Are we alone in the universe? If not, where is everyone?

[mike123]

Srsly? That's what you observed me do in a thread titled "Are we alone in the universe? If not, where is everyone?"

So in your mind a "thread jack" is underway, which has been strategically planned by yours truly? Coooool ouuuut.

I'll just suppose you have some secret answers to this extraterrestrial riddle that you'll spring on us at JUST the right moment. Until we have a smoking gun, it's all conjecture and speculation, right?


JG

dont mind him
i think he may have good intentions but dude is one of them "skeptics" that cant be swayed by any amount of proof or testimonials

 

[AtomAnt]

This gif speak trills

Say.......... Who's this cutie pie

 

[Andros the magician]

dont mind him
i think he may have good intentions but dude is one of them "skeptics" that cant be swayed by any amount of proof or testimonials

I can be swayed. I just like to rule out every single possibility. Whats wrong with that?

 

[Boo_Slim]

If I had five arms or twelve eyes and I looked down and saw how people treat each other because their skin is different, I'd say fuck it too.

 

[GAMETHEORY]

Among other theories to explain it (why If there is other intelligent life, we have not found it yet).... consider this; early homosapiens were intelligent life, but they had nothing that we'd consider technology. They were tool makers, and had big brains, but they didn't understand the concepts of electricity, molecules, sound waves, etc... and they were (at the time) the most highly developed (in terms of intelligence) creatures on earth, and it took millions of years for that intelligence to get here.

So, is not one possibility that among the tens of thousands of galaxies out there, and the probably millions of planets (discovered and undiscovered) there may be intelligent life that is still at the caveman stage? If they're out there somewhere, our technology isn't advanced enough to spot them, and they would still be on a quest for fire or some shit, and thousands of years away from even considering that there are millions of planets, etc.


...and 180 degrees the other way... let's say that there is another civilization, so advanced that they have studied us for tens of thousands of years... maybe scoped out the planet for millions of years before even homo erectus existed, and now they're watching us fumble about doing stupid human shit. Why would they bother to let us know that they're there? What if their technology is so sophisticated that our "primitive" technology misses any sign of them?

And what would we pick up?

I doubt that the radio flux of a civilisation that had radio a thousand years ago and a thousand light years away, would be that detectable.

Our own use of high-power radio signals on earth started about 60 years ago.

When SETI started, I think there was an assumption that our transmission powers would increase for a long time yet, and that alien civilisations must be using vastly higher-power radio systems.

But already we're slowly ramping down our own high-power broadcast - more communication is by low-power cellular systems, cable, and other relatively contained systems.

As time goes on, the man-made emissions from our planet will actually fall, as we replace large broadcast power transmitters with lower-power local systems fed by microwave links.

Another 50 years, and it's possible that we won't be using radio for high-power broadcast at all...

So that's maybe a one-century window in which we're detectable.

That bubble-wall of detectable radiation spreads out from us at the speed of light, being weakened by the inverse square law and absorbed by interstellar dust, giving something like an inverse cube law...

So the question is what are the odds of another civilisation being close enough to detect our signal before dust converts it into scattered infrared, while also being in an age of civilisation that spends resources looking for such things, during the maybe 100 year window that our signal goes past?

On the inverse, the question is not just one of how many intelligent civilisations there may be, but how many of them may have used high-power radio, and for what period, and what the odds are of their use of the technology having been at exactly the right time ago to match their distance from us to reach now, while we are listening, which we also probably won't do for much over a century.

The Heart Of Gold might give you the odds, but I reckon they're a lot worse than the numbers that get bandied about from the assumptions fed into the Drake Equation.

 

[GAMETHEORY]

...

 

[mcguyver]

One thing's for sure, if an alien was to visit earth... I'm personally stepping up and begging them to take me away with them.

you Gonna be the first negro slave in space.

 

[World B Free]

...

ARE WE ALONE? ....Well, they weren't in this OLD ASS THREAD YOU HAD TO BUMP from 2012