143 réponses à ce sujet

[katamuro]

Me too. They have other stuff going on.

 

Several possibilities are quite easy to imagine. 

For one an alien species could end up being frightened about the prospect of alien intelligent life, especially one that could detect them. For all they know those aliens could end up some kind of xenocidal maniacs. So they deliberetly are hiding.

Second is that we are simply not equipped to actually recognise those signals, for all we know they might be on frequencies that we cant listen in or simply cannot distinguish them from the background noise. After all for a radio signal to cross between the stars it has to be fairly powerful, and what if other stars, like pulsars or black holes interfere with the signal enough so that we dont actually notice it. 

Third possibility is that there is indeed a thriving galactic community but most sentient species have agreed that species that haven't reached a certain technological or societal level are not to be contacted and kept in the dark about the existence of intelligent life in the galaxy.

Fourth is that there is intelligent life in the galaxy but its so alien, so different from us that we dont have and never will a way to communicate with them.

 

There are a lot of ways to explain or theorise of why we dont know still if there is intelligent life in the galaxy despite all the theoretical calculations done.

[Kabooooom]

Several possibilities are quite easy to imagine.
For one an alien species could end up being frightened about the prospect of alien intelligent life, especially one that could detect them. For all they know those aliens could end up some kind of xenocidal maniacs. So they deliberetly are hiding.
Second is that we are simply not equipped to actually recognise those signals, for all we know they might be on frequencies that we cant listen in or simply cannot distinguish them from the background noise. After all for a radio signal to cross between the stars it has to be fairly powerful, and what if other stars, like pulsars or black holes interfere with the signal enough so that we dont actually notice it.
Third possibility is that there is indeed a thriving galactic community but most sentient species have agreed that species that haven't reached a certain technological or societal level are not to be contacted and kept in the dark about the existence of intelligent life in the galaxy.
Fourth is that there is intelligent life in the galaxy but its so alien, so different from us that we dont have and never will a way to communicate with them.

There are a lot of ways to explain or theorise of why we dont know still if there is intelligent life in the galaxy despite all the theoretical calculations done.

Most of that is often brought up as an (optimistic) objection to Fermi, but they actually dont really apply. I'll explain:

1) seems improbable solely because of self preservation, which every living thing in the universe likely possesses. A species that remains on their homeworld will inevitably doom themselves to extinction.

2) Is possible, but it doesn't address the crux of the Fermi paradox which isn't that these beings exist, its that they should ALREADY have colonized our solar system. What you brought up is more an adjunct to the Drake Equation and how contact may be difficult, than to Fermi.

3) This is a reasonable possibility, but it anthropomorphizes alien morals, akin to Mass Effect. I find it unlikely that a multi-species galactic community could coexist in such a fashion, but in the vastness of the cosmos I would bet that it has happened or will happen at least once in some galaxy somewhere. Maybe the milky way IS that galaxy. That is a best case scenario.

4) Also not a true explanation for the same reason that #2 isn't: the paradox suggests that they should already be here, not that they exist and it is difficult to communicate with them.

[katamuro]

But how do you know if they are communicating with you if they are so different? And what if they had evolved a billion years ago and had been evolving all this time. it would be like trying to talk to an ant, or a fish. Something that lives in a completely different set of what is than us. 

 

and anyway the whole premise is that "if aliens existed we would have met them so they dont" is kinda like saying "only things that are proven exist" after all we all know that something like dark matter or dark energy has to exist, we have never seen it, we cant detect it we are not even sure if its one thing or a combination of many. All we know is that theories about our universe and our observations do not compute. There are discrepancies there that cannot be simply waved away. 

 

After all lets not forget that many scientists in the end of the 19th century had said that everything there is to know about physics has already been discovered. And yet a century and a quarter later we know how much wrong they were. 

[Kabooooom]

I think you are missing the point of the Fermi paradox entirely. I'm not quite sure how to explain it to you, other than telling you to go actually play with the math of it to get a grasp of the significance of it.

It is extremely simple. It has nothing to do with communication. Nothing to do with probability of life existing. Not really, anyways.

It can simply be described as such. If we are the FIRST intelligent life forms in the milky way and we ONLY travel the stars via sub light speed generation ships which take centuries, then it will take us only around ten million years to completely colonize every star system in the galaxy.

Ten million years, dude. You know how old the Milky Way is? 13.2 billion years. That is a laughably miniscule amount of time. Intelligent life should be everywhere by now. That is the point of the Fermi paradox.

It has nothing to do with most of what you are hung up on. It only has to do with that one simple statement.

Also, as a scientist I find your statement of "well we were wrong about things in the past so therefore we are wrong about things in the present" to be illogical. Science is progressive: The earth is flat, the earth is round, the earth is an oblate spheroid. All of those statements are technically incorrect, but some are more incorrect than others. Our understanding of nature exponentially increases over time. Do we know everything? No. But we know a hell of a lot. And compared to the state of our knowledge a few hundred years ago, we are going to be wrong about far, far less in two hundred years from now than our forebears were. Because scientific knowledge is progressive and additive. That's how it works.

[katamuro]

I get that I do, which is why the Fermi equation and the Drake equation are not the perfect, 100% surefire way. We cant just put them up on a pedestal and say that they are 100% correct. There could be all kinds of variables that are not in them right now that would explain perfectly why we seem to be the only sentients right now. 

 

One of the possibilities is that WE actually have colonized Earth, what if all those millions of years a seedship reached Earth and released a virus or something like that so that the primates started evolving bigger brains. 

After all its way easier to send a drone, controlled by something like a VI, to seed the galaxy. Or possibly it reached Earth only to fail somehow, explode in the upper atmosphere, or landed but during the iceage or during one of several extinction events and it simply did not fulfil its mission.Or the ship could be smart enough to make decisions, for example if it was programmed to leave planets with already existing intelligent life or the makings of it and just continue on, so if it visited earth within the last million years or so it could have turned away to find another planet. And at sublight speeds the journey would be rather long. So long that our ability to detect aliens would simply be too new. 

[Han Shot First]

If Earth life has alien origins, and that is a very big if, I think it is far more likely that an asteroid blasted bacteria off of Mars than some alien space craft seeding Earth with life.

[katamuro]

If Earth life has alien origins, and that is a very big if, I think it is far more likely that an asteroid blasted bacteria off of Mars than some alien space craft seeding Earth with life.

 

Well sure, or pretty much any number of ways it could have been. As always I do not claim that my words are the truth and absolute truth and that everything else is false. Just illustrating examples of possibilities despite their actual probability.

 

And you can probably find a lot of examples when stuff happened to just fall in line, or a conjunction of unlikely events ended up creating even more an unlikely event which proves that just because something seems improbable, it does not mean it cannot happen if the conditions are just so.

[MrMrPendragon]

Well aren't we sending people on a one way trip to Mars?

 

We're one step closer to finding that beacon, and initiating war with the Turians.

[God]

No. Not realistic in the slightest.

[Maniccc]

In answer to TC's question:  no.

[ForgottenWarrior]

Assuming the entire existense of Zero element is impossible... no, ME universe aren't realistic.

[Vader20]

Well, we are still zillion of years away from traveling to other stars and we barely made it to the moon and even that is questionable for some.... Also, we would need to travel faster than light in order to reach distant stars in a reasonable amount of time. To answer your question, I think that some parts of the ME universe may be achievable, but we still don't know our real histroy: Who we are, why why we are here.. and is there any life outside this rock ?

[katamuro]

Well, we are still zillion of years away from traveling to other stars and we barely made it to the moon and even that is questionable for some.... Also, we would need to travel faster than light in order to reach distant stars in a reasonable amount of time. To answer your question, I think that some parts of the ME universe may be achievable, but we still don't know our real histroy: Who we are, why why we are here.. and is there any life outside this rock ?

 

Actually we could easily go to the Moon now, the technology exists it just is a bit expensive to do that. And I think that that 6 missions to the moon and back in 3 years is "barely". Do not think just because something is not being done now its not feasible. We could go to the Moon and Mars but the budgets of all the current space programs is not enough. The reason why current missions take years to implement, and why we(as a human race) haven't been further than LEO for the past 40 years is that the people who control money do not see space as profitable. Most companies that work in "space" are just there to put satellites into orbit and with no real political will behind a space program it will be decades before we do anything real of note. The only ones who seem to think about space as an exploitable resource is that asteroid mining company. Everyone else seems content to just send robots and telescopes to look at stuff. 

[Vader20]

 The reason why current missions take years to implement, and why we(as a human race) haven't been further than LEO for the past 40 years is that the people who control money do not see space as profitable. Most companies that work in "space" are just there to put satellites into orbit and with no real political will behind a space program it will be decades before we do anything real of note.

 

Really now ? How silly of me to forget the money....

 

Imagine they learn that Mars has 10 times more oil than earth and is a gold mine. They would send humans next weekend...   Also now that you mention it  imagine if human greed would go beyond this planet ?

[Tonymac]

Really now ? How silly of me to forget the money....

 

Imagine they learn that Mars has 10 times more oil than earth and is a gold mine. They would send humans next weekend...   Also now that you mention it  imagine if human greed would go beyond this planet ?

 

Well, maybe if Mars was filled with hot blue babes.....

[katamuro]

Really now ? How silly of me to forget the money....

 

Imagine they learn that Mars has 10 times more oil than earth and is a gold mine. They would send humans next weekend...   Also now that you mention it  imagine if human greed would go beyond this planet ?

 

Well considering there are literally whole mountains of all kinds of useful and precious metals just floating out there. Plus on Mars you can get iron by simply shoveling some dirt into the microwave and then turning it on and much lower gravity makes it far easier to get it off the planet. But asteroids are easier.

[Kabooooom]

Well, we are still zillion of years away from traveling to other stars and we barely made it to the moon and even that is questionable for some.... Also, we would need to travel faster than light in order to reach distant stars in a reasonable amount of time. To answer your question, I think that some parts of the ME universe may be achievable, but we still don't know our real histroy: Who we are, why why we are here.. and is there any life outside this rock ?

We DO know our real history. Who are we?: A species of Great Ape, descended from other similar hominid species that split from the rest of the lineages of Great Apes between 8 and 4 million years ago. The genus ****** appeared 3 million years ago, and ****** sapiens roughly 200,000.

Why are we here is a philosophical question, ultimately meaningless and unanswerable by science.

And if there is life outside this rock is unknown, but a statistical certainty given the sheer size of the cosmos.

[Han Shot First]

Really now ? How silly of me to forget the money....

 

Imagine they learn that Mars has 10 times more oil than earth and is a gold mine. They would send humans next weekend...   Also now that you mention it  imagine if human greed would go beyond this planet ?

 

It will once it becomes technologically feasible. Space will become commercialized. You are already starting to see that with private companies performing some of the functions that the national space programs used to perform. But eventually asteroids will be mined, when it becomes technologically and economically feasible.

 

In 1997 it was speculated that a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (0.99 mi) contains more than $20 trillion USD worth of industrial and precious metals. A comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron–nickel ore, or two to three times the annual production of 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×1019 kg of nickel–iron, which could supply the world production requirement for several million years.

 

Asteroid Mining - Economics

[Kabooooom]

Lol. I love how the forums auto-censor the word H0mo.