Alien intelligence

[cheeky_monkey]

sounds to me that if you lived in the middle ages you would have believed the earth was flat...or the sun went round the earth etc...truth is the universe and all that it encompasses if it is the only universe out there..is way beyond our limited intelligence...as far as the human race is concerend it is my belief that we havnt even dipped our toe into the ocean of knowledge as yet!

[WBSH]

It is a bit arrogant to suggest that extraterrestrial life doesn't exist - based merely on the fact that humans have never come across them.

The sheer size of the universe and it's time scale is the main factor in the likeliness of extraterrestrial life. And I say like likeliness, because it's also arrogant to assume that there is definatly life out there as well. Because we know so little of the universe - it's impossible to assume both ways.

The sheer size of the universe and it's time scale will have to beat the incredible odds at which life can form - for there to actually be life at all.

Also, the sheer size of the universe and it's time scale may also suggest why we have never encountered such life - maybe we are just too far away and remote. Again I think there is a slight tinge of arrogance to "Fermi's paradox". Why exactly would extraterrestrial life want to visit us anyway, should they exist?!?

Edited July 21, 2007 by WBSH

[Gray-Wolf]

You know full well that if you roll a die enough times you'll thow 3 six's ,one after the other, I imagine it to be the same with life in the universe. It is very, very old out there and star systems have been born and died many times over before our patch of space rubble coalessed into our little system. It is very ,very big out there (a bound infinity) so many many many many many many...........(you get the point), planets have been born, matured and then blasted into oblivion by their star (or remain as cold rocks out there in the cosmos) Why then is it logical to suppose life only ever sparked up here, now, in all this time and space?

[Bobby]

I don't think it's arrogant at all to suggest that we are alone. Arrogance doesn't come into it, it's just looking at the evidence and making a decision based on it. Fed up of personal jibes on this forum.

Anyway, I am not saying that there isn't ET life, just that its logical to think that there isn't, as there is no evidence of it, and we just don't know how life is created. Life just could be a incredible coincidence, a miraclous perhaps even quantum event of such inredible freakness it will never be repeated. Since we still have no idea how life started, why isn't that a good possibility?

Edited July 21, 2007 by Magpie

[WBSH]

There is no evidence that life does exist on other planets - thats true.

But there is also no evidence that there isn't other form of life out there in the universe.

So therefore I don't think it's logical to think that there is or isn't - because we know too little about what is out there.

[Bobby]

There is no evidence that life does exist on other planets - thats true.

But there is also no evidence that there isn't other form of life out there in the universe.

So therefore I don't think it's logical to think that there is or isn't - because we know too little about what is out there.

Well, there is no evidence that there aren't pink leprechaun santas living in a underground palace on Pluto. Stll no reason to believe in it though, because no evidence backs it. It is logical to assume that there isn't life, from a logical standpoint, because of Occam's razor - the simplest explanation is most likely. It is true though that nobody can say there isn't life out there, because we don't know. But if one is to take a stance, the logical one (I sound like Spock now) is that there isn't ET life.

[Gray-Wolf]

I think it far more reasonable to accept that ,for life to have sparked off here, it is quite a common event throughout space and time. Because the numbers against this being the case are so mind bogglingly large it is a far safer bet (I.M.H.O.) to say what occured here is 'common' and not in any way 'freakish'.

[Roger J Smith]

The thing I don't understand about alien intelligence is this -- they fly eighteen gazillion miles through the galaxy, find the earth no problem at all, then crash land into New Mexico and all die with no signs of parachutes or fire-fighting equipment, so really, how intelligent can they be?

[SP1986]

The thing I don't understand about alien intelligence is this -- they fly eighteen gazillion miles through the galaxy, find the earth no problem at all, then crash land into New Mexico and all die with no signs of parachutes or fire-fighting equipment, so really, how intelligent can they be?

To be honest if the Earth was created near the time of the big bang (or whatever event started the creation of Earth - but please I hope no one starts a debate on that it may become repetitive), then we can assume that every other planet in the universe has the same timings of building blocks for life - unless say a star with a stronger energy source can create life and 'evolve' it quicker (our sun doesnt have a strong energy source compared to some stars in our galaxy for instance), so therefore there probably are no life forms capable of travelling those 18 gazillion miles through the galaxy.

The chance is therefore that most life forms are probably made out of the same stuff, and possess less or as much intelligence as we do.

[SnowBear]

Its an unknown, and will be for some time, I see it pointless arguing about it to be honest.

Using probability, with the size of the universe, the number of stars and planets out there, the number that possibly are able to support life, I would say it is very likely that there is life and probably even intelligent life out there somewhere. But with the ridiculously large distances involved and the resources needed to travel those distances, I would say that Alien Contact is and always will be a very very very rare occurance if at all.

[Bobby]

My point though is that no matter how big the universe, and no matter how many planets are like Earth with all the ingredients we know of for life, we still don't have any idea whatsoever how life started do we? Unless we know that, we just can't say "life is common" because how can we say that if we don't know how it started here on Earth?

It could be an exceptionally rare event that came about as a freak mixture of the perfect conditions, so freak that it may have never happened before and never happened elsewhere. After all, life only started on Earth once. Since there is of yet no evidence for ET, this possibility is looking the most likely.

Of course, ultimately, I don't know. Nobody does. But if we are to make an educated guess, logic weighs towards that we are alone.

Edited July 23, 2007 by Magpie

[cheeky_monkey]

My point though is that no matter how big the universe, and no matter how many planets are like Earth with all the ingredients we know of for life, we still don't have any idea whatsoever how life started do we? Unless we know that, we just can't say "life is common" because how can we say that if we don't know how it started here on Earth?

It could be an exceptionally rare event that came about as a freak mixture of the perfect conditions, so freak that it may have never happened before and never happened elsewhere. After all, life only started on Earth once. Since there is of yet no evidence for ET, this possibility is looking the most likely.

Of course, ultimately, I don't know. Nobody does. But if we are to make an educated guess, logic weighs towards that we are alone.

off course many believe there could be billions of different universes!!....makes the mind boggle

[Tim B]

Can someone remind me what the oxygen carrier in our blood is (or what it binds to, rather) and where else this element is found?

I think summer beer may have kill many brain cells, thanks.

[Bobby]

Can someone remind me what the oxygen carrier in our blood is (or what it binds to, rather) and where else this element is found?

I think summer beer may have kill many brain cells, thanks.

Iron?

[SnowBear]

Iron it is, Haemoglobin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemoglobin

[snow raven]

Like anything that hasnt been proven or disproven - its down to the belief of the individual.

Considering humans have walked the earth for millions of years (or the such like) and we only went up to space 38 years ago, its a bit premature for any of us to poo poo another form of life existance.

[Roger J Smith]

I suppose the main objection to alien intelligence, other than my lame witticisms earlier, would be as follows.

If they exist, then why haven't they made their presence known to us?

We aren't shy about lording it over apes, dolphins, whales and cats, the most intelligent life forms on the planet other than us (or that's our propaganda), and as for dogs, we even use them for our own purposes.

Is there some ethical advancement that has taken place among the alien life forms that prevents them from lording it over us in a similar way, at least showing off their abilities so that we can be sure they are there?

Somewhat different question -- if we believe in God, is He an alien life form and are some of the other beings mentioned in the Bible and elsewhere alien life forms also, for example, angels, seraphim, cherubim, even demons for that matter?

So is this the way in which alien intelligence has been shown to exist, complete with a religious paradigm inviting or even commanding worship of them?

Or, are we to believe that alien intelligence is so refined that they have taken pity on us and made every effort to hide their galactic civilization from our prying eyes?

I think it must be the latter, because if the human race is the most highly evolved life form in the universe after 13.5 billion years or whatever it has been, then that's not saying much, is it?

[Bobby]

I don't see why aliens would be more intelligent than us. We are far more advanced than we were 100 years ago, yet are we more intelligent than the people back then? I doubt it. More technologically advanced != more intelligent. Unless they artifically make themselves more intelligent with computers or eugenics or something.

[PersianPaladin]

If the aliens had one huge powerful telescope and we likewise - that could see each others planets; they would likely see us in the stoneage and as cavemen and thus not very 'advanced' at all. We would probably be staring at a planet which was uninhabited and in early forms of life, and at the same time we were staring at their home planet...there could be an alien invasion within the next few hours.

Weird eh?

[Bobby]

If the aliens had one huge powerful telescope and we likewise - that could see each others planets; they would likely see us in the stoneage and as cavemen and thus not very 'advanced' at all. We would probably be staring at a planet which was uninhabited and in early forms of life, and at the same time we were staring at their home planet...there could be an alien invasion within the next few hours.

Weird eh?

Very true that, weird indeed.

[SnowBear]

If we even did have aliens in our galaxy, they probably wouldn't know were even exist yet as PP says. As they peer through their telescope from say the other side of the galaxy, they would see Earth as it was 100,000 years ago, and no "intelligent" species around and mark Earth as "Return to look in the future, possible intelligent life may come to be" or "Send probe to reach in 1 million years time". By which time humans may not exist by the time it reaches here and may miss the epoch of Humans altogether.

As we look out into space, we look back in time, the other side of the galaxy as it was 100,000 years ago, Andromeda as it was I think its 5 Million years ago and so on.

I am reading a book at the moment on time and space etc, called The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, which addresses these very issues, very interesting. It includes the spacetime theories, quantum theories, inflation theories, etc etc of cosmology. Once you can sort of come to terms with the concept of just how big, weird and complex the universe is you can understand that its not unrealistic for there to have been no contact at all yet, but at the same time the possibility that life is very wide spread out there.

Edited August 1, 2007 by SnowBear

[Bobby]

If we even did have aliens in our galaxy, they probably wouldn't know were even exist yet as PP says. As they peer through their telescope from say the other side of the galaxy, they would see Earth as it was 100,000 years ago, and no "intelligent" species around and mark Earth as "Return to look in the future, possible intelligent life may come to be" or "Send probe to reach in 1 million years time". By which time humans may not exist by the time it reaches here and may miss the epoch of Humans altogether.

As we look out into space, we look back in time, the other side of the galaxy as it was 100,000 years ago, Andromeda as it was I think its 5 Million years ago and so on.

I am reading a book at the moment on time and space etc, called The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, which addresses these very issues, very interesting. It includes the spacetime theories, quantum theories, inflation theories, etc etc of cosmology. Once you can sort of come to terms with the concept of just how big, weird and complex the universe is you can understand that its not unrealistic for there to have been no contact at all yet, but at the same time the possibility that life is very wide spread out there.

That's true. What is a good possibility is that if there are civlizations out there, they are so far away that we will never see each other. Even at the speed of light it's going to take tens of thousands of light years to get here from some places of just this galaxy, let alone other galaxies. So even if life is relatively common, the nearest civilization to us could be many thousands of light years away. I doubt they would bother to come that far and take that long to visit us even if they knew we were here. It's also possible of course that a civilization may only exist for a few centuries before destroying themselves.

Perhaps all civilizations at a certain stage try an advanced scientific experiment and end up creating a black hole or something which annihilates their planet. Or some experiment with anti matter goes wrong and their entire solar system is destroyed, and we are next. Would explain a lack of contact. Could theorise forever though.

Anyway, til there is contact, I shall still take the stance that we are alone.

[SP1986]

Thats very true that, what PP said, even if we had the power to visit their planet, the laws of time would govern that we might never find a planet with life on. If you think that the stars we see now are how they looked 1000 years ago, and it took us maybe 3000 years to get to the Andromeda galaxy, the only few bits of life may have been killed off by an asteroid or something.

It must be very strange because with a really powerful telescope you could see a planet about 2 million light years away for example, and say we may see the planet through our telescope, and then say we had a carrier that could get us there in 10 minutes, the planet might be gone, it might have been destroyed because we saw as it was 2 billion years ago through the telescope, not at that current time.

Boggles the mind and makes me believe that we will never be able to travel to another planet to find life because we dont have the intelligence or the ability to comprehend the workings of spatial time networks over a large area. The reason being I think the universe is largely in its infancy - for example I think if stars last for say 20 billion years on average and there are new stars being created all the time, then the universe would probably last for a good deal longer so perhaps who knows what may happen in the future

[A.J]

That's true. What is a good possibility is that if there are civlizations out there, they are so far away that we will never see each other. Even at the speed of light it's going to take tens of thousands of light years to get here from some places of just this galaxy, let alone other galaxies. So even if life is relatively common, the nearest civilization to us could be many thousands of light years away. I doubt they would bother to come that far and take that long to visit us even if they knew we were here. It's also possible of course that a civilization may only exist for a few centuries before destroying themselves.

Perhaps all civilizations at a certain stage try an advanced scientific experiment and end up creating a black hole or something which annihilates their planet. Or some experiment with anti matter goes wrong and their entire solar system is destroyed, and we are next. Would explain a lack of contact. Could theorise forever though.

Anyway, til there is contact, I shall still take the stance that we are alone.

Some interesting points from Magpie, the sheer size of the universe might suggest that advanced civilizations could be hundreds if not thousands of light years apart making contact impossible ever, however, the law of averages suggest that in taking the sheer age of the universe 13 billion years plus, verses the earth age 5 billion years, there might well have been countless civilizations flourishing at any given point in time, the famous 'Drakes equation' suggest this.....as to why contact has never been made?.....my two pennies are as follows....reason 1: as said earlier, the sheer distance involved makes contact improbable....reason 2: advanced intelligence on our planet capable of interpreting an alien contact has only been around for less than a billionth of the planet's history.....reason 3...to an alien civilization, our planet may be as unimportant to paraphrase Jodie Foster in the film 'contact' 'as a microbe on an ant hill in africa is to us'.....reason 4....once an alien civilization reaches certain advancements in technology, they self destruct, such as war, scientific experiement gone wrong etc.......personally reason 4 is the one that springs to mind for me, how close has the human race come, in its incredibly short time span, to destroy its self with war?......scary thinking!....and also the human race and indeed our planet could be on the brink of destruction with these so called particle accelerator scientific experiments as reports suggest that these scientists are playing with forces that should be left well alone!! (black holes & 'exotic particle' creation such as 'stranglets')

[SnowBear]

and also the human race and indeed our planet could be on the brink of destruction with these so called particle accelerator scientific experiments as reports suggest that these scientists are playing with forces that should be left well alone!! (black holes & 'exotic particle' creation such as 'stranglets')

Well, its quite possible that the universe we see all comes from a tiny quantum jitter leading to a rapid inflation of spacetime etc due to repulsive gravity, the anomaly weighing no more than 20kg. In the split moments after the inflation, the law of gravity changed, and gravity became attractive only as the mechanics went from quantum sizes to larger. If 20kg is all it took, it does cause some concern I guess as to what they are smashing and playing with in these atom smashers etc. But, I would say to produce such a large inflation anomaly in a quantum field a far larger amount of energy and far higher temperatures than we can obtain on earth would be needed, even at quantum levels. Who knows. Maybe human meddling will be our undoing.