mandos
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posted 05 September 2004 02:40 PM      Profile for Mandos   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That was Earth: Final Conflict. The first season was very good; it was clear that the aliens had an Agenda from the very beginning, but it was also suggested that they were not all bad because of it. And the humans who fought them were not all good. The main character was stuck precariously on the fence between the two. The first season was a very clever and nuanced discussion of human/alien contact. What was even more fascinating was that the main human character and his alien counterpart had to keep covering for each other, without openly admitting to each other that they knew what the other was about...

However, in the second season they fired the main character and did some stupid plot kludges and the show became a completely mindless "youth-oriented action series." It was tragic.

A good writer of mostly benign human/alien contact is CJ Cherryh. There are also a few other writers like Ben Jeapes. Even William Shatner delved into that genre (he's a much better writer than an actor actually, shame he didn't start younger).


From: There, there. | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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posted 05 September 2004 02:44 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
...he's a much better writer than an actor actually...

Oh dear... so many straight lines, so little time...


From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged

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