Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: thedoc on 21/11/2016 21:23:01
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Josip Buric asked the Naked Scientists:
According to the drake eqation, the universe should be filled with inteligent life. Why haven't we made contact so far? Are we the first inteligent life in universe or are we the only one?
What do you think?
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Are we the first inteligent life in universe or are we the only one?
Before you start worrying about Proxima Centauri (or stars even farther away for which we have even less information), ask the question about Earth!
I heard an interview with the author of this book; it sounded really interesting:
https://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Know-Animals/dp/0393246183
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Who "we"? The proponents of Mutually Assured Destruction? Churchgoers? ISIS? Economists? Republican voters? People who play computer games? Drug users? Smokers? The National Rifle Association? Creationists? Climate change deniers?
It turns out that even lemmings are less inherently suicidal than homo sapiens.
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Because the universe is HUGE. We have only the past 100 years had the radio technology so that could be why we havent picked up on singlas. Altho advanced aliens could already be all around us and we might see them once we reach certain point in technology.
ITS REALLY INTERESTING BUT I DONT KNOW!!!!!!! :D
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For a serious answer, you need to multiply the Drake probability of life by the chance of intercepting a cinvilisation at the same stage of development as ours.
Life on earth has been going for around 4,000,000,000 years. Our ability to detect life on another planet has only existed for 100 years, and the best Bayesian estimate is that it will continue for another 100 years. This gives us a 200 year window in 4 billion to look outward, and whatever we are looking for has a similar window in which to transmit its existence. Even if the windows overlap, it means we will only be able to detect intelligent life within a 400 light year radius: anything further away will be dead before we know it was ever alive, or we will.
So the answer is that there almost certainly is, was or will be something we would recognise as intelligent life out there, but even if it broadcasts its existence to the entire universe, there is damn-all chance of our finding it.
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It's a silly equation, because one factor in the equation (fl = the fraction of habitable planets that actually develop life) is entirely unknown. The probability of life developing in a hospitable environment is entirely unknown, and we do not have anywhere near enough data to even make an informed guess. In Drake's original estimate, he assumed this probability was 100%!!! How arrogant.
In my opinion, the development of life could have been such a freak and improbable occurrence that it will NEVER happen again. We have no evidence to the contrary. Brian Cox agrees with me.
Therefore, the answer to the Drake equation could easily be zero, or near zero.
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The analysis of the luminosity fluctuations of Tabby's star adds another element into the mix. Is there a Dyson sphere being constructed around this star or is it just comet debris? It is not only the detection of electromagnetic signals that count. We may yet find other forms of life in ur own solar system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852)
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What I meant above was a Dyson swarm not sphere. There are critical differences in the two types.
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Speculation that it is a Dyson swarm seems a bit of a stretch, especially since we haven't even found evidence of extraterrestrial bacterial/microbiological life anywhere in the universe. Also, no evidence of radio signals from this star.
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Although I fully agree about humans I think lemmings have more sense
http://io9.gizmodo.com/lemming-suicide-is-a-myth-that-was-perpetuated-by-disne-1549040246
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We're here to ask these questions because a tiny part of the solar system is capable of supporting high technology life. Even here, high technology has only been developed once in the millions of years there have been species capable of developing high intelligence.
Using the weak anthropic principle:
a rather fine tuned universe barely capable of supporting intelligent life, e.g. one instance per cubic teralightyear, may be much more probable than a very fine tuned intelligent-life-friendly universe.
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On the other hand, if we take a synthetic rather than analytic view, it looks very much as though Mars and maybe a few large asteroids, or moons like Europa, could have supported life, maybe still do, or might in future.
Which leaves the definition of "intelligent" to be debated. Given the predisposition of homo sapiens to overpopulate, believe in the supernatural, vote for crooks and idiots, advertise itself as a food resource for aliens, make its own life unpleasant, and fear death, I'd say that any worm or microbe that has kept its head down in the Martian soil for a few billion years would count as more intelligent. So there may be 5 or 10 intelligent life forms within the solar system itself, and thus a very high probability of its existence elsewhere.
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It's just one of those questions we never can answer except if we actually pick up some signals that would be different from any other. And if that signal was Sendt say 4 billion years ago(from Earth 2), we could not communicate with them, they are probably dead, burnt up by their sun.
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On the other hand, if we take a synthetic rather than analytic view, it looks very much as though Mars and maybe a few large asteroids, or moons like Europa, could have supported life, maybe still do, or might in future.
Which leaves the definition of "intelligent" to be debated. Given the predisposition of homo sapiens to overpopulate, believe in the supernatural, vote for crooks and idiots, advertise itself as a food resource for aliens, make its own life unpleasant, and fear death, I'd say that any worm or microbe that has kept its head down in the Martian soil for a few billion years would count as more intelligent. So there may be 5 or 10 intelligent life forms within the solar system itself, and thus a very high probability of its existence elsewhere.
I wasn't very precise in my OP.
Intelligence of not homo sapiens:
overpopulate? yes, every chance they get
believe in the supernatural? unknown
vote for crooks and idiots? never
advertise itself as a food resource for aliens? not intentionally
make its own life unpleasant? not intentionally
fear death? most creatures that don't at least act like they fear death rarely survive to reproduce.
Is h. sap. the only unintelligent life in the solar system?
More seriously I think the only useful definition of intelligence in this context is 'communicates with high power long range electromagnetic radiation.'
It's taken more than 300 million years to get from intelligent land based life to the first radio transmitter/receiver.
It's impossible to know if this is typical or very rarely happens.
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(The Drake equation is) a silly equation, because one factor in the equation (fl = the fraction of habitable planets that actually develop life) is entirely unknown.
At the time Drake produced his eponymous equation, the fraction of stars with planets was entirely unknown.
- According to this logic, the Drake equation is silly
- Except we now have very good evidence for this factor
- Which makes the Drake equation very sensible (according to this logic)
- Logic which declares something to be both silly and sensible is itself suspect
The fact is that Science has often progressed over the past few centuries by an analytic process of breaking difficult problems into smaller problems that can then be separately investigated, in detail.
- The Drake equation explicitly does this, breaking down a Big question into many smaller questions
- Originally, the many unknowns were allocated what was explicitly a guess (some of them "educated guesses")
- These smaller questions are now being investigated (and at least one now has a reasonable answer)
- The Drake equation is merely a miniature example of this scientific process
Unfortunately, there are many problems that cannot be broken down into separate parts with simple interactions; things like ecology, sociology, economics, medicine, psychology, neurology and genetics have many components which interact in complex ways.
- The analytic approach does not work well on these systems
- These complex problems need a different strategy which is more synthetic and integrative.
I think the only useful definition of intelligence in this context is 'communicates with high power long range electromagnetic radiation.'
Leave out the "electromagnetic" bit, and some whales communicate over long distances with high power sonic radiation.
But we are unlikely to detect the message unless we are searching for submarines, and we are unable to decode it (so far).
Although we can recognize humpback songs as a cultural construct.
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Extraterrestrials from many different planets have been coming to Earth for thousands of years. The Bible encodes it. The US Govt has been supressing it since at least the Truman Administration after Roswell July 4, 1947 and the UFOs that buzzed Washington DC twice later that year.
I presented 'Identifying 'True Earth-like Planets' - All New Worlds Are Built on 7_4 (like Earth) Or 6_4 (like Planet Nestor' at a NASA conference in 2009. Google that.
I'll now go back to watching Star Trek.
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(The Drake equation is) a silly equation, because one factor in the equation (fl = the fraction of habitable planets that actually develop life) is entirely unknown.
At the time Drake produced his eponymous equation, the fraction of stars with planets was entirely unknown.
- According to this logic, the Drake equation is silly
- Except we now have very good evidence for this factor
- Which makes the Drake equation very sensible (according to this logic)
- Logic which declares something to be both silly and sensible is itself suspect
The fact is that Science has often progressed over the past few centuries by an analytic process of breaking difficult problems into smaller problems that can then be separately investigated, in detail.
- The Drake equation explicitly does this, breaking down a Big question into many smaller questions
- Originally, the many unknowns were allocated what was explicitly a guess (some of them "educated guesses")
- These smaller questions are now being investigated (and at least one now has a reasonable answer)
- The Drake equation is merely a miniature example of this scientific process
Unfortunately, there are many problems that cannot be broken down into separate parts with simple interactions; things like ecology, sociology, economics, medicine, psychology, neurology and genetics have many components which interact in complex ways.
- The analytic approach does not work well on these systems
- These complex problems need a different strategy which is more synthetic and integrative.
At least one factor in the equation (fl = the fraction of habitable planets that actually develop life) is entirely unknown, and considering the physical limitations on interstellar travel and the sheer distances involved, it will perhaps always be unknown. It is not possible to make an educated guess on this factor with any confidence considering our current lack of data. Based on this consideration, the Drake equation is not yet useful to us for making predictions, and may potentially never be useful. Those who have used the Drake equation to make assertions about the likelihood of the existence of extraterrestrial life are being very unscientific.
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the time we're at, sending out a lot of EM noise, will disappear quite soon, either by technology developing or by us annihilating ourselves. And if the same is true for other technologies the time space of 'hearing' might be quite limited for them, as well as for us.
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Trump is the president elect, any more question?
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I actually had hope that Trump would march into secret governmental bases and learn the truth about UFOs, but he seems to only care about power so I doubt he would risk his life. :P