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Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

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Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#91

Post by deeeeplearning »

bena wrote: post #83
deeeeplearning wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the age of the Milky Way, a civilization using even slow sub light travel with generation ships or autonomous probes could have colonized the entire galaxy many times over. Why has no one done that? Hence the paradox.

Yes, I know the paradox. It's simple. It's too simple. It has huge assumptions. Namely the assumption that the current problems to colonization can be solved in a cost-effective manner. The longest continuous length of time spent in what limited space flight we have is just under 440 days. Not to mention, all of it was spent in low Earth orbit. Once we go beyond that, we lose all protection from the Earth's magnetosp…

You talk like this is all expected to be done by 21st century humans when in reality if there were civilizations out there capable of doing this colonization they would likely be millions of years our elders and its incredibly foolish to try to guess their intentions or the capabilities of their technology. Your view is painfully anthropocentric.

Just to add, there are plenty of valid criticisms or plausible solutions to the Fermi paradox but I think you've failed to identify a single one.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#92

Post by tsimionescu »

Given that life only appeared once on earth in 3.5 billion years on Earth, the Milky Way is around 14 billion years old, we don't really have a good reason to believe there were more than a handful of abiogenesis events in the history of the galaxy.

Of course, its possible this is completely wrong, perhaps the Earth was completely unlucky, or perhaps there have been many abiogenesis events and they have just failed for whatever reasons.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#93

Post by deeeeplearning »

cblum wrote: post #82
INTPenis wrote: post #2

What's staggering to me is that with the new Voyager discoveries lately it feels like we're a bunch of stellar savages who just managed to release a buoy far enough into the ocean to feel the currents. Let alone recognize another savage on a different continent who might be doing the same experiment.

> with the new Voyager discoveries lately What new discoveries, specifically?

I think it came out recently that it actually detected an increase in the particle density of the interstellar medium as it leaves the solar system.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#94

Post by nkoren »

kfarr wrote: post #77
krapp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's from Arthur C. Clarke: "If one considers the millions of years of pre-history, and the rapid technological advancement occurring now, if you apply that to a hypothetical alien race, one can figure the probabilities of how advanced the explorers will find them. The conclusion is we will find apes or angels, but not humans." [0] http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/alientech.php

I like that quote but lately feeling like advanced tech doesn't necessarily mean angelic

Old-school angels were just as likely to rip your face off as serve you tea and cookies. Read the older Abrahamic texts, and it's clear that to encounter an angel was often a terrifying experience, even when it went well.

Obviously their marketing department has given angels quite a rebranding over the last thousand-odd years, but still...

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#95

Post by saas_sam »

tsimionescu wrote: post #92

Given that life only appeared once on earth in 3.5 billion years on Earth, the Milky Way is around 14 billion years old, we don't really have a good reason to believe there were more than a handful of abiogenesis events in the history of the galaxy. Of course, its possible this is completely wrong, perhaps the Earth was completely unlucky, or perhaps there have been many abiogenesis events and they have just failed f…

Is "life only appeared once on earth" an accepted fact at this point? There was clearly at least one occurrence that led to a subsequent successful reproductive pattern from which we evolved, but prior to that, or alongside that, it strikes me as pretty unlikely that we would be able to discover other fleeting abiogenesis events.

We just discovered new salivary glands in human heads. Organs. Not microscopic ones. They are in our actual heads that we are walking around with and we just found out about it like a week ago.

So, forgive me if I am a little skeptical of our ability to find hard-to-find things. Some stuff is... hard to find.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#96

Post by mod »

saas_sam wrote: post #95
tsimionescu wrote: post #92

Given that life only appeared once on earth in 3.5 billion years on Earth, the Milky Way is around 14 billion years old, we don't really have a good reason to believe there were more than a handful of abiogenesis events in the history of the galaxy. Of course, its possible this is completely wrong, perhaps the Earth was completely unlucky, or perhaps there have been many abiogenesis events and they have just failed f…

Is "life only appeared once on earth" an accepted fact at this point? There was clearly at least one occurrence that led to a subsequent successful reproductive pattern from which we evolved, but prior to that, or alongside that, it strikes me as pretty unlikely that we would be able to discover other fleeting abiogenesis events. We just discovered new salivary glands in human heads. Organs. Not microscopic ones. The…

Not to mention it could have started and been scarfed up by already established life. It didn't have to be long-lasting to have happened.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#98

Post by chordalkeyboard »

ceejayoz wrote: post #65
sudhirj wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that public justifications are more important than actual motivations. Actual motivations can be enslaving other beings, ruling / mining an extra planet or just wanting to watch the universe burn. Motivations are already present because there are millions of motivations that map on to the same result - destruction of another group of living things. I'm pointing out that it's easy to find public justifica…

Motivations lead to the justifications. The problem with interstellar warfare is, outside the "Dark Forest" concept of "kill everyone just in case", there aren't all that many motivations that seem to make sense. Any interstellar species probably doesn't really need to steal planets, resources, etc.

If planets in the “goldilocks zone” are extremely rare and they want to “terraform” (xenoform?) those planets then thats a motivation.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#99

Post by e12e »

eloff wrote: post #74
deeeeplearning wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the age of the Milky Way, a civilization using even slow sub light travel with generation ships or autonomous probes could have colonized the entire galaxy many times over. Why has no one done that? Hence the paradox.

I don't know why this got down-voted. The milky way is 100K light years across. It's 13.5 billion years old. It's entirely possible to blanket the whole galaxy with probes, without even getting into self replicating probes.

You have to make an assumption about speed - it certainly won't be more than a tiny fraction light speed. Eg voyager appear to travel now at less than 0.00006 c (16 km/s). Than turns 100k light years into ballpark 150 M year journey (no it doesn't its 1.8 bn years as mentioned in reply) . Still possible to cross 10.000 times - but that would be a straight line. I suspect the distances will grow somewhat fractally if you want to swing by any stars? (ed: so, not really very likely at all)

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#100

Post by rosywoozlechan »

tsimionescu wrote: post #92

Given that life only appeared once on earth in 3.5 billion years on Earth, the Milky Way is around 14 billion years old, we don't really have a good reason to believe there were more than a handful of abiogenesis events in the history of the galaxy. Of course, its possible this is completely wrong, perhaps the Earth was completely unlucky, or perhaps there have been many abiogenesis events and they have just failed f…

I imagine it's much harder for life to develop a second time once there's already life present. So I'm not sure how that affects your 3.5 billion time window. Prior to life appearing on Earth, the planet's conditions may not have been suitable. It may be that life appeared as soon as possible once the conditions allowed for it and that life developed to become so good at taking up available resources needed for life that new instances of life could not come about.
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