Does Life Exist

[JurijD]

making statistical arguments like ... there are 8 other planets with moons in our sol. system and none of them has life is very argumentative. First of all we might discover life on some of them and even if we don´t the fact that there is life on only one of them tells us nothing about the rest of teh galaxy... Here are my conclusions:

- I have read the Rare Earth hypothesis and it is very similar to Drake´s assumptions but for one small difference. The guys that did R.E. assumed that there is little life out there and Drake assumed that there is a lot and both tweaked their equations to produce the desired affect. It´s the age old optimist vs. pessimist tug-o-war. The real problem is that none of the factors in their equations can be estimated and not to mention all other factors they left out.

- the real questions is how many intelligent life forms are out there ATM. Well given the fact that we´ve been monitoring the EM band closely for the Last 70 years and found no TV, radio or other transmissions comming from outer space one can resonably conclude that there are no human-like aliens (close to our tech level) in a radious of 70 light years around Earth.

- for the remaining 90k light years of our galaxy who can say... we simply don´t have enough knowledge to make a resonble estimate. It´s just not possible.

- what we can say is that if we do find aliens (or they find us) they will either be very very far ahead of us (tech like) or very very behind us. (since it is very very unlikely two cultures will be at the same tech level at any given time) ... but since we just barely climbed out of the stone age ourselves (10.000 years is nothing cmpared to the eones passed) any aliens that we *might* find will most surely be hugely superior to us

ID4 all over again

[Atrocities]

Good point, if there is life out there, and it has the ability to travel the stars, will it be friendly or hostile toward other life? We are a resource devouring race therefore I believe that if there is life out there, and I do not believe there is life, then they to will be a race dedicated to self preservation above all else and if we meet, we are food.

[Loser]

I like the "if there's anybody out there, where the bleep are they!?!" side of the question. Even within the limitations of the speed of light, it would take no more than a couple hundred million years for one race of intelligent life to spread throughout the galaxy, the whole galaxy.

Since the galaxy has been around for billions of years, they should be here, or at the very least we should be picking up radio transmission from them: communicating with each other, communicating between worlds or craft within the same system, even radio transmissions that are meant to only reach individuals on the same planet should be making some difference. What is there? Nothing.

The matter may stem from some specific failure mode, some specific thing that intelligent life does to itself on a consistent enough basis that it never makes it out of its own solar system. That a bit depressing, as it could be seen as an assurance of doom. Whatever, keep breathing.

[ August 08, 2003, 12:11: Message edited by: Loser ]

[JurijD]

Well this isn´t a good example but its the best I can do for now:

Before the Last ice age there were at least 3 differet species of humanoids living on Earth. People usually think that Homo sapiens evolved in a linear fashion from "lower" humanoids but what they tend to forget is that parallel to us several other species evolved (also from lower humanoids) that were in no way (mentally or physically) inferiour to us. But as you can see apparently only one of those species survived to this day (ok, forget about Big foot, the Snow man and the Easter bunny )

So one can resonbly conclude that (at least on Earth) similarily evolved intelligent species (although related) didn´t really like each other very much and there is evidence that over the passage of time one species took over teritories that belonged to another only centuries ago... not a very encouranging thought concidering that "the aliens" won´t even be distantly related to us.

And encounters of a technologically superiour culture with one less developed (in a militarily and sientific way!!!) also don´t tell a hopefull story. just look at what 200 Spanish soldiers did to the Inka indians back in the 16th century (I think it was the Inkas... or the Aztecks later on... same story

I don´t think E.T. will attack Earth to steal our water (since they have a quadrillion times as much freely available in those ice asteroids orbiting not far away from Mars Maybe our small and unimportant planet is what will safe us in the end. Because what could they possibly want from us... I mean there are millions of other planets with the same (or better) mineral composition as Earth... and besides it doesn´t make sence for a space-ferring culture to mine planets ... it makes more sence to mine asteroids where you don´t need to bother with this annoying gravity we keep hearing about :-) I mean why would you mine gold on Earth and then have to haul it up at enormous costs of energy to space when you have a few rocks with .0000% g already in space that are loaded with the suff. (no really there is an asteroid orbiting near jupiter that has more gold and platinum on it that our enitre planet *ka-ching*

[ August 08, 2003, 12:23: Message edited by: JurijD ]

[Ruatha]

To detect inter-system communication within another system is propably hard.
You have to aim at that system directly, it's not very high signals that would reach earth if the signals aren't directed in a tight beam towards us, I belive. Not to mention that we might be listening on the wrong frequency, if communication is sparse they might not be using that many frequencies. And perhaps there is other way to transmit communication than by radio waves. Wires planetside and light in space? Perhaps mass communication isn't for all species?
What where the SETI resources in the 40:ies?

So to say that we've been monitoring the EM band closely for the Last 70 years isn't the whole truth.

(I might be out on thin ice here as I really don't know but what I've written here seems reasonable, right?)

[ August 08, 2003, 12:27: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[Arkcon]

Atrocities, I gotta side with JuriD here. A handful, in a gigantic universe, equals countless planets with the possibility of life.

That the life forms in question have an intelligence like ours is hard to know for sure. The drake equation is easy to discuss and debate to figure out for number of stars and planets. But to define intelligence and technology, well, that might be difficult.

I'm a firm believer, that the laws of physics prevent these far flung societies from ever coming in contact with each other. If anyone ever discover warp points, jumpgates, I'll be shocked. And, IMHO, hyperspace drives and warp drives are just plain silly.

JuriD, you're back from vacation? Betcha you thought you'd have missed some turns on PBW, huh. Didn't figure you'd have missed nothing, didja. Welcome back.

[JurijD]

Hey Arkcon... yeah 11 days in the mediteranian sun relaxes you more then u can imagine I´m glad PBW knew when to stop working

I understand your point Ruatha... I know that in the 30-ies old Adolf couldn´t exactly tune to Alpha Centauri between his looong screaming monolouges It just that I read somewhere that the voyager probe (if put far away from Earth) would be able to record (again) the first Elvis song broadcasted on radio... I just concluded that with a big enough radio antenna one could pick up the first transmissions from our system... and vice versa.

P.S.: and of course my argument only included intelligent species that have the same tech level and are similarily developed as we are... use teh same tech (radio freq. that we use are such because they are most appropriate and they would prolly use the same ones) ther of course could be a hugely developed culture living on alpha centaury that has ships that reach warp 9.86 but communicates by telephaty and has no need for radio and such primitive junk

[ August 08, 2003, 12:44: Message edited by: JurijD ]