Our Galaxy Should Be Teeming With Civilizations, But Where Are They?

Project Phoenix ^ | 25 Oct 01 | Seth Shostak

[RadioAstronomer]

No problem. Just keep good notes, and write legibly.

Write it in stone, it lasts longer than steel, paper or CDs/DVDs. LOL!

[Timesink]

The problem with any discussion of such matters, or any serious attempt to discern evidence of other civilizations, is that we have only one way of looking at the problem: The human way. Even in this excellent thread, we're all talking about how to track down signals based on what we, as human beings, with our own unique physical, mental and emotional makeup, think "intelligent life" would do to try to contact us, or at least leave unintended but unquestionable evidence of their existence. I'm not only speaking of the obvious questions - what radio frequencies might they use, would they even care enough to send a hello, etc - but also of far more fundamental matters, such as: How do we even know most other intelligent life forms out there have eyes and ears as we do? Perhaps they communicate in ways that are so fundamentally bizzare that no human has even imagined such a concept. Perhaps their signals are blasting right past us at this very moment and have been for thousands of years, but we don't even have the slightest clue they're there.

After all, 115 years ago, you could have built a radio or TV transmitter powerful enough to be received halfway around the world, but 100% of your output on those airwaves would have zoomed right through every human on the planet, and they all would have remained utterly clueless that the signals were ever there. Not only didn't they have radios and TVs, only the brightest scientific minds of the day even considered the theoretical possiblities of radio. We today could be right in the middle of just such cluelessness. Maybe 10-15 years down the line someone will invent some wild new communications system based on nothing even vaguely like the electromagnetic spectrum, and the moment he builts the receiver and turns it on, "HELLO EARTHLING" will pop out of it!

Or, maybe not.

And that's just one of an infinite number of possibilities. Personally, my belief is that human civilization simply is not yet anywhere near the point where we can even start to comprehend a meaningful number of the other possible ways to detect intelligent life on other worlds. We're getting there, but we ain't there yet. And until we are, I think it's presumptuous of us to even ask "Maybe they aren't there?" They could be right under our noses, and we're just too backwards to see them at this point.

Put far more succintly: We're not looking out there for evidence of "intelligent life"; we're only looking for evidence of life NO MORE INTELLIGENT than we currently are circa 2001 AD. And since all other potential civilizations out there that can't be much better off that we are, are most likely dealing with the same internal crap that we are - wars, politics, just trying to work our way towards a truly technological wonderland - they're probably not putting out much in the way of receivable data. Even we only have a little under 100 years' worth of transmissions out there; that material has only made it to a couple of other solar systems at this point, and those systems are almost unquestionably devoid of life.

[Mr. K]

Bob Lazaar saw the spacecraft and described a 'gravitaional' drive system that beats the faster-than-light travel problem. Mathematically it is correct, and if we could only reverse engineer it we could be traveling to the stars ourselves soon.

I really believe this- I am not joking!

I think we just have not figured out the technology to bend space so as to travel far away instantaneously...

[Timm]

No, but if they can only move at a hundredth of a percent of the speed of light--a much more reasonable figure--then it does matter. The fact is, going from star to star is just plain hard. I fully expect that corporeal human beings will never make the trip. (Once we learn how to transfer our consciousness to nonliving substrates, however, we just might manage it.)

I don't see any reason to be so pessimistic about travel speeds. We can already, now, imagine ways to travel some significant fraction of the speed of light, v>.1c. If we felt like spending the money, we could use these technologies today, or very soon. There are the nuclear propulsion systems of the Daedalus project, solar sails, etc.

It's not extravagant to speculate that in several centuries we would be capable of traveling even faster and at a practical level of expense.

[RadioAstronomer]

Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter Douglas Ward and Donald Brownlee gives a fairly convincing argument that Earth is pretty much it when it come to intelligent life.

I heard the same type of arguments when I was in school for other solar systems. I had a prof who once told me we would never discover a solar system outside of our own. We see life in the most unusual places. Places we would die in seconds. This universe may be teeming with life that does not resemble us in the least. If they become tool builders the laws of physics dictates that RF is RF no matter who or what generates it.

[RightWhale]

I was pleased to read 'Rare Earth', even had to special order it from Waldenbooks. The pendulum had swung too far toward Sagan's side. Ward and Brownlee were the voice of reason, a tiny minority in the deafening chorus following the movie of Sagan's book 'Contact', and all that Face on Mars hullabaloo. If anyone said "we might be alone in the galaxy" they would be shouted down. There is still a lot of shouting, not quite as deafening as last year, but if we are as alone in the galaxy as it appears, we need to start acting more responsibly. Hear that bin Laden?

[Psycho_Bunny]

"Fermi's paradox is therefore alive and well."

Not really. Such a conclusion requires scores, if not hundreds, of assumptions.

I'd be pretty embarrassed if my international reputation were based on such a sloppy, off-handed comment.

[RadioAstronomer]

Even we only have a little under 100 years' worth of transmissions out there; that material has only made it to a couple of other solar systems at this point, and those systems are almost unquestionably devoid of life.

There has been an estimate of over 14,000 stars within 100 light years from earth. So how do we know they are devoid of life?

[Timesink]

I don't think we will "transfer" our consciousness to anything else. I think that's impossible. But hey, I think when Kirk goes through the transporter a new person comes out with all Kirk's memories. The first one is dead. (Won't catch me on no transporters.)

Well, in the ST universe, it's been shown a number of times that you continue to exist, think, and feel while inside the transporter beam, so it's not a matter of ripping your atoms apart to calculate what a "you" is (killing you in the process) and then using that data to build a replacement "you" on the other end.

You're right, though, that as of 2001 the only way anyone has been able to consider building such a device is to do just that: Kill and dissect your scrawny ass and then put a fresh copy together again on the other side. Luckily, the only known way to pull this off today would require a "human hard drive" that could hold more bits of data than there are atoms in the entire universe ... just to beam ONE GUY. So I don't think we have to worry about it happening anytime soon. <grin>

[Skywalk]

"Impressive. Most impressive."

[RadioAstronomer]

I have grave doubts about the claims made by Bob Lazaar.

[Timesink]

There has been an estimate of over 14,000 stars within 100 light years from earth. So how do we know they are devoid of life?

Is it that many? Damn it, I just read somewhere the other day that there were only a few that close. I gotta stop getting my scientific data from the Taliban Instutute of Technology.

Though, in a way, you could probably conjecture that there aren't any 2001-esque levels of huminoid intelligent life there, because we would have picked up their stuff too, eh?

[cookcounty]

But, exactly WHY should there be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?

The "scientists" that promote SETI do so out of RELIGIOUS desire, NOT because of "science."

If we don't know how life began on earth, how can we possibly make statements about the probabilities that it has arisen elsewhere. The Saganites are good entertainment, though.

[tortoise]

And how many commercial chemical synthesis operations were around a billion years ago with their convenient building blocks all mixed together in the right proportions with the right catalysts at the right pressure and temperature and ready to react? Get real!

Ummm...YOU need to get real. You obviously don't have the slightest clue about chemistry or reaction dynamics. You aren't even grasping the fundamentally obvious. You'll find damn near any chemical you want in a large, dirty, energetic soup in some quantity, even if very minute. Complex organics don't spontaneously assemble, they bootstrap, and it won't take very long for that to happen in a chemically rich and energetic environment. There are many sources of extremely rich and complex organics on this planet that are not biological in origin. As long as you think large-scale spontaneous assembly is the basis of organic chemistry or bio-chemistry, you'll be embarrassingly wrong. The amount of incremental assembly required to create self-replicating organic molecules is actually quite small. There are many different kinds of self-replicating molecular systems known to science; DNA/RNA is just one of the multitudes possible.

My point about commercial production is that a reaction pathway either exists or it doesn't. We don't do any magic in commercial reactors that doesn't happen in nature already, the primary difference is that our product is purer.

[RadioAstronomer]

Though, in a way, you could probably conjecture that there aren't any 2001-esque levels of huminoid intelligent life there, because we would have picked up their stuff too, eh?

Of that I have no idea :)

My search continues!

[theoutsideman]

Every living thing in the entire universe is right here upon the Earth where God created it. Simple, is it not?

[headsonpikes]

"I'd be pretty embarassed if my international reputation were based on such a sloppy, off-handed comment."

Me, too. Luckily, it's not. ;^)

[RightWhale]

They could be right under our noses

Sure, this is possible. They might be so big or so small or so different somehow that they would be of no concern to us or us to them. Communication might not be possible, and even if it were their value system could be so different that nothing could be discussed. We would be looking for something that might be either a competitor or trading partner, something that could interact with us or be the subject of a master's degree project. I expect we will find bacteria everywhere out there; nothing more.

[Skywalk]

I'm not sure that EVERY civilization would suffer from the same self-destructive tendencies. I mean, humans(whether you creationists like this or not) are similar in their base instincts to Chimpanzees(NOT the more peaceful Bonobos) We aren't as territorial or hierachical as some animal societies, but we have good helpings of both in our genetic makeup.

If a race of ant-like creatures with a hive-mind(like Borg, or Communists lol) were somehow able to achieve civilization and SOME level of innovation(dedicated "research drones" ??) than maybe the only conflict they would find would be with other species.

Maybe there's an intelligent but sublight speed bound race of gas or energy. That'd make it kind of difficult to know how and where to look. Then again, maybe things are like Star Trek and an advanced race sprinkled some DNA in the primordial stew millions of years ago, and we all came out somewhat humanoid in form. I have no idea...

Frankly, I don't know if we want to find out. There's no guarantee that the alien race we meet will be any different than the Spanish were in the Americas(or worse, King Leopold's rule in the Congo)

[RadioAstronomer]

The "scientists" that promote SETI do so out of RELIGIOUS desire, NOT because of "science."

This sure is news to me! I am actively involved in a SETI search with a group of dish antennas, and I certainly do not worship them or my search.