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83 Comments
- binaryloop, on 09/30/2009, -3/+22The best proof that there is intelligent life out there .... is that they haven't contacted us.
- thinkb4utype, on 09/30/2009, -1/+15It's quiet here... can you hear a signal?
- orientis, on 09/30/2009, -2/+11Totally! Why shouldn't we assume that radio is the only possible method of communication?! We've had it for thousands of years and it hasn't been topped yet!
WAIT A MINUTE - orientis, on 09/30/2009, -1/+9Yeah, there's heaps of evidence for that. Heaps.
- valis, on 09/30/2009, -1/+8It is all opinion. No one knows.
- BasalCellBossk, on 09/30/2009, -1/+7Advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are not using radio as a form of communication transmission. Take it to the bank. We won't be in 100 years. They are using light or more likely some form of quantum-coupling based information transfer.
- novenator, on 09/30/2009, -4/+9Life is out there, but I don't think many if any life forms can survive the technological threshold. Ie. they kill themselves off before they can get to the stage where interstellar travel is possible.
- Osirus1156, on 09/30/2009, -1/+6Well if there is life that is way more advanced than us out there, or even if they are not, they could very well be using a method of communication that is way beyond us technologically.
That or they saw /b/ and banned the planet from communications. - orientis, on 09/30/2009, -1/+6You think that a war on Earth somehow dictates the behaviour of organisms we cannot even imagine? Please, expound your logic here.
- orientis, on 09/30/2009, -1/+5What if an intelligent species developed from benign parasites? Then the evolutionary drive would be linked with the wellbeing of the organisms around the parasite, and thus the ecology.
It is simply anthropomorphic hubris to assume that other environments will produce organisms acting according to processes we have already identified. What about silicon-based lifeforms? What about the inflatable gas beings of Quantor III?
There's no evidence of further intelligent life in the universe. Thus we have no idea what could be out there - apart from what we can extrapolate from our own environment, and what we can imagine. I don't believe we have imagined everything yet. - orientis, on 09/30/2009, -2/+6So far, what we know is that we haven't heard anything. That suggests, despite prevailing cosmological theories and speculative calculations, that nothing's out there.
The attempt to turn an absence of evidence (typically an inductive process) into logical proof (a purely deductive exercise) is sophistry.
I'm sorry, your commenting privileges have been revoked. - SawButter, on 09/30/2009, -0/+3Fooking coward prawns !
- InfinitySnatch, on 09/30/2009, -1/+4They're out there. They're keeping quiet. The galaxy is full of wolves.
- Boggy20, on 09/30/2009, -1/+4If extraterrestrials were to try and communicate with us, or attempt to make any contact at all, Kanye would interrupt them anyway...
- 1x253, on 09/30/2009, -0/+3orientis
Uh, no, I didn't realize b/c you didn't put quotation marks around the quote you were quoting. That helps to distinguish btwn the quote you respond to and your own response.
Nonetheless, I'm digging you back up! Thanks for being a rationality superhero on digg. - thinkb4utype, on 09/30/2009, -0/+3Maybe life is common, but intelligent life is rare. Twice life has evolved on earth without developing an intelligent species. The pre-cambrian animals were killed off by an asteroid after 300 million years. The dinosaurs were around for 200 million years before another collision killed them off. The third time we evolved from other mammals only after 65 million years had passed. Evolution doesn't seem to favour intelligence. It could be that the stars around us have planets with life, but that life has never been smart enough to build radio transmitters.
- ChromaVita, on 09/30/2009, -2/+5Nothing intelligent. ZING!
- orientis, on 09/30/2009, -2/+5"In an infinitely large universe, the chances of two species from seperate parts of the universe to meet are also... infinite."
Err.. no. It doesn't work like that. Just because we live in an infinite universe doesn't mean that all values = infinity. - SawButter, on 09/30/2009, -1/+4Mankind can't even really live peacefully with all its different civilizations. Why should we start to communicate with ETs ?
Let's find our way to build an international synergy that will lead to peace and respect of each others and then we could talk about having contact with ETs.
If they are advanced enough to come to visit us, they might think we are to much primitive for them and just wait for us to evolve. - Nerden, on 09/30/2009, -0/+2@orientis, actually it does, if there are infinate number of planets and if we only find life on something like every 1*10^32th planet there will still be an infinate number of planets which will result in an infinate number of alien races.
What i think was ment, was that it is close to infinate number of planets, but there will be an end which will limit the number of alien races.
If there are aliens they could just be at the same stage of evolutuion and technology as us. - neocreo, on 09/30/2009, -0/+2or grues....
- insomniacal, on 09/30/2009, -0/+2At least we know we haven't heard anything.
- neocreo, on 09/30/2009, -1/+3I thought they said "If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me"?
- bigbangbuddha, on 09/30/2009, -2/+4I believe the biggest barrier to communication is the means of communication itself. We are scanning the skys listening for radio waves. We assume that all intelligent civilizations would leave radio fingerprints of themselves. I wonder why? We have only been doing it for a hundred years. Why do we assume this is the pinnacle of communication methodologies? Who's is to say that in the next few years (or even few thousand years) we don't discover some new strange form of energy or particle that makes using anything today obsolete. This is actually quite probable. The reality is that even if the universe were teaming with life (which I believe it is), the chances we would hear messages from another civilization in the same technological stage as us is absurdly small, especially if we expect them to be nearby.
- tod987, on 09/30/2009, -0/+2A single cell to advance civilization can takes 3 million years to form through mutations given the conditions are right for life. Yes, numbers are involved and very specific numbers, indeed; set in stone like the speed of light. The universe is 14 billion years old. Should you span the age of the universe to a year, we are only minutes old. This provides plenty of time for advance life communication within 100,000 light years (length of our Milky Way) to reach us. Do you see anything on those bands? SETI? Nope, sorry space is way to big. Light communication has a more narrow wavelength....still nothing? Yep, nope one is in our galaxy. Yes, light can travel quite easily 100,000 light years and detected for patterns. Nothing.
- BasalCellBossk, on 09/30/2009, -1/+3Sorry to break it to you, but your statement is based entirely on your own bias.
- eviscerator, on 09/30/2009, -0/+2Butter I agree. I like to compare aliens observing us to humans observing ants in a glass box.
I think if we ever achieve world peace (lol!) aliens would be very interested in talking to us. - appleseed1234, on 09/30/2009, -3/+5The fundamental drive of organic evolution, survival of the fittest. Of course as species become more advanced this simple goal manifests itself in more complex ways, like building a bigger bomb than your neighbor so that your people have more room to expand. Unless there are extra-terrestrials that rely on a mechanism other than evolution, that's going to be the basic motif of just about any life form, especially intelligent ones.
Unless somewhere down the line, humans eradicate the destructive competition instinct from their genes and place that function in the hands of some sort of "referee", whether that be a computer or living organism, that will ensure the best for humanity (and see to it that we aren't too docile or too destructive). Aside from those two possibilities, I don't see why an advanced intelligence won't eventually die out. But dugg for bringing up a good point. - dijkstra22, on 09/30/2009, -3/+5If you were a highly developed alien with the ability for galactic-scale communication, would you really want to talk to people on Earth?
- orientis, on 09/30/2009, -1/+3Err.. you guys know I'm responding to the comment above, right?
- BasalCellBossk, on 09/30/2009, -1/+3This is absurdly illogical. This reason seems to be based entirely on anthropocentric arguments; easily dismissed.
- Iceman21, on 09/30/2009, -1/+3Will lifeforms that have mastered or at least have feasible interstellar travel want to talk to a species that regularly kills its own kin, consumes everything around it, ruining its planets environment, litters its orbit with useless junk.
To a much more advanced species we are simple barbarians, paranoid, aggressive, confused about our own existence, our gender, sexuality and the realities of reproduction and survival, for the most part we are less than enlightened or intelligent, i only have to live through one day and i hear about or see someone doing something utterly stupid.
Before i get dugg down consider looking at our species as a whole from and outside perspective and see if you can tally up all the stupid, selfish, greedy and murderous things we do and have done and imagine what the more advanced and intelligent races will think of our race, they will probably see the same thing i see when outside on the streets witnessing random occurences of violence and stupidity. - mabsark, on 09/30/2009, -0/+2So what you are saying, is that instead of scanning for radio waves, they should be scanning for some unknown thing that may or may not exist, which they have no idea on what type of signature to look for, using tools which may or may not be able to detect such signatures.
Someone give this guy a Nobel. - kjava206, on 10/01/2009, -1/+2So, are you planning on spooling out fiber optics? Radio is the best carrier of long distance wireless data transmission that currently exists and will exist during any currently living human's lifetime. Much like interstellar travel, even some future form of communication would be limited by the speed of light and covering the enormous distances being discussed would still take longer than most biological creatures will exist.
Maybe if you read a book instead of repeating memes you would know this, but why bother when you can just repeat what actual witty people have said to burn you in the past? - MisterEThoughts, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1They not going to respond. I think they will just show up!:) Sarcastically speaking:)
- gethane, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1I copy/pasted it silly. I was afraid of the person who wrote that comment! His (or her) tinfoil hat must be so large that it disrupts radio and tv broadcasts.
- eviscerator, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1K'plah! (I know, I can't spell Klingon words right :P )
- subliminalurge, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1I'll correct that for you....
It is mostly a matter of opoinion. Only a few know. - kjava206, on 10/01/2009, -1/+2Outside of the dreams of science fiction there is nothing that has been proven to travel faster than light. If something is discovered and that is doubtful, then maybe their would be a chance to communicate over long distances but how would the party you were attempting to communicate with be able to receive the message? It would be cool but it is doubtful.
Try having a conversation instead of being a jackass and maybe people would be nicer to you and consider what you have to say... - acknotSW, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1My own belief is that each galaxy only gives rise to 2 maybe 3 intelligent species during its entire existence and most of them probably kill themselves off long before they ever evolve to the point where they could leave their own solar system.
From what I've heard and read, in less than 1000 years we could start leaving our solar system, (maybe in less than 500 years by some accounts) in search of other planets to colonize. Even if we never travel faster than 1/3 the speed of light we could spread out all over our galaxy in a few hundred thousand years. At that point, what could kill us off?
Keep in mind that humans arose about 200,000 years ago. If you assume that we are pretty average as far as intelligent species go, that’s going from sticks and clubs to colonizing our galaxy in less than half a million years. Given the age of our galaxy and our planet, if intelligent life was common, the galaxy should be so overcrowded by now that earth should have been colonized by another species millions of years ago. - orientis, on 10/01/2009, -1/+2Arthur C Clarke is definitely more appropriate for kids. Dick can spin into surreal worlds of drugs and sex quite easily. Wait until he/she's at least 11 :)
For novels, the Rama series is unbeatable. There is, however, a huge book of his collected short stories. It's called The Collected Short Stories of Arthur C Clarke. I recommend that. He did some recent novels with other people - like The Light of Other Days with Baxter I think. Anything he wrote is gold really. - inactive, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1It's all good, I have a case of Frobozz magic Grue repellent.
- 1x253, on 10/02/2009, -0/+1Orientis
Thank you, sir; I appreciate the great info. Have a great weekend! - Altotus, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1Not only have we only been doing it for 100 years, but increasingly, our communications are carried by wire or using much lower intensity broadcasts. Our RF emissions have peaked and are waning.
The real problem, as I consider it, isn't whether they want to talk, but the physical issue of generating a meaningful signal that at any appreciable interstellar distance the intensity and S/N ratio will be great enough to pick it out. That'd take a lot of doing. - Mican, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1..why did you assume you'd get dugg down for your first two paragraphs?
o_O - SawButter, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1Where, in my post, have you read something about an alien threat ?
- TheMachine1, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1You mean 3 billion years.
- jsmithers, on 09/30/2009, -1/+2MAN! People are stupid. All this wondering by the general public worldwide about "Hmmm, I wonder if aliens really ARE out there somewhere?", and meanwhile EVERY SINGLE UFO sighting ever gets shot down in a ball of flames by these same people: "Fake!" "Photoshop!" "Kook!" "Wierdo!". And it's the same with crop circles - "Fake!", "Students did it!", "2 old men with planks did it!", "some company did it!".
Sure, lots of it IS rubbish. But there is still a huge amount of all the ufo sightings, alien contact, crop circles etc over the last 60 years (for example) that cannot be explained conventionally. All this huge quantity of genuine, real, cannot-be-dismissed evidence IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR NOSE. Much of it from people you're quite happy to trust with your lives - military personnel at all grades, police, flight controllers, pilots, etc.
But, to quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men: "The truth?! You can't handle the truth!".
That's the reality. We, the general public, can't handle the truth.
Come on, admit it. People (flesh and blood, with thoughts and feelings, like you and me) who happened to grow up on other planets (hey - shock horror - if people who grew up on a different continent to you but look a little different are just the same as you and me, why does a bit of space between us, rather than just a bit of water, make any difference? Huh?) are not just "out there somewhere".
They're here. Now. And have been for decades (probably millennia, but we'll skip that for now). Interacting with humanity (the argument goes "why should they look like us?". Well, why SHOULDN'T some of them look like us? IDENTICALLY like us?). Gently alerting us to their presence, in a harmless, loving way. Making patterns in crops. Being seen in the distance in their vehicles. Etc.
Grow some balls people. Admit the reality. Admit the truth. To yourselves.
http://disclosureproject.org - neocreo, on 09/30/2009, -1/+2@Orientis... one symbol: π
At least one value with never ending sequence. - valis, on 09/30/2009, -0/+1Unless you are one of the people who knows, then it is still opinion.
So, let me correct that for you...
"I think that a few know." -
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