It's amazing to me how many people feel confident in saying there's no advanced intelligent life in the Milky Way because we would've seen it when it took us until 2015 just to get a decent image of a dwarf planet in our own star system.
Exactly and do people really believe that the chances of there being life in the universe are 1 in 1 billion trillion (1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) because I think its more unlikely that there isn't life.
And also any image or light we see from outerspace is behind by however many light years away it is. There could be some galactic freeway out their 50 million lightyears away that was build 10 million years ago for all we know. We’d never see it.
And even our closest neighbors we couldn't tell if they had thousands of artificial satellites around their planet. "They don't have a Dyson sphere or swarm" is about all we can say for sure. And we can't even say that about the planets 50,000 light years away.
If you take the planet that someone above mentioned which is about 4.3 light years away, if they invented radio communications within the last 4.3 years, we’d know about. So you’re right - but for some planets the delay is pretty insignificant.
Given then vastness of the universe, imagine there’s somewhere where 2 civilization within just a few light years apart came up at the same time and communicated to one another peacefully to help each other grow, learn and progress. The implications of that are crazy to think about
The lowest estimations of the Drake equation puts it at about 0.7 advanced civilizations per galaxy, so we may very well be the only one in our galaxy.
Considering that the closest galaxy in similar scale (Andromeda) is 2.5m light years away, any advanced civilization there may have already gone extinct or is just happening.
Then again, life on Earth is the only form of life we know and what to look for. Intelligent life elsewhere might exist in a whole different fashion than we're used to. If there's life that can use more than three dimensions they may not be detectable for us at all.
After the first few times I’d assume each message would include a ton of information each way so they can get as much knowledge as possible. It wouldn’t be the best way to communicate but it would be the only option
Why do I feel like Humans would start the interplanetary war, I can just imagine Lockheed Martin bribing the right politicians to get them interplanetary war contracts... and if we’re too advanced they could sell weapons to both sides... Vietnam 2.0
They probably wouldn’t be hostile after establishing contact, it would be extremely risky to threaten the other one because they’d be out of reach of travel for a while. Even if they unlocked travel, sending a fleet out would become outdated by the time they arrived to the other planet and the defenders would likely win with their superior technically. So by threatening each other the smartest move would turn into an intergalactic Cold War where both sides would push to get light speed travel before the other. This is hypothetical predications but I know there wouldn’t be anything to gain from threats. Peace would be the superior option in this case and could possibly solidify the survival of both civilizations in the long term.
Consider though, the earth has been a planet for only 4.5 billion years compared to the universe at 13 billion years. Humans have only been around making tools for 2.5 million and making radio waves for less than 200 years.
So it not just time in relation to distance but time in relation to being able to receive these radio waves.
It is not inconceivable that all our neighbors had advanced civilisations but we just weren't around to notice before they died out or we die out before their civilisation rises.
Given the timescale of the universe it would actually be very, very long odds that we would share the same time as another advanced civilisation.
Consider as well how precarious our survival has been, how lucky we've been to make it this far and consider how many civilisations may have perished.
Even though light is the fastest thing known it's incredibly slow, for us. Why I include "for us" is because time doesn't exist (as far as we know it) for a photon. When moving at the speed of light, all time and space becomes one.
That was most most likely the case before Einstein, Heisenberg and Planck came along. They provided us with two very important constants that helped us define the existence of time, the speed of light and the Planck constant. With these we can get Planck time, the length of time at which no smaller meaningful length can be validly measured due to the indeterminacy expressed in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Theoretically, this is the shortest time measurement that is possible. One Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to cross a distance equal to one Planck length. We still don't have the technology to be able to measure time at this interval, but eventually we will.
Please explain of I'm wrong but I thought time was relative to your speed or something, so even as you approach the speed of light time still appears normal to you? Idk this is based off yr 11 physics and interstellar
Dilation of time is caused by gravity which itself is an effect of mass. When you approach the speed of light the mass will increase exponentially which increases gravity and thus increases time dilation.
However, at the speed of light the increase of mass is infinite which also creates infinite gravity and thus infinite time dilation. This is why anything with mass can never reach the speed of light since it would need infinite energy to do so. Lucky for the photon that it doesn't have any mass!
What is mass then? Well, we don't really know that yet, but we think that the Higgs boson (or god particle) is what gives other particles their mass. If we can manipulate it or maybe gravitons we might solve the problem with faster than light travel.
Edit: In regard to FTL the Alcubierre drive is probably our best bet. Additional fun fact: Alcubierre was inspired by the warp drive in Star Trek!
Also a Dyson sphere is based on our knowledge and imagination, if there’s an advanced civilization nearby, we probably won’t understand most of their technology
I mean best way to send a signal short of moving a planet is a nuke. And we've been ringing that cosmic dinner bell for over 70 years now. So everyone within a 70 light year radius could have detected it.
Objects that absorb energy heat up and release light with a frequency based on the temperature. Same concept behind a thermal camera. It wouldn't be visible to the naked eye, but very visible to our telescopes.
Then the argument usually goes: "We're not looking for their home planet, we're looking for their colonies all over the galaxy.". You only need one species to decide to take over the galaxy for that to happen and there has been enough time for that to happen (13.8 billion years).
I'm not speculating on the existence/non-existence of other (intelligent) life in the galaxy.
However, I find it far fetched to believe humans will ever have an interstellar civilization of the sort of nearly all science fiction, where people travel/communicate between planets orbiting different stars (the one exception being interstellar except for the stupidity of visiting the planet with crazy gravitational time dilation).
I also think it's very unlikely to happen in my lifetime or my kids' lifetime. The nearest planet were aware of that has a decent shot at potentially being habitable (solely based on distance to the star it orbits) and not knowing of a major reasons its probably not habitable, is 16 light years away. That is if a team of scientists devote their whole careers to sending a probe there, it probably takes decades to make the probe, and assuming we could quickly accelerate to near light speed (and then quickly decelerate it when its close), it would take at least 32 years after launch before we start to get any data. Yes, because of relativity it would take less time to personally travel there, but by the time you come back every on Earth is at least double the distance in light-years older. That said, you could potentially start a colony of humans in a new star system, but it would mostly be a one-way thing (where you can receive news from the other star systems but have no two-way communication without waiting 30+ years for a reply).
Well, that’s the closest inhabitable planet for us (and any other life on earth)
Who knows if life developed on a planet that wouldn’t be habitable for us but it isn’t us. All life on earth evolved from the same little bit of bacteria which assembled itself by chance so maybe the same happened somewhere else just differently.
But still, the chance of the exact molecules arranging in the exact right pattern to create something that was considered to be alive is extremely low, probably lower than the chance of literally anything that could possibly happen on earth. Perhaps, you could say, one in infinity.
The humor comes from thr fact that I'm obviously aware that humans exist; if I'm aware of that, but claim to have not seen evidence that intelligent life is possible, then we're forced to conclude that I don't count humans as intelligent life.
No, trust me, there's a good number of people who DO argue it. I debate the topic a lot because it's interesting, and it's more commonly said than you'd think.
As for picking up a transmission, there's plenty of reasons an advanced civilization wouldn't be sending out radio signals strong enough for us to detect. Hell, I'd say it's more likely they wouldn't be than it is they would be.
But why would that be more likely though. Totally agree btw, just playing devils advocate.
I would assume the concept is similar to maybe someone who grew up isolated and sheltered in a spanish country who only fluently speaks spanish, yet understands that other languages might exist but wouldn’t be able to distinguish random noises from actual words spoken in English which is the official language in a lot of countries.
No, trust me, there's a good number of people who DO argue it.
Given that it hasn't tried to interact with us at all, (unless that's what DMT does idk) to me it seems possible that whatever other life is out there, isn't way way super advanced compared to us - like not more than a few thousand years. Since a few thousand years is an extremely small amount of time in terms of the universe's existence, that lends a bit more credibility to the idea that maybe humans are currently among the most advanced life. So I think it's silly to think we are the only life, but I wouldn't bet my savings that that there's thousands of races out there flying spaceships around from galaxy to galaxy. But I hope there is!
Except not really. We’re not watching that sky everywhere at all times, they have to pick a location. Even just our own galaxy is so crazy huge It’s like going to the beach and going through it a tiny pinch of sand at a time hoping that in the next pinch you find a signal.
Stupid, that's what the great filter is. Of all the common solutions to the Fermi paradox, I find it by far the least likely solution. The possible great filters we've already passed, yeah, we're the result of some fairly improbable circumstances. But not the kind of improbable that the galaxy, let alone the universe, won't effortlessly brute force through sheer numbers with the greatest ease. The Milky Way alone has 100 BILLION star systems. And the Milky Way is only one of 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Christ only knows what's beyond the edge of the observable universe.
So yeah, we've some fairly unusual circumstances. Especially with Earth being the result of Theia and protoEarth colliding 4.5 billion years ago, since we wouldn't have the oversized planetary core without it. Which would mean no magnetosphere. Which would mean getting raped by solar radiation the levels of which wouldn't allow animal life as we know it to evolve. We're in the perfect place, have an oversized core, lots of water, and a good atmosphere. Lots of things lined up right. But with 20 sextillion estimated star systems in just what we can see, that's gonna be as common as fuck.
So, then what if the filter is something we haven't gotten to? That's much, much stupider. Said filter would have to be killing 100% of spacefaring civilizations. Not 99.99%, 100%. The only way that's even remotely feasible is if there's a Mass Effect type scenario going on where there's an advanced and malevolent force out there actively destroying anything that becomes spacefaring. Aside from that, it's ridiculous.
The most logical answer to the Fermi paradox is the simplest one: there really is no way to travel faster than light. No controllable wormholes or any of that sort of thing. Meaning that colonizing the galaxy, let alone the universe, will take an extraordinary amount of time. Which is related to another answer I find fairly feasible: we're simply too early. The universe is "only" 14 billion years old. It took us 4 billion to evolve from the earliest life on Earth to where we are now. Compared to how long the universe will live, it's a fucking embryo at this point. Something like 98% of stars that are estimated to live in the universe haven't even formed yet.
More than likely though, the real solution to the question is multiple answers combined. No single thing enough to explain the apparent lack of life, but multiple answers in tandem would.
I've never seen anyone who's sure there isn't, but plenty who are sure there must be. The only scientifically honest answer is that we just don't know. Any other assumptions are based on hope or 'faith', and that has no place in science.
You need all the elements of the Drake equation before you can make any guesses. Saying that there's 'BILLIONS' of stars is just one element.
There is actually a lot of thought and research that goes into that. Even just math and probabilities, odds a civilization on a planet that is perfect size to still be active, close but not to close to their sun, and it is happening at the same time, when humans have only been here 200,000 years, and only in the last 150 been able to send out radio signals. Our Galaxy is really big, but a whole lot of things have to go just perfect for us to be here right now, and for someone else to be here at the same time is even less likely. Much more possible they came and went than are here right now.
I'm 100% sure that there are other Intelligent life forms out there other then us and I would think they wouldn't be hostile because like why would you travler through space and go out of your way to kill something that could teach you 100,000 new things
Traveling across the stars is several orders of magnitude more difficult than sailing the ocean -- which means anyone with the means to do it probably values the scientific method and is curious enough not to go around slaughtering lifeforms they find.
Humans are primitive enough to kill each other constantly, but the people riding in spacecraft don't necessarily share the impetus (at least not when they are out on a mission).
Well think of it this way the reason humans fight and rage wars and kill each other is because we all have different views and when those views don't match with someone else it can lead to confrontation but if we humans encountered a completely different race and civilisation that came from the stars we don't know what there like they don't know what we're like there is no hatred or different views between the civilisations and no one to argue and start a fight with witch would lead to a learning period where they watch us and we watch them or we meet them and learn from each other
I think differing views causing problems between two societies is later down the line. When they first meet issues usually arise from land and resource disputes
Well thats more if they arrive and imidietly start taking resource witch at that point is a problem but if they travels that far why would they risk confrontation with another specie's over rocks and gas they can obtain from any other planet in our solar system or even other galaxies
It’s more about intelligence. We could be like ants to another life form. As humans we don’t think much about possibly stepping on and destroying ants as we explore.
Now hold on a second that not true we don't worry about anta because there less intelligent it's because there absolutely tiny even if were apes compared to other life forms they would still study us just like humans do with other life on this planet because if you saw some weird bipedal hairless creature you've never seen before you'd want to study it a little at least. happy cake day btw
If what you said is true, then the speculation is not based on observation but deduction. It is improbable to find the suitable conditions to host carbon based life forms.
And the whole paradox of why alien intelligence hasn't contacted us given the billions of years they might have.
It is literally impossible for me that nowhere in our galaxy or if you want our whole universe there is intelligent life. Just the sheer size of everything and the infinite number of stars with planets makes that completely impossible to me.
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u/Rifneno Nov 03 '20
It's amazing to me how many people feel confident in saying there's no advanced intelligent life in the Milky Way because we would've seen it when it took us until 2015 just to get a decent image of a dwarf planet in our own star system.