Hello? Is There Anybody Out There?

[bornagainathiest]

This neatly demonstrates the problems of communicating with intelligent extraterrestrials.

 

http://phl.upr.edu/press-releases/firstpotentiallyhabitableterranworld

 

Kepler186f orbits a smaller and cooler star than our Sun, but it does so within the habitable zone for that star.

So, it's not an Earth-twin, more like a cousin.  We've yet to find an Earth-sized planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star - but that day can't be far off.  Now for the elephant in the room. A.k.a, the speed of light.

 

K186f is estimated to 500 light-years away.

So, we're not seeing that planet as it is now - we're seeing it as it was in May 1514.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1514

(Please note that we're not actually 'seeing' it all.  It's been detected by the ultra-sensitive instruments on the Kepler satellite, but in reality it's host star can only be seen by very large telescopes and the planet K186f itself is millions of times too faint to be seen by the human eye.)  So, if we transmitted a radio message to that planet today, it'd arrive in... May 2514 A.D.  If any intelligent aliens living there immediately replied, their message to us would arrive in... May 3014 A.D.

 

  

 

Ok, let's try another scenario.

Let's assume that these aliens have been around a lot longer than us and have been transmitting radio greetings to us for centuries or even thousands of years.  What then?

 

Well, since we only acquired the technology to receive radio messages in the early 20th century, their messages to us would have gone unnoticed throughout 99% of human history.  Even assuming that we could have detected these messages in the early 1900's, we still wouldn't have had powerful enough transmitters to reply.  And even if we'd be able to do so, our radio response would still be only 1/5th of the way there.  It'd still have another 400 light-years to travel.  So, even by the most optimistic estimate, the Little Green Men on K186f wouldn't be hearing from us until 2400 A.D., at the earliest!  And their reply would get to us in 2900 A.D.

 

 

 

The reverse of this is also true.

We could have started transmitting to them a century ago, but who says they'll have acquired the technology to receive our messages by 2400 A.D., when the signals arrive?  They could be intelligent, but living in a pre-industrial society..  

 

 

 

Now, it could be that the LGM on K186f are alive today and their civilization is thriving.

But tomorrow or next year or in 499 years their society might come to an abrupt end and we'd never know that they existed.  Nuclear war might take them out, as it almost did to us.  They might succumb to a devastating plague.  An asteroid the size of the one that totaled the dinosaurs might hit their planet and knock their culture back to the stone age. A Gamma-Ray burst might obliterate all life on that planet.  Or they might just be as short-sighted and selfish as we are and **** up their world up, making it uninhabitable for themselves.  There are many different possibilities and we'd be stupid to imagine that intelligent life in the universe is somehow guaranteed to survive, thrive and carry on for millennia.  NOTHING like that is guaranteed.

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So where does that leave us?

Imho, the snail's pace of the speed of light leaves us in the following sobering position.

* We may detect signals from intelligent aliens, but there's no guarantee that they will still exist for us to contact them.

* They may detect signals from us, but there's no guarantee that we'll still exist for them to contact us.

* Most likely (assuming interstellar travel is possible) we'll discover the ruins of their civilization or they'll discover ours.

* More likely still is that we'll encounter robot probes from other civilizations or they'll encounter ours.

* Least likely of all (and this is a purely opinion) is that we'll encounter intelligent aliens in the flesh, on or near planets orbiting nearby stars.  In this context, 'nearby' means within 20 or 30 light-years.  

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Thanks,

 

BAA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Orbit]

Life's a bitch and then you die. 

But seriously, I enjoyed reading that. The only hope would be if they had the ability to travel by warping space, or wormholes or something, and get to us shortly after receiving our message. But that still requires hundreds of years for them to receive our message, if we could generate a powerful enough transmitter. It's lonely in the galactic boondocks...

[bornagainathiest]

 

Now 38 light-years distant and still going strong.

[Joshpantera]

Enter Jody Foster...

 

[DoubtingNate]

I heard an explanation, possibly from Dawkins, that a civilization of intelligent, human-like beings would only have a very narrow window of time between developing the technology to communicate with other life forms, and bombing itself into extinction.  The odds of this happening seem even smaller when you consider that any civilization similar to ours could very easily wipe itself out.  A sobering though, to say the least.

[Thought2Much]

I think the situation may be even worse than you imagine, BAA. Here's why:

 

It has taken between 4.3 and 4.5 billion years for a life form on earth to develop a technological society. I believe it is also safe to say that since evolution doesn't have a goal or a purpose, that there is no "drive" for a species to come about that is intelligent enough to form a technological society. Based on these two bits of information, I would say that the likelihood of there being an alien civilization within thousands of light years of us is virtually nil. If an alien species visited earth even a couple of million years ago, just a fraction of one percent of earth's history in the past, they would be hard pressed to even find a species that they could guess might one day evolve into something that would become technological.

 

With all of that in mind, I think there is a chance that there is no one out there in our galaxy to contact right now. It's even a possibility that we're the first. I'll grant that there may be millions, perhaps billions of worlds with life on them, but seeing how the kind of intelligence required for a technological society is far from being a given in evolution, I think we may find ourselves pretty lonely here.

 

Of course, this is all just me guessing. I could very well be wrong.

[Fernweh]

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” 

 

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

[ContraBardus]

Very likely, unless we can figure out that whole FTL travel thing. It does seem like it may be possible right now, but only theoretically. Doubtful we'll ever actually see it in our lifetimes, but maybe in a few generations.

[bornagainathiest]

I think the situation may be even worse than you imagine, BAA. Here's why:

 

It has taken between 4.3 and 4.5 billion years for a life form on earth to develop a technological society. I believe it is also safe to say that since evolution doesn't have a goal or a purpose, that there is no "drive" for a species to come about that is intelligent enough to form a technological society. Based on these two bits of information, I would say that the likelihood of there being an alien civilization within thousands of light years of us is virtually nil. If an alien species visited earth even a couple of million years ago, just a fraction of one percent of earth's history in the past, they would be hard pressed to even find a species that they could guess might one day evolve into something that would become technological.

 

With all of that in mind, I think there is a chance that there is no one out there in our galaxy to contact right now. It's even a possibility that we're the first. I'll grant that there may be millions, perhaps billions of worlds with life on them, but seeing how the kind of intelligence required for a technological society is far from being a given in evolution, I think we may find ourselves pretty lonely here.

 

Of course, this is all just me guessing. I could very well be wrong.

 

Thanks for the input, T2M.

 

Yes, I agree.

Considering the huge sweep of geological time, it's far more likely that two civilizations will 'bypass' each other by millions of years, rather than meeting.  The (fictional) Scrblz empire could have flourished on a planet a thousand light-years away, while Jurassic dinos were slaying each other, here on Earth.  Likewise, long after we're gone, maybe the (equally fictional) inhabitants of Kakakakakaxo will visit this dead planet before it gets swallowed up by the ever-expanding Sun.  

 

Of course, this was exactly the kind of scenario that prompted Arthur C. Clarke to write this ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_(short_story) ...in 1948 and then expand it into this... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ...in 1968.  

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And while I did very much enjoy 'Contact' Josh, do you recall this?

 

Ellie:

"So who built the wormhole network?"

 

Ellie's (Alien) Father:

"We don't know."

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Not so much a galactic transportation device as a handy plot device!  

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[bornagainathiest]

Very likely, unless we can figure out that whole FTL travel thing. It does seem like it may be possible right now, but only theoretically. Doubtful we'll ever actually see it in our lifetimes, but maybe in a few generations.

 

I'm with Stephen Hawking on this one, CB.

 

Given the poor cohesiveness of humans on a global level, establishing a self-sufficient colony on Mars (with a sufficiently large gene pool) seems to be the best way of ensuring the continued existence of the species.  

 

Unless, of course, we **** things up... wherever we go?  

The Americas were a chance for Europeans to make a new beginning, to experiment with new kinds of societies and to get it right?  

 

    

 

How many more chances do we want/need/deserve?

 

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Your thoughts?

[TheRedneckProfessor]

If there were aliens, BAA, the bible would have mentioned them; but as we can clearly see from Genesis chapter 6, the sons of god came down and married the daughters of men and that proves that... wait... shit.

[Voice]

My gripe with the attempt to communicate with extraterrestrials via radio is that we assume extraterrestrials use technology the same way we do. What if a species did evolve way before us and became more advanced than us, but whose advanced nature applied to their adaptability to their natural environment without technology, for example, advanced communication abilities with creatures of their own planet, telepathy, etc. To communicate with such beings we would not be able to use radios, but rather telepathy, which is not limited to the speed of light. Best of luck with that one, we have the capacity for telepathy but are not advanced enough to use it or even acknowledge it as a verifiable ability. If we want to communicate with such beings, we'd best start meditating.

[RogueScholar]

Well, I imagine that if we really do attempt to contact something we will do so by initially using information any advanced civilisation should understand. We we need to use something that is incredibly well defined and understood. This would have to be true even with a highly advanced society. I would postulate something like the emission lines of a Hydrogen atom. Even advanced civilisations with incredible technology will most certainly understand the energy levels within a Hydrogen atom. From there I'm not as certain, but that IMHO, would be a good place to start as most of the "light" matter in the universe is Hydrogen.

[Thought2Much]

If I were to send a message that I wanted interpreted, I would send a signal that would start with basic math, like the Fibonacci sequence and prime numbers, then work my way up to how to interpret later parts of the signal as binary data, which would include things we know about chemistry and astronomy and such. Then I would loop that signal continuously for a while.

 

Of course, I would only send that kind of signal to a planet that appeared to have life or a technological civilization on it (we might be able to tease out such info from spectral data from a planet's atmosphere).

[Thought2Much]

To communicate with such beings we would not be able to use radios, but rather telepathy, which is not limited to the speed of light. [citation needed]

 

Best of luck with that one, we have the capacity for telepathy [citation needed] but are not advanced enough to use it or even acknowledge it as a verifiable ability.

 

Bolding in both quotes done by me.

 

However, you are right that an extremely advanced civilization may not use radio for communication, and so might only hear a message from us if they were specifically listening for civilizations that use radio. Likewise, we might only receive communications via radio waves from more advanced civilizations if they're specifically intending to talk to us on our own technological level.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

If I were to send a message that I wanted interpreted, I would send a signal that would start with basic math, like the Fibonacci sequence and prime numbers, then work my way up to how to interpret later parts of the signal as binary data, which would include things we know about chemistry and astronomy and such. Then I would loop that signal continuously for a while.

 

Of course, I would only send that kind of signal to a planet that appeared to have life or a technological civilization on it (we might be able to tease out such info from spectral data from a planet's atmosphere).

Not me.  I'd inspire a book full of genocide, rape, slavery, atrocity, and the murder of my own son, that could only be understood within the context of the time and culture in which it was written.  But then, I've always had a god complex.

[Fweethawt]

If we focus on obtaining time travel rather than ways of communicating, by the time we figure out how to travel through time, our communications technology might naturally evolve to a greater than light speed method.

 

Then, we can take our faster communications tech. far into the past to send messages to civilizations that would have time to reply so we can hear back from them now...

 

 

Now go put THAT shit in your bowl and smoke it, bitches! Booyah!!!

[bornagainathiest]

http://phl.upr.edu/press-releases/100millionplanetsinourgalaxymayharborcomplexlife

[bornagainathiest]

http://news.osu.edu/news/2014/07/03/planet-discovery-expands-search-for-earthlike-planets/

 

Half the stars in the galaxy were written off as suitable places to find planets - because they're binary star systems.

 

Not any more!  

[Ravenstar]

The study of extremophiles makes me happy… I am leaning to the thought that if there is a way, life will find it… intelligent (as defined by us) life? Not so sure. As was stated above there is no reason for life to evolve sentience as there is no goal in evolution. There is also the concept that sentience may take forms we can't yet comprehend. It's a lot of guesswork at this point.

 

Until we actually find life elsewhere… even microbial (though I still think the alleged microbial mars fossils are fairly convincing) we still don't know if life has occurred elsewhere in the universe. 

 

The discovery of so many planets recently is tipping the scale in favour of possible life though. Blame my skeptical mind but I have to reserve judgement until more data is available.

 

They are working on folding (warping) space at JPL though. As usual the energy requirements are the crux of the problems they face.

 

an aside: NASA has a neat little series on youtube; Sciencecasts… 3 to 5 minute vignettes on space stuff.. very cool. It's a good way to get the latest news on space exploration. Here's a link to one:

 

[gall]

 

Very likely, unless we can figure out that whole FTL travel thing. It does seem like it may be possible right now, but only theoretically. Doubtful we'll ever actually see it in our lifetimes, but maybe in a few generations.

 

I'm with Stephen Hawking on this one, CB.

 

Given the poor cohesiveness of humans on a global level, establishing a self-sufficient colony on Mars (with a sufficiently large gene pool) seems to be the best way of ensuring the continued existence of the species.  

 

Unless, of course, we **** things up... wherever we go?  

The Americas were a chance for Europeans to make a new beginning, to experiment with new kinds of societies and to get it right?  

 

    

 

How many more chances do we want/need/deserve?

 

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Your thoughts?

 

 

I agree. And if we cannot even find it in us to get that base going and make it thrive we will never get farther. You can't start on the far reaches to reach them.

 

If it comes down to waste all of our resoures on war or another place to live, well is there really two answers to that question?