Billions of stars, with billions of planets and we’re the only one with intelligent life?
True, but life and intelligent life are two different things. On Earth, life has been around and evolving for at least 2.5 billion years; the only (known) intelligent or semi-intelligent life-forms that have ever emerged all come from the genus Homo, which is only 2.5 million years old – an eyeblink of time by comparison. Any ET who had visited the Earth before then would have found no sign of intelligent life. So if we send an expedition to a world known to be life-bearing, what are the odds of finding a civilization there at that particular snapshot-moment of its planetary history?
We also have absolutely no way of knowing how long an intelligent species can survive.
The Drake equation can’t even help us make any educated guesses; too many of its variables are not only unknown but, at present, imponderable.
If there is such thing as an intelligent, high-tech-civilized species elsewhere in the Galaxy, now, and if they have the technology and the patience to cross the unimaginable gulfs of interstellar space to visit our planet, and if for some reason they wanted to, why would they go to all that trouble and then hide? That’s not what the Europeans did when they went exploring!
That sums up my attitude. Even if there ARE aliens or more likely one of their probes in our system, I find it unlikely they have anything to do with UFOs.
…billions of stars,billions of planets… but also billions of years.
They may have visited us when the planet was inhabited by algea floating in a primordial sea, or when dinosaurs ruled, or when mammals were starting to evolve, or when neanderthals communicated with grunting sounds, or when a few homo sapiens were learning to make fire, or when knights in armor were fighting the Crusades.
But the chance that aliens who have all those billions of years to choose from, just happen to visit specifically today, or yesterday, or in the past decade? Methinks is pretty unlikely.
You’d have to check with the Indian women about that.
The “so many people testify to it that there must be some truth in it” meme can be applied to any of a number of cracktastical notions, including the Sasquatch/Yeti, the Loch Ness monster, the image of Jesus appearing in potato crisps, multi-level marketing, et cetera. The fact that after fifty years in which thousands of reported incidences of alien sightings, crashes, abductions, et cetera have occurred leads to only three conclusions:[list=a][li]The aliens are inexcusably careless about their visibility and personal safety, but also incredibly capable in regard to cleaning up and recovering physical evidence after the fact,[]A world-wide cabal of benevolent but secretive men (one assumes that women would have more sense) have striven for decades to successfully maintain a conspiracy covering up and/or dismissing any evidence or verifiable claims about the aliens among us, or []it’s nothing but complete balderdash fed by the universal feeling of alienation in the modern industrial world, and participants like the sense of value and necessity that comes from being an integral part in some mysterious plan by shadowy, unseen forces.[/list][/li]
Given that the latter argument already has a strong empirical basis I think it not untoward to grant it the greatest likelihood.
I personally suspect that life has developed more frequently throughout the universe than most people would imagine, and sapience has probably emerged in some form or another (whether we could recognize it or such) with some modest degree of regularity. However, given the scale of even our own galaxy and the brief fragment of time for which we even have a historical record, being visited by a sapient extraterrestrial species would imply that we are either astronomically fortunate (or unfortunate, in the case of those being anally penetrated or whatnot) or such a species must have spread wide across a considerable portion of the galaxy for us to have come into contact.
I find it beyond any reason that such a species would be in any way likely to resemble humans in even superficial form (i.e. bipedal, binocular, grasping appendages attached to the upper trunk). As for communication, I find it unlikely that we could share any cultural concepts outside of the hard sciences and mathematics, and even that may be mutually unintelligible. (Imagine trying to discuss mathematics with a species that has no notion of discrete numbers–their fundamental arithmetic would be integral and differential calculus, and with no doubt a much different conception than our own.) Any species capable of commanding the kind of energy and technology to cross the vast distances between stars is probably going to have about as much to say to us as we do to a tapeworm.
Stranger
That is a mind boggling point of view, one not unique to this thread (i.e. seen it before on numerous occasions). If we consider that intelligent life with the ability to construct a technological society is very rare in the galaxy/universe, and thus also very precious, then any aliens out there would most certainly find us fascinating, so worthy of study that there simply can’t be any doubt about that at all. They at least would be interested to see “how we’ve done it”, and compare notes, if nothing else. Now I’ll add the caveat that there likely are some alien races which have absolutely no interest in lifeforms from other planets, but for any race which contains even the tiniest shred of curiousity and imagination they must be hugely interested in us, even in a negative way (to be exploited or the like).
Well, the aliens that invented the spacecraft may have been pretty darned clever. That doesn’t mean Klaatu Sixpack who was driving the thing couldn’t be just some everyday schlub. The controls of a 747 can be marvellously complicated, but that doesn’t mean the pilot can’t turn up drunk one day and make a mess of things.
Just being devil’s advocate. Really, you’re probably right.
Just because space is vast, that doesn’t mean it’s not empty…
I’m always puzzled by the “but SOMEWHERE out there in the vastness of space there HAS to be some type of intelligent life” argument. It has not a shred of logic whatsoever. The fact that life ever arose on this planet is a billion different billion to one shots hitting us at the same time. It’s like hitting the lottery every single day for 80 years.
I don’t have any opinion either way: however, the debunkers arguments are just as flawed as the adherents, e.g., the Jimmy Carter sighting of whatever. Yeah, Yeah, he saw a configuration of some planets. That is a good story, but it doesn’t satisfy me. I mean, dork President, sure, but let’s be straight: the guy was an engineer…this means a derned lot of physics, which would preclude his making such a careless mistake. And even I, since I was four years old, knew that different light amplitudes in the sky could only be stars or planets. I doubt that Jimmy saw the first wave of interstellar hostilities, but, my money says that it wasn’t a couple of planets in alignment.
When I was about 12 years old a friend and I walked out my parents front door. A light was roaring down the street. It was house high and went down the middle of street with a whoosh. It went past the house and shot up at an angle skipping over the street lights . Then went up and went rapidly into the night sky out of out sight.
Must have been an interesting configuration of planets there.
I do not know what it was, I will not make a guess. But not a planet configuration.
We immediately looked out to see if anyone else saw it but the streets were empty. We never discussed it after that night.
I’ve always thought there is life and possibly intelligent life out there somewhere, but I don’t think we’re getting visited by aliens for basically the same reasons others have stated.
All the reports, all the investigations, and zero hard evidence.
Plus, I always come back to this: In every case where enough information was available to say with any certainty what happened, is has always been something prosaic, something perfectly normal. Even the most fanatical believer in alien visitation will generally say that 90 to 95 percent of sightings are explained by normal things.
So what is the most reasonable assumption about the other 5 percent where there isn’t enough information to say with certainty what happened? That they would also be explainable by normal means if we had a little more information, or that they have some other explanation entirely, an explanation involving aliens?
This is faulty logic. It only makes sense if you assume that humans in our present form is the only possible outcome. Since there are billions of different possible outcomes once self-replication starts the odds you quoted aren’t correct.
UFO reports seemed to have peaked during the late 1950’s , early 1960’s. This was probably a stress reaction the Cold war (aliens come to save us from ourselves). funny-everybody has a cell phone camera today-why don’t we see more of UFOs now?
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
If there are ETs out there and if they’ve visited us I imagine they’ve taken a look and thought “Jebus, these guys are fuckin’ dangerous, let’s get the hell outta here and right quick”
Just sayin’
First, “Astronomer”, not “engineer” would be the relevant area of expertise; engineering training isn’t going to give someone a better grasp of the appearance of the planets as seen from Earth. Second, it’s the logical burden of the person claiming something exists to provide evidence, so no, the debunker’s arguments AREN’T as flawed.
And finally, people are terrible eyewitnesses. Study after study has shown this. Saying that you saw something doesn’t mean a whole lot.
If aliens wanted to be seen, we wouldn’t be able to deny them.
If aliens didn’t want to be seen, we wouldn’t see them.
If aliens were advanced enough to come here, they wouldn’t crash and we wouldn’t be able to shoot them down.
There’s every UFO encounter we’ve had so far, debunked by 3 common-sense statements.
I find the idea of life somewhere out there easy to grasp. Intelligent life seems only a bit less likely, since intelligence (like physical advantage) would easily be selected for.
Each time we figure out the science of the universe, we find a new truth later. I know that Relativity and all really work - and likely will for a long, long time. What if there’s more? What if there are implications to a Unified Theory that we just don’t understand because we don’t have a solid, cohesive theory yet.
So… I see the immense gaps between what we consider to be the habitable planets as a very REAL challenge. I can say that if I were in control of a society and we could travel to other planets - we would. And something akin to the Prime Directive would be in effect.
So… I give it all, as a whole, very low odds - but not impossible odds. It seems a reasonable and humble position. Overall, I can’t say I’ve seen one thing to convince me we are being visited.
And I’d think an alien race wouldn’t have much to gain by being noticed - unless they hoped to spur science or see how friendly we might be.
Why wouldn’t they crash.? They still are mechanical devices. Shit happens. Everything breaks eventually.