Extraterrestrials

[Daniel L Newhouse]

There are several reasons to believe extraterrestrials exist.

1) The number of moons of Saturn keeps changing. I remember being taught 16. It is now 14. It was down to 13.

2) The "satellite" photos of the arctic glacier. A great shot of Amerida. A really great shot. I asked the library of congress for images, they didn't have anything shot from that high a point.

3) Pluto, the du-arched planet. Why don't we have a clear hubble image?

4) Michael Jackson wrote the song "Dirty Diana" and even described her as "katani" in one live performance.

5) At Rockwell Collins, someone wrote software that is an infinite recursion loop in 5 minutes. I looked at it and I swear it would take me years to think through it. A lot of employees didn't know what it was.

[thekillman]

What?

If you want a serious answer: it would be absurd if we're alone. Our galaxy alone contains billions of stars. so far, we have no problems finding all sorts of planets around all sorts of stars. Meaning, it's safe to assume that 1 billion stars will mean 1 billion planets. Even the darkest spots in the skies have millions of such galaxies.

The real question is, will it matter? Say a species lives 1000 lightyears from us. Means that if the Romans sent a message, we'd get a reply today. "Future of the roman empire? Whatever you do, don't split it". Would require one hell of a question for it to have a useful answer.

[Daniel L Newhouse]

Has there been any TV or book discussing potentially extraterrestrial origins of the Kuiper belt.

[Chaka-Z0]

What?

If you want a serious answer: it would be absurd if we're alone. Our galaxy alone contains billions of stars. so far, we have no problems finding all sorts of planets around all sorts of stars. Meaning, it's safe to assume that 1 billion stars will mean 1 billion planets. Even the darkest spots in the skies have millions of such galaxies.

The real question is, will it matter? Say a species lives 1000 lightyears from us. Means that if the Romans sent a message, we'd get a reply today. "Future of the roman empire? Whatever you do, don't split it". Would require one hell of a question for it to have a useful answer.

That's a logical conclusion considering our current level of technology. If an Alien race was to make first contact with our kind, that would pretty much mean that they are highly advanced in interstellar transportation or/and would have means to communicate over vast distances. NASA uses lasers to transfer/receive data over huge distances with their probes, I don't see why they couldn't manage.

[Annoyed]

What?

If you want a serious answer: it would be absurd if we're alone. Our galaxy alone contains billions of stars. so far, we have no problems finding all sorts of planets around all sorts of stars. Meaning, it's safe to assume that 1 billion stars will mean 1 billion planets. Even the darkest spots in the skies have millions of such galaxies.

The real question is, will it matter? Say a species lives 1000 lightyears from us. Means that if the Romans sent a message, we'd get a reply today. "Future of the roman empire? Whatever you do, don't split it". Would require one hell of a question for it to have a useful answer.

FTL is impossible, at our current level of technology and understanding of the laws of physics.
That does not mean it is impossible, all it means is that our understanding is incomplete.

[Coco Pops]

FTL is impossible, at our current level of technology and understanding of the laws of physics.
That does not mean it is impossible, all it means is that our understanding is incomplete.

But what happens when we do learn how to do that?

What next, and with all the EM junk our planet spits into space surely we should have been noticed by someone by now. Our planet makes a lot of noise and any advanced species would have spotted Earth a long time ago assuming they even exist, so why have they not bothered to send anything here?

[thekillman]

If an Alien race was to make first contact with our kind, that would pretty much mean that they are highly advanced in interstellar transportation

Which doesn't mean that they can travel in an FTL fashion.

or/and would have means to communicate over vast distances. NASA uses lasers to transfer/receive data over huge distances with their probes, I don't see why they couldn't manage.

That still doesn't solve that light only goes so fast.

FTL is impossible, at our current level of technology and understanding of the laws of physics.
That does not mean it is impossible, all it means is that our understanding is incomplete.

The problem is that if FTL is possible, it would **** up causality. And causality happens to be a fairly fundamental part of everything. Plus, it doesn't change the fact that new understanding still has to explain old understanding. And a consistent observation is that causality is real.

But what happens when we do learn how to do that?

What next, and with all the EM junk our planet spits into space surely we should have been noticed by someone by now. Our planet makes a lot of noise and any advanced species would have spotted Earth a long time ago assuming they even exist, so why have they not bothered to send anything here?

Our transmissions have reached only a fraction of a fraction of the galaxy, let alone the universe. In addition, the inverse-square law applies so the signal gets weaker and weaker as it gets further. By the time it meets someone, they might not notice it's not background noise.

[Annoyed]

But what happens when we do learn how to do that?

What next, and with all the EM junk our planet spits into space surely we should have been noticed by someone by now. Our planet makes a lot of noise and any advanced species would have spotted Earth a long time ago assuming they even exist, so why have they not bothered to send anything here?

Who says they haven't? I'm convinced that they have, because I am pretty sure I saw one from a distance a long time ago. No details, too far away, but I saw something go from horizon to horizon, level flight, what appeared to a straight line across the sky, not going down like a meteor would (way faster than a meteor anyway) in a matter of 3 seconds or so.

Ain't nothing we have that can move that fast.

Even if that was somehow an optical delusion, and I didn't see anything, who is to say we could detect an advanced alien starship if they didn't want to be detected? And there are plenty of historical anomalies that suggest we are not alone as well.

As far as no official contact with us, they may have something akin to Starfleet's Prime Directive. They might be smart enough to let us grow out of infancy before contacting us.

Just as with FTL, our knowledge is incomplete. We can't say for certain either way.

Oh, and we only developed radio communications about a 100 years and change ago. The farthest our signals could have gone so far is 100 & change light years.

[Womble]

What?

If you want a serious answer: it would be absurd if we're alone. Our galaxy alone contains billions of stars. so far, we have no problems finding all sorts of planets around all sorts of stars. Meaning, it's safe to assume that 1 billion stars will mean 1 billion planets. Even the darkest spots in the skies have millions of such galaxies.

Lots of things are thought absurd until they aren't.

Trouble is, we don't have much of an idea under which conditions matter can self-organize into life, if at all.Billions of stars and tens of billions of planets? Sure, bring it. Rocky planets within "goldilocks zone"? Fewer. Rocky planets within goldilocks zone capable of supporting life of any kind? Do we even know how many factors to control for?

On average, 1 in 5 sun-like stars has an Earth-sized rocky planet in the goldilocks zone - but that's if we play fast and loose with the definitions of "sun-like" and "Earth-sized". My understanding is that out of 4000 exoplanets discovered so far, none qualify as theoretically capable of supporting life.

And then we will have to get to the definition of what constitutes life. And then what constitutes intelligent life. Every time narrowing the probabilities down by orders of magnitude. Why is it so improbable that they might reach zero?

The real question is, will it matter? Say a species lives 1000 lightyears from us. Means that if the Romans sent a message, we'd get a reply today. "Future of the roman empire? Whatever you do, don't split it". Would require one hell of a question for it to have a useful answer.

Of course it will matter.

If there exists life outside of Earth, it doesn't matter whether or not we discover it while it still exists or after it has perished. The very encounter would provide vital information on what kind of forms life can take. And in the long term we will need that information in order to determine which direction to evolve ourselves in.

I am convinced that the human form as we know it will disappear in the next 200 - 300 years. We will genetically engineer ourselves, fuse ourselves with tech and diversify humanity on genetic level for various applications. The only truly practical way to colonize Mars is to engineer life that can support itself on Mars - and people who can survive transplanting themselves to Mars. Just as suggested by Isaac Asimov in 'Foundation and Earth", the first aliens we meet will be ex-humans.

[Coco Pops]

Who says they haven't? I'm convinced that they have, because I am pretty sure I saw one from a distance a long time ago. No details, too far away, but I saw something go from horizon to horizon, level flight, what appeared to a straight line across the sky, not going down like a meteor would (way faster than a meteor anyway) in a matter of 3 seconds or so.

Ain't nothing we have that can move that fast.

Even if that was somehow an optical delusion, and I didn't see anything, who is to say we could detect an advanced alien starship if they didn't want to be detected? And there are plenty of historical anomalies that suggest we are not alone as well.

As far as no official contact with us, they may have something akin to Starfleet's Prime Directive. They might be smart enough to let us grow out of infancy before contacting us.

Just as with FTL, our knowledge is incomplete. We can't say for certain either way.

Oh, and we only developed radio communications about a 100 years and change ago. The farthest our signals could have gone so far is 100 & change light years.

I tend to agree with this.

We may well have been visited but are not at all aware of it happening.

[Coco Pops]

Probes don't cost money in terms of crew and food, and stuff so why wouldn't aliens send probes to observe Earth?

[Daniel L Newhouse]

Are there any ET distress signals? Like in Wing Commander.

[Annoyed]

Probes don't cost money in terms of crew and food, and stuff so why wouldn't aliens send probes to observe Earth?

Would we know if they did? Any race that could do that would probably have no problem hiding them from us.
For all we know, there's a monolith buried in Jupiter or someplace, maybe even Earth.

[Annoyed]

Are there any ET distress signals? Like in Wing Commander.

Never played Wing Commander, so not sure about that type, but I'm sure any spacefaring race would have some form of distress signal. We Humans will likely never receive one, though. Not sure they would even think we could help them. We are still mostly planetbound.

[Coco Pops]

I like the Wing Commander movie