Are we alone? Intelligent aliens may be rare, new study suggests

[Atlan0001]

Advanced spacefaring life no more bothers with dead slow radio communication than it bothers with such dead slow travel methods we would consider today to be so fast. They travel at warp speeds and jump space teleportation, and their communication traffic, if such massless communication could exist at all point to point greater than the speed of light, would be quantum entangled transmitter/receiver point and point, same point, instantaneous.

 

[Classical Motion]

If you use time for your supposing, remember that the human kind is new and very young. And relative to our recordings, past very long term established species have been wiped out in a quick manner. Whole eco systems destroyed.

The future is always in doubt. From more than one cause. And we are the only ones that know that. No other life form is troubled by this.

Star travel is a movie only. There is no future in it. This is no acceleration velocity to overcome it.

This one oasis solar system is all we will have. This is backed up with science. It’s authoritative. And sober. Non-emotional. Absence of passion. The brutality of fact.

That’s why we enjoy TV. TV is not limited to facts. If only WE could ignore those facts. We can when we watch TV.

Or study modern theory. Ha ha.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, there is no possibility of human travel to another star within their lifetime. The energy requirements are astronomical. A reasonable amount of antimatter needed to propel the craft would need around the same amount of energy the Sun emits in a few hours. So, it's sort of pricey.

 

[Questioner]

The universe is an ecosystem.

There may be predation beyond blunt organic chemistry.

Predatory elements might see us as bait for their sophisticated & wary prey.

Just one of numerous possibilities.

Organic capitalism at work.

 

[billslugg]

I have all the elements atomic numbers 80 and up on my phone's "block" list. They are responsible for so much human agony and suffering.

 

[Classical Motion]

With an inertial dampener we could reach higher speeds at lower cost and energies. Acceleration without mass gain. But still before c we would have a particle collision problem. Lots of energy would be needed for active far reaching shielding. We still would not be able to travel at c speeds. At c, no EM fields can be emitted in the forward direction. Pardon me, they can be emitted, but the ship is going at the same speed, the field is no faster than the ship. No shielding. Can’t move fast without shielding. So no time saved. So no star travel.

Can't travel fast without a shield. The craft would dissolve. Time and distance is the perfect barrier. No cost and no maintenance. We’re stuck.

Time, speed and distance, plus space particulate density prevents it. And there are always unknowns.

TV star travel will have to do.

 

[Classical Motion]

The particle density of space should increase with velocity. It might get thick. Shockingly thick. A particle barrier perhaps. On top of time and distance. It would be an inertial, a mass barrier.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

That calculator seems to take the "fuel" as antimatter and turn its mass it into kinetic energy of the spacecraft with 100% efficiency.

So, not a very realistic basis for conceptualizing how far and fast humans could go in colonizing the galaxy or universe with known capabilities.

With what we know can be done with technology that actually works, we can't get there from here.

 

[Classical Motion]

And maybe leave a wake. No one knows.

 

[Catastrophe]

Of course, if we wish to invoke (what is currently) science fiction, it is possible in the imagination to send one's consciousness instantaneously over unlimited distance, and "be present" there to observe and/or communicate. Purely theoretically, of course.

Cat

 

[Archibald]

Even if interstellar voyagers in our galaxy maxed out their velocity at 0.01c, they would still need less than a 1% head start on earth to cover the entire galaxy. Yes, we do not have technology to do this now. Less than 100 years ago we did not have technology to send an object into orbit. It's conceiveable that our space travel technology will continue to improve. How advanced do you think human space travel will be in a million years? Say it takes us a million years to achieve interstellar travel at 0.01c. That literally does not change the result of the above calculation. I don't know why some here are adamant that interstellar travel will never happen.

 

[billslugg]

That calculator seems to take the "fuel" as antimatter and turn its mass it into kinetic energy of the spacecraft with 100% efficiency.

So, not a very realistic basis for conceptualizing how far and fast humans could go in colonizing the galaxy or universe with known capabilities.

With what we know can be done with technology that actually works, we can't get there from here.

I don't know why some here are adamant that interstellar travel will never happen.

I am saying interstellar travel within a human lifetime will never happen. That means a human goes to the nearest star and comes back to Earth and does it all within 100 years. I have run the calcs abd fisson does not provide sufficient power, neither does fusion, even all the way up to iron. Anti-matter can do it, but the amount needed requires so much energy, we would have to harness an entire star. No civilization without a Dyson Sphere could do it.

 

[Classical Motion]

Space bits are isolated charge. The perfect fuel for anti matter. All we need is a large enough collector area and collector velocity for the right density to fuel an anti-matter reaction. It would be like a ram jet, needing a certain velocity to work.

Once outside our bubble, we could go much faster. Richer air, ha ha.

We would not want or need shields. We want to absorb and collect those particles.

Solve one problem with another.

With this setup, the faster you go, the more powerful the engine becomes.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Even if interstellar voyagers in our galaxy maxed out their velocity at 0.01c, they would still need less than a 1% head start on earth to cover the entire galaxy. Yes, we do not have technology to do this now. Less than 100 years ago we did not have technology to send an object into orbit. It's conceiveable that our space travel technology will continue to improve. How advanced do you think human space travel will be in a million years? Say it takes us a million years to achieve interstellar travel at 0.01c. That literally does not change the result of the above calculation. I don't know why some here are adamant that interstellar travel will never happen.

The difference in opinion is whether technological advances are just a matter of time, or if there are physical limits that we know about today that will never be overcome, no matter how much time is available.

My personal opinion is that there might be potential for learning new, even unexpected things that would allow us to do in the future what we think is impossible today. So, I am in the "never say never" camp on the possibility.

On the other hand, when it comes to making an objective assessment of the Drake Equation, about why we are not seeing a thriving interstellar travel community in a billions of years old universe, my opinion is that we do have to consider that it might be impossible, no matter how much we learn.

Or, maybe there really just isn't anybody else out there. There are plenty of "ors" in the currently possible interpretations of that equation with the current state of our knowledge.

 

[Classical Motion]

Collector scoop theory. If you think about it, this scoop acceleration would never end. Remember we have an inertial dampener. With this constant acceleration c could be breached. Faster than c accelerations.

Multiple c could be reached. But I have no idea how to slow down. If you slow down, you lose the fuel to slow down.

We will need transporters. Multi-c transporters.

 

[Dave]

We are one race, the human race the only intelligent lifeforms who are unaware of this reality is humanity itself. We live in these countries(tribes) and all of our conceptions are based on tribal beliefs. We do not act as one as a species and this makes us both socially aggressive and dangerous. We hopefully will evolve to be one as human beings, but we are not there yet. When we evolve it is reasonable to believe we will behave appropriate when encountering an inferior intelligent species. We will observe only and not give this new lifeform that 'smoking gun' so they can discover us.

Our world is like an oasis in the desert. You don't explore a few miles of the desert and then declare the rest of the desert (galaxy) devoid of other life. You search all of it. You leave no stone unturned, and then you make your determination.

 

[COLGeek]

We are one race, the human race the only intelligent lifeforms who are unaware of this reality is humanity itself. We live in these countries(tribes) and all of our conceptions are based on tribal beliefs. We do not act as one as a species and this makes us both socially aggressive and dangerous. We hopefully will evolve to be one as human beings, but we are not there yet. When we evolve it is reasonable to believe we will behave appropriate when encountering an inferior intelligent species. We will observe only and not give this new lifeform that 'smoking gun' so they can discover us.

Our world is like an oasis in the desert. You don't explore a few miles of the desert and then declare the rest of the desert (galaxy) devoid of other life. You search all of it. You leave no stone unturned, and then you make your determination.

The desert is vast. So large that no amount of "water" may be enough to allow us to traverse it while we search.

 

[Catastrophe]

I am saying interstellar travel within a human lifetime will never happen. That means a human goes to the nearest star and comes back to Earth and does it all within 100 years. I have run the calcs abd fisson does not provide sufficient power, neither does fusion, even all the way up to iron. Anti-matter can do it, but the amount needed requires so much energy, we would have to harness an entire star. No civilization without a Dyson Sphere could do it.

That calculator seems to take the "fuel" as antimatter and turn its mass it into kinetic energy of the spacecraft with 100% efficiency.

So, not a very realistic basis for conceptualizing how far and fast humans could go in colonizing the galaxy or universe with known capabilities.

With what we know can be done with technology that actually works, we can't get there from here.

I DID NOT POST THAT.

It is verbatim Unclear Engineer #33.
I did quote part in the Drop of Water thread.

Cat

 

[bolide]

We are one race, the human race the only intelligent lifeforms who are unaware of this reality is humanity itself. We live in these countries(tribes) and all of our conceptions are based on tribal beliefs. We do not act as one as a species and this makes us both socially aggressive and dangerous. We hopefully will evolve to be one as human beings, but we are not there yet. When we evolve it is reasonable to believe we will behave appropriate when encountering an inferior intelligent species. We will observe only and not give this new lifeform that 'smoking gun' so they can discover us.

Our world is like an oasis in the desert. You don't explore a few miles of the desert and then declare the rest of the desert (galaxy) devoid of other life. You search all of it. You leave no stone unturned, and then you make your determination.

I suspect that tribalism is built into our DNA, and not only human DNA but far back into evolution. Many animals will fight with "strangers," but not with members of their group.

I think the only possibility for overcoming intra-human tribalism would be with extra-human tribalism, i.e. the human race considering itself as one tribe vis-à-vis some other ET civilization. And even then ...

 

[Questioner]

The cell wall is a vitally necessary exclusionist construct.

Sociological tribalism isn't necessarily all bad.

It may allow for exercising a variety of paradigms which over time will likely favor those that work best.
(even if you & I may not like them)

Sometimes cruel, sometimes ugly social evolution.

 

[sizzlerjoe]

Read book 'rare earth' by Peter ward-donald Brownlee. Yr 2000

 

[ado]

I was reading that the universe, in absolute terms, is the same age everywhere so if there is intelligent life somewhere out there then maybe it has developed at the same pace we on Earth developed . Maybe then none of us have reached the stage where we have the technology to reach each other.

 

[ChrisA]

I was reading that the universe, in absolute terms, is the same age everywhere so if there is intelligent life somewhere out there then maybe it has developed at the same pace we on Earth developed . Maybe then none of us have reached the stage where we have the technology to reach each other.

We started very late. don't even worry about "The Universe", look only at our galaxy. It existed long before the Sun and the Earth.

On a galactic time scale, we humans are very new.

The best answer is that technical civilizations are so rare that at most only one exists at the same time

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Regarding the "newness" of Earth compared to the galaxy:

What the conditions have been in our galaxy since it was formed is not yet clear. If it went through a series of developmental processes that involved being a quasar, merges between supermassive black holes at its center, etc., it is not clear that any planets would have had the types of conditions we have had on Earth for the last 4.6 billion years, at least until 4.6 billion years ago.

So, thinking that life started in our galaxy something like 12 billion years ago, and should therefore be about 7 billion years "more advanced" than we are is not necessarily realistic. The idea that other life would have reached its pinnacle long ago and either be dead now or capable of interstellar travel isn't the only set of assumptions that makes some sense.

 

[Wworlk]

THere is an easier way to figure this out. It also agrees with what we observe.

If we assume that Earth is not rare or unique and that there are millions of Earthlike planets in the galaxy then if this were true what should we expect? How can we calculate what we would see. Not "guess" but "calculate"

Lets build a simulated galaxy populated with exact copies of Earth but the key is each copy of Earth is made on a different year over the 4 billion years of Earth's existence. So our simulated galaxy has 4 billion earth-like planets and they all have different ages.

What would we see? Out of the 4 billion Earths
1) about 100 of them would be humans who know how to build radios. So radio technology would be very rare. with one
2) most of them would have only microscopic life
3) A fair fraction would have multi-cellular life
4) one in a million planets would have mammals, like mice and monkeys and such

Earth is the only data point we have but Earth has existed for 4 billion years, we can look at Earth one each of those billion years and get 4,000,000,000 data points

This is actually VERY disappointing from a SETI perspective because it means that even of something like 1 in 25 plants has an exact copy of Earth we can expect only 100 planets with radio and perhaps zero that can transmit a radio signal over interstellar distances.

So, bacteria-like life might be common, multi-cellular life would be rare, intelligent life would be a one-in-a-billion level rare and advanced technological life would be exactly zero (as we are not there yet.)

I think this is the ONLY method of prediction that does not use extrapolation or guessing. It makes an impossibly optimistic assumption and then concludes that we should expect to hear and see nothing even in a galaxy teaming with "life". In other words, this theory predicts what to observe.

If you want a theory that predicts that we will find ETs then you have to introduce guess and extrapolations like
1) High-tech societies do not destroy themselves be war or global warming or advanced AI.
2) As societies age they continue to care about the universe around them. We don't know. Perhaps they only play video games and live in simulations.
3) perhaps the biological people are peacefully replaced by some kind of hybrid AI and therefore required very small amount of resource for trillions of them to live and expansion is possible by simply building a one meter cube server room

We have no idea about 1,2 or 3 and any answer is a guess. But if you assume only what we 100% know, we should expect a silent galaxy that is filled with simple life.

Simple life that possibly includes deadly pathogens that would wipe out most if not all life on Earth.
We should not be bringing anything found in H2O back to Earth.

It is highly doubtful SETI will ever hear anything.
How long would it take for a powerful signal to get here, Millions or Billions of years?

A robotic race or maybe a cyborg race might be able to survive long enough to reach the stars.
As stated, it would take Elon Musk fastest rocket nearly 120,000 years to get to the nearest star.

We should focus on our solar system if we want to survive just 10,000 more years.
But we must get past self-destruction...