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When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

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Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#71

Post by zalzane »

Udo wrote: post #67
andrewflnr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds? If you haven't, you really need to.

No. why do I need to?

Revelation space is a speculative fiction novel set in the far future during the golden age of space colonization. Spoilers ahead.

Throughout the novel there's alien civilizations that use different kinds of way to cloak constructs and settlements. Examples include devices like artificial moons and holographic, multi-spectral holograms that emulate gas giants to hide stuff inside.

The one I think andrewflnr may be referring to is a device that one race used to cloak entire regions of space to hide their civilization from technologically superior aggressors. Essentially they set up variable-gravity devices at strategic points around their region of space, and had the devices resonate to build 'waves' of gravity that would constructively interfere at a massive scale at the borders of their space, which would essentially tear any intruders apart using the amplified+alternating gravity waves. Several million years in the future, observers/scientists of other races on the outside would dismiss these chaotic space regions as an unexplained anomaly.

Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#72

Post by JulianMorrison »

maaku wrote: post #69
JulianMorrison wrote: post #64

My analysis: the time period in which a civilization goes from "present" to "owning the observable universe, rearranging the stars" is short. The first civilization sees an empty sky. The second sees red-glowing stars tapped for all their negentropy, Shkadov thrusters rearranging them, and probes whizzing from star to star, disassembling them for usable mass and building computronium. My conclusion is, if you don't s…

And if you did see that, you were damn lucky to be born at just the right time to see it before you get annihilated by the oncoming intelligent matter transformation.

Yeah, because the probability that a random alien would recognize "humans would rather not be reassembled into somebody else's compute substrate" as ethically relevant is slim.

Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#73

Post by Gravityloss »

joe_the_user wrote: post #32
sampo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most plausible explanation for me is still that we happen to live in a historical dark zone. I am no expert, but I remember reading somewhere that our Sun is among the first generation of solar systems that were born with enough heavy elements to make life based on carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, occasional iron etc. possible. That there first needs to be some generations of starts going nova so that the stars have g…

Another argument I heard, compatible with life being a fairly easy reaction; A loglinear graph tracing the genetic complexity of life reaches zero about seven billion years. Obviously this implies an extraterrestrial origin of life theory. But it would also say life came into existence half-way into the big bang expansion and has been gaining complexity ever since. We are the result of this. But there's no reason to…

It's a logarithmic graph. It doesn't go to zero. It just goes to 10^0 which is 1. And in this case one billion units of whatever. -1 is 100 million etc..

Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#76

Post by gameshot911 »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #12

Our radio emissions aren't that visible, there is a horizon, so to speak, where your radio signals attenuate to be indistinguishable from background radiation. For our TV transmissions I believe this to be no more than a handful of light years. As tech has been increasing we've been putting less power into our transmissions and thus reducing that horizon. Even high powered military radars aren't typically banging awa…

Here's a graphical representation of that radio sphere you talked about: http://www.geekosystem.com/human-radio-broadcasts/

Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#77

Post by gridmaths »

exratione wrote: post #11

Obligatory talking points associated with the Fermi Paradox: - It takes a very short time in comparison to the age of the galaxy for a single self-replicating probe to result in a descendant probe visit to every star. A few million years. This means that you cannot really argue plausibly that all civilizations fail to do this - it would take trivial effort for just one faction within just one advanced civilization to…

Is it possible nearly all advanced species have gone to great lengths to hide their existence ? The more advanced, the better at hiding?

Perhaps gravity is the only radiation they cant hide, so all we could detect of them is 'dark matter'?

Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#78

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

tree_of_item wrote: post #41
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #29

I find the definition of intelligent life, specially as given by astronomers, amusing. Looking for a second carbon-based lifeform, in a planet identical to Earth, beeping out on the radio spectrum, in the same time frame as us? How cute. Meanwhile, we miss a bigger definition of life right under our noses. Unfortunately reductionism is ingrained in science.

Well, don't keep us in suspense. What definition would you use?

Certainly one that doesn't put lifeforms in a lifeless universe like actors in a stage.

Astronomers should be the first to propose that, since they know how the carbon molecules in them can be traced back to a nebula, just like mitochondria can be traced back to a life form from Earth's early days. The parallel is obvious to me.

The Gaya hypothesis, for instance, gives a saner view of how the biota and biome are the same thing, and still, gets dismissed as New Age stuff. And that's talking just about Earth, mind you. Expand the theory to the entire Universe and you will be ridiculed by Dawkins himself, even though this "hunch" is persistent.

Many past thinkers had a gut feeling about this, with less data than we have today. Read about "Anatta" (Buddha's concept of "not self"). Or read about "Tao" (Lao Zi's concept that has surprisingly parallel to what we now call "Big Bang" and how nature works out of pure probability). This is all surprisingly insightful knowledge, made out of pure intuition.

But because post-illuminism abolished holism, we end up looking for analogous of humans with radio antennas, Dyson spheres, among other increasingly ridiculous things, and that gets called science. Meanwhile, ideas like Universal Darwinism are ignored.

Well, that's why I find that amusing.

Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#79

Post by haihaibye »

derekp7 wrote: post #27

Nevermind life outside our planet, why isn't there other non-related life on our planet (independant biogenesis)? From what I gather, evidence at the molecular level (things like molecular chirality in various cellular structures) point to all life being related.

Because DNA has a few billion years head start, and brutally out-competes any upstart life forms.

Re: When Are the Intelligent Aliens?

#80

Post by wizeman »

Gravityloss wrote: post #73
joe_the_user wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another argument I heard, compatible with life being a fairly easy reaction; A loglinear graph tracing the genetic complexity of life reaches zero about seven billion years. Obviously this implies an extraterrestrial origin of life theory. But it would also say life came into existence half-way into the big bang expansion and has been gaining complexity ever since. We are the result of this. But there's no reason to…

It's a logarithmic graph. It doesn't go to zero. It just goes to 10^0 which is 1. And in this case one billion units of whatever. -1 is 100 million etc..

Given that the axis in question represents genome size, I'd guess "bp" stands for "base pairs", not a billion units of something...
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