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Hiding in plain sight? The argument for invisible aliens (2020)
- cies 4y agoHow are "invisible aliens" not rebranded ghosts? (beings without a physical body)
- ianai 4y agoThe hypothesis of a prohibition on grabby aliens feels more plausible to me than most others. We’re relatively early on the scene. If one Von Neumann probe got out from a civilization it could mean no other species evolve again in the universe. That’s surely disastrous since the universe will be around for trillions of years and survival will require adaptation over that period. So maybe they’re around and watchful to allow species to evolve on their relative own. Aside, I really wish we were already building the successor to JWST. And multiples of them for surety of success. For verification but also the universe is literally the largest thing we know. Lots of science to learn just by careful watching. It’s also work (astronomy) that does add to human knowledge with few negative externalities. So create jobs for astronomers!!
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoI think VN probes are impossibly hard and extremely unlikely. A working VN probe literally has to reproduce a significant part of an entire civilisation's industrial capacity - mining, refining, all levels of assembly - while improvising with a mix of raw materials which may not be similar to those available at source. And it has to do it in a way that is 100% guaranteed free from software bugs, hardware failures, and general space wear and tear. Over millions of years. (Assuming FTL isn't possible.) You may as well as just seed viruses everywhere and see what they evolve into. (What if we are the VN probe?)
- ianai 4y agoLife is a likely VN. Edit-not that life is anyone in particulars VN probe. But it’s clearly self replicating and can evolve to various conditions. Kind of the obvious example to prove the existence of VN probes as a logical concept.
- nonameiguess 4y agoLife is self-replicating, but it can't just use any substrate. Nutrition and energy requirements are quite specific. Any life on earth that managed to survive an interstellar journey would need to find organic chemicals similar to what are found on earth in order to continue replicating, and I think at least water as well. There are only some tiny number of spores that can survive in a vacuum at all, and while I don't think it's impossible that something like them could actually survive an entire interstellar journey, I'm reasonably sure nothing we know of can do that. They also can't change course. Most space is empty, so the most likely place they end up is nowhere. The next most likely are the largest gravity wells, which are all stars and black holes, where they are not going to replicate. Then you get to planets, but giant gas planets are going to be the largest gravity wells among planets. Assuming even one manages to find a planet earth-like enough to support life like it, would it survive atmospheric re-entry? Spores don't have heat shields. What you're describing is something like the protomolecule from the Expanse books, which is a nice concept, but it required its creators to have the technology to locally alter the laws of physics as we know them to work, making it possible to use an asteroid with no propulsion system as a carrier vehicle, with energy sucked out of a different universe they figured out how to gain access to (not something that is likely to actually be possible).
- bluGill 4y agoFortunately water is extremely common in the universe, as are the other building blocks of life. Every proposal I've seen for life not based on carbon, water, and the other building blocks of life here relies on chemistry that is hard to pull off in a lab (or impossible, though in theory is seems like it should be possible). Water and Carbon have some very interesting chemical properties that make it the mostly likely building blocks for life. Of course since we are talking about unknowns, I can't say for sure that life elsewhere isn't made of something else, but our current knowledge of chemistry makes the idea unlikely.
- mnky9800n 4y ago> as noted by businessinsider.com The pinnacle of trustable and verified information.
- notorandit 4y agoLet's imagine 1 civilization lasts 10 million years on a planet. Then it either blows itself out or moves away. Let's imagine it takes another 10 million years for a new one to spawn out there. Within 100 million years we could get 5 different civilizations, each unaware of the other ones, unless some long-lasting (> 10 my) relic can be found. So, for two civilization to come in contact you need to be within the same space-time boundaries. Otherwise they could be either too far in time or too far in space. Provided that both civilizations can physically get in an effective contact.
- lnxg33k1 4y agoI’d say any form of life out there would have to go through some form of capitalism that would extinct them before they’d be able to be advanced enough to get in touch, but also I always had this stupid idea, that if to develop an intelligent form of life it took a inhabitable planet then why another intelligent form of life hasn’t developed here on earth other than human species?
- lgl 4y ago> I’d say any form of life out there would have to go through some form of capitalism This is anthropomorphizing at its best because we humans have largely decided that capitalist is the best "*ism". Alien intelligence could have basically unimaginable governments, societal norms, morals and/or motivations. > (...) then why another intelligent form of life hasn’t developed here on earth other than human species? The answer here is probably just evolution. Other intelligent species have developed on Earth thorough its history (e.g.: Neanderthals, Denisovans). They're not here anymore because we (Homo-Sapiens) killed them.
- intrasight 4y agoCapitalism is the apogee of survival of the fittest which is the basis of evolution which, lacking plausible alternate routes, can be argued to be the basis of all life everywhere. So I accept the posts premise that "some form of capitalism" is required. Great apes have capitalism.
- dtx1 4y agoAn american Defense Contractor writing about this just reeks of slow preparation of the public for the eventual release of evidence that some of those Navy UAPs are in fact extra-terrestrial and we have no Idea what to do about it.
- marcus0x62 4y agoOr they are positioning themselves as a “thought leader” in order to win lucrative contracts to study those UAPs. For the public benefit, of course.
- steve1977 4y agoFollow the money
- Loughla 4y ago100% this. The releases by the government, these sorts of stories. I am 100% convinced it's just to chase defense contracts and to justify further US federal spending on this. Sometimes the stupidest reason is the reason. Especially when it comes to money.
- dtx1 4y agoThis is even better and more realistic!
- solumunus 4y agoThere are videos debunking them which are pretty damn convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs
- tunap 4y agoMore plausibly, they are seeding the Demon Haunted World theory to distract the populous from their immediate problems. I found the timing of resurgent UFO/UAP stories & official statements at the height of the pandemic quite dubious. I did/do really enjoy the thought experiments posited in these comments. For more than a few minutes my mind's eye forgot that my finances have been a slow-motion trainwreck these last 3 years.
- aflag 4y agoI think it's not unreasonable that we are sort of early to the party. Earth has existed for about 1/3 of the lifetime of the universe (and I think it was only around 8 billion years ago that the galaxy started looking like it does today) and we are only here right now and we don't have enough impact in our environment that would be detectable with our technology from very far away even within the milky way. Considering that in order to get technologically advanced you need some heavier elements to exist, your planet really needs to be formed after a few generations of stars. Then there are a bunch of other factors to get everything right in the planet so that it ends up creating inteligent life. I suspect there's probably intelligent life out there and some may be a lot more advanced than us. But I think it's not unreasonable to think that no life in the milky way quite made it to galactic domination yet. If that's even feasible. It's just very hard to find anything short of that right now. And, even if such life exists in other galaxies, it would be very hard to detect that as well. Plus, they are really far away, so their influence didn't quite have the time to reach here.
- ido 4y agoThe lifetime of the universe is so long that it's hard to reason about intuitively. Saturn's rings were formed about 100 million years ago, which is cosmologically speaking a blink of an eye. 1 million years ago is 1/14,000th (0.007%) of the lifespan of the universe, so almost trivially miniscule in cosmological sense. If some sentient alien civilisation got 1 million years head-start on us wouldn't they basically already have achieved any technological advancement possible?
- 867-5309 4y agothe fact we have only been bleeding EM radiation for the last hundred years or so only gives us a radius of 100ly for detection - another tiny fraction of the galaxy
- bluGill 4y agoAt most. Radio waves follow the inverse square law for attenuation, most of the signals we have sent over the past 100 years are not detectable out that far.
- djaouen 4y agoI personally feel that the aliens are everywhere, only we can’t see them. Like shapeshifters, they come and go as they please [1]. [1] My Uncle Larry
- le-mark 4y agoOdd that Northrop Grumman are publishing this. Otherwise the point about phosphorous relative importance (in terrestrial biochemistry) vs abundance is new to me, very interesting.
- Lastodon 4y agoMy first thought as well. What's in it for them? Planning a pivot toward space based defence assets perhaps? How forward thinking.
- kypro 4y agoHonestly I'm questioning the quality of this website. Seems like it's largely one guy writing low-effort clickbait science articles, likely to raise public awareness of the Northrop Grumman brand and some of their focuses - space, sea, STEM, automation, cyber security, etc. https://now.northropgrumman.com/aliens-in-the-ocean-is-sea-ing-believing/ https://now.northropgrumman.com/aliens-in-the-ocean-is-sea-i... https://now.northropgrumman.com/proof-of-mermaids-science-tells-the-tail/ https://now.northropgrumman.com/proof-of-mermaids-science-te...
- mannykannot 4y agoWRT phosphorus: this article also brings up the microbes (found in Mono lake) which have allegedly substituted arsenic for phosphorous in their biochemistry. As far as I know, this claim has been refuted, or at least dialed back to their being remarkably arsenic-tolerant. https://www.monolake.org/today/mono-lakes-arsenic-tolerant-microbe-is-back-in-the-news/ https://www.monolake.org/today/mono-lakes-arsenic-tolerant-m...
- drumhead 4y agoAliens mean danger and danger means new, advanced and very expensive weaponry.
- machina_ex_deus 4y agoLooking at the rate of technological progress, my bets are that intelligent life that spreads intergalactically takes extremely small time to do so (relative to the expected time to randomly spawn life from fluctuations). So the odds of two simultaneous fluctuations competing is nearly zero. We're just the first, and it is the normal thing to expect to be the first. With sufficiently high ratio between these two durations, most observers in most universes would be the first ones. Being first isn't special, it's actually the most common.
- vlovich123 4y agoWhy do you conclude we’re the first?
- last_responder 4y agoHubris, bravado and ego most likely. There is no evidence of any sort that would indicate this so this thought has to have manifested itself from some fantasy.
- pfdietz 4y agoThis is an ad hominem argument. "If you believe this theory, you are a bad person, therefore the theory must be wrong."
- bicijay 4y agoHmm i dont think so in this case. We dont really have any evidence for this theory, so the thought of "we are the first" might be coming from those adjectives he just said. Not that they are bad, but it might just be true.
- pfdietz 4y agoI do think so. The motivation of the person stating the theory is entirely irrelevant to the correctness of the theory. Bringing it up is nothing but an attempt to disparage the theory by illegitimate means.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Brajeshwar 4y agoSo, I went ahead and tried to read further about the author -- Doug Bonderud. Interesting that his articles are pretty much about aliens, "Aliens in the Ocean", "Proof of Mermaids", "Area 51: Aliens, or Just a Simple Myth-Understanding?", "What do Astronauts do in Space?", "5 Odd Theories of the Universe That Might Just Be True", "The Great Conjunction Curse: Creative Conjecture or Concerning Coincidence?"
- prometheus76 4y agoWhat's odd to me is that this blog is sponsored by Northrop-Gruman.
- Loughla 4y agoI think we might see more and more forays into odd-ball theories by the likes of Northrop, Boeing, and other defense contractors/aerospace companies. With the relatively new "Space Force" spinning up, it's in their best interests to have the American public talking about these things mainstream. They want money. How else to get money? Terrestrial terrors are sort of played out. So why not dip some low-cost toes into the wacky alien technology theories? Alternate option; they know more than we do and are preparing for something. Either way.
- jessaustin 4y agoOne used to seriously consider the existence of aliens, UFOs, etc. Since the Pentagon and armaments manufacturers started talking about them, these things have seemed much less plausible.
- yucky 4y agoSEO spreads its tentacles even into the vast recesses of the military industrial complex.
- shireboy 4y agoInteresting thought experiment, but untestable with current tech. I’ve wondered if dark matter/dark energy couldn’t be organized into life. There’s 80% of mass we know next to nothing about. Any reason that can’t be organized into dark matter planets with dark matter people running around? Interesting thought experiment but my 2c is physics limits space travel such that it can never be what we see in sci-fi. Any civilizations elsewhere - phosphorus based or otherwise- have just as hard a time getting off their rock as we do, if not harder (larger gravity wells). If they do, they have an even harder time getting off their star. Certainly getting beyond their galaxy is physically impossible. Makes lousy sci-fi but fits observations.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Loughla 4y agoMy thoughts are that if we can measure [Thing A] sufficiently precisely, we can figure out a way to impact/harness [Thing A], regardless of what it actually is. Therefore, it's just a matter of developing appropriately advanced technology to be able to impact the base laws of physics. I think it's harder to get to that point than anyone could ever imagine just because of the natural tendency for species to destroy themselves. I think that Ringworld had that part right - any species that is sufficiently advanced to be interstellar travelers would absolutely have to be able to identify, and nullify, naturally selected traits about themselves.
- Sakos 4y agoThe core issue is that we have no idea how consciousness sparks into being. Everything we know indicates that you need something brain-like, which requires a particular set of environmental stimuli and developmental history to form. Maybe there's another way to create consciousness, but we'll probably never find out.
- CuriouslyC 4y agoThere's no evidence that consciousness "sparks into being" at all. Self awareness probably needs something brain-like, but that's a different matter.
- smallstepforman 4y agoFrom the universes timeline, there had to be a civilization which was the first. They pondered to themselves "the universe must be full of life, where is everyone?" But they were the first, hence they never encountered a more advanced species to themselves. Maybe that's us.
- masswerk 4y agoWell, here's my hypothesis: The universe develops in superposition until the first observer emerges, causing the superpositions to collapse. Meaning, the first possible observer will not only be guaranteed to exist, they will also make their mark on the universe. Conversely, they also adjust the local universe to their causality, making it harder for other observers to emerge. – In other words, there we did something again, by launching the Webb telescope… ;-) (PS: Here, the universe behaves like a path search for first possible observers and, thus, causality. Posing the question, if there is no possible observer in a given universe, does it even exist or is the search exhausted in what isn't even an instant? Anyway, let's call it the "race to causality" hypothesis.)
- snapcaster 4y agoDo you mean observer as in a photon?
- masswerk 4y agoAs in "an observer which/who requires causality and cannot exist in superposition". Whatever that is. Is causality a product of at least a minimal level of awareness? (We won't be able to tell, as exploring the concept of causality already presupposes awareness.)
- andrewclunn 4y agoI believe this hypothesis assumes some sort of metaphysical property to consciousness. Also, Permutation City did it first (consider this a book recommendation).
- djexjms 4y agoDisclaimer: I'm not a physicist. I'm just some random internet dude who likes learning things. My understanding is that a single photon wouldn't count as an observer. It doesn't even experience time (from the point of view of the photon, admission and absorption are simultaneous). Now if that photon is entangled with another photon, that can then be considered an observer. Someone please correct me if this is not accurate.
- college_physics 4y agowe don't really know how and why life came about and how representative it might be of a broader phenomenon unfolding across the universe. but anything else of that nature happening around here would have to have a minuscule footprint in terms of the conventional physics / standard model to successfully evade serendipitous detection in any of the countless and very diverse measurements across physics, chemistry, biology and various engineering disciplines worldwide (and for more than a century) missing pieces (as we now understand the world) show up only when the puzzle reaches cosmological scales. of-course it would be extremely exciting if something "invisible" had a faint trace in our lowly spacetime neighborhood. but as Feynman might have said, the Universe is what it is and it is not hear to entertain us (nor drive clicks onto aerospace company blogs)
- iambateman 4y agoTo add to this rather fun, hypothetical conversation…I join most Christians to believe in angelic beings - creatures who exist in an invisible universe alongside us. I see no difference between the Christian understanding of an “angel” and what we call “invisible aliens” in culture. In fact, many religions accept a kind of shadow-world as part of their orthodoxy. Perhaps it’s all superstition emerging from our biology but it is at least possible that someone knew something meaningful about a shadow-world and encoded that knowledge into religion.
- mistermann 4y ago> In fact, many religions accept a kind of shadow-world as part of their orthodoxy. Consider pre-scientific times: little did people know at the time that there was a whole world or "level of reality" all around them that could be seen, but only to those who knew how (which had to be discovered and developed). Consider also some of the reactions (powered by intuition) people would have back then if someone from the future ran some of the things we now know and take for granted by them, and compare that to how modern people react when propositions regarding unknown matters are presented to them. It seems at least plausible that humanity in 2022 has not reached the pinnacle of potential knowledge and capability.
- theGnuMe 4y agoMeh, we can identify and reason about things we can't actually see.
- chadlavi 4y agoThis is an insane rant on hypercube levels. What did I just read??
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- rojobuffalo 4y agoI like the idea that aliens are here but they reveal just enough of themselves to be at the top of our hierarchy without getting close enough to hurt us or make us hate them. They're here to passively observe, but they also want to make sure we don't expand beyond our solar system, or as Robin Hanson puts it "become grabby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBZP4rLk6bk&t=6672s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBZP4rLk6bk&t=6672s
- LeonTheremin 4y agoConsider: Woman forces emergency landing after biting passenger and claiming Jesus told her to open plane door mid-flight https://ca.news.yahoo.com/woman-bites-passenger-thigh-tries-103159117.html https://ca.news.yahoo.com/woman-bites-passenger-thigh-tries-... A victim of electromagnetic weaponry used by terrorists for covert crime. Religious figures don't talk to people "telepathically" to make them kill others, criminals posing as them do. By using these same weapons and methods, they have managed to coerce people working in semiconductor industries into inserting backdoors into all your CPUs - albeit they would rather not be known that this is the case and prefer resorting to making people do what that woman did so killings look like human error instead of malicious sabotage. "Aliens" is just one of the false narratives propped up so people keep looking up to the skies while weaponry buried on Earth's core (maybe by a previous civilization, "Silurian hypothesis") is used for total electromagnetic surveillance of this planet and sabotage of our science - like in the Three Body Trilogy.
- rbanffy 4y agoNobody wants to talk to meat.
- MilStdJunkie 4y agoI felt that the Strossian "Bandwidth Explanation" (from Accelerando, a not-great novel but a cornucopia of ideas) for the Fermi paradox honestly made more sense than just about anything else I've heard. The further you are from your planet, the dumber you get . . or, more precisely, the smaller / slower your mind is. So most stick close to the gravity wells and low-latency areas. Anything that can store data in Planck lengths, that's going to be completely imperceptible, something built into the structure of the universe. Might as well listen to digits of Pi like in Contact.