First Contact

[Dale Dough]

Re: the argument if interstellar (time?) travel were possible and there are other intelligent civilizations, why aren't they here:

How would you recognize one? If someone tells me he is on a mission on Earth, was put into a human body, and can't tell me more because 'humanity isn't ready for that yet'.. how can I disprove it?

[Kirkrrr]

Wow, great thread. I will just sound dumb if I try to add something, but luckily there's a lot of posters in this thread who are knowledgeable enough on the subject(-s) and I'm content to defer to their opinion.

Kirk

[shaniac]

Ditto, Kirkrr...

I enjoyed the thread for the dominant amt of science vs science-fiction, even though I usually prefer to dream on the science-fiction stuff.

[ianlippert]

[ QUOTE ]
Pretty sure this is wrong.

I doubt radio waves from Earth would be detectable beyond a couple dozen light years. Below that, the signal to noise ratio is too low. Not to mention dispersion.



[/ QUOTE ]

I actually was having this discussion with a physics friend of mine a long time ago. He did some calculations and I think the number he came up with was something like 60 light years before radio waves are indistinguishable from the background noise. This is probably a good reason why we havent found anything yet. Does SETI do anything else to find civilizations or it all based on radio waves?

[stigmata]

Very influenced by AC Clarke / Star Trek, but it is an reasonable explanation, consistent the facts and reasonable conjecture:

1) There is intelligent life in the Universe. Chances are there has to be.

2) They are far more advanced than we are. Chances are it developed before us, and given our rapid growth, it will be far more advanced simply because it had a head start.

3) They are aware of us, because detection issues probably aren't that difficult for something waaay advanced from us (e.g. think about a million more years of post-industrial technology, not evolution)

4) They are advanced & intelligent enough to realise that contacting us would be incredibly stupid & disastrous thing to do at this stage in our evolution.

They're waiting..... Waiting for us to either "grow up or blow up."

[SaulPaul]

just stumbled across this the otehr day:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2241753.ece

pretty interesting

[morphball]

[ QUOTE ]
If there is intelligent life out there, then the universe should be full of von Neumann probes. or we should see evidence of a galaxy where one of these went awry. This is one of the more interesting wikipedia articles I've read.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps the von Neumann probes are biochemical--meaning we are the probes. What's the theory called? panspermia or sporeogenesis?

[UpstateMatt]

I happen to be a firm believer that the reason we have not had contact with other intelligent life is simply because no civilization has been able to achieve the necessary technology (or desire) for contact prior to imploding on itself through technological warfare.

I say this because two things are relatively clear to me:

1)The universe is so big (and time is so long) that the odds of no other intelligent life existing, or of us being the most advanced intelligent life yet to exist, are infintesimally small.

2)Given (1), we should have easily been contacted already by many, many advanced civilizations.

This leaves me with the sad conclusions that the universe contains the continual story of civilization after civilization of intelligent life developing, advancing, and then imploding on itself.

Either that, or we're all inside some virtual world, created by some kid inside someone else's virtual world.

matt

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
Either that, or we're all inside some virtual world, created by some kid inside someone else's virtual world.

matt

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[tubasteve]

I haven't read the thread, but the Drake equation is pretty much useless considering that some of the variables are of a high enough order of magnitude that small errors will vastly affect the answer.