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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?

#31

Post by Tycho »

wlievens wrote: post #27
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.

You're right of course but I believe science already has some inroads in FTL communication (quantum entanglement, some exploit I read in New Scientist about a sweeping beam traveling faster at the the ends than the pivoting centre) whereas from what I've gathered FTL space travel is still a non-starter.

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

#32

Post by cruiser »

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…

I agree. Whenever I witness such an utter lack of imagination, I console myself by thinking that line from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide that has the phrase "super-intelligent shades of blue". Just imagine colors being intelligent! That's the best alien life-form I've heard of.

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

#33

Post by wlievens »

Tycho wrote: post #31
wlievens wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're right of course but I believe science already has some inroads in FTL communication (quantum entanglement, some exploit I read in New Scientist about a sweeping beam traveling faster at the the ends than the pivoting centre) whereas from what I've gathered FTL space travel is still a non-starter.

That's not how I interpret it. The light-speed constraint isn't just about preventing matter to move faster than light, it's about information traveling faster than light. Picturing it like FTL communication being just an engineering problem (sorry for the exaggeration) and FTL travel being near-impossible in contrast is rather strange.

Quantum entanglement doesn't allow faster-than light information transfer (though it is pretty mysterious in its own right). The sweeping beam thing doesn't either. These things aren't in any way pushing the frontier with regards to FTL communication.

Do note that I hope with all my heart that I'm wrong here. We're all geeks, right.

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

#34

Post by proexploit »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #13
proexploit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finding non-intelligent alien life would not make it more likely that intelligent alien life exists. It either exists or it doesn't. :)

This is semantics. Finding non-intelligent alien life would raise our current estimate for the likelihood that intelligent non-human life exists. Is that better? :P

Yes, much better, I was just having a little fun.

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

#35

Post by jsean »

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…

I pretty much agree with what you've said. Although, regarding "I ask them then that by the same logic, out of the billions of species that have existed on this planet there's gotta be more species like us doing the same things that we do?" My answer would be - sound logic but flawed line of thought. Since all billion species here on earth are confined in this well connected area it means, all billion species pretty much have been and still are competing with each others and amongst themselves. Meaning there can in the end only be one winner (following some sort of law of the jungle). The winner gets to type these words.

If we assume "since space is vast, there's gotta be a planet somewhere that has similar environment like Earth and thus similar life forms inhabiting it" we can regard each of those planets as completely separate competitions and thus there can be as many winners as there are "similar environments"

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

#37

Post by amikazmi »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #18

Encounter is a pretty vague term. Do I think we'll have meaningful conversation with Aliens any time in the next thousand years? Probably not. Hubble can see billions of light years out at this point meaning if something was within a couple hundred light years of us we'd probably know about it. There could be societies far more advanced than ours since our sun didn't show up for about 10 billion years into the Univer…

But (b) assumes that they use light to know about us.. That may be false :)
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