Two simple questions that I am eager to hear opinions on:
Yes or No - Do you believe that intelligent civilization(s) exist ANYWHERE else in the Universe?
If Yes - When do you believe humans will make contact with such a civilization?
My predictions:
Yes (and probably hundreds of them)
Never - Even if humans could achieve interstellar travel before we self destruct and extinguish our civilization, the distance is too great.
A moderate form of pessimism obliges me to agree with both your points. I can’t find myself so very pessimistic as to believe we’re the only sapient civilization in the cosmos – but I also can’t find myself so very optimistic as to think we’re close enough to one, both in terms of physical distance and in communicative adaptions, to make meaningful contact.
I think, at very best, we may end up exchanging “bird songs” with a very distant civilization. That, in itself, would be wonderful, but it isn’t like we’d ever get to debate philosophy with them.
I could buy that we’re among the first such species, on the assumption that life as is likely to exist requires certain elements like carbon and oxygen and phosphorus and whatnot, which require supernova fusion cycles and such, and the universe isn’t so old that there’s a lot of said elements floating around, hence Earth is among the first places where the elements came together in sufficient quantity for a chance at life.
A highly simplified view, of course. In any case, if we manage to survive in some form for another million years or so, we darn well better have colonized a good-sized corner of this galaxy, so we’re well spread-out when contact occurs.
1: Yes. The universe is enormous, possibly infinite; and there’s nothing so special about life or Earth or intelligence to think that it’s impossible for intelligent life to arise elsewhere. And given the sheer scale of the universe, “not impossible” means “it’s probably happened quite a few places”.
2: Unknowable.
I concur with you, and I like the argument given in the movie (and presumably book) Contact: “Do you think there’s intelligent life out there?” “If not, it’s a huge waste of space!”
BTW Keanu Reeves’ magnum opus Bill and Ted theorized a future in which we can communicate with other intelligent life (to compare number of water parks), but never actually travel and meet them. But alas it was a minor point in the movie and they didn’t spend time dwelling on how such a thing would be possible.
Absolutely, i think there’s probably millions if not billions of planets with life
No idea, not enough information
It is clear that there are likely millions and billions of worlds with life, since it appeared so soon after conditions were ready for it. But it is less clear how easy it is to make the jump from single celled to multi-cellular life, and even less clear how likely intelligent life is. I’m a firm believer in the anthropic principal so I’m not willing to use the fact that intelligent life evolved here as any indication that it is at all likely to elsewhere even given billyons of billyons of stars to try with.
Even if intelligent life appears its not clear how long does it last. I’m yet to be convinced that intelligence is a evolutionarily beneficial long term (millions of years). Given the way we are going so far I give our long term viability as a technological species no more than a few tens of thousands of years, an eye blink in geological time. So the probability that we overlap with another form of intelligent life during this period and manage to contact them within this time frame seems remote even they did exist.
1 - As mentioned above, if not, it’s a huge waste of space! But … who knows. If the universe is infinite (e.g., infinitely many stars), then I’m confident there’s intelligent life out there somewhere.
2 - Doubt it, though it depends on what you mean by “contact”. If that requires two-way communications, then “no”. If it’s one-way, then … hard to say. We’d need more info to calculate the probability of #1. I agree with Buck that intelligent life isn’t likely to be long-lived (geologically speaking), unless it manages to “go viral” on an interstellar level.
But if going viral is possible, then the odds go up – thus the argument that intelligent life hasn’t gone viral or we’d know about it. It’s an argument with a few holes, but still worth considering.
Also, life might exist in ways that we wouldn’t even recognize. E.g., on a scale so large or small we couldn’t observe it, or timescales so large or small. Or, using physical processes/substrates that we aren’t even aware of yet. For the question to be meaningful, we have to restrict it to “life somewhat like us”.
Buck, regarding the overlap, note that it’s not a co-eval overlap (assuming we only need one-way communication). Instead, we have to be contained between the aliens’ light cones (one where they start transmitting and the inner where they stop). Assuming intergalactic communication isn’t feasible, initial conditions aren’t a limit since the light cone of the Milky Way doesn’t go back that far.
Depends what you mean by intelligent life. Human beings like us? Probably not. Other critters that might be sentient? Maybe. ANYTHING living, even bacteria? Probably so.
Probably never. Too damn far away, for one. My theory is if there are other humans out there, they’re not fallen like we are and they’d be horrified at what earthlings are like and it’s thus best we never make contact.
If I had to guess, I’d say no, but it’s only a guess. One might as well ask whether any other species in the universe has ever built a waffle iron.
If other civilizations exist, then I think there’s a good chance that we’d contact them someday. I’m not a physicist, but it’s my understanding that there are theoretical possibilities such as wormholes that might allow us to bypass the vast distances of interstellar space.
Yes. The universe is vast. If it happened once it probably happened more than once. Our egos tell us we are remarkable, but if you have evolving life forms over the same time span that we’ve had on earth anywhere else, you’ll certainly end up with an intelligent one.
I don’t know when. The universe is vast. If intelligence hasn’t evolved millions of other times then the closest intelligence species may be too far away for us to ever reach. Even with FTL we may never find another intelligent species. Or it could be tomorrow.
I think intelligence exists elsewhere. But each civilization will only last a finite amount of time. I suspect that most civilizations destroy themselves once their technology is up to the task.
I doubt they’ll come a knockin’. We have nothing to offer a species that could make the trip.
Absolutely! With our extremely limited technology, we have already discoverd over 800 Exoplanets and several of them line in habitable zones the same distance from their star as we are from the sun…including one just discovered yesterday that is only 12 light years away…a stones throw in the scale of cosmic distances
Yes, in fact if we don’t within the next 100-200 years, I will honestly be suprised (but not shocked/dissapointed) considering the technologial advancements being made as we speak in regards to Space Exploration. I actually believe by the year 2200, we will have comformation of Alien life…possibily bacterial but still existing…
Yep
we’ll be dead before contact can be made.
1.) Yes.
2.) Our current understanding makes it impossible, luckily that isn’t stagnant. I think we will contact distant intelligent life before ‘humanity’ is genetically incapable of breeding with current humans.
Several people in this thread are saying the distance is too great, and it is. For vacationing on some non-solar planet.
But in terms of making contact we could do that by sending probes out everywhere, and even going at, say 10% c, we could have visited every star system in our galaxy in “mere” tens of millions of years.
If one of those probes makes contact, how would we know about it back here on earth?
Communication signals would presumably be limited to the speed of light, so it would take hundreds of years to hear a simple “hello” and then respond with a “hi there from the Earth”.
If the folks living on Andromeda (a few hundred light years away) can see us right now,they aren’t seeing us .They’re seeing Thomas Jeferson writing the Declaration of Independence, or, or seeing Columbus sailing across the ocean, or Crusaders riding horses across Europe.
My guess is that, even if there is intelligent civilization out there, it won’t exist at the same time as our civilization. Either they existed when the earth was ruled by dinosaurs, or we exist while their planet is ruled by their dinosaurs.
There’s a big difference between the hundreds of years it would take to send a message hundreds of light years away and 65 million years which is how long since dinosaurs walked the earth.
But anyway, if it’s two-way comms you want then let’s use generation starships instead of probes.
btw Andromeda is another galaxy, and is 2.5m light years away. I was specifically just talking about our galaxy, which from tip to tip is 100k light years.
I don’t see how this helps us. If civilization generally lasts 100,000 years before collapsing, at any given spot there is a 100,000 year period over which we have to overlap. Given that life itself is on the scale of millions of years, the probability that a given planet is at the right time in evolution relative to its distance from us is still going to be quite small.