Posted on 02/10/2014 6:28:41 AM PST by 12th_Monkey
The first detection of intelligent extraterrestrial life will likely come within the next quarter-century, a prominent alien hunter predicts.
By 2040 or so, astronomers will have scanned enough star systems give themselves a great shot of discovering alien-produced electromagnetic signals, said Seth Shostak of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
"I think we'll find E.T. within two dozen years using these sorts of experiments," Shostak said here Thursday (Feb. 6) during a talk at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium here at Stanford University
"Instead of looking at a few thousand star systems, which is the tally so far, we will have looked at maybe a million star systems" 24 years from now, Shostak said. "A million might be the right number to find something."
(check out the rest of the article at the link)
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
I’m a christian and have no problem with the idea of abundant life in the universe.
If intelligent “life” is found out there, we probably won’t be able to reach it anytime soon. If it reaches us I doubt it would be organic. If the intelligence could make it’s way across the vast distances of the cosmos I would imagine it would have ditched organic bodies long ago in order to “live” in space much easier. Personally, I think that is where the human race is headed, mechanized bodies containing (or in more cases than not created) consciousness.
Yup. totally agree. 3DP is going to open up avenues we can’t even grasp at the moment.
True, why 2040? Why not next year or why not 20 years ago? More junk science to occupy the idiots that are spending their earnings in the great colleges of Amerika.
I also agree with this. A lot of people blow off transhumanism as sci fi pap. And right now it is. But man has searched for imortality since he concieved the meaning of death. And he will work toward it as long as he is able. Whether he achieves it outside the religious concept of it is another matter entirely.
Here’s the one thing I always wondered about machine intelligence...in the sense of transplanting our consciousness into one.
How do you know? How does the machine brain ‘you’ know you’re ‘you’ . I mean REALLY you and not a copy of you. Because if such a thing were ever possible, why not make a million of you? If one could be replicated in consciousness once, why not more?
You can see the philosophical implications making all you You’s go insane ;)
just my $0.02 anyway..
GMTA
I’m an insomniac and I use that down time for ponderin the great mysteries.
I think by definition that divergence is instant. But then that brings up another can of ethical (or more exactly, lack thereof) worms.
Anyone agreeing to this would have to do it KNOWING that they were committing genocide. On themselves and humanity. And when the last human replicated and eventually died, humanity would cease to be. And all the moral constraints that governed that humanity along with it.
There is simply no need for morality when one can simply be replicated or disposed of/scrapped/erased.
I have that issue.
How did they get here from 100,000,000,000,000 miles away and how did they pick our planet to be inhabited from among a million other possible choices? About as fast as we can go is maybe 50,000 miles per hour. That would take 2,000,000,000 years approximately. That’s impractical to even consider and they would have had to guess right on which planet was inhabited. Albert Einstein was right when he said there may well be people up there but we will never get to know.
I think it is a reasonable assumption that the creator/concept/unifying force we call “God” also expresses what we perceive as life somewhere else out there in the Universe. The building blocks of life can be transported across the Universe by pure chance. Just like seeds, pollen, animals, etc have reached the most remote Islands on this planet. Life has been found in nearly every unlikely corner of this planet. The difference with space is that the nearest anchor of life beyond this planet is likely unreachable by man without conquering space/time.
The only true questions are HOW and WHY the Universe and these building blocks of life came to be. IMO, it is something we will never understand within this perspective of life we were given.
Debating whether the origin of the Universe and Life is a result of a human ideas such as “accident” or “design” is a pointless exercise and beyond our limited perception of reality.
It may even someday be scientifically proven that all around us is a result of "random" chance from our perspective. But then what created randomness, our consciousness, matter, time, etc?
that is an interesting question to ponder. Why are they hiding? Why not just say, hey! we’re here....
“There is no scriptural foundation for that belief that I know of.”
That we are the only life or that there is other life?
Thats good. Some folks get real touchy on the subject. As I said, I think alien life, be it single cell or humanoid, would just reinforce the grandure of Gods creation.
if a civilization is much older than ours of course would be more advanced. No way to tell what kinds of power they have harnessed, folding space, artifical wormholes or who knows what else.....
Either!!!
These two examples you pose are only thought in peoples head trying to explain HOW space travel is possible.....there is nothing scientifically that hints at the idea they even exist let alone being able to harness them!!
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