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Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

#21

Post by diego_moita »

The most boring thing about these speculations about beings from other planets is the absolute lack of imagination. Most times people imagine something like a vertebrate with human-like appearance.

Why assume that the evolution of any form of life in a different environment would repeat so closely the evolution of life on earth? It could and should be completely different. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan speculated about life in other planets based in nitrogen and sulfur, with huge bubbles gathering nutrients and other smaller ones preying on them. Now this is what I call imagination.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

#22

Post by equark »

vjk2005 wrote: post #16

IMO the only 'aliens' we'll ever meet will be humans who had left Earth for distant planets sometime in the future and whom Earth inhabitants have forgotten or fail to recognize for some reason(environmental adaptation causing inhuman features). A chance encounter in space will then be the 'meeting with the aliens' that many fantasize about. As far as meeting intelligent species completely alien to our planet and our…

Interesting perspective. But another possibility is that ecosystems can only support one species like ours per planet.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

#23

Post by equark »

diego_moita wrote: post #21

The most boring thing about these speculations about beings from other planets is the absolute lack of imagination. Most times people imagine something like a vertebrate with human-like appearance. Why assume that the evolution of any form of life in a different environment would repeat so closely the evolution of life on earth? It could and should be completely different. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan speculated about life…

True but there are actually pretty good reasons to think some traits will be universal. How many different ways to swim are there really, beyond what we see on earth. Hawking talks about this point. Eyes are another example of a hugely useful trait that may be universal.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

#25

Post by herrherr »

Check out this video from the American Museum of Natural History: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

- It makes me think that we cannot be the only society in the universe

- But it also makes be think that it is unlikely that we will find them in the near future or vice versa

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

#27

Post by wlievens »

Tycho wrote: post #20

It's see it like this: Observe that historical trends show communication technology advancing much faster than transportation technology. In the 20th century we got cars, planes, helicopters, rockets... and now we still have cars, planes, helicopters and rockets (do they make hovercraft anymore?). No major advance for decades. Compare to communication, which seems to change beyond recognition every ten years. What th…

> What then is bound to happen is that we develop some sort of theoretically inter-stellar range communication technology.

'Bound to happen' is quite a bold statement for something that, according to current scientific understanding, is not really possible. That is, if you mean faster-than-light communication, which I think you allude to in the next paragraphs.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

#28

Post by wlievens »

People typically say "the galaxy is big, so it's unlikely", which is not necessarily true. You need no more than a few tens of thousands of years to colonize a significant part of the galaxy, and it's not unthinkable many societies have had that kind of head start.

The real expanse that separates civilizations is time. It takes only slightly more than 1000 years to travel a thousand light years, but the gaps in time can be much bigger. It's possible that over the course of a billion years, many thousands of civilizations rise and fall, but at any given time only a handful are in existance concurrently.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens?

#30

Post by markkat »

I am sure that intelligent life exists out there. It's just a numbers game. However, if they are intelligent, based on how long we have been around, chances are they have been so much much longer. Millions of years would be more likely than thousands.

So, I don't think we would even recognize them, or they us. I am pretty sure they would have cast off their biological bodies long ago, and probably have gotten to a point where time and space aren't as limiting either. I could see us doing this in a few thousand years. As any given intelligent life in the universe would likely be ahead of us by much more than that, I think we are akin to fleas on a dog wondering if there are other dogs with other fleas on them. Where in fact, there is much more going on all around us, and we aren't yet capable of being a party to that conversation.

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