Do you believe?

I remember a great conversation between two prominent scientists once... might have been Bill Nye and Mr Tyson but don't quote me on that...

They where talking about how one of the reasons we may not have seen signs of intelligent life is that every society born with innate intellectual prowess is destined for self destruction. Any alien species capable of FTL travel would have overcome all baser instincts of violence to better themselves, making motives for any type of 'invasion' totally pointless.
 
I seriously doubt faster than light travel is possible.

This is the reason we won't be seeing any aliens.

Distances are just too huge to travel. No way any species is going to land on our doorstep.
 
kedge said:
In a way yes, people are willing to believe significant intelligent life forms exist beyond planet earth even if it is directly unobservable.
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we have proof that life can and does exist in the universe though - we are the proof.
We have only belief for a god.
 
DrToffnar said:
I remember a great conversation between two prominent scientists once... might have been Bill Nye and Mr Tyson but don't quote me on that...

They where talking about how one of the reasons we may not have seen signs of intelligent life is that every society born with innate intellectual prowess is destined for self destruction. Any alien species capable of FTL travel would have overcome all baser instincts of violence to better themselves, making motives for any type of 'invasion' totally pointless.
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and how do they come to that conclusion? it's no different from saying gaining the ability to chart/sail our way across oceans centuries ago would be the same, and yet that's exactly what we did. they could see we have some priceless resource, like liquid water or whatever, and since we're just savages compared to them they have the right to acquire it.
 
IvanDobskey said:
I seriously doubt faster than light travel is possible.

This is the reason we won't be seeing any aliens.

Distances are just too huge to travel. No way any species is going to land on our doorstep.
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Theoretically, it has been postulated by eminent scientists that it may be possible to bend space, creating a worm hole. This would enable travel across vast distances in an instant. Maybe more advanced beings than us have achieved this capability.
 
wolfie138 said:
and how do they come to that conclusion? it's no different from saying gaining the ability to chart/sail our way across oceans centuries ago would be the same, and yet that's exactly what we did. they could see we have some priceless resource, like liquid water or whatever, and since we're just savages compared to them they have the right to acquire it.
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I think the assumption is that if they where able to actually travel these enormous distances, they'd have found more then adequate renewable resource to fuel there ships and sustain life in general.
 
Sliver said:
Theoretically, it has been postulated by eminent scientists that it may be possible to bend space, creating a worm hole. This would enable travel across vast distances in an instant. Maybe more advanced beings than us have achieved this capability.
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Indeed. Isn't it more the issue of dealing with the pressure/weight gain that comes with traveling at such speeds?
 
Having advanced aliens being alive at the same time we are, and knowing our location (considering the size of the universe) will be something crazy like 0.00000001%

who knows, we could be the first ones. Maybe in the future it's us who are the advanced beings in the universe (god help the universe)

of course it's far easier to send communications than actual people, just being able to communicate would be amazing!

I think star trek will forever remain science fiction
 
Sliver said:
Theoretically, it has been postulated by eminent scientists that it may be possible to bend space, creating a worm hole. This would enable travel across vast distances in an instant. Maybe more advanced beings than us have achieved this capability.
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isn't this the theory based on the star trek warp drive that instead of moving the ship faster than light, it compresses the space ahead of it so it doesn't have to go as far, thus giving the practical effect of faster than light travel without the ship actually exceeding it.

of course making such a system a practical reality is, as always, the hard part.

that said, we used to think atoms were as small as it got, now look at us.
 
wolfie138 said:
communication is interesting - who would choose who is to speak for us, as a race?
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if it's ongoing communication there's no reason it couldn't be cycled.

would be nice to think that we could unite as a species once we realise we're not the only ones out there. as terry pratchett said "people don't care about black or white when they can gang up on the greens"
 
wolfie138 said:
and how do they come to that conclusion? it's no different from saying gaining the ability to chart/sail our way across oceans centuries ago would be the same, and yet that's exactly what we did. they could see we have some priceless resource, like liquid water or whatever, and since we're just savages compared to them they have the right to acquire it.
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we have no good resources, space is littered with far more and far easier to get resources. Water is abundant everywhere.

We haven't and are unlikely to kill ourselves, even our best efforts haven only slightly indent global population and in the future, we will be multi planet.
and yes we don't need faster than light travel, in fact, part of the Fermi paradox is you can colonise the galaxy in surprisingly little time with conventional travel.
 
adolf hamster said:
isn't this the theory based on the star trek warp drive that instead of moving the ship faster than light, it compresses the space ahead of it so it doesn't have to go as far, thus giving the practical effect of faster than light travel without the ship actually exceeding it.
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Yes.
 
Glaucus said:
we have no good resources, space is littered with far more and far easier to get resources. Water is abundant everywhere.

We haven't and are unlikely to kill ourselves, even our best efforts haven only slightly indent global population and in the future, we will be multi planet.
and yes we don't need faster than light travel, in fact, part of the Fermi paradox is you can colonise the galaxy in surprisingly little time with conventional travel.
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there's a problem with conventional travel though- how do you power something for hundreds of thousands of years, sustain life (with all that entails in terms of the basics of food water and oxygen) with no input?

the best we've managed is voyager and 40 years later it's barely hanging on after shutting down a lot of it's systems to maintain power for the others.

that's the reason faster travel is such an appealing prospect, as we haven't even looked at the psychological aspect of trying to unite a group of people towards a common goal for such long timescales.
 
Rroff said:
With enough iterative repetition of a limited enough combination then yes that would be possible - the universe we can observe doesn't seem to match that kind of scenario though other than in a very general sense.
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The Universe is not a big box of molecules randomly distributed and shaken up at the start of time like a jigsaw puzzle. Were the universe infinite and this so, then maybe you'd get such a thing happening. But the Universe is not infinite and not randomly ordered. It has a beginning (The Big Bang) and an edge (the boundary of where matter and energy has reached from the Big Bang so far). Within that finite, albeit it staggering, space, matter has direction (outwards from the Big Bang in general) and begins as light elements such as Hydrogen and Helium. To the best of our knowledge heavier elements only form within a star through fusion. So first you have to have a star form from hydrogen and helium, then live its life, then die in a supernova expelling heavy elements about it. These then have to coalesce and through some process be configured into shapes that have meaning. Which is highly unlikely. The complexity of a living cell in your body is staggering.

So no, no random duplicates of OCUK forum members drifting through the cosmos. ;)
 
adolf hamster said:
there's a problem with conventional travel though- how do you power something for hundreds of thousands of years, sustain life (with all that entails in terms of the basics of food water and oxygen) with no input?

the best we've managed is voyager and 40 years later it's barely hanging on after shutting down a lot of it's systems to maintain power for the others.
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however it is not even close to the best we can do and wasn't even designed to do anything like reach another star, it also only used an RTG.
Oh and you don't need it to last hundreds of thousands of years. just 50 to several hundred years. then you colonise and then launch another.
look at Project Orion and the other nuclear-powered spacecraft for feasible interstellar travel that are also reasonable time frames.
 
Not read the whole thread and probably been said but basically its all about crossing paths with other civilisations, not that others wont have or will exist.

We have been transmitting radio waves and exploring the sky in a meaningful way for such a short space of time. With advanced technology comes increased chance of extincting yourself and also the universe is a pretty unfriendly place with bullets of rock flying all over the place ready to take you back to the stone age at any time. So the chances of two technological civilisations existing at the same time and near enough to communicate is infinitesimal.

Some kind of AI life drifting the universe is the most likely bet. If UFOs are of alien origin, my guess is that they are unmanned or computer controlled probably mapping the planet and moving on.
 
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