New Mars Forums

dicktice,

Time will tell if we are intelligent or not .
A non bias judge and jury for sure

I believe we will take up residence on the moon, Mars i think will be a struggle to begin with and take much longer than expected for even a small settling.
Stepping from Mars to the next closest place at a near star will be quite a jump, will we ever accomplish that?

The moon might be 20 years before we really setup shop, Mars 50 years or more, the nearest stars i think we are looking at 100's if not 1000's of years before we are ready for that step.
From that point on though humanity would slowly colonize everything possible in our galaxy.

Then the judge and jury (time) would render a decision in our favour.

dicktice,

Sounds like we have pretty much the same opinion on finding another intelligence.
The jury is still out on if we are intelligent or not also. LOL

With some luck you won't have to wait 25 years for an answer, anytime i think is possible now for an answer.
A signal could be picked up at any time now we are starting to look seriously.

I agree with the lets get going with moving out to the stars.
50 years of silence after a few foot steps on the moon is a pretty poor record.

Finding an ET signal would be a day of reflection for everyone on this planet, we would have to give up some of the myths and beliefs we have and start working as one species on one small planet in the vastness of space.
Would be an interesting day for sure.

dicktice,

I agree with that 100 %.
Long before the sun gets to hot we will be gone or gone for good.

I think no matter what we do we don't have much longer as we are now.
Technology one way or another will change us.

We will either leave Earth and change ourselves at the new locations.
Destroy ourselves or be destroyed with change or lack of it.
Alter ourselves reworking our genes.
Alter ourselves with technology.

Lets hope we use up all the space we have in our island galaxy.
1 galaxy is more than big enough for us.
The other 249 billion 999 million 999 thousand 999 galaxies, we will get to much later.
I feel rather small after writing that.

bobunf,

We can do some stop gap measures for sure to prolong our stay on Earth.
Once the sun starts to burn hotter it will also start to fuse more helium.
In doing so the sun will not only become hotter but more erratic in its nature.
We can probably endure a sun at 20% hotter, but not 20% more solar flares with 20% more intensity.

dicktice,

I agree we are an unusual species with a lot of potential.
We also have a pretty dark side that could destroy that.

We are very curious but at the same time afraid of new things.
We are intelligent but have a difficult time in accepting new ideas.

We really do need to make a second home on Mars.
Something as simple as an odd virus could destroy everything we have, we could destroy ourselves or a rock from the sky could reset the life clock.
Will we just sit around waiting for one of those days or be a species that dares to venture forward and into safety for all of life on our little rock.

We might be alone in the universe or we might not, either way if we don't step up we might not get a second chance.
In my opinion right now is the time to take that step while global hostilities are at a minimum, technology is ready and many countries see the same future on Mars.

I think just once in a very long time the universe gets a place that has a potential species, not just once per star or even once in a while on many stars.
Maybe even just the once.

If we take the right steps we could be a species that endures until the end of time all across the universe.
If we don't take the right steps we might be just a footnote in the history of the universe, a failed experiment.

bobunf,

It seems to be scientific consensus that Earth has used up around 90% of it's time in the life zone.

Earth indeed will have it's oceans boil away as the sun warms up.
Long before that happens we will need to migrate.
Doubt if we have 2 billion years before the boil happens, and less than 1 billion before it's time to leave as Earth becomes a hothouse.

Many articles about that on the net, and many more about the link between big moon, stable climate and the development of life to complex forms.

I just post the links i don't write them.
I tend to agree with the analysis of both arguments of moon and life development, but to each person they believe what they want from what they read.

cIclops,

You must be looking for C02 funding.
I have my doubts about C02 being a giant factor in greenhouse warming since reflective cooling from smoke/smog should actually be cooling the world even with increased C02 levels in the atmosphere.
When we stop producing lots of smog and smoke then i would worry about C02.

cIclops,

I believe the moon stops Earth from random tilts like happen on Mars.
I also believe the moon is the main reason life exists at all on Earth.
Couple of links about each.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4 … heory.html
http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q106.html

bobunf,

I agree that funding for science is the most likely way we would discover a signal ourselves.

Cost and gain is the problem with that idea though on the reliance of scientific knowledge vs spiraling cost for bigger projects.

You need a pretty good sized telescope to see even fuzzy pictures of an earthlike world within 50 ly.

Detecting gas makeup precises enough to detect a technical civilization on a planet orbiting a star even 25 LY away would be a much bigger telescope than the one to get fuzzy pictures.

Radio is an even bigger problem though, either the equipment is big enough to listen or it isn't, no fuzzy noises to give any evidence until you are at the right size or at least the right size to know you have to build much bigger.

Terraformer,

I think we might be alone in our galaxy as the only technical civilization but not alone in the universe.
And by no means alone in our galaxy for life.

Earth was bacteria, algae and fungus for nearly the first 3 billion years of the 4 billion years, so we should expect life on most of the earthlike worlds or gas giant earthlike moons even in the right spot to be that life or something similar.

We should also expect that not many earthlike worlds are safe abodes for life for 3 billion years before something really interesting happens.

The odds in my opinion are not very good for numbers of places for inteligent life in our galaxy, worse for time spans of life development on those places that are in the right spot, and worse again that everything happens somewhat similar as Earth to develop inteligent life, real bad if we need a big moon and only Earthlike places can host life, dismal if life is a freakish event.

The galactic distances are so far from each other that without some way to stop time or dimensional travel the galaxies could be a barrier for even the most technically advanced civilization in the universe.

We could have most of the galaxies in the universe with intelligent life that colonizes every star in that galaxy, but never take the leap to the next galaxy because it's to far to go with no stopping point.

noosfractal,

Interesting article on Lucy TV.
Go big or go home i guess is the theme.

The catch 22 i see in building such big equipment to see our TV signals is that to build it in the first place you must know we are here, and to know we are here you must build the equipment first.

I guess if ET discover a different civilization very close to them.
It's possible they put up a decent sized dish for science originally, then detected a very weak signal from them while doing science.
As communications became more prevalent they both put up very large dishes to chat more easily.

Then one lucky day for one of them they hear a very very faint signal from us while doing some checks for others with the big dish equipment they both now have. 

This seems the only logical way to get to equipment that has a chance to hear our signals without building it first and just wishing someone exists with radio.

mork_from_seattle,

I think looking at another civilization within 100 LY's is probably a better way than listening for the radio signal.

I would think within 100 years we would be able to do just that.

Our radio/TV bubble only endure about 1LY then becomes background noise.
Even very advanced beings wouldn't detect us with our radio/TV signals, they would be to weak to detect from even the next closest star.

If they could see us first then send Radio signals that is a different story.
High powered directed radio signals can easily make it stellar distances as long as they are pointed at something.
I think they would have to be pretty similar to us technically or just a bit more advanced to contact us.

If they are extremely advanced and have been trying to contact us for a million years, they would probably either figure we are dummies or come and see why we didn't send a message back. 

I think we would have nowhere near that sort of patience after discovering another intelligent species, maybe 100- 200 years and if they didn't make contact back we would go and say hello in person.

cIclops,

I think we are aliens, but not in the conventional sense of ET.
Life seems to take a quantum leap on Earth from nothing to very complex, so us being the decedents of alien microbial life is quite possible.

It's difficult for even that sort of life to spread around a galaxy in hibernated format, but not impossible.
The decedents of that life might have gone through many stages on the original life world.
It just spread as more complex life as we see the first life on Earth.

noosfractal,

Expanding on your thought about colonizing this galaxy.
What if we are alone in our galaxy but lots of the close galaxies have been colonized by species in those galaxies.

Can we use that same sort of formula for colonizing to other galaxies?
The distances are truly immense to get to the closest other galaxy for any species from any galaxy.

That might be the ultimate barrier, even with very fast travel and very long lived species the distance will still be daunting.

bobunf,

I think the real question comes down to how odd or normal is life in the galaxy.

If life requires an earthlike world with a big moon and a host of other conditions pretty similar to our solar system, then we could easily be alone in this galaxy.

If life is pretty typical around the galaxy and not so reliant on our type of setup then lots of systems will have life.
Intelligent life forming on any of those places i think will be an oddity just like it was here even with perfect conditions.

When we imagine that 90% of the stars in our galaxy cant support life.
90% of the remaining stars wont have earthlike places.
90% of the remaining total that have earthlike worlds wont be in the right place for an earthlike world.
90% of that total wont have big moons.
90% of that total wont have a perfect mix of gasses/land/water.
90% of them never develop intelligent life.

We probably have another 50 of these to do before we get to a real total of possible places and chances for intelligent life to form on them.

When we start we need a random number on those worlds to see how normal or odd it is for life to develop at all.
If life is very normal then 1 out of 1, if it is an odd event them maybe 1 in 100 or worse.

If life is a very odd event we might not only be alone in this galaxy but alone in the universe.

I think if the galaxy has decent numbers of intelligent species with technical abilities it will still be difficult to communicate with them.
For them to talk with us they will need to be more technically advanced that us and be very persistent in trying to communicate with us.

Long distances might not be a problem if you are a million years more technically advanced than us, because you simply send every type of imaginable signal towards us and wait for a reply.
If radio does indeed become super seeded you send the technical information on radio how to communicate much faster.
Persistence will be needed for sure as the distance increases.