an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

flashgordon · 2006-02-13 21:56:41

I remember some people giving the standard ant theory of why e.t.'s are not contacting us earthling technological species, and that didn't make sence to me based on how much I talk to my cat; surelly, if there was one space faring civilization out there that knew about us, some of them would 'want' to talk to us, just like I and many other animal lovers talk to their pets.

monkeymind · 2006-02-14 21:04:04

just like I and many other animal lovers talk to their pets.

I think one point that you may be missing is, that while you may talk a lot to your cat is does not necessarily follow that your cat understands what you are saying...

flashgordon · 2006-02-14 21:59:48

nice thought, but the cat while it doens't know what I'm saying, does know it is being talked to and knows inflection, or emotions; it more or less knows what I'm saying.

monkeymind · 2006-02-15 06:32:28

but the cat while it doens't know what I'm saying, does know it is being talked to and knows inflection, or emotions; it more or less knows what I'm saying.

Have you tried talking to an amoebe lately?

Trebuchet · 2006-02-20 19:50:12

Perhaps a better way to demonstrate the silliness of using this line of argument to advance a few-ET's argument is the following analogy: would you fly overseas, just to talk to a cat?

If the aliens are so hellbent on talking to people, they probably acquired some DNA samples millenia ago and have been raising pet humans to be their inferior-intelligence sidekicks/companions.

monkeymind · 2006-02-21 17:08:44

Perhaps a better way to demonstrate the silliness of using this line of argument to advance a few-ET's argument is the following analogy: would you fly overseas, just to talk to a cat?

Actually I was more leaning towards the relative gulf in intelegence between 'us and them'.

If the aliens are so hellbent on talking to people, they probably acquired some DNA samples millenia ago and have been raising pet humans to be their inferior-intelligence sidekicks/companions.

Sounds like someone has been reading Ian Banks...

X · 2007-05-25 00:12:56

You know your cat though. How many stray cats have you ever talked to?

Antius · 2007-06-01 09:45:27

You know your cat though. How many stray cats have you ever talked to?

The gulf of intelligence is likely to be the other way around. The more we learn about the Earth, the more we learn just how special it is and how small variations in certain attributes would render it unsuitable for complex, intelligent life.

Consider the following: For 90% of the Earth's existence it has held life, but for the first 4billion years, that life was single cellular and primitive. Multicellular life did not evolve until about 500 million years ago and the first land plants apperaed a few hundred million years ago. No-one knwos why, but it is suspected that a high concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere and low concentration of CO2, was a prerequisite for allowing multicellular metabolism.

Condition 1: Precise atmospheric composition.

Second, the Earth had to be large enough to hold a strong magnetic field and active geology for billions of years, yet small enough and outside of the star's hot zone to avoid accumulating a hot, dry, dense atmosphere like Venus, or excessive volcanism that would plague a larger than earth terrestial planet.

Condition 2: precise size and distance from star.

Condition 3: Jupiter. Without a massive planet at about the right distance from the sun, the Earth would be slammed by comets on a regular basis.

Condition 4: A large moon. Our moon is very large, compared to its planetary companion. Lunar is as large as the moons of jupiter, a planet 300 times as heavy, and it formed under very unique conditions. Without it, the Earth's axial tilt would be unstable and it would be subject to frequent and very intense climatic swings.

Condition 5: A stable star. Only 15% of stars are as stable as our sun, most exhibit much more intense and frequent flaring activity, that would lead to climatic swings and would compress most planetary magnetic fields, leading to steady errosion of planetary atmospheres.

There are probably even more conditions that make the earth special, without which intelligent, complex life and a civilisation could not have evolved.

The impression that these facts tend to create is that primitive life is probably everywhere, advanced life is probably very rare. There may be an intelligent civilisation with 100 light-years of earth. I may win the lottery next week!

One obvious point occures to me, if a civilisation had evolved elsewhere in our galaxy in the past, then given the age of the universe, wouldn't they have litterally conquered the galaxy by now? How come they havn't colonised our solar system long ago and how come the galaxy isn't awash with interstellar communication? If even one advanced civilisation had evolved and become space faring as little as 1 million years ago, we would expect them to be everywhere by now. This suggests that we are the first spacefaring civilisation to have evolved in this galaxy.

noosfractal · 2007-06-01 09:58:27

If even one advanced civilisation had evolved and become space faring as little as 1 million years ago, we would expect them to be everywhere by now. This suggests that we are the first spacefaring civilisation to have evolved in this galaxy.

Or that the half life of spacefaring civilizations is < 10000 years.

Spatula · 2007-06-03 00:26:50

Condition 1: Precise atmospheric composition.
Second, the Earth had to be large enough to hold a strong magnetic field and active geology for billions of years, yet small enough and outside of the star's hot zone to avoid accumulating a hot, dry, dense atmosphere like Venus, or excessive volcanism that would plague a larger than earth terrestial planet.
Condition 2: precise size and distance from star.
Condition 3: Jupiter. Without a massive planet at about the right distance from the sun, the Earth would be slammed by comets on a regular basis.
Condition 4: A large moon. Our moon is very large, compared to its planetary companion. Lunar is as large as the moons of jupiter, a planet 300 times as heavy, and it formed under very unique conditions. Without it, the Earth's axial tilt would be unstable and it would be subject to frequent and very intense climatic swings.
Condition 5: A stable star. Only 15% of stars are as stable as our sun, most exhibit much more intense and frequent flaring activity, that would lead to climatic swings and would compress most planetary magnetic fields, leading to steady errosion of planetary atmospheres.

These helped us become exactly like we are, but I doubt they're a necessity for complex, intelligent life. Just complex, intelligent life very similar to us.

For instance, a less stable star isn't so bad if it's really long lived. If we had been a few billion years late, we'd be cooked. A red dwarf that has trillions of years of life in it would be quite a luxury for any multi-cellular life to develop. Considering the amount of red dwarfs out there, it seems like a safe bet that they'll have most of the life we find.

nickname · 2007-06-03 16:43:44

Antius,

Maybe ET has already visited earth.
Maybe they believe we are somewhat interesting and will visit again in another million years or so when we start to evolve to something more interesting.
Maybe ET has millions of worlds to check out somewhat interesting creatures.
Maybe all earthlike planets have some form of life on them.
Maybe ET believes all life is important and is unwilling to alter a planet with life already on it or the path that life follows.
Maybe ET's all know where all other ET species exist already in our galaxy, they search together.
Maybe ET is now working on exploring other galaxies.
Maybe if we endure long enough we will help them search.
Maybe our technology path leads us down a dead end, they use technology but not radio and cell phones and computers.

Maybe we are the first in our galaxy.
Maybe we are the first in the universe since no signals have been detected anywhere.
Some species has to be first, why not us?

I can think up another 100 reasons why no other Earth like place might exist with a tech society.
If we multiply those odds as 1/10 for each of 100 must have factors we might really be so alone as to never discover another species.
Or even really alone.

Just 3 must have factors would be 1/1000.
10 is 1 in 1 billion.
20 is 1 in 10 trillion.
100 must have factors becomes one in a very big number.

dicktice · 2007-06-03 18:13:19

It matters little if "they" are out there or not, if we don't pull up our space socks and get off the Earth before we make it impossible to do so for socialogical reasons....

Antius · 2007-06-04 02:32:55

Condition 1: Precise atmospheric composition.
Second, the Earth had to be large enough to hold a strong magnetic field and active geology for billions of years, yet small enough and outside of the star's hot zone to avoid accumulating a hot, dry, dense atmosphere like Venus, or excessive volcanism that would plague a larger than earth terrestial planet.
Condition 2: precise size and distance from star.
Condition 3: Jupiter. Without a massive planet at about the right distance from the sun, the Earth would be slammed by comets on a regular basis.
Condition 4: A large moon. Our moon is very large, compared to its planetary companion. Lunar is as large as the moons of jupiter, a planet 300 times as heavy, and it formed under very unique conditions. Without it, the Earth's axial tilt would be unstable and it would be subject to frequent and very intense climatic swings.
Condition 5: A stable star. Only 15% of stars are as stable as our sun, most exhibit much more intense and frequent flaring activity, that would lead to climatic swings and would compress most planetary magnetic fields, leading to steady errosion of planetary atmospheres.
These helped us become exactly like we are, but I doubt they're a necessity for complex, intelligent life. Just complex, intelligent life very similar to us.
For instance, a less stable star isn't so bad if it's really long lived. If we had been a few billion years late, we'd be cooked. A red dwarf that has trillions of years of life in it would be quite a luxury for any multi-cellular life to develop. Considering the amount of red dwarfs out there, it seems like a safe bet that they'll have most of the life we find.

I don't buy this. If it were true, we would have expected a different intelligent species to have evolved on Earth, aeons before we did.

Also, the fact remain that if ET had evolved elsewhere in our galaxy even a short time ago by geological standards, they would have colonised every habitable star system in our galaxy by now. Their radio signals would be everywhere. Their space junk would be littered throughout our solar system. Also, how would they spontaneouly die out, if they had already colonised their solar systems or multiples of other solar systems?

The observations that we are seeing only make sense if we assume that ours is the only advanced technological society to have evolved in our galaxy, or none of the others were succesful in colonising space to a significant degree and thus, have not survived in any evident form.

nickname · 2007-06-04 04:44:20

dicktice,

My thoughts exactly.

If we are truly alone then we should start the outward movement of our 1 in a billion trillion trillion lucky break that we are.
The universe has our name on it.

If we are not alone we should do the same and search for the other lucky ones.
The Universe has our name on it with a few co signers.

Either way we are extremely lucky and right now extremely regional.

dryson · 2007-07-17 20:37:00

laughing, do you think you would want to visit Earth if you were an advanced spacefaring civilization? Every notion that people think of how an alien civilation would be like is based off of how humans would go about it.

There are three main types of Extra Solar Entities in the Universe

1.Agressive - only purpose is to conquere other races for a self servatial notion, killing all that opposes them. Driven by property and wealth.

2.Non-Agressive - the purpose of this type of race would be the exploration of the Universe to better theirself and their race or civilization.
They would posess weapons meant to defend theirself against attack but would never use them to attack pre-emptively. This is hopefully the race that would make first contact with us. Driven by exploration and knowledge

3.Neutral - this race would be reclusive in nature, being like race number 2 but not wanting to interact or be enacted upon by outside races. This race would most likely have the most powerful tech and weapons available to concel their existance and if found would have the ability to not leave any trace of their existance. This race would be more aggressive then #1 and would open fire on an Earth vessel first.

Driven by exploration and knowledge, the same as number #2.

Then there are humans- ????

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#1 2006-02-13 21:56:41

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#2 2006-02-14 21:04:04

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#3 2006-02-14 21:59:48

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#4 2006-02-15 06:32:28

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#5 2006-02-20 19:50:12

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#6 2006-02-21 17:08:44

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#7 2007-05-25 00:12:56

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#8 2007-06-01 09:45:27

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#9 2007-06-01 09:58:27

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#10 2007-06-03 00:26:50

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#11 2007-06-03 16:43:44

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#12 2007-06-03 18:13:19

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#13 2007-06-04 02:32:55

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

#14 2007-06-04 04:44:20

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#15 2007-07-17 20:37:00

Re: an inference that there are very few indeed e.t.'s out there

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