OT: Contact

[Atrocities]

What if there is no universe? What if it is just our minds way of rationalizing the emptiness of our own souls?

I don't think we will ever find evidence of humanoid life on Mars or any other planet for that matter. When you figure out how unique events had to be in order for the universe to spawn us, then you begin to understand how truly rare we are. We are so rare that the chances for having another humanoid race, or any race remotely similar to us is about 1 followed by enough zeros to circle the known universe into infinity. That’s a very large number, so large that we currently do not have a definition or name for it.

I hate how shows like ST, SW, B5, and other make the galaxy out to be this thriving utopia of life when in fact and more likely than not, we are the only sentient being, that is similar to us, in the galaxy.

Think of it this way, you have a 7 number lotto with a number range from 1 to 99, and everyone in the world has submitted a ticket with their 7 numbers. The chances for there being more than one wining number are about 1 in 5 billion. That my friends could also be the odds of a planet like earth existing else where in our galaxy.

Mars lost, or perhaps never had a strong electro magnetic field and any vegetation or life would have been swept away by the harsh solar winds long ago. If not for our own electro magnetic shield we too would be a dead world.

No when you think about how rare our planet is, and how unique we are to it, then the logic of our exsistance comes into focus, we are an oddity, an enigma of the universe. We are perhaps the only sentient race in our galaxy and I believe this firmly.

I sincerely doubt that we will ever build a space fleet and explore the stars because I fear that we will have destroyed ourselves long before we could have invented the technology to do so.

We are so arrogant to think that there is life out there because we can imagine it. It can also be said that we are arrogant to believe that there is no life out there, but right now, there is NO proof either way. There is only speculation and hope. And until one of them contact us, or land on the white house lawn, I am resigned to the belief that we are alone.

[ May 19, 2004, 14:10: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Grauzone]

If Atrocities has right, we have a heavy burden on our shoulders. We have to spread life in the whole UNIVERSE. A big duty...

Before we do so we schold stop to throw bombs on our neighbours and pollute our unique biosphere, and concentrate our power on more important areas of human possibilities...

[Atrocities]

LOL - A true 4 x player if I ever heard of one.

[Suicide Junkie]

Who here thinks that indisputable evidence of life (whether microbial or bigger, past or present) will be found on Mars? Show of hands please.

Indisputable, never.
Evidence good enough for 99% of the people here, probably.

There are bound to be more conspiracy theorists than you can shake a stick at...

[Raging Deadstar]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
There are bound to be more conspiracy theorists than you can shake a stick at...

The funniest Conspiracy Theory is the one about my countries Royal Family being Alien Lizards from outer space Lol! Yeah, i can see it now, A huge humanoid green lizard in white gloves and a big pink hat!!

[dogscoff]

are about 1 in 5 billion. That my friends could also be the odds of a planet like earth existing else where in our galaxy.

Atrocities, Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. *


From some website I just googled:

Some 100 billion galaxies are visible to modern telescopes and the total number in the universe is believed to exceed this number,

So even if your just-made-up numbers are accurate, and the chances of a second earth like planet in a galaxy is 5 billion, that means there are at least (1oob/5b) = 20 earth-like planets in the universe. And that's the chance of there being a second earth-like in a galaxy- presumably the chances of their being a first one would be even higher. WIth some 3 billion stars in our galaxy alone, you really can't ignore Drake's equation.

If Atrocities has right, we have a heavy burden on our shoulders. We have to spread life in the whole UNIVERSE. A big duty...

Hey baby, want to help me populate the universe? You know I have a VERY big duty...


*thanks again to Douglas Adams.

[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!