Are we alone.... The answer is ''Yes''

Cork boy 55

You would think we would have seen or heard something by now
some sign of Civilization in the cosmos
A signal, huge structure or pollution or something..

Leaving aside the detection of a signal the most likely first contact
will a be a AI robotic probe launching satellites into orbit followed by probes to surface, Like NASA's mission to mars.

I suggest we destroy the robot probes, satellites and robot mother ship ASAP.
Best to stay hidden until we have developed interstellar Warfare capability.


:pac: :eek:

Thus in one ETI contact scenario, the ETI use humanity for entertainment purposes just as we
use sea lions and seals for this. Shklovskii and Sagan continue to point out that ETI may
desire to be the sole galactic power and will eliminate other life forms when they start to get in
the way. Similarly, an ETI may simply be interested in using us as a means for growth of their
economy. On an individual level they may not be interested in killing us, but may be interested
in incorporating us into their civilization so they can sell us their products, keep us as pets, or
have us mine raw materials for them. Such a scenario could be harmful or beneficial to us,
depending on the methods they use to bring us into their society.

Baum, Seth; Haqq-Misra, Jacob; Domagal-Goldman, Shawn. , Acta Astronautica, 2011, 68 (11-12):2014-2129, April 22, 2011, accessed August 18, 2011.
"Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis"

Seaneh

Just in response to the OP and ignoring everything else in this thread, here is a really interesting essay/article by Geoffrey Miller, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at University of New Mexico entitled "Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens" from SeedMagazine.com.

maninasia

If life starts so early then I have no doubt that more than one form of life would have taken hold at this stage.

I've explained why this could be unlikely, the ecological niches have already been occupied. I also think that it gives a strong hint that life came here ready to go in the form of bacteria, probably on a cometary fragment of ice and rock.

Again I dont know enough about virues, fungui and bacteria's inner workings but its something I'll look into to see if there is a big difference or if there is definitely connecting all these life forms.

They are all definitely related, they all share the same nucleic acid chemistry and metabolic processes more or less. You can take a gene from a fungus, virus, plant, animal or insect and with little effort and a little bit of tweaking use it to make a functional protein in a bacteria. They really are that similar.

maninasia

You would think we would have seen or heard something by now
some sign of Civilization in the cosmos
A signal, huge structure or pollution or something..

A poster mentioned earlier looking out from Galway across from the Atlantic Ocean and not being aware of the continent of North America on the other shore. That's where we are right about now. It's a technological problem, we simply don't have the imaging or processing power to detect other civilisations at present.

im invisible

I thought i remember hearing somewhere, years ago now, about some extremeophile bacteria that was different somehow, different cellular chemestry, i dont know

maninasia

david75 wrote: »

not to get all Star Trek about it but why is it life can't evolve in liquid or gaseous form? always thought the argument that life has to be carbon based was a bit arrogant.

But we are mostly water so we you could already say we are liquid based life.
As for gas there are some theories about plasma based life forms. As long as you have some structure, some means of communication and energy storage and generation, why not?

The gas giants have a lot of energy swirling around and are incredibly massive, so do they have any lifeforms that have evolved to take advantage of this and the huge amount of real estate available?

It is hugely arrogant to assume carbon formed life is the most prevalent, if we create silicon based artificial lifeforms in our lifetime they are actually silicon based.

maninasia

dyer wrote: »

I haven't heard anyone mention quantum mechanics as a viable mode of communication yet. Why waste all that energy communicating when we could theoretically use quantum entanglement to our advantage? There is a great article here with Anton Zeilinger about his work in the field : http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jul-aug/14-anton-zeilinger-teleports-photons-taught-the-dalai-lama

According to the theory of quantum mechanics, entanglement cannot be used to transmit information on it's own i.e. you can entangle two photons, separate them and observe the spin of one, but you have no idea if what you are observing is a random event or not.

To provide the information for 'teleportation' Star Trek (quantum deconstruction/reconstruction) style you need to send a photon in the normal method to the entangled partners. So teleportation is possible as this scientist has proved, but it cannot be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light. In theory you could have some type of machines with 'quantum goo' material placed in various regions of the galaxy and transmit the information to reconstruct the objects without actually having to send the objects themselves but

a) The original object will be destroyed in the process
b) You are limited by the speed of light of the placement of the machines and quantum goo in the first place which must take place ahead of time
c) You are limited by the speed of light for the speed of teleportation (not bad though as physically travelling at the speed of light would take infinite energy!)
d) You need an awesomely powerful computer at both ends to both encode and decode the information of all the quantum states of all the atoms of all the molecules in the object, this may only be possible ironically by using a quantum computer

maninasia

im invisible wrote: »

I thought i remember hearing somewhere, years ago now, about some extremeophile bacteria that was different somehow, different cellular chemestry, i dont know

There are a few branches that are 'out there' in terms of their metabolic processes but ultimately they are still all traceable back to a single common ancestor. That's not to say something that lives on Earth that isn't related to us doesn't exist, but it has never been found.

Tree of Life
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Phylogenetic_tree.svg/450px-Phylogenetic_tree.svg.png

dyer

Isn't that what his experiments have shown? ie, refute Bells theorem of local realism? He does admit that there are some loopholes that need to be closed, but if it works in practical application, then we'd have little reason to believe otherwise.. ahem, until proven otherwise It's impossible to foresee where these new discoveries might take us but i think it's an exciting glimpse of what might yet be to come.

For example, say you are experimenting with entangled photons. As soon as you measure one of the entangled photons in a detector and find that its polarization—that is, the orientation of its waves—is horizontal, the other one in the pair is instantly projected into a horizontal state. And this happens not because the photons were both horizontally polarized from the beginning. That is contradicted by the experiments. It doesn’t matter whether you look at the two particles at the same time, separated over large distances, or one after the other; the results are the same. So it seems as if quantum mechanics doesn’t care about space and time.

How were you eventually able to create these states?

We found a way. To do this you need four photons—two photons entangled in one state and the other two photons entangled in another state. Then we send one photon from each pair into a detector, and you measure only one in such a way that you don’t know where this one photon you measure came from, from the first pair or from the second pair. If you do that right, the remaining three photons end up being entangled.

ZeRoY

You guys should have done that online Astrobiology Course that started 3 weeks ago, its fab!

Capt'n Midnight

david75 wrote: »

not to get all Star Trek about it but why is it life can't evolve in liquid or gaseous form? always thought the argument that life has to be carbon based was a bit arrogant.

Life is liquid.

every living cell is just a bag of water containing chemicals

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2bDetailsoforigin.shtml



carbon creates Goldilocks bonds, not too tight , not too loose, just right , not with it's self but with other atoms

people keep going on about C-C-C-C chains and then compare them to Si-O-Si-O chains

That's missing the whole point, Life is not based on carbon chains.

The carbon-carbon bonds mean the Lego bricks are stable

Life is based on small carbon compounds that can be linked together via other bonds. Like the studs on Lego

Protein is -C-C-N-C-C-N- (peptide bond / rings)

Sugars contain -C-C-O-C-C-

DNA contains the above and -C-O-P-O-C-



Also the Millar experiments and the evidence from radioastronomy show that carbon pre-cursors are easily accumulated through time and space. Similar silicon compounds aren't even though the earths crust is 59% Silicon and 28% Oxygen and just 13% of everything else.



Perhaps nitrogen / phosphorous / sulphur etc. might form analagous structures but it would have to be in an environment with lower energy and even then carbon is still a contender

maninasia

Of course carbon is just a very malleable atom that likes to combine stably with itself and other molecules.

However..we are already close to creating artificial lifeforms using doped silicon chemistry. If these really pass through a singularity then they can reproduce independently of us and fulfill all conditions to be certified as living things. They would then go on to evolve into something else according to the local conditions that they found at the time.

It's even possible to create living organisms that entirely exist only in bits and bytes Matrix style.

How much of life in the universe evolved 'a priori' and how much of life evolved from an earlier precursor chemistry or was deliberately created by intelligent civilizations? We obviously don't have a clue.

Life involves self propagating chemicals or units of information that evolve over time, I don't think we should get hung up on our particular version.

mickmackey1

maninasia wrote: »

A poster mentioned earlier looking out from Galway across from the Atlantic Ocean and not being aware of the continent of North America on the other shore. That's where we are right about now. It's a technological problem, we simply don't have the imaging or processing power to detect other civilisations at present.

That misses the point of the Fermi Paradox though. It doesn't matter what is the level of our technology, the mystery is why none of their technology is controlling us, considering that trillions of planets are billions of years older than the Earth.

Cork boy 55

Some people speculate that near earth object 1991 VG is in fact a
bracewell probe of some sort

A bracewell probe being a robotic interstellar space probe with a high level of artificial intelligence

Steele, D. (1995). "SETA and 1991 VG". The Observatory 115: 78–83.
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1995Obs...115...78S&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

Daveysil15

Maybe we’re all descendents of the Anunnaki?

Capt'n Midnight

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

Some people speculate that near earth object 1991 VG is in fact a
bracewell probe of some sort

what if it's a beserker probe ? :eek:

Kxiii

I saw this article on Cracked 5 Theories Why We Haven't Discovered Alien Life thought I'd share it here.

Capt'n Midnight

Daveysil15 wrote: »

Maybe we’re all descendents of the Anunnaki?

Looking around here I guess there are a lot that trace their roots back to the Golgafrincham B Ark

flanna01

Guys.... There are some wonderful comments being posted, but are we straying off the beaten path...?

For arguments sake... Let's just assume the Universe is teaming with life. It has no bearing on the human race... The simple reason being that we are too far apart to ever interact with another intelligent race.

I would suggest that even our radio waves will never reach another inhabited planet? Space is practically a massive empty vacuum, an area so vast, that the human mind cannot fully comprehend how big it really is....

The planet Earth will always be 'alone'. We will never engage in any type of communication with another people - Never.

In fact, if history has taught us anything.. We will probably destroy ourselves before any probe gets near another star system... Any intelligent race that captures a voyager probe, will be holding an instrument of a long extinct race.

Curly Judge

flanna01 wrote: »

Guys.... There are some wonderful comments being posted, but are we straying off the beaten path...?

For arguments sake... Let's just assume the Universe is teaming with life. It has no bearing on the human race... The simple reason being that we are too far apart to ever interact with another intelligent race.

I would suggest that even our radio waves will never reach another inhabited planet? Space is practically a massive empty vacuum, an area so vast, that the human mind cannot fully comprehend how big it really is....

The planet Earth will always be 'alone'. We will never engage in any type of communication with another people - Never.

In fact, if history has taught us anything.. We will probably destroy ourselves before any probe gets near another star system... Any intelligent race that captures a voyager probe, will be holding an instrument of a long extinct race.

How has history taught us that?

Justin1982

maninasia wrote: »

I've explained why this could be unlikely, the ecological niches have already been occupied. I also think that it gives a strong hint that life came here ready to go in the form of bacteria, probably on a cometary fragment of ice and rock.

Hmmm. Somewhat. If life had a decent chance of appearing every million years on a planet like earth then, possibly most of them might not get too far, some of them would be killed by life already in the environment which would feed off them but the law of averages means that one would always make it.
Of course that "one" different form of life is possibly out there on planet earth as we speak somewhere deep in the ocean.

Life could have come on a rock in ice but I find it strange that there is no life detected on any meteorites found so far.

For me, seeing is believing. No evidence then any suggestions are rubbish.

There just is no evidence that life can easily come into existence on an empty planet with the right conditions in the rest of the universe. There is evidence that life exists in the universe, right here on earth and thats it!
I'd love to believe that there is evidence but there isnt.

im invisible

just to go another bit off topic.... it'd take an awful lot of ice from comets to make up the oceans, i dont know what percentage people say came from space, but i'd say its a small fraction of a fraction of that...

dyer

flanna01, if history or science has taught us anything at all.. I think it would be, never say never! Besides these questions and problems will never be answered unless we challenge ourselves to find a solution.

im invisible wrote: »

just to go another bit off topic.... it'd take an awful lot of ice from comets to make up the oceans, i dont know what percentage people say came from space, but i'd say its a small fraction of a fraction of that...

Not if the water was already present in the formation of stars :

First icy star-disc hints at source of Earth's water
Large water reservoirs at the dawn of stellar birth

There's a reasonably interesting philosophical essay written here about why aliens might never want to contact US.

Justin1982

im invisible wrote: »

just to go another bit off topic.... it'd take an awful lot of ice from comets to make up the oceans, i dont know what percentage people say came from space, but i'd say its a small fraction of a fraction of that...

I thought they did the maths on this already. Water in early solar system that ended up in earth and then on top of that water from an estimated number of comets since the early solar system. As far as I know the numbers add up to what we see and water from icy bodies is considerable.

Curly Judge

im invisible wrote: »

just to go another bit off topic.... it'd take an awful lot of ice from comets to make up the oceans, i dont know what percentage people say came from space, but i'd say its a small fraction of a fraction of that...

Surely it all came from space?
Given the earth's origin and evolution where else could it have come from?

maninasia

mickmackey1 wrote: »

That misses the point of the Fermi Paradox though. It doesn't matter what is the level of our technology, the mystery is why none of their technology is controlling us, considering that trillions of planets are billions of years older than the Earth.

The Fermi paradox is not a paradox, it's just an observation based on very poor technological capability.

As I stated already, we can't even figure out if Mars has life yet (the latest multi billion probe can only scrape 6cm into the surface of Mars), let alone all the moons and gas giants in our solar system, let alone any other solar system light years away.

Now if you want to talk about intelligent life, how do you know that we are not being controlled or observed, when our technology is their equivalent of stone axes and mortars?

dyer

maninasia wrote: »

when our technology is their equivalent of stone axes and mortars?

I'd like to equate that to mud slinging, for the record.

Regarding the water on earth debate.. read the last links i posted.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-C91Do1eO72o/TqCoM83-tKI/AAAAAAAACak/q9vgkpshUnM/s1600/Detection+of+water+vapour+in+the+spectrum+of+TW+Hydrae%2527s+protoplanetary+disc.jpg

maninasia

There just is no evidence that life can easily come into existence on an empty planet with the right conditions in the rest of the universe. There is evidence that life exists in the universe, right here on earth and thats it!
I'd love to believe that there is evidence but there isnt.

Yes there is excellent evidence, us. If you see a tree do you think it's the only tree? If you see a fish do you think it's the only fish?

Life as we know it appeared very quickly after the crust cooled on Earth, there are trillions of planets out there, it's close to mathematically impossible that Earth is that unique, plus life is simply an extension of evolutionary processes of replication and entropy, the structure that allows the replication and energy storage and transmission could be made of many different chemistries.

It happens that the only one we know of us is based on DNA and proteins, but we are currently technologically blind as to what is going on out there.

dyer

Personally i think the biggest problem we face is a psychological one maninasia.

maninasia

flanna01 wrote: »

Guys.... There are some wonderful comments being posted, but are we straying off the beaten path...?

For arguments sake... Let's just assume the Universe is teaming with life. It has no bearing on the human race... The simple reason being that we are too far apart to ever interact with another intelligent race.

I would suggest that even our radio waves will never reach another inhabited planet? Space is practically a massive empty vacuum, an area so vast, that the human mind cannot fully comprehend how big it really is....

The planet Earth will always be 'alone'. We will never engage in any type of communication with another people - Never.

In fact, if history has taught us anything.. We will probably destroy ourselves before any probe gets near another star system... Any intelligent race that captures a voyager probe, will be holding an instrument of a long extinct race.

Your field of view is too narrow and focused on humans. It's what comes after humans and what comes after them that will be roaming around the galaxy.