Hondo Gravel

So what y’all think? Are we behind or did humans get ahead of the great filter? Are we the only intelligent species in the galaxy? Or are we behind and are destined to destroy ourselves? Maybe the Fermi Paradox is wrong and just another BS theory? The subject freaks me out.

Lemond1985

Did you see the last sentence "or at least their probes"? You mean to tell me you haven't been probed by the alien grays yet?

jon c. 

We keep looking for earth like planets because they could host life as we know it. We're a long way from figuring out how we could even begin to look for life as we don't know it. We can only search for what we understand and what we understand about our universe is still very limited.

Lemond1985

There is also the existence of various dimensions. I could have Bigfoot sitting in living room right now and not know it, because he's currently occupying a different dimension. Like different TV channels, there may be things happening in hundreds or thousands of dimensions right now, right in front of our faces, that we have no ability to sense or perceive. Not currently anyway.

Then there is the video game theory, maybe we're living in a computer-generated virtual reality, with idealized bodies and scenic environments, when in reality we're just some giant ugly patch of green slime at the bottom of the ocean, someplace on another planet in another galaxy.

Bonzo Banana

I think life is everywhere in the cosmos but simple life. The largest biomass of this planet is in the ground, probably organic material being influenced by the heat and water below. If so many planets without atmospheres could harbour simple life.




The issue of intelligent civilisations is the extreme rarity. Our solar system is not like other solar systems, are sun is particularly stable, we are out in a stable part of the galaxy, our planetary configuration is rare with 2 large gas giants that aren't close to

the star which in other systems probably causes the star to be more erratic. We have important chemicals like potassium. It just feels like intelligent civilisations is something extremely rare and the more remote the star system the more that helps.

Sorry about the weird spacing, site keeps signing me out after a short time and so I Control C what I have written before posting knowing I'll have to sign in again and paste it back in, which adds spacing for some reason.




Considering there are absolutely trillions of worlds around us and we have no conclusive proof of over civilisations despite not being the earliest star system so lots of time for multiple civilisations to have travelled to us, that it appears other civilisations are

rare to say the least.




There are probably 10,000 worlds with very simple life for every planet with large multi-cellular life moving about in their atmosphere and of those perhaps 1 in 10,000 has a civilisation.




Life and nature is about battling for survival so soon as we come across a more advanced civilisation there is a strong likelihood they will destroy us anyway. The very fact we still exist is probably the evidence we need that we haven't been visited.




Our radio waves and communication signals are only about 100 years old so they haven't got to that many star systems yet. They might need to travel for 3000 years before they encounter another civilisation who then decides to destroy us and they might

take 20,000 years to get to us. It's quite likely most civilisations just keep their head down and don't want to be noticed because they don't want to be destroyed.




I just feel if you combine the low probabilities of alien civilisations plus the fact most will stay silent explains the current situation.




I think humans have a strange logic of pretending there are more advanced beings or a being that created them despite the huge evolutionary evidence and that means we have a strangely positive feeling about outer space and its possibilities perhaps thinking

these friendly powerful beings are out there.




I think more logical beings will look out at space and be terrified of the possibilities of creatures coming and destroying them. I would imagine that is the normal thought processes which would have been taught to them by nature itself.





Trying to contact aliens who would likely consume and destroy you is probably the very definition of insanity.




If you actually accept that Greys exist you can see they are incredibly elusive and very careful about being caught. Those aliens don't seem to wish us much harm but are interested in us but you could say their focus appears to be not giving

us any information about where they are from. That would seem logical behaviour to satisfy their curiosity without putting their civilisation at risk. We probably seem like a planet of morons to them.

Stadjer

That doesn't seem entirely logical to me. When there are that many galaxies and that old the chance of intelligent life meeting with other intelligent life gets smaller, not bigger. There's only been intelligent life on earth for an extremely short period of time. Suppose that the intelligent life in older galaxies is not as vulnerable and produces a space exploring civilization that lasts much longer, let's say a million years. How big is the chance that period of million years coincided with the period there is life on earth at all? It might even take longer for light and signals to travel the distance than the time intelligent life on earth will exist. Or there is extremely intelligent life elsewhere, but it's a blob. Or it has fins instead of hands and can't build anything or otherwise change it's environment.

And when there are that many galaxies, there also might be a 100.000 planets with intelligent life, if the most advanced civilization has met with 1000 of them, they might loose interest in discovering nr. 1001, especially as it's hard to find among all those lifeless galaxies. Or maybe when they are really intelligent, they don't care much for space exploration and care more for life in their own seas for example and would be quickly bored with other intelligent life. Maybe they are even smarter than that and do nothing all day but eat, drink, **** and play games. Our space exploration is not only in a very narrow window of time and distance, it's also within a very narrow window of intelligence. As Kennedy said 'we go to the moon not because it's easy but because it's hard', and that's what makes it interesting, we can only just do it and we are ambitious, curious, competitive, hormone driven and reckless, so we do. Who says we would want to if we'd be more intelligent? There are a lot of assumptions about intelligent life in this.

tyrion

Many people think life inevitably evolves toward complexity and intelligence (and Star Trek tells us that life tends to evolve towards American-English speaking humanoids), but we don't know that. Evolution explores many avenues, and the avenue that leads to technological intelligence could turn out to be an evolutionary dead end.

Bonzo Banana

I feel that is a very good point. Once you develop technology you protect yourself much better and start harnessing resources much better even if you pollute as you do so. So population growth gets extreme and the natural balance is destroyed so global warming kicks in. That gives a finite timeline to a technological civilisation before you even factor even destroying each other with nuclear weapons.

So there is probably a huge variable there in how many civilisations get to exist for a long time. It could be 95% of civilisations destroy themselves and their environment after 200 generations of developing technology.

genec

I have a feeling we are the primitives others have been warned to avoid... "Yeah, stay away from that blue ball... it's on the rough side of the universe."

Great explanation of the Fermi Paradox... https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

indyfabz

Bigfoot lives in Yaak, MT as is very much in this dimension.

DrIsotope

It's one of two flavors in my estimation:

1. Everything is just too far apart, and the expansion of the universe makes covering the vast distances impossible.
2. The development of the technology required to traverse those distances (that is, FTL or space folding) is either impossible, or breaks something fundamental, resulting in the obliteration of whoever made it.

There could be an infinite number of sentient lifeforms out there, and we will likely never know. Our solar system has been around for 4.5 billion years, humans have been using tools for 100,000 years, and we haven't made it further than the moon-- which in terms of space travel isn't even the equivalent of stepping off of a curb. We are, for all practical purposes, alone.

Lemond1985

But we have space stations ... and Strauss waltzes!

Seattle Forrest

His family lives in Granite Falls, I barely escaped with my life on the Lime Kiln trail. Just getting squatchier and squatchier, until it was almost too late.

tyrion

Yeah, timing could be an issue. Life on earth has been around for 4 billion years, but we've only had the capability for interstellar communication for 130 years. Maybe someone sent us a message 131 years ago.

sirjag

I agree with this here. Isotope, your alright in my book man.....been reading this forum for several weeks...gathering as much info as i can, and consuming a great deal of content...i see your post frequently and think your pretty solid my man. Keep it up.

JAG

Stadjer

Indeed, intelligence also seems a bit of niche, most evolution is about bigger teeth, more offspring, efficient muscles and more sexual attraction. And evolution does not really explore avenues to make species better, it has no stake in that, or in the survival of species at all, it just makes everything extinct that doesn't fit in nature well enough. Evolution doesn't do improving of species. Intelligent enough appears to be wat counted in the survival of humans so far, the intelligence to travel into space is something that happened in the process but if human intelligence would have maxed out at an IQ of 90, there would be survival but no space travel.

clemsongirl 

Even with our current scientific understanding of the universe being quite incomplete I’d say probability favors other advanced/intelligent life in the universe. I also assume that even if there is no way to secure complete and absolute truth, through scientific inquiry, at the least increasingly accurate approximations can be made and more importantly it gives us technological advancements. I focus on those advancements rather than the speculation on other advanced/intelligent life….well…until they show up

tyrion

Simple bacteria have probably been around for 3 billion years, so that would be the most successful life form we know of. Regarding more complex life (e.g. animals), sponges have been around for maybe 600 million years, and survived all kinds of extreme environments, so sponges might be the most successful animal life form.

Intelligence, while very useful in some circumstances, might not be worthwhile in the long run.

Stadjer

Maybe not even in short run. Less intelligent people tend to have more kids and have them earlier while many highly intelligent people struggle to get a boyfriend or girlfriend at all.

clemsongirl 

more likely things like personality/attitude/lack of trying to be positive/understanding...now, a good and friendly alien ftw!!!

genec

While we physically have not gone far, we have made our presence known, by our radio emissions... and other intelligent life likely will have done the same. Radio waves do travel at the "speed of light."

DrIsotope

The first intentional broadcast into space was made in 1974, so it will have traveled roughly 45 light years by now.

That transmission will have passed around a dozen exoplanets that scientists guess could support life-- and I mean guess. Relatively speaking, the transmission will have hit 12 grains of sand on an infinite beach, filled with infinite grains of sand.

There are anywhere between 250 and 400 galaxies within the Milky Way. The Milky Way itself is 105,700 light years across. We have made our presence known only to ourselves. There is other life in the universe, probability all but guarantees it.

But we're in a fishbowl hurtling through space at 143 miles per second. Our solar system is over 200 billion miles from where it was when Earth broadcast that message.

Seattle Forrest

I'm a world with infinite resources, intelligence isn't terribly useful for selective purposes. As you point out, we still have bacteria and sponges in our world. But intelligence was probably inevitable.

Darth Lefty 

If anything is obvious from recent science, it's that there are tons of planets for aliens to come from. If there aren't any aliens we'll have to create some.

In some sci-fi universes, the civilizations that have survived nuclear weapons (and worse) each eventually decide that the galaxy is too dangerous, and take their stealthed Dyson sphere out into intergalactic space. The Puppeteer world fleet from Larry Niven's Known Space is an example.

Darth Lefty 

The math works, all you need is negative matter (that is, matter with negative mass, not to be confused with antimatter) and an amount of energy equivalent to the mass of the universe
https://www.businessinsider.com/warp...al-fake-2018-5

The recent best evidence against aliens is that we are all carrying around video cameras all the time now.