OT: Contact

[Wardad]

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are going camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up:

“Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce.”

Watson says, “I see millions of stars and even if a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life.”

Holmes replies: “Watson, you idiot, somebody stole our tent!”

[Narrew]

But the reason I do not think there is, because SETI has not heard 1 stinking thing for the Last 15-20 years of listening.

Our puny planet has been broadcasting for only the Last 60 years, and each year we increase the amount we send out. I do not see a future that we will close our leakage off (ie tight beam communication).

And lets say that we will broadcast indiscriminately for a total of 1k years. Before we decide not to leak anymore or die off, what ever.

So just as a ripple in a pond flows out, our broadcast will flow away from the earth, so if the Drake's equation is any where correct, we should hear other races communications, even if that race is dead and gone, as its ripple flows over Earth's orbit. I do not know when the Universes background radiation will distort/destroy a signal, but it seems a long time. So at anyone time, there should be a few signals coming from somewhere.

It's either that, or we are the only race that is stupid enough to leak our communications out to space (paranoid aliens then).

As the movie brought up, it comes down to Occam's Razor.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think SETI should continue to listen, just incase we are in dry period (of ripples). And I do want to see E.T.'s, but until we hear something, I will go with Occam.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Narrew:

It's either that, or we are the only race that is stupid enough to leak our communications out to space (paranoid aliens then).

That is not the only reasonable hypothesis. It may be simply that it's much harder to pick up these signals then we currently have the technology for. Signals don't just bounce around forever in the vacuum of space. Here's a good article by one of the guys involved in SETI.
Can aliens find us?

It paints a pretty bleak picture actually. There would almost have to be an advanced alien race that suspected our system of harboring life that intentionally sent a very strong message directed at us. General planetery communications would likely be too weak for us to monitor unless they were very close by, and if that were true we'd already know about them.

Perhaps in the future we could setup very large space borne antenna arrays capable of picking up low power radio transmissions from farther away. But we aren't there yet.

Intra system and military communications are stronger so we might pick them up, but they are typically narrow-beam directional broadcasts.

Strong inter-planetary signals also aren't likely to be omni-directional, so we'd have to be incredibally lucky to happen to be between points A and B to tap into it. And that would assume there were two highly advanced intelligent species living on either side talking to each other and neither had contacted us yet.

[Phoenix-D]

Then there is the other problem.

That is, if there is intelligent life out there, it might not have gotten to the point of sending signals SETI can detect..or even to the point of technology.

Even if it had, and it was in our galaxy- the galaxy is around 100,000 light years across. Way, way too big for anyone who developed on the other side to know we're here or vice versa. Assuming the signal could even be recognizable past all the crap in the way anyway!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
What if there is no universe? What if it is just our minds way of rationalizing the emptiness of our own souls?

At, now your reaching...

[Narrew]

geoschmo, Nice article, I think we just need a longer time to listen. Also, if we ever move out to space then perhaps there were will be some pure science done to answer these questions.

Phoenix-D, that is why I think it is enjoyable to discuss these things, we just don't know, time will tell even if we are not around to hear the answer.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
This is an interesting mind exersize, but it's not any sort of proof.

I explicitly stated that it was merely part of a proof, not a proof.

For one thing, space is not nothing. It's most definetly something. Saying that space is nothing is like saying that zero is not a number.

Space is nothing. It is empty... space. Yeah... anyways, it is merely the extension of 3 dimensions. It is volume, but that is all. It is the same sort of nothing that the volume inside a box is. I do not mean nothing as in it doesn't exist, just that it is the void in which other things are contained. It is not really something by itself.

The universe is contained inside space. Space is nothing exactly like zero is nothing. No apples and no oranges. Zero. And like zero, if you add more space to the space you have, you still just get the same space. Both are infinite in size.