Extraterrestrial Life

I think there is life out there, but I do not wish for us to meet it, and vice versa, because like LorDrrr said, there would simply be conflict and war, and it would generally cause more problems.

I think that there is life out there and that whe should send out war ships to destroy any planets with living beeings on it j/k

I posted a video somewhere a little while back… there was a scientist who found that the universe contains the base code for life within every single molecule… so when the correct conditions for life are present, there will be life there no matter what. They did some kind of test and found this to be true.

If you take a look at our DNA for example, the full coding of your DNA can be found in each individual cell. So its not really that far-fetched that the universe contains a blue-print for life on a molecular level. With the test they performed, the only conditions they used were extreme heat - no water… and it still produced the basic first signs of life.

It’s quite silly to believe we are the only intelligent life in this universe which seems to be infinite in size… there are at least 100 MILLION stars within this 1 galaxy. There are at least 100 BILLION galaxies out there… if not more… thats 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000… etc… stars many of which would have orbiting planetary bodies (solar systems), thus there would be a good chance for the right conditions to be present. And granted what I said earlier is indeed true, then the universe could be literally teeming with life.

As Turin mentioned, a potential contact with extraterrestial civilization requires a great amount of luck to “catch” a very small span - not only a span of space (neighbourhood of several light years), but also a span of time. We might have missed an enormous amount of chances to contact with other civilization, because they have simply extinct before they “space-time span” overlapped ours.

But if any of them survived long enough, they are probably extremely advanced: upon meeting we could probably easily treat them as gods. Thus we can’t detect them as they are most likely using completely different means of communications. And if they are aware of our existence, it’s quite likely that they aren’t even slightly interested in having contact with such primitive civilization.

I’d be interested in seeing this for myself if you can post it again (or PM me). I minored in ecology and so life science in general interests me quite a bit. In any event, even the assumption that extraterrestrial life has to be DNA-based is a false one; one that might not have even held for all Earth’s history. Do a search for Cairns-Smith and the “inorganic mineral” theory of abiogenesis, for just one (fascinating) example… Richard Dawkins discusses it at length in The Blind Watchmaker.

You’ve got an interesting assumption here as well that I always find interesting. I’ll illustrate it by its inverse: what if it’s actually impossible for civilizations to become much more advanced than we are? Even if you assume something like a “technological singularity” inspired by the invention of free-willed AGI (which probably spells the doom for the inventing species, by the way), who’s to say that all the sci-fi tech we assume is waiting to be discovered is really possible?

FTL appears to be utterly impossible right now – don’t believe what you read in flaky magazines like New Scientist that posit that FTL would be possible “if only [fill in nonsense concept like negative energy].” It may very well be the case that the laws of the universe don’t allow god-like entities to actually exist. For which I would be grateful, actually. Such entities might not even recognize our sentience!

Yes, I was just thinking of that… what if evolution is a universal thing? where all life is at the exact same point and there are no alien species that are more advanced than us. They probably have microwave dishes too trying to pick up our radio waves, but because our radio waves take a certain amount of time to reach their system, its kind of futile both ways. But there is also the idea that once a species reaches a certain point in their evolution, they become more spiritually orientated… moving into a higher dimension, and as a result, either can’t or choose not to interfere with the evolution of other species.

A wormhole is just as stupid as traveling at the speed of light apparently… both require an infinte amount of energy… UNLESS you were to change the mass to zero… or very close to zero… the only way to do that would be to convert the craft and its occupants into light photons, then convert them back to normal once the travel is complete. You also have to think about what would happen if traveling through space at light speed… i.e. small asteroids, space debris, etc. if that were to hit the craft at such a speed it would cause damage. I can’t believe we are still using rockets though… they are basically just large missiles. We have computers, the internet, the telephone, the television, quantum physics… yet we still think that traveling in space is best done using a rocket? come on… they should shut NASA down or at least re-focus their efforts on something more productive and practical.

Turin: that video will be too hard for me to find sorry. It was about ancient technology, atlantean quartz crystals or something. I find it interesting that biologists are now discovering (or so i hear) that the mind/consciousness can alter its own bio-chemistry… if you think you are going to be sick, then you will be. One guy (on C2C) went as far to say if you fully believed you could live young forever, then you could. But I think that may be a bit off-topic.

I agree. Surely theres some living animal, or plant or even bacteria. Would be interesting to see a real life extra-terrestrial (and I don’t mean aliens with big eyes). Wonder what abilities they would have, and how they would differ from other species.

While I would argue that the process of evolution is indeed universal, inasmuch as that we have good reason to understand that it will be the process by which life develops all over the universe, evolution has nothing to do with the technological development of a civilization. For example humans have gone from “ouch, fire burn!” to “LOLZ intarwebz!” without any associated biological evolution.

[mod]Trolling removed. :bruno:[/mod]

[mod]More trolling removed. :bruno:[/mod]

Rockets are a perfectly viable method of getting off the ground. There are lots of interesting uses of more exotic propulsion methods, some of which are really being used today in robotic craft or experiments (ion drives, for example). But the exotic propulsion methods that have enough delta-V to get you off the ground and into orbit would all have inherently bad side-effects… like bathing the launch site in gamma radiation.

[mod]Yet more bashing removed. :bruno:[/mod]

:rofl: Never mind!

If NASA can find even the simplest of life (we’re talking single cell organism simple), even in the form of fossils on another planet(say, mars)/moon/object, then it means that life in the universe is very common and exists in countless other galaxies…On the other hand if we can’t find any life on other planets or proto-planets, then it means that in all likelihood life is extremely rare in the universe and perhaps limited to a select few areas of the cosmos.

I would have to agree that rockets are a reasonable method of reaching the necessary velocity to escape earth’s gravitational hold, but you’re right, they aren’t practical for long term travel(as solid and liquid fuel are not only heavy, but are depleted quickly). This is the reason why we invented Ion engines(in conjunction with gravity-assist maneuvers) to accommodate long term missions. Basically you have the satellite, or whatever you are sending, equipped with a very compact nuclear reactor. Sure this doesn’t create a significant amount of thrust(in fact, it is equivalent to the downward force exerted by a small stack of papers), but since you’ve reached a decent speed through gravity-assist maneuvers, the ion engine is sufficient. Not only that, but the half-life of the radioactive elements within the reactor is an incredibly long time(insert energizer slogan here).

Finally I think it is reasonable to assume that evolution is universal. It isn’t a law of nature after all, rather a process that all organisms undergo to ensure their continuing survival. In the end, if an organism didn’t wish to adapt and survive, I don’t think it would make it much farther than the first run.

You’ve got RTG and ion-drives mixed up with each other. The RTG, which is the radioactive part, is not a nuclear reactor in the conventional sense of the term (fission). It works via the decay of a long-half-life radioisotope. The RTG is a power source, not an engine.

The ion drive uses an arrangement of cathodes (you know, like in your old TV?) to ionize an inert gas (like xenon) in such a way as to cause thrust. This requires a power source and the reaction mass (the gas). The power source can be an RTG, but they can also be solar cells, or whatever.

Nitpick: organisms don’t adapt and evolve, species do. :wink: Or, more to be more technically accurate, allele frequencies change.

I believe extraterrestrials are out there somewhere, and if they’re intelligent have likely even made contact with people. I mean sure you can look at all those UFO pictures/videos but they prove absolutely nothing, most of them are regularly verified as hoaxes. There are people who create this fake media to encourage this sort of thing. There’s not really any concrete proof, who knows if there will be any. Not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist or anything (I’m not), but it’s entirely possible that aliens have made contact with people on Earth in important governmental positions. That’s who I’d go to first. Who knows? They might be covering it up, I doubt society in general would be ready for a shock like that.

Anyway I’ll stop rambling, this is all just my crazy speculation. :content:

Turin… don’t shoot the messenger… I’m just entertaining idea’s here so please dont get all skeptic and scientific on me because without imagination and creativity, brilliant technology such as the internet would have never been created in the first place.

[mod]Ranting and mild flaming removed. :bruno:[/mod]

Rad… the thing is… ION drives will not transport HUMANS to another star system any time soon. Even travelling at the speed of light would still take approx. 8 years to reach even the closest star. And as i was saying before, even if you could travel at the speed of light, stay alive in the space-craft for 8 years… the space-craft would not make it there intact unless you had some super-dooper plasma shield. Many scientists have also said that its impossible because the thrust and mass reach infinity… I just think they are looking at it all the wrong way and money is being wasted that could be spent on saving fellow human beings e.g. all the poor and sick people in the world.

Trolling removed. :bruno:

GAH , stop spamming aroung !!
anyways, i think that there is indeed live on other planets , also that they aware of the existence of earth , but the never will visit us :content:

Apparently you are trying to spell ultimate end of our scienific progress in near future, but you aren’t then only one who attempted at it. Just recall Enlightment age or beginning of XX century: it was pretty common to believe that all mysteries of nature will be solved soon. Plus, such ‘decadential’ thinking isn’t exclusive to science, if we mention Fukuyama’s “The End of History”, for example.
So personally, I don’t worry that our technological progress will be thwarted in near or further future and thus I also assume that existence of highly advanced (much more than us) civilisations is perfectly possible.

You have probably misunderstood the meaning of ‘god-like’ if have used previously. Artur C. Clarke stated that any sufficiently advanced technology can be mistold as magic and that’s what I meant. If you would present any of inventions being in common use currently to most of people living few hundred years ago, only single ones would probably try to find any explanation of their functionality that would be at least slightly scientific. Still we - creators of those inventions - are probably very far from harnessing all possiblities given by laws of universe we live in. Therefore a subjective perspective of highly advanced aliens as ‘gods’ has more in common with relative difference between them and us rather than their absolute state of development, probably capped by laws of psychics such as speed of light being the upper bondary for all velocities.

And since I can’t hestitate:

It took me a while to recognize which phrase evolved first :wink:

As a species we are arogent to think in a universe so vast with so many other galaxys like are’s and also not like ares that there couldn’t be life. We haven’t the techknowledgy both in the detection of other species/intelegent life or the ability to traverse space itself to even remotely say that we are the only species in the universe. This is not a belief mearly a true statement if life can happen on this planet then it can happen in others somewhere else in the universe.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t think we’re currently near the fundamental limits of progress – in fact, I’m making the exact opposite argument elsewhere right now – but it’s entirely possible that there is a limit (somewhere) of progress that may be closer than Clark’s “magic.” But more importantly, the limit of technological progress for our particular species may not be THE limit. Several (sobering) possibilities exist:

  • We may be unable to avoid killing ourselves off before we reach the limits of technology (i.e. large-scale nuclear exchange, superbug, etc.)
  • Our species may not be intelligent enough to reach that point. After all, our brains evolved chasing game on the savanna… only our best and brightest can even come close to understanding the fundamental laws of nature (as we have modeled them).
  • Some cosmic accident may wipe us out (i.e. big asteroid strike, nearby supernova explosion).
  • Some extraterrestrial species might hate the Ally McBeal reruns they’re getting via radio telescope and decide to wipe us out via relativistic kill vehicle (i.e. small asteroid thrown at some small but significant fraction of c).
  • We may create a new species (AGI) which becomes the de facto thinking caste of our civilization – tech would advance, but it really wouldn’t be “our” tech.

I would love to be wrong on any of these, of course. But I suspect either the first one or the last one will be the result (as the last one can trump the middle ones).

:rofl:

It is indeed possible. Let’s treat the three “doom” scenarios as one and assume that we were lucky enough to avoid being wiped out. Plus, let’s also assume that at the point when AI would be possible to create, we would use associated technology rather to enchance capabilities of our bodies (and brains), effectively merging with our technology and pushing the evolution further (and therefore removing the variant of our species being not intelligent enough) . Ultimately, if we avoid extinction we may reach a state when we could only say: “There is nothing more to discover and invent as the universe itself limits us”. Pretty depressing scenario, I must say.
Fortunately it’s probably either false or - as I described above - very, very far. I think that answering on this problem is more like philosophical challenge rather than a scientific one. It’s kind of “metascience” - investigation of scientifical development using scietific methods. Even if we have means for it, we don’t have many specimens to investigate :slight_smile:

[mod]Flaming removed. :bruno:[/mod]

Sure. In fact, I know an AI researcher who posits that “downloaded” human brains seem likely right now to be the first AIs. His research group is trying to beat that effort with “true” AIs, of course, but there are some fascinating dangers associated with that work. That being said, the scenario you’ve outlined actually means we’re talking about a transhuman species, so technically homo sapiens would be extinct. :wink:

Why’s that? If it’s a fundamental limit rather than a practical one, then whatever species has access to it would have mind-boggling energy resources. Enough to give a whole species of space-faring AIs until the heat death of the universe to see new sights and explore new things, have new experiences. Sounds wonderful to me. Just because you have run against the limits of physics doesn’t mean you’ve run into the limits of experience. Just because you’ve discovered all the fundamental laws of the universe doesn’t mean you’ve tried every possible application of those laws. Not by a long shot.

By way of analogy: Julia Childs knew everything there was to know about cooking, but that didn’t stop her from trying new food.

I highly doubt it’s useful in terms of achieving any practical results… but that’s like the least important point of (m)any discussions :wink:

What’s that? I heard about speculations about “uploading” ‘content’ of human brain into a computing and carry on living as ‘AI’ in virtual reality. But opposite direction? Programming human brain like a computer?..

That’s an inhrenent part of evolution :smile:

Fair enough. And physics is not the only science out there. For example, a case of society knowing all fundamental laws about the universe would be intriguiting as a subject of social examination.