Are we not far away from discovering alien life

[McPhee]

Maybe aliens have been here before, but it seems unlikely that they've been here during recorded history (~5000 years). And such a theory must go hand-in-hand with another to explain why we haven't detected any signs of any advanced civilizations.

TBH I think the most likely theories are that we are among the most advanced life in the universe, that life is unique or relatively unique and extremely rare (possibly tying in to theory 1), or that other life is so different to what we are used to that we wouldn't know it if we saw it (and possibly the other way round).

My favourite (albeit scary) theory is that the an early, highly advanced civilization wiped out all other advanced civilizations. It continues to seek out and destroy other intelligent life before it has a chance to spread to other planets. That would mean our time is potentially quite short before we're wiped out.

 

[Tephnos]

My favourite (albeit scary) theory is that the an early, highly advanced civilization wiped out all other advanced civilizations. It continues to seek out and destroy other intelligent life before it has a chance to spread to other planets. That would mean our time is potentially quite short before we're wiped out.

Ah yes, Reapers. The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed that claim.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

My favourite (albeit scary) theory is that the an early, highly advanced civilization wiped out all other advanced civilizations. It continues to seek out and destroy other intelligent life before it has a chance to spread to other planets. That would mean our time is potentially quite short before we're wiped out.

Captain, we've just found intelligent life
Where?
1,575,000 light years away
Have we enough fairy dust to get there?
Yes
Make it so ......

1,575,000 years later (at the speed of light)
Bugger we're being attacked, they're more advanced than us.

or

Right we've killed them where next?
Only 260,000 light years that way
Make it so ...........

 

[McPhee]

Ah yes, Reapers. The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed that claim.

How, exactly, has that theory been dismissed? As far as I'm aware, it remains as one of the possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox, though one dependent on FTL travel.

It isn't one I think is particularly likely, but I like it as it alludes to life in the Universe having a rich history. A lot of the most likely theories are a tad desolate.

 

[glenimp617]

considering nothing can travel faster than light, the size of the universe, the distance between planets, the likelihood of another planet containing life, the likelihood of another planet containing intelligent life, the likelihood of two planets containing intelligent life at the same time, of which those planets are close enough to detect each other

I'd say the chances of both being able to detect let another communicate with one another.....let alone travel to physically meet to be almost

ZERO

 

[mrk]

How, exactly, has that theory been dismissed? As far as I'm aware, it remains as one of the possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox, though one dependent on FTL travel.

It isn't one I think is particularly likely, but I like it as it alludes to life in the Universe having a rich history. A lot of the most likely theories are a tad desolate.

Only because it relies on primitive devices like survival of the fittest. Personally I'm siding with those that believe that in order to trawl the vastness of space to the kind of level we are discussing here, you'd need a civilisation that has far surpassed the that kind of life. Their way of life wouldn't revolve around conflicts, jobs and stuff we all rely on. Their sole way revolves around exploring the Universe and observing the "ants" go about their own evolution.

The kind of space travel you're on about isn't something that you'd think just a faction of a particular intelligent race would be taking part in surely.

That is if that's the case

 

[Tephnos]

How, exactly, has that theory been dismissed? As far as I'm aware, it remains as one of the possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox, though one dependent on FTL travel.

It isn't one I think is particularly likely, but I like it as it alludes to life in the Universe having a rich history. A lot of the most likely theories are a tad desolate.

Whoosh goes the meme.

 

[h4rm0ny]

I firmly believe we are not alone. I do not know if we've found any evidence, because I feel if we did it would never be made public, for fear of inciting panic and backlash from religious extremists.

I'm also not expecting this to change in my lifetime, sadly..

I think your cynicism is accurate, but that you're missing something. If Intelligent Life is discovered, it will be discovered by engineers and scientists, not by politicians or intelligence agencies. And the first thing any scientists who discovered suggestions of intelligent life are going to do, is publish. The greatest terror of the scientist, is to open up the pages of Nature and find that someone else has just published what you've been working on for the past year.

Until primary research starts being carried out by Prime Ministers and Presidents (now there's an unlikely scenario), I think the "they'll never tell us" scenario is unlikely. Unless aliens initiate contact and for some reason choose to do so clandestinely and directly with heads of state, we'll know.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I think your cynicism is accurate, but that you're missing something. If Intelligent Life is discovered, it will be discovered by engineers and scientists, not by politicians or intelligence agencies. And the first thing any scientists who discovered suggestions of intelligent life are going to do, is publish. The greatest terror of the scientist, is to open up the pages of Nature and find that someone else has just published what you've been working on for the past year.

Until primary research starts being carried out by Prime Ministers and Presidents (now there's an unlikely scenario), I think the "they'll never tell us" scenario is unlikely. Unless aliens initiate contact and for some reason choose to do so clandestinely and directly with heads of state, we'll know.

And like I replied to him earlier, Religious nutters will accept life from other planets and say that their God made them. The Pope even got his head Astronomer to talk about Aliens - perhaps they know something
Obviously if Aliens come and hover their 3 mile wide ships over every major city then I'll start to panic.

 

[Angilion]

You are being very technical to the point of bothersome. Does it matter to you that much? The probability is so high that it would be arrogant not to think it exists and annoying to debunk people by saying it is 'belief, not fact'. Who the hell cares? You can't prove it directly, but the numbers we can't comprehend (and those who do more than any of us say it's pretty much guaranteed) point to only one conclusion.

You can argue that until you're blue in the face but you're just coming off as extremely pedantic.

You're claiming absolute knowledge purely from your own authority (which is based on nothing) and you're calling me arrogant. That's quite funny.

You're clearly projecting yourself onto me. You're the one who's obviously very bothered about it, which is to be expected from someone who has a faith-based position on the subject.

You can argue that you're right because you say so as much as you like. It won't make it true. You don't know for sure. I don't know for sure. Nobody knows for sure.

Have faith if you like, but deriding people for not sharing your faith makes you look bad.

 

[Angilion]

I am sure there is life out there. It will be a long time until we can find them and visit. They could come here at any time imo.

Imagine if they ere friendly and gave us loads of cool stuff.

That might be worse. If they could come here, their technology would be vastly superior to ours.

Imagine if everything humanity did or could do was instantly rendered pointless. All scientists, all engineers, all doctors...all instantly so far behind the current level that their knowledge and skills are useless. Almost all jobs instantly gone because the alien technology does those jobs much better than any person could.

Humans are adaptable, but that would be a hell of a lot to adapt to in a matter of days.

And that's assuming it's only their technology that's superior to ours. What if their intelligence is as well? What if humans could never catch up?

 

[Tephnos]

You're claiming absolute knowledge purely from your own authority (which is based on nothing) and you're calling me arrogant. That's quite funny.

You're clearly projecting yourself onto me. You're the one who's obviously very bothered about it, which is to be expected from someone who has a faith-based position on the subject.

You can argue that you're right because you say so as much as you like. It won't make it true. You don't know for sure. I don't know for sure. Nobody knows for sure.

Have faith if you like, but deriding people for not sharing your faith makes you look bad.

Uh-huh. Or you could stop constantly calling people out for their opinions because they don't share your 'absolute fact' basis. You can't prove it, I can't prove it, give it a rest.

 

[Angilion]

I think if live exists out there it may not necessary be close enough or at the same period of time as us to ever come across. Which is quite a sad thought and if the speed of light is the maximum velocity we may never meet our neighbours even if we did know where they were.

It would be a bit amusing if we had to devise much more advanced technology than we have now in order to communicate with them as pen pals. Although the lag would probably be centuries rather than days or weeks.

 

[Secret_Window]

I think your cynicism is accurate, but that you're missing something. If Intelligent Life is discovered, it will be discovered by engineers and scientists, not by politicians or intelligence agencies. And the first thing any scientists who discovered suggestions of intelligent life are going to do, is publish. The greatest terror of the scientist, is to open up the pages of Nature and find that someone else has just published what you've been working on for the past year.

Until primary research starts being carried out by Prime Ministers and Presidents (now there's an unlikely scenario), I think the "they'll never tell us" scenario is unlikely. Unless aliens initiate contact and for some reason choose to do so clandestinely and directly with heads of state, we'll know.

I think what a lot of people are alluding to (particularly conspiracists), are the secret societies that go beyond the presidents and prime ministers - the black projects and such, that go on in the background, regardless of who is in power.

It's these particular powers at play that many believe to hold information or some form of contact regarding extraterrestrials.

To what end or particular interest? Well, there are a few theories: namely for mutual interest serving as the extraterrestrials right to experiment and conduct research in secret for the return of some shared knowledge in the form of experimental aircraft and technologies for example.

This is just the tip of the iceberg stuff that I remember reading when I used to be heavily interested into alien conspiracies when i was younger.

 

[Angilion]

[..]
Yes I absolutely agree with Robert Bauval that the Pyramids were aligned to Orion's Belt but since Orion & Osiris were pretty big Gods in Egyptian mythology it wasn't a big step to try and build Heaven on Earth.

I think that religion is also the most likely explanation for all of the "it can only be seen from above, therefore aliens" claims. If people believed that their gods live somehere that is in some way above the world (which many did), it's not surprising that they would build for the view of their gods.

 

[Secret_Window]

Also, regarding extraterrestrial life and travel, how do we even know it is not interdimensional? What if life is here locally but just not in a dimension that we can see, touch or communicate with. If their plane of existence is different from ours, then we might both be unable to see or communicate with one another. It could be, that there are forms of life trying to communicate us, but we are too primitive or simply lacking in ability to detect it.

 

[Angilion]

Uh-huh. Or you could stop constantly calling people out for their opinions because they don't share your 'absolute fact' basis. You can't prove it, I can't prove it, give it a rest.

I haven't said anything about opinions. I've argued against false claims that the existence of life elsewhere is a proven fact.

You're very angry about that. Why? Does your religion require you to have faith in the existence of life elsewhere and demand that everyone else does too? If so, why are you now acknowledging that I am right? ("You can't prove it, I can't prove it").

 

[B&W]

Insufficient data for a valid answer.

 

[SonniLombardi]

End of the day if we are here on Earth, then there is no reason for life not to exist on other planets in this huge universe.

 

[Tephnos]

I haven't said anything about opinions. I've argued against false claims that the existence of life elsewhere is a proven fact.

You're very angry about that. Why? Does your religion require you to have faith in the existence of life elsewhere and demand that everyone else does too? If so, why are you now acknowledging that I am right? ("You can't prove it, I can't prove it").

Perhaps it was your attitude that got to me.

And for the record, I'm as atheist as it gets.