7 ms·

If this is true, life evolving twice right here would have implications for what we would plug into the Drake equation, and make the deafening silence so far ev

by ericb 16y ago

If this is true, life evolving twice right here would have implications for what we would plug into the Drake equation, and make the deafening silence so far even a bit more eerie. edit: It sounded like a separate evolutionary path initially before the actual announcement--that is what I was saying "if this is true" about.

JabavuAdams 16y ago
Why would we expect anything other than silence? The universe is big, but time is long. The chances of two active technological species overlapping in time is pretty low. I'd expect to find a lot of ruins and artifacts out there.
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  > The chances of two active technological species overlapping in time is pretty low. There are some pretty big assumptions about how long a technological species lasts in that statement.
  - sfphotoarts 16y ago
    ... and likely accurate assumptions, if the last 100 years is anything to go on.
    - ceejayoz 16y ago
      There are lots of alternative explanations proposed. Quick transitions into more advanced, less detectable communication technologies, for example.
      - JabavuAdams 16y ago
        Or less detectable life-forms. I.e. we're wired to ascribe intelligence to human-like intelligence. Something radically different or developed might not look like intelligence to us. E.g. Are those proto-stars in a nebula? Or is that some transcendent intelligence's weekend project or substrate or waste matter?
  - sorbus 16y ago
    That's the Great Filter, right there. Something which goes around killing off technological species, or something inherent to their development which prevents them from causing lasting change in the universe.
  - JabavuAdams 16y ago
    Of course. As there are in any other speculation about finding live ETs. We don't have a good model. By analogy, if you could drop a modern human explorer on Earth at a uniformly selected random time in its history up 'till now, at a random spot it would almost always be uninhabitable. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how-habitable-is-the-earth.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how-habi... Time is really, really long, and we're biased not to recognize that, especially when it opposes our "space is big" arguments.
- acgourley 16y ago
  My understanding: that is what makes the silence deafening. If it's probable that the universe is filled with other intelligent life, and we see no evidence of it, that means that these civilizations are all ending before they can get radio or long range space flight. Or shortly after. Does not bode well for us.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    I might be underestimating the sensitivity of our instruments, but if we're just now being able to detect planets based on their gravitional signatures on stars, how can we be sure we haven't peered through a telescope at intelligent life already? Our species was pretty damn interesting 300 years ago, but if the aliens were looking for was radio signals we didn't "exist" to them until about 1920. And our radio waves haven't even gone that far yet, 100 light years is nowhere. Maybe in a 1,000 years when they get somewhere and aliens notice, they'll dispatch their ship and another 1,000 years later land here. I wouldn't expect to get found in the woods a millisecond after I lit the signal fire, and thats where we are today in universe terms.
    - khafra 16y ago
      That's where we are--but the universe is 14 billion years old, and there are many, many planets out there much older than ours; some several times older. It should only take a few millenia for any truly successful life in our galaxy to colonize the whole thing: less than a cosmic eyeblink.
      - chc 16y ago
        It took us millions of years to get all around the globe, when it "should" (in the same sense as above) only have taken a couple hundred. I don't think we should assume that life will necessarily take the most efficient path to any particular goal.
      - krschultz 16y ago
        Yea but that point, you are getting around faster than the speed of light. If you can move faster than the speed of light, why would you use radio waves for anything? What if their entire communication/transportation happens in some manner we can't comprehend. Imagine trying to show an iPad videochatting someone else to Da Vinci. It would be black magic with so many layers of technology that he couldn't comprehend - and he was a smart guy. So in a few hundred years we've blown everything we thought we knew away. Who knows what physics and technology we will have in a few thousand years?
- foobarbazoo 16y ago
  It's not just that. Look at the life progress in our world. How long until we're trucking around the galaxy? Not long... So given that, if life were on another project, well, we'd expect them to be trucking around the galaxy too by now. And they're not. That leads to the reasonable conclusion that there are not aliens at the same level as us in this galaxy. Note: For aliens to be at the same level as us and not trucking around, they would need to be hopelessly close to use in evolution. Given how much has happened in just the last 10K years, that seems extremely improbable. Hmm, this was supposed to be a reply to another comment...

by ericb 16y ago

JabavuAdams 16y ago

Why would we expect anything other than silence? The universe is big, but time is long. The chances of two active technological species overlapping in time is pretty low. I'd expect to find a lot of ruins and artifacts out there.

ceejayoz 16y ago
> The chances of two active technological species overlapping in time is pretty low. There are some pretty big assumptions about how long a technological species lasts in that statement.
- sfphotoarts 16y ago
  ... and likely accurate assumptions, if the last 100 years is anything to go on.
  - ceejayoz 16y ago
    There are lots of alternative explanations proposed. Quick transitions into more advanced, less detectable communication technologies, for example.
    - JabavuAdams 16y ago
      Or less detectable life-forms. I.e. we're wired to ascribe intelligence to human-like intelligence. Something radically different or developed might not look like intelligence to us. E.g. Are those proto-stars in a nebula? Or is that some transcendent intelligence's weekend project or substrate or waste matter?
- sorbus 16y ago
  That's the Great Filter, right there. Something which goes around killing off technological species, or something inherent to their development which prevents them from causing lasting change in the universe.
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  Of course. As there are in any other speculation about finding live ETs. We don't have a good model. By analogy, if you could drop a modern human explorer on Earth at a uniformly selected random time in its history up 'till now, at a random spot it would almost always be uninhabitable. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how-habitable-is-the-earth.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how-habi... Time is really, really long, and we're biased not to recognize that, especially when it opposes our "space is big" arguments.
acgourley 16y ago
My understanding: that is what makes the silence deafening. If it's probable that the universe is filled with other intelligent life, and we see no evidence of it, that means that these civilizations are all ending before they can get radio or long range space flight. Or shortly after. Does not bode well for us.
- krschultz 16y ago
  I might be underestimating the sensitivity of our instruments, but if we're just now being able to detect planets based on their gravitional signatures on stars, how can we be sure we haven't peered through a telescope at intelligent life already? Our species was pretty damn interesting 300 years ago, but if the aliens were looking for was radio signals we didn't "exist" to them until about 1920. And our radio waves haven't even gone that far yet, 100 light years is nowhere. Maybe in a 1,000 years when they get somewhere and aliens notice, they'll dispatch their ship and another 1,000 years later land here. I wouldn't expect to get found in the woods a millisecond after I lit the signal fire, and thats where we are today in universe terms.
  - khafra 16y ago
    That's where we are--but the universe is 14 billion years old, and there are many, many planets out there much older than ours; some several times older. It should only take a few millenia for any truly successful life in our galaxy to colonize the whole thing: less than a cosmic eyeblink.
    - chc 16y ago
      It took us millions of years to get all around the globe, when it "should" (in the same sense as above) only have taken a couple hundred. I don't think we should assume that life will necessarily take the most efficient path to any particular goal.
    - krschultz 16y ago
      Yea but that point, you are getting around faster than the speed of light. If you can move faster than the speed of light, why would you use radio waves for anything? What if their entire communication/transportation happens in some manner we can't comprehend. Imagine trying to show an iPad videochatting someone else to Da Vinci. It would be black magic with so many layers of technology that he couldn't comprehend - and he was a smart guy. So in a few hundred years we've blown everything we thought we knew away. Who knows what physics and technology we will have in a few thousand years?
foobarbazoo 16y ago
It's not just that. Look at the life progress in our world. How long until we're trucking around the galaxy? Not long... So given that, if life were on another project, well, we'd expect them to be trucking around the galaxy too by now. And they're not. That leads to the reasonable conclusion that there are not aliens at the same level as us in this galaxy. Note: For aliens to be at the same level as us and not trucking around, they would need to be hopelessly close to use in evolution. Given how much has happened in just the last 10K years, that seems extremely improbable. Hmm, this was supposed to be a reply to another comment...