General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDo you believe there are species that have mastered FTL travel?
Why or why not?
For me, having the background in physics that I do, I feel it is a certainty that there are species in the universe that have developed an understanding of the universe sufficient to allow them to build technology capable of circumventing the mass-energy limitations of traveling faster than light (or at speeds up to that of light in a vacuum). Most likely by not traveling at all, but jumping from one point to another without traversing the intervening space. If not by doing that, than by warping space time so as to be 'pulled' in a bubble towards their destination without actually accelerating.
While I don't know and won't speculate as to whether or not we have been visited by them, I believe it is a very plausible explanation for some of the behavior that some UFOs exhibit. I also contend that many of these craft are built by humans.
What say ye?
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NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)And I never did buy into the "nothing travels FTL" proposition.
It just seems narrow minded, though I do appreciate that scientific theory can't advance without making certain presumptions that often need to be abandoned at a later time.
ETA:
As to the how or why of other lifeforms having mastered it, no idea how (our ideas would, after all, be based on our limited current suppositions) but the vastness of the universe suggests that if something could happen, it has happened- someplace, at some time, and will again.
cliffordu
(30,994 posts)NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)
On a plane heading west....
hobbit709
(41,694 posts)
Glorfindel
(9,732 posts)I'm afraid I also believe that if these species have visited the earth, their continued presence is nothing more than quarantine patrol, preventing the killer apes from escaping into the civilized reaches of the galaxy. I don't blame them.
By the way, welcome to DU!
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)It has seldom ended well on this planet when two distinctly unequal cultures rub shoulders, any sentience that has developed FTL and is currently using it is going to be a long way past us in terms of capabilities.
Buzz Clik
(38,437 posts)
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)Judging by all the ancient writings, maps, cave drawings, structures, and all kinds of things that were known about astronomy, "somethings" had to have had input.
I think they (whoever is in charge of this planet) already know what many of us suspect, but it is not time yet to make it public.
I rejoined "Seti@home after a 10-year absence and am amazed how it has grown. There are hundreds of thousands of people from every country on earth involved, and the cost of the many new telescopes must be very great. I'm sure that everyone who takes part in one of the programs is waiting for something to happen, tho they don't speak of it anywhere on their message boards or info websites. And I think to myself, if ET wanted to make contact, where would he find a more receptive audience than the people already looking for him? This program is so huge that I think there's more to it than we know or can imagine other than just finding distant stars. The warping of space is caused by gravitational waves (I search for those) caused by many things, explosions, collisions, etc.
What it says they have found does NOT justify the cost of the radio telescopes or its favorable reputation. Groups from all the military services and universities all take part in the "search." Nothing after all these years except for new pulsars would logically have ended the program long ago.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)I believe it is possible.
I don't "believe" or "not believe" things I don't know about.
warrior1
(12,325 posts)&width=600
This is a false-color image of a laser beam showing a superposition of entangled photons spinning in opposite directions.
How fast do quantum interactions happen? Faster than light, 10,000 times faster.
That's what a team of physicists led by Juan Yin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai found in an experiment involving entangled photons, or photons that remain intimately connected, even when separated by vast distances.They wanted to see what would happen if you tried assigning a speed to what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance."
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They didn't find anything unexpected, but that wasn't the point: in physics, sometimes it's good to be sure. The group published their work on the ArXiv.org, a preprint server for physics papers.
snip
hunter
(38,322 posts)The past is not set in stone, neither is the future.
The photons are not so much "entangled" as they simply don't bother to have any state until they are held to one in the present. From our biologically evolved and prejudiced perspective, the "past" is set in stone and immutable, so it appears the photons are "entangled." What's actually happening is that in the present where this experiment exists, there is only one past that "explains" the results. But there is also a time-distance where the results of the experiment are lost and the photons are disentangled.
There is no solid past or solid future. A "present" perspective shapes it all.
The origins of our own biological perspective, the perspective that makes it so difficult for us to understand this universe, the perspective that makes subjects like quantum physics, time, or relativity seem so alien and perverse, are pretty clear. Each and every one of us have ancestors "all the way back" to the "beginning of life" who somehow managed to survive and reproduce. What are the "odds" of that, that you would be reading this looking at a picture that "demonstrates" "entanglement" ??? It is clearly a meaningless question.
It is what it is, nothing more, nothing less.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)nt
Response to Twofish (Original post)
JaneyVee This message was self-deleted by its author.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)A silicon-based life form with automated repair could spend thousands or even millions of years traveling, so sub-light speed interstellar travel is quite feasible within their "lifetimes".
Apophis
(1,407 posts)
sellitman
(11,607 posts)We believe in all sorts of magical being. Called Religon by most of us. Extra terrestrial life is just another way humans have devised to explain what we don't understand.
Bull on all of them.
Just my .02
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)with all the millions or billions of stars in space that we are the only intelligent species?
FSogol
(45,514 posts)
Shankapotomus
(4,840 posts)
longship
(40,416 posts)exboyfil
(17,865 posts)I frankly think that any one time that you have only a handful of technological species in the galaxy (talking about other galaxies with the vast distances is meaningless). I base this opinion on what I know about life science, and the highly unlikely events which occurred to reach multicellular eukaryote lifeforms. At a minimum you also need a 2nd or 3rd generation star for the heavier elements. The clock is ticking. It took 4.5 B years on earth and 14 B years for us to reach this stage. We only have about 1-1.5 B years left until life as we know it will not be able to inhabit the earth. That is not much of a window.
As far FTL I don't think so but I would love to be proved wrong. I will be dead and gone before it happens in any event.
Hugabear
(10,340 posts)From what I've been reading lately, our existence is due to a very unlikely set of circumstances.
Without our moon, it's doubtful that complex life ever evolves. But our moon also very unique. It didn't form the same way other moons in our solar system did. Our moon was the result of a cataclysmic collision between our planet and another proto-planet. Without that collision, our planet would have a much less dense iron core, less gravity, etc. We probably wouldn't have tectonic plates. Without our moon, we wouldn't have tidal forces.
There's an awful lot that had to happen just right for life to evolve past the microbial stage. It's a lot more than just having the right size planet in the right place.
I'm sure it has happened elsewhere, just because of the overwhelming vast size of the universe. But I do believe that complex life is a lot rarer than we might think.
Marr
(20,317 posts)Life is shaped by the place in which it grows. Any intelligent life is going to look around itself and count a thousand little things that had to be just so in order for the species to exist-- but that's nothing spectacular.
Douglas Adams had a good way of describing it. He said an intelligent puddle would notice that the land in which it sits is perfectly contoured to it's shape. And little difference in the topography and that puddle's shape would be impossible. So naturally the puddle, assuming it is special, says things are *just right*.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)The shape of the puddle may be determined by local conditions, but the existance of a puddle at all is determined by universal conditions. For the puddle to exist there needs to be liquid, gravity, and a solid body.
For us to look like we do and have the characteristics that we do is determined by conditions on earth, that is true. But some things are needed for us to exist at all and are shared by any other life form that exists. Our moon appears to have played a vital role in making complex life possible.
For one thing, the moon keeps the insides of the earth in motion which brings uranium to the surface, making our planet mildly radioactive. That speeds up evolution by creating lots of mutations for evolution to work on. Without that, evolution would move at a much slower pace.
There are lots of other things about earth that are uncommon that are vital for complex life to even exist. When those things are combined, the odds for technological life become extremely small.
One of those things appears to be just plain luck. There are lots of events that can wipe out all life on a planet and we have been lucky enough to for the past 3.5 billion years to avoid hqaving to go back to "start". We haven't been hit by a really big astroid/comet, or fried by a gamma-ray burst from a hyper-nova, or had a nearby star go super-nova.
It increasingly looks like we are winners of a cosmological lottery.
Marr
(20,317 posts)The topography being short hand for all conditions generally-- not just the lay of the land.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)But there are some requirements that are universal.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)That is, so many as to be a number which is almost inconceivable to the human mind.
sellitman
(11,607 posts)Have you?
burnodo
(2,017 posts)I think it is utter arrogance to assume that this one little planet orbiting a minor sun in the outer arm of this galaxy is the only place in the universe that intelligent life exists. Statistically, it is not possible.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Read the book "Rare Earth".
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)Orrex
(63,219 posts)
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)we are free...for now.
MineralMan
(146,324 posts)This is UFO crazy talk, though, and belongs over in the Creative Speculation group, I'm pretty sure.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)tanyev
(42,594 posts)mick063
(2,424 posts)I don't believe anyone could survive it.
What I do believe:
The universe is teaming with life.
The distances are so vast we may never directly encounter alien life until "generation" ships are deployed. Entire lifetimes must be spent in route. Several lifetimes.
Twofish
(63 posts)The trick is find a means of generating sufficient power to warp space time.
mick063
(2,424 posts)How many years away is that?
Never?
Twofish
(63 posts)MillennialDem
(2,367 posts)Technically human lifespan is indefinite now, but I mean getting humans to never die from disease and maybe only from accidents/homicide/suicide.
Think cryonics/stem cells/therapeutic cloning/etc.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)Especially since the relativity equations seem to be so robust. Yes, they are still classical physics (ie, not quantum). Nevertheless, just as relativity did not cancel Newtonian gravitation -- it only expanded its applicable domain -- I expect the relativity will hold in the future.
I may be wrong about this, but I doubt it.
Quantum doesn't hold much hope for FTL travel either, in spite of quantum effects seemingly traveling FTL. These results are highly contrived and nobody involved in the theory or experiments believes that information can be transmitted by such a process. In fact, the theory specifically forbids such a thing from happening. If there can be no information transmitted by quantum entanglement, than certainly one cannot use it to transmit a solid object. (Which, in any case, would not act as a quantum object simply because all quantum effects average out to null for any object sufficiently large to be any use.)
Physics does not advance by replacing whole bodies of theory. It advances by modifying existing theory. That's the way modern science works in general. We'll never see a time that evolution will not have happened. Similarly, we will likely never see relativity falsified in whole.
C is the speed limit of the universe. That fact is woven into the very constants that describe the behaviors we see and can measure to a very, very high degree of accuracy. This is as predicted by physical theory and validated over and over and over again.
So my answer is No!
Maybe that's why we do not see real alien space craft circling our planet. It takes too damned long to make any such interstellar journey.
Sorry, Star Trek fans (I am one myself). Warp drive is a fictional device to move the plot forward in a reasonable amount of time. Nothing more.
The only catch: Alcubierre says that, “just as happens with wormholes,” you’d need “exotic matter” (matter with “strange properties”) to distort space-time. And the amount of energy necessary to power that would be on par with — wait for it — the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.
So we’re back to “fuhgeddaboudit,” right?
Maybe not. According to NASA physicist Harold White, the energy problem may actually be surmountable by simply tweaking the warp drive’s geometry.
White, who just shared his latest ideas at the 100 Year Starship 2012 Public Symposium, says that if you adjust the shape of the ring surrounding the object, from something that looks like a flat halo into something thicker and curvier, you could power Alcubierre’s warp drive with a mass roughly the size of NASA’s Voyager 1 probe.
In other words: reduction in energy requirements from a planet with a mass equivalent to over 300 Earths, down to an object that weighs just under 1,600 pounds.
What’s more, if you oscillate the space warp, White claims you could reduce the energy load even further.
“The findings I presented today change [Alcubierre's warp drive] from impractical to plausible and worth further investigation,” White told SPACE.com. “The additional energy reduction realized by oscillating the bubble intensity is an interesting conjecture that we will enjoy looking at in the lab.”
longship
(40,416 posts)This is still highly speculative and would break a lot of physical theory. We don't see that happening very often without a good reason. For instance, physicists have been trying their darnedest to break the Standard Model for decades. It has stood up throughout it all.
Also, one guy, or even a small group of guys saying something won't convince many physicists. Explain it with a testable hypothesis that works within the framework of established theory and then you may have something.
Advancements in science are always highly conservative. We don't throw out theories whole hog when we make new ones.
I doubt that this thing will go anywhere. But if he thinks it will, have at it, Hoss. Maybe DARPA will give him some funds. They've been known to fund some fringe ideas before. More power to him.
Twofish
(63 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)I will take a look.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Until they get here. Or we are the ones who do it.
wandy
(3,539 posts)is our preferred form of government, yes. Yes, and I believe that species will be us.
We already think that we may, emphases on may, have discovered partials that travel faster than light. The jury is still out on that. That their is need of a jury speaks volumes.
Our universe works by a set of rules. A set of rules we are just beginning to understand.
The speed of sound was once thought to be the fastest mankind could travel. Until we figured out a way around it.
Now the speed of light is considered the upper limit. Nice number. Good reference point.
Until we figured out a way around it.
Yes Twofish portable Alderson points would be a wonderful thing.
And their may be other ways to skin that 'cat'.
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)would allow them to travel at speeds that our own human bodies cannot presently tolerate. Which could mean that these entities have been in existence longer than human kind on our planet. It's as if some of the things that have been seen actually become a form of light or energy. I also think that the "little green men with large heads and eyes" thing is a carry over of Hollywood movies. At my age I've seen the evolution of that in comic books and 1950's Sci-Fy Movies in 'real' time. The Von Daniken "Ancient Alien" thing I think it is ridiculous because people have taken the popular movie image and worked backward to find a Peruvian skull and cave drawings to say, 'Hey. This is how they look.' Because that image sells books and has proven to sell movie tickets. The big head thing has to do with the simple Hollywood script idea that aliens having large evolved brains and are smart enough to travel which to me is a juvenile concept.
Some would say the entire idea of space aliens is juvenile.
Silent3
(15,253 posts)... you accomplish it, be it "folding space", "warp drive", worm holes, or any other trick you can imagine. People get all hung up on the gross physical aspect of trying to go faster than light, how mass increases, how more and more energy is needed until it becomes infinite at the speed of light, etc.
But that's only half of the problem.
if a physical object, or even a massless information-bearing signal, starts at Point A and arrives at Point B faster than light in a vacuum can travel from A to B, then the arrival at B will be observed to occur before the departure from A in many frames of reference. This is not just a matter of when these events are seen to have happened, but a true reverse chronology that remains after light-travel time is taken into effect. Our normal concept of cause and effect gets turned on its head, because an effect can precede its own cause.
If one backward cause and effect pair were an isolated occurrence, no paradoxes would arise. But if you follow the principle of relativity, then the rules for FTL travel or FTL signal-sending must be the same for everyone in any frame of reference, there are no privileged frames of reference, and it becomes easy to construct "shoot your grandfather" types of paradoxes with interacting FTL events.
Suppose we have a Mars colony, FTL communication between Mars and Earth, and FTL communication between fast, but slower-than-light spaceships travel back and forth from Mars to Earth.
Alice on Mars calls Bob on Earth, saying "Hey, how's it going?". The relative speed of Mars and Earth in their orbits is slow enough compared to the speed of light that, for the purposes of an FTL voice call, the two planets can be considered to share the same frame of reference, and can share a common clock. Let's say Alice places her call at 1:00:00.0 UT, and the signaling system is so fast the Bob gets the call at 1:00:00.1 UT, almost instantaneously, and much faster than the 30 minutes that light-speed communication would have required.
Bob gets this call, and, hearing the slightly dejected sound in Alice's voice, realizes that he forgot to call Alice earlier himself to wish her a happy birthday.
In the frame of reference of a spaceship near Earth, traveling in a direction away from Mars at some substantial fraction of the speed of light, it would appear that Bob receives Alice's call anywhere up to 30 minutes before she makes the call. If Bob hangs up on Alice, picks up his phone again, arranges to have his phone call routed to the near-Earth ship instead of directly to Mars, the near-Earth ship routes the call to a near-Mars ship using FTL technology, and the near Mars ship routes that call to Alice, Bob can now say, "Happy birthday, Alice!" and Alice can receive Bob's call before she makes that dejected-sounding phone call of her own. (Yes, it does work this way. Don't make me have to pull out the Minkowski spacetime diagrams!)
Of course, if this happens, Alice will never make that phone call, and then Bob would never have been reminded of her birthday, so he won't make his backward-in-time call, but then Alice will think Bob forgot her birthday and will call him herself, and then Bob will make the backward-in-time call, but then...
While I won't say that FTL is impossible, if it is possible, then there are consequences that go beyond satisfying the immediate goal of wanting to move or send signals FTL. At least one of the following would have to be true:
1) At a philosophical level, at least, Einstein was wrong. There are indeed privileged frames of reference, and there is (at least locally) absolute time. The principle of relativity would still apply to known physical phenomena, but whatever new physics comes along to allow FTL would reveal a privileged frame of reference and a special reference frame of time such that all causes precede all effects within that frame.
2) The universe is OK with these kinds of paradoxes, and really weird, confusing shit happens when we start messing with FTL, more than we bargained beyond for in just wanting to make things go faster. Maybe something like the quantum multiverse idea, with different branches of the history of the universe existing in parallel which don't need to be reconciled with one another.
3) Some as-yet unknown force or principle blocks paradoxical events from happening. It's hard to not imagine that being a very weird kind of deus ex machina intervention, however, if you just graft FTL on top of anything like known physics.
Twofish
(63 posts)"... you accomplish it, be it "folding space", "warp drive", worm holes, or any other trick you can imagine."
This statement is wrong. Warping space so that the region of space inside of the warp bubble is moving faster than the unwarped space around it does not lead to a paradox. Time proceed at exactly the same pace inside and outside of the bubble. If you travel from earth inside of one of these bubbles and wind up at alpha centauri in 4.9 years exactly 4.9 years will have passed on earth as well as in the bubble.
Silent3
(15,253 posts)Last edited Sun Jun 9, 2013, 05:19 PM - Edit history (1)
Also, your example is slower than light, since Alpha Centauri is roughtly 4.4 ly away. You'd be right that taking 4.9 years to make the trip, even if you pull off the trick of making time pass at the same rate on the ship as it does back on Earth, wouldn't lead to a paradox.
As soon as multiple travelers can be going in multiple directions with their own individual warp drives, however, that's where the trouble begins.
Edit to add: You can go back to my Alice/Bob birthday message thought experiment and replace the phone calls with messages sent by warp-speed carrier pigeons. Now it's physical travel using warp bubbles, but the same exact paradox arises.
nebenaube
(3,496 posts)Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)hunter
(38,322 posts)I don't think this universe is built that way.
Everything is speeding along at the "speed of light" and there is no way to go "faster" or "slower." Everyone reading this post is zipping along at the "speed of light," none of us are anything more than shifting, shimmering patterns in the light.
We still live in a universe of near-infinite possibilities however. I think intelligent beings of the "free will" variety are able to create any kind of community they wish, becoming essentially immortal (if that is even important to them), essentially creating their own neighborhood realities of increasing sophistication.
(Maybe some of those UFOs are the creation of intelligent dinosaurs who evolved here on earth. Distant relatives of a sort.)
That our species has any future as intelligent beings is still undetermined. The odds seem to be against us. We are still flying blind. A future where we are extinct or much less "intelligent" and similar to our ancestors of 4 million years past seems very likely.
Orrex
(63,219 posts)That's pretty close, right?
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)There could be a species "out there" that has accomplished such a feat, but I have not heard of any evidence for it. Why would I believe?
gvstn
(2,805 posts)Just going on the basis that for something like Roswell to happen makes no sense. 4 lonely aliens travel here to observe or whatever purpose in a tiny ship with no preparations for an unintended crash landing, no sort of rescue or recovery? Doesn't make sense.
But on other species being more advanced than us and possibly not being limited by our understanding of physics, I completely agree. One has to consider that there may be many species that can perceive time, energy and matter in ways are five senses cannot. Our limited understanding of species is based on the illusion that one must have two eyes, a nose, mouth and eat to survive. Yes, it is mostly true for every species we have encountered but there are myriad possibilities. Seeing broader spectrums of light or even air molecules or sensing radiation or magnetism are possibilities that may give other species a head start on discovering new technologies.
It has only been a few years that scientists have allowed themselves to conjecture on what is on the "other side" of the known universe. What is our 13.7 billion year old space-time generating universe expanding into?
former9thward
(32,064 posts)just because there was " a tiny ship with no preparations for an unintended crash landing, no sort of rescue or recovery?" does not mean anything. If we send a crew to Mars it will probably be a crew of about 4 people in a tiny ship and if they crash there will be no provisions for rescue or recovery.
quinnox
(20,600 posts)we are like babes in the wood in terms of our scientific and technology advancement.
Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)Why? Because I never believe that humanity has learned all there is to know about any subject. There may be alternatives that we have not even considered.
Now, do I believe they are here? That's a different question. Is it possible that some anthropologists or similar such scientists are here studying our society and evolution? Yes. However here is where I have the problems. First, there is little doubt that it is cold in space, and clothing is the most efficient way to manage personal temperature. Yet none of the aliens who are described have discovered clothing. Second, I reject all those stories about anal probes. I mean, at some point, you have to have learned pretty much all there is about butts. You would move on to nasal probes wouldn't you? But for more than fifty years, every redneck who gets snatched always comes back with stories of anal probes.
Do I believe it is possible that life exists in the universe? Certainly. Do I think they are all buck nekkid little guys who are fascinated with butts? No. I don't know what is out there, but I find it hard to believe that is what we'll find.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)creepy to me. I watch a LOT of sci fi and horror flicks and shows.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)Laws of physics--steep hill to climb.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Marr
(20,317 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)I think multicellular life is improbable.
I think the probability of advanced life is so improbable that our species will never encounter one.
Marr
(20,317 posts)I suppose we'll just have to disagree.
Personally, if I had to make a guess, I'd say multicellular life is fairly common. I'd guess intelligent life is less so, and so short-lived, evolutionarily-speaking, as to be blips in time even more than than in space.
Either way, I'm not expecting a visit either.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)The absence of evidence says we're alone - not even microbial life anywhere else.
My gut feel is that humans will eventually discover evidence of extraterrestrial microbial life, but nothing more.
People recoil from this idea because the implications are terrifying. We don't want to think that this is the only place in the galaxy with advanced life and we are the stewards of it.
If life ever becomes common in this galaxy, humans and our descendants are the ones who are going to do it.
Personally, I think the first person whose consciousness will live for thousands of years - uploaded into a computer - has already been born.
They are the ones who will spread life to the stars.
Marr
(20,317 posts)...humanity could theoretically colonize the entire galaxy in some ridiculously short period of time (from an evolutionary standpoint). I don't recall the time frame-- a couple hundred thousand years or something. If our whole focus was to spread the species, and we were alright with the occasional huge catastrophe, and living on multigenerational ships, etc.-- a hundred things that go against human nature completely. Never going to happen, of course, but there you go.
It does kind of reinforce your position though... if this is all the technology you need to accomplish a galaxy-wide colonization... where are those aliens? You'd think at least one of those species would have evolved with the right temperament to set off on that quest.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Using instruments in our own solar system we search for human habitable planets that are close enough for a multi-generation ship to be launched to. Once every 500 years we launch a colony ship that takes 500 years to get there. After 500 years on that planet they have a fully developed space faring civilization that searches for other habitable planets. So 1,000 years have passed and you now have two launching planets, each making a launch every 500 years. Like the famous example of the person who earns a penny the first day, two pennies the second day, four on the third day, and at the end of the month his is a multi-millionaire, in a couple of hundred thousand years the entire galaxy is filled with humans.
That does suggest that we are alone.
Akoto
(4,267 posts)Believing that we are the sole sentient intelligence in a galaxy as large as ours, to say nothing of the thousands of other galaxies out there, is pure arrogance.
It also bears mentioning that, in terms of the galactic timeline, our collective species is an infant. Imagine a sentient species which had developed technologically tens of thousands of years prior to our own, and pair that with how quickly we have come to understand things in just centuries. From that perspective, FTL travel seems like the least of their potential accomplishments.
Rex
(65,616 posts)So odds are any guesstimating I make will be wrong.
Logical
(22,457 posts)
Cleita
(75,480 posts)was once science fiction become science fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there is a way to do this that is yet undiscovered.
Marr
(20,317 posts)There are 300 billion stars in our galaxy alone. The data from Hubble suggested roughly 125 billion galaxies in our universe-- and that's just based on what we can presently detect.
Even if life is rare, even if intelligent, social species tend to be short-lived, that's still a lot of rolls of the dice.
That's not to say I give any credence to UFO reports. I once heard an astronomer say he'd spent his entire life looking at the sky, and while he'd seen atmospheric oddities, aircraft of every sort, meteorites, and a list of other things, he'd never seen an alien spacecraft. Neither have I. There's an enormous leap between the questions, "is there alien life out there?" and "is there alien life here?".
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)"Where is everyone?"
If interstellar travel and intelligent life were possible, San Fransisco would look like Mos Eisely.
Marr
(20,317 posts)I mean, I read something about a Pacific island tribe that thought they were the only humans in existence until the 1900's. People had been sailing around the globe for a long time, but no one had stumbled onto them.
One life form looking for another life form in this galaxy would have to be something like a gnat in Missouri looking for a gnat in Peking. Even if they're broadcasting, the range of those broadcasts will be infinitesimal for hundreds of years.
The spaces are just so vast, and the time so immense, intelligent life could be popping up regularly, but never existing at the same time, or anywhere near each other when they do, or not recognizing one another as intelligent, or... who knows what.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)It presumes that any intelligent life form would have population growth rates and a desire to expand territory on par with that of humankind. It's entirely possible, and likely even PROBABLE, that an intelligent species can have very low population growth rates that would preempt any desire to expand across the galaxy.
Biologically, we cannot make the presumption that alien life and reproduction would resemble our own in any way. An alien life form is just as likely to be asexual and reproduce once or twice per lifetime as they are to lay eggs and reproduce a thousand times per lifetime. What we do know is that there is a direct relationship between the size of a population and the amount of resources they can make available to projects not core to the maintenance of the species. We humans have the ability to travel across our solar system TODAY, so why aren't we doing so? Why doesn't every nation on the planet have its own space program? Because most governments have more important things to do, most of which involve protecting the lives and health of their citizens.
Even species that did reproduce at a scale matching or exceeding our own would need to put that population growth in check before venturing into space. The evidence on our own world increasingly suggests that we're heading towards a population crash. A high birthrate society building toward space travel would likely confront the same problem, and would see spaceflight resources dwindle as the population continued to increase. Any society that wanted to be spacefaring would need to have a stable population. A stable population negates Fermi's assumption that alien races would colonize the galaxy. At that point, they would be a race of explorers, not colonizers.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)You are assuming only one species makes the discovery. Sooner or later an expansionist species would make the discovery and set off to colonize the galaxy.
I agree that they would need to have a stable population before beginning to colonize, but the two are not mutually exclusive. An authoritarian government could create a stable population while still seeking to expand to other worlds.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)The point of life is to reproduce to fully exploit the environmental resources available.
The point of intelligence is to expand the universe of resources available for the organism to exploit. We discovered fire to enable us to eat a wider variety of foods (i.e. bread). We covered ourselves with skins to enable us to exploit colder climates. We invented boats to exploit aquatic resources. We explore to expand our territories. We'll eventually colonize Mars and the Moon for the same reason. We've been able to explore space for what? 60 years? It is far too soon to project our experience of the last 20 years millennia into the future.
Forget for the moment directly exanding our population onto other planets. Intelligent and technologically-capable critters are by definition curious. They might not be physically present on every life supporting world, but would definitely have left probes and radio signals. The moon has been there, quietly orbiting a life-filled planet for the last four billion years. Despite that, the only technological objects there are those of humans, as are the only footprints.
There's zero reason to believe that intelligent life will suddenly forget the secret of their success.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)You cannot apply the Earth-based evolutionary paradigm to the evolution of life that may exist on worlds that have little in common with the Earth. An intelligent species arising on a resource-poor world prone to famine would be under reproductive pressure to maximize its genetic flexibility every generation while minimizing its actual reproductive numbers. What would such a species look like? And would a species that viewed one offspring as "normal" suddenly start pumping out babies once they found a more resource rich planet? Doubtful.
Fermi assumed that any alien life would function in a manner similar to life on our own planet. That's a false premise. Life on our planet evolved in its current form in response to external forcing unique to this planet. There is no way for us to know what forces would provide evolutionary pressure to life on other planets, and there is no reason to assume that it would lead to the same runaway population cycles that plague so many species here on Earth. There are countless theoretical scenarios in which a species could evolve with a relatively stable population.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Me) We're alone.
Response) No we're not, because there are lots of planets. Besides, Drake equation.
Me) If any of the values in the Drake equation are zero, then so is the result.
Response) We have proof of life here, therefore the result of the Drake equation is not zero, so life happened lots of places.
Me) Then where is everyone? Where's the radio signals? Where are the monoliths on the Moon?
Response) Aliens use tachyon pulses and subspace communications and shit. Besides, life elsewhere in the galaxy is unimaginably different(tm). They play 14 dimensional scrabble whilst hanging out with Lando Calrissian at Cloud City and are entirely uninterested in prosaic matters of survival.
Me) If we're going to use the example of Earth as proof that life evolves elsewhere in the galaxy, then it seems reasonable to use that life as an example of what "life" means.
Life as we know it grows through metabolism, reproduces and adapts to its environment. Every successful organism outcompetes other organisms for reproduction. Intelligent life outcompetes by being better able to adapt to a variety of environments. The unavoidable end state for an intelligent organism which isn't rendered extinct is population expansion to all the environments possible; interstellar expansion. Intelligent technological species don't simply hang up their tennis shoes to retire on the porch.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)...the natural reproductive rates among humans in the western world has largely fallen to replacement rates (or even below replacement rates) as technology, medicine, and societal pressures have eliminated the need to reproduce with abandon simply to produce genetic heirs. Most of the worlds population growth today comes from regions where that technology is not yet available or socially acceptable, and even in those areas we are beginning to see declines in birthrate. Among population groups immigrating into the western world where birthrates are already lower, there is a clear statistical drop in birthrate within a single generation of that families migration.
Most statisticians expect that the worlds population will stabilize within a few generations as these things become more widespread and accepted globally, and the only real question is whether that stabilization will occur before or after we exceed this planets sustainable carrying capacity.
In all probability, even humankind will achieve a stable population before we reach out into the stars and start looking at new Earth's. I don't see a technologically advanced species, human or otherwise, moving out into the stars after countless generations of "small families" and suddenly deciding "Woohoo, we can breed like rabbits now!" Once small families are normalized, and minus any actual direct benefit from having larger families, I don't see any reproductive benefit to reverting to the larger family size. In fact, as doing so would actually reduce resource availability to the already existing population, it's probable that societal pressure would continue to favor smaller families.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)You are assuming that only one species discovers FTL. If it exists (I don't think it does.) then it will be discovered over and over by different species. Sooner or later it will be discovered by a species that does say, "Woohoo, we can breed like rabbits now!" and they will outcompete other species for available real estate.
Think in terms of multiple species making the discovery, each in its own time.
But lets suppose that the first species does strive for a very low level of population growth. ANY growth rate above zero WILL quickly fill up the galaxy because growth rates are exponential, not linear, and the galaxy has lots of time to give them to grow.
You keep thinking that the Vulcans will be the only ones to make the discovery, but what about the Klingons, Ferangi, Romulons, Kzin, Pierson's Puppeteers, Pak Protectors, & Tnuctipun? Especially don't forget the Moties. Moties don't have birth control, are super-smart in technology but are confined to their planet by the weird location of the first and only jump point directly available to them. If they escape, the game is over. (Yes, I am a Larry Niven fan.)
Notafraidtoo
(402 posts)Not enough evidence to support the possibility that beings of any type could travel as fast or faster then the speed of light.
Based on the size of the universe,math and how things work here i am certain there is likely millions or more planets out there supporting life but based on the speed of light limitation i don't believe any of them has visited us in any way.I also fear again based on how we see the universe works that any being likely would not have the time to advance far enough to even consider speed of light travel simply because a mass extinction event would wipe them out.
The likelihood of any intelligent being living long enough and being around the same time to even hear some kind of radio type contact from another planet is extremely low also based on these extinction events.
Of course i just have earth and humans to go by but any similar technology path and productivity levels that we show is just too slow,We just wont be here long enough to produce what we need to even consider this tech ourselves.
I imagine how A intelligent being would think of us if this were to happen and i think it would be like us talking to a chimpanzee or a caveman, the trillions of point of references and knowledge advancements for them to get here would be so far ahead of us that we would be extremely insignificant to a being that intelligent.
Jamastiene
(38,187 posts)When they see me, they are on me faster than the speed of light. Even running at my top speed, I cannot get away from them quick enough. Next thing I know, it's "harlot, lesbian, hethen, hellfire, and damnation!!!11!1!" being screamed at me. 
johnp3907
(3,732 posts)But are quantum leaps FTL? I'd often wondered if quantum leaps could be replicated in the lab, and then this technology used in computing---zipping particles around inside computers and the like. Then I read an article about how quantum leaps HAD been replicated, and that scientists were saying the technology could be used in the way I was thinking. Once we got this technology down couldn't we then progress to the point of moving a mass of particles (a human body for example) in this way?
alarimer
(16,245 posts)End of discussion.
nebenaube
(3,496 posts)Incitatus
(5,317 posts)That would have been based on their knowledge. You say it is impossible because of your understanding of physics, but I think it is safe to assume there is a lot we do not know about what is possible.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)We develop more and more technology every year and the pace continues to speed up. I think it's foolish to say anything is impossible.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)...breaking the laws of physics and merely not having developed the technology yet. Flight has been known to be possible but we didn't have the engineering yet. People who don't undertand physics love to say that nothing is truly impossible.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Others may have devoted their efforts to other than fighting wars.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)just so they can make pretty designs in some wheat field.
Sid
yawnmaster
(2,812 posts)ZX86
(1,428 posts)Where did the technology come from? Most people hypothesize if we are manufacturing and piloting flying saucers the technology is from reversed engineered alien space ships. Otherwise we have made a technological leap forward on the level fire and the wheel. Let's remember we're talking about flying saucers making right angle turns at mach 3 and flying triangles the size of a football field.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)A couple choices come.
One involves string theory and bending of membranes, or riding through...the ther is warp. Both have the same pesky energy problem we have not solved. The third is creating stable wormholes able to take more than atoms.
All these require massive amounts of energy.
The fact we don't have it, or can conceive of it, does not mean it's impossible.
As to them coming here...we do the same with primitive cultures in the amazon, so I don't fully discount it.
Of course, there are slow boats to china that we could do right now...cough solar sails, cough.
rrneck
(17,671 posts)It is a huge universe. There is no way we are the only intelligent species and there is no reason to believe that plenty of them are not a lot more intelligent than us.
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)I suspect about everything that we can imagine at this point happens sometimes.
How often I don't know. I'll take the longer odds and say yes even in what we think of as the universe, even possibly right now in our own galaxy. I suspect we don't know a whole hell of a lot and misunderstand much of what we do kinda know.
That said, best plan for long ass trips en route to this discovery.
Ian David
(69,059 posts)Just wondering is all.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Let's suppose that such travel is possible. Given the size of the galaxy, somebody has already discoved it. That civilization will also know that their parent star will one day die - as all stars do. Further, they will be an exploring type species as a species with no exploring genes will never make such discoveries. They will explore and start colonies on other planets. As those colonies mature they will also send out other exploration missions to still more planets, while the original planet will continue to explore.
They won't fight interstellar wars as that is just too expensive. The logistics are just too great for that.
They won't lose or forget about colonies as they will have advanced record keeping as part of being an advanced civilization.
If they can go from colony to mature civilization in 500 years, they their number of colonized planets will double every 500 years. In a couple of hundred thousand years - an eyeblink in cosmological time - they will have found and colonized every planet in the galaxy. And every such planet will be part of the galactic civilization.
Look around. Earth has been a prime planet, ready for colonization since a few hundred million years ago. They would certainly discoved us and already colonized us before the dinosaurs. Are we part of such a super-civilization? Nope. Therefore, such a space-faring civilization does not exist.
Other technological civilizations may exist, but they are limited too.
MillennialDem
(2,367 posts)but if you consider the time factor involved to get to intelligent life capable of FTL travel....
50 years humans have been able to leave Earth out of a 5 billion year history of the planet.
Now has some species in the UNIVERSE discovered it? Yes probably. But why would they come here?
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)The entire universe is too vast to discuss meaningfully, and intergalactic distances are extremely vast, even for FTL travel.
I prefer to talk about our own galaxy.
I gave a reason for coming here - colonization. All species have the drive to reproduce, or else they die out.
If FTL is possible, somebody else would have discovered it millions of years ago and would have already colonized this planet. WE would not be here, and their colony here would not have been lost.
Nor have humans truly left Earth. At extreme expense a very select few have been able to make short trips into near-space to our companion world (Moon) and some more have been able to be in orbit for a while.
At less expense, some of our machines have gone further, and accomplished more.
MillennialDem
(2,367 posts)50/5,000,000,000.
As for coming here/colonization: why? The galaxy is a very big place. It doesn't necessarily follow that they would need to come here.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)In a couple of hundred thousand years (cosmological eyeblink) they would fill every habitable planet in the galaxy, including this one. Since this would have happened millions of years ago, and they would NOT have lost the colony, then we would not be here and Earth would be a member of a galactic civilization.
MillennialDem
(2,367 posts)A. Earth has been around only 1/3 the life of the galaxy (and habitable for less than that). A species that discovered FTL may have discovered it and died out or went on to other galaxies prior to Earth becoming habitable.
B. You are still assuming every habitable planet would be colonized. Maybe they saw Earth and have a "hands off" policy because they saw intelligent life on the planet by the time it was discovered.
C. Assuming FTL is possible.
D. Assuming FTL has already been discovered in this galaxy.
Yada, yada, yada 
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)I accepted your assumption and followed it logically.
You are thinking only one species will make the discovery. If they have a hand-off policy, then some other species will make the discovery that doesn't have such a policy.
Unlikely that such a species will die off. They will evolve into various other species, depending upon the conditions they encounter. But the galactic civilization will still exist, and Earth would be part of it.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Just as we are confined to ours.
Fermi paradox discussed upthread.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)If they are at the same exact level of development we are, absolutely. If they are able to cross interstellar space using FTL, it might as well be magic.
Though right now we have the tech, in theory, for generation ships.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)If we aren't the first and someone found it millions of years ago, where is the galatic civilization?
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)But what we know already of exoplanets it makes life, even intelligent life, possible. Now what that life will look like...twice earth's gravity will lead to different evolutionary results, IMO.
Here is the problem, right now we are using radio to try to find our neighbors. Assume for a second they are there, we have only "gone live" for seventy years or so, and have been listening for thirty.
We are also listening to a single channel at a time. (Technology to be honest will allow us to "scan" the way my police scanner does in ten years tops).
My theory is very much with Sagan's. first they need to survive the terrible teen years, where we are. But after that, they might no longer use radio, so go quiet again.
Purely speculative, let's assume for a second they are visiting earth. If they are, the technology is so far ahead of us, that stealth and all that is very possible. Why? We must be entertaining, the same way an Amazonian tribe is to American anthropologists. We can't hide our presence from our subjects in the Amazon, but I contend anybody who is crossing those vast distances has a choice to remain fully hidden from view.
I recommend looking at the Drake equation. Yes, you can solve it to zero by having any variable at zero. The more we know the less likely it will be zero.
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Somebody solves the FTL problem millions of years ago and begins colonization. Even slow colonization is exponential. By now they have filled every habitable planet (including Earth) in the galaxy with a vast galactic civilization. Why are we here instead of them?
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Here is one thing that you could mull, and one that a few scientists have toyed with... they are here, genetic encoding
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
Orrex
(63,219 posts)SidDithers
(44,228 posts)
Sid
Orrex
(63,219 posts)was that he replied to say "And I look forward to years of your sarcasm."
I guess that he and I will have to be disappointed together.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)I have a sneaking suspicion that this wasn't their first trip 'round the DU block.
Sid
Orrex
(63,219 posts)sofa king
(10,857 posts)I think that's why the aliens aren't threatening to destroy London every week, because overcoming the curvature of space is not nearly as easy as travel between an infinity of similar universes, some of them different only in the point in time from which they originated, and therefore offering a paradox-free option to use a simulacrum of time travel.
When confronted with the choice between infinite versions of the tiny spaces within easy reach, or a dangerous, plodding, decades-or-centuries long journey between stars, most advanced civilizations will probably stick to their own front yards.
Of course, I know very little about any of those things, so it's easy for me to imagine without the shackles of limiting mathematics and physics!
(Oh, by the way, I mastered FTL a couple of months ago. One of the funnest games I've ever played.)
ananda
(28,873 posts)I can't comprehend physical beings being able to do that.
I have to think of them as energy or light beings. Some
might call them angels or something like that.
The big question for me would be: would they have
consciousness and appeal to our thoughts in our own
relative languages.
On some level, this gets pretty ridiculous.
Sometimes I wonder what the brain is exactly and what
it's capable of ....
KamaAina
(78,249 posts) 
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,426 posts)Let's hope that they're friendly if/when they come here. More E.T. and less "Independence Day"
GreenStormCloud
(12,072 posts)Humanity knows that it isn't alone and that at least some of the others are hostile. The many crashed spaceships provide lots of technology. Some surviving aliens become traitors to save their own lives and help us understand the technology. We go into space, quietly scouting so we won't be taken by surprise. Later, as humanity recovers more, we become aggressive, actively looking for them to eliminate them.
