What dipstick decided to SETI ??

EmmetSpiceland

Why is everyone always afraid of an alien “civilisation” coming here? If they are that far advanced what would they need us for? There is nothing here that they can’t find, in abundance, out in space.

They would hardly need slaves. If they needed the land I’m sure there are lots of other “uninhabited” planets that would be less hassle to deal with.

This is just more of the same sci-fi nonsense that’s in that ‘UFO’ thread. It’s beggars belief that this thread, and that one, are in the same place as the ‘Speed of Light’ one.

Wanderer78

EmmetSpiceland wrote:

Why is everyone always afraid of an alien “civilisation†coming here? If they are that far advanced what would they need us for? There is nothing here that they can’t find, in abundance, out in space.

Maybe they're just as curious as us, maybe they're trying to figure out are they alone?

Smiles35

Mad_maxx wrote: »

im afraid you are quite wrong

I've never had to send you on a lightbeam down to the bar before Max. Give me a second.

AllForIt

My unbeaten record in Snooker remains 100% as I'm so far away from a snooker table I'm impossible to beat.

EmmetSpiceland

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Maybe they're just as curious as us, maybe they're trying to figure out are they alone?

That may well be the case but do we need to fear them if they are curious “explorers”?

The idea we should stop sending “signals” out for fear some evil galactic empire will set their sights on us is just laughable. Using our blood to power their nefarious “death rays”. Absolute twaddle.

ThunderCat

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

That may well be the case but do we need to fear them if they are curious “explorers”?

The idea we should stop sending “signals” out for fear some evil galactic empire will set their sights on us is just laughable. Using our blood to power their nefarious “death rays”. Absolute twaddle.

One of the proposed reasons why we haven't found signs of intelligent life in the cosmos yet is because it is a dark forest. Meaning that a truly advanced civilization will do all it can to mask its existence for fear of being wiped out by another advanced civilization. It is young civilizations such as our own that get destroyed because our existence is easily detectable for advanced civilizations. Perhaps we are far enough out of the galactic centre and away from much older stars that we get to become advanced enough to start disguising our existence. Who knows.

The Chinese author Liu Cixin has a trilogy of books based on exactly this. It's called the Three Body Problem. Probably my favorite books ever.

And here is an article on The Fermi Paradox taken from the Wait But Why website that goes into detail all the different scenarios as to why we haven't found intelligent life yet. Amazing read:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

breezy1985

ThunderCat wrote: »

One of the proposed reasons why we haven't found signs of intelligent life in the cosmos yet is because it is a dark forest. Meaning that a truly advanced civilization will do all it can to mask its existence for fear of being wiped out by another advanced civilization. It is young civilizations such as our own that get destroyed because our existence is easily detectable for advanced civilizations. Perhaps we are far enough out of the galactic centre and away from much older stars that we get to become advanced enough to start disguising our existence. Who knows.

The Chinese author Liu Cixin has a trilogy of books based on exactly this. It's called the Three Body Problem. Probably my favorite books ever.

And here is an article on The Fermi Paradox taken from the Wait But Why website that goes into detail all the different scenarios as to why we haven't found intelligent life yet. Amazing read:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

With any luck the advanced civilization will think we are so f***ING useless that they will see us as a charity case and help out.

Only downside is if they offload their version of Bono onto us

topper75

breezy1985 wrote: »

With any luck the advanced civilization will think we are so f***ING useless that they will see us as a charity case and help out.

Only downside is if they offload their version of Bono onto us

"Yeaaaaah maaaaan, like, permission to beam aboard?"

"Ah... no."

breezy1985

topper75 wrote: »

"Yeaaaaah maaaaan, like, permission to beam aboard?"

"Ah... no."

"Hi my name is Spacebono and I'm a rockstar. I just wanted you to know every time I click my fingers a child on Earth dies"

iamstop

A galactic map showing the extent our signals have reached in the 100 odd years they have been beaming.

Taken from here:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/news/a27934/galaxy-map-human-radio-broadcasts/

"The Milky Way stretches between 100,000 and 180,000 light-years across, depending on where you measure, which means a signal broadcast from one side of the galaxy would take 100,000 years or more to reach the other side."

Hand in Your Pants

What bothers me is that broadfaced hairpieced freak sending one of his ugly naff cars up into space playing pop music

1990sman

maybe we are the aliens. and maybe other beings are imperceptible to us.
oh what was the story with the american pentegon statement about having craft 'not off this world' ? was there any more on that? funny how what might be biggest story for all humans just kinda fizzled out in light of latest addition to corona family.

was pentegon pullin our leg, like with wordplay whereby they'll showcase some new moonbuggy or lunar elevator

Smiles35

31 October 2021, James Web gets launched. Up to watch for chlorofluorocarbons in the atmospheres of planets as was posted earlier. Imagine that, we are only a year away from reports of industrialization on other planets. :eek:

I have to laugh a bit aswell, we will be able to say for definate they are more advanced than we are, light was bouceing off their planet while they were industrialised, longer than ours.

Ronin247

Smiles35 wrote: »

There was talk of a new signal detectector being built in Austrailia. I'd love some Irish govenment investment towards this. It's eminently interesting for resonably small outlay.

We have much more pressing issues in this country, never mind spending money looking for intelligent lifeforms on other planets . Lets try and find some intelligent lifeforms in the Dail.

Peregrinus

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

Why is everyone always afraid of an alien “civilisation” coming here? If they are that far advanced what would they need us for? There is nothing here that they can’t find, in abundance, out in space.

They would hardly need slaves. If they needed the land I’m sure there are lots of other “uninhabited” planets that would be less hassle to deal with.

This is just more of the same sci-fi nonsense that’s in that ‘UFO’ thread. It’s beggars belief that this thread, and that one, are in the same place as the ‘Speed of Light’ one.

Perhaps they want to come to feast on our delicious, delicious flesh.

PTH2009

Nphet wouldn't approve of non essential travel

Imagine MM or Leo having to deal with an Alien invasion

TuringBot47

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

Why is everyone always afraid of an alien “civilisation” coming here? If they are that far advanced what would they need us for? There is nothing here that they can’t find, in abundance, out in space.

Except life itself. A bunch of aliens living off vegan food might consider earth a drive thru restaurant and mutilate the odd cow.
Or want DNA samples of every useful animal, plant and bacteria.

But more than likely we're considered the savage aggressive species in the neighbourhood and Earth is considered the Darndale of the milky way.

It's likely aliens learnt how to extend their life maybe to hundreds of years. So they would see us as immature children unable to cooperate and share the planets resources properly.

There's also the possibility that there's competing aliens out there based on different types, eg mammals, reptiles, insects and that more advanced aliens are shielding/protecting us from the others.

auspicious

In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive (also known as "Starfleet General Order 1", "General Order 1", and the "non-interference directive") is a guiding principle of Starfleet, prohibiting its members from interfering with the internal and natural development of alien civilizations.

Ie Let them get on with it.

auspicious

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

Why is everyone always afraid of an alien “civilisation” coming here? If they are that far advanced what would they need us for? There is nothing here that they can’t find, in abundance, out in space.

They would hardly need slaves.

Since we're on the hypothetical, what if they were obligate carnivores and needed flesh to sustain themselves? Perhaps spanning lightyears of space on 'fake' meat they had an unjustified need for succulent flesh( in this case human) and 7billion souls is just ripe pickings?
How could you argue against that?

440Hertz

SETI just listens with radio-telescopes and other instruments, like looking for light pulse and X-ray pulses and so on.

That’s what the SETI Institute has been doing for decades. They’re actually very cautious and have thought about and discussed the risks and have come up with policies.

Then there’s Active SETI and METI - Messaging Extra Terrestrial intelligence. That’s generally been one of stuff where messages have been deliberately beamed into space, targeting regions that are assumed to have more likelihood of there being something listening. They’ve not been associated with the SETI Institute.

There are plenty of theories that it’s something that mightn’t be the greatest idea, as we could end to alerting something unpleasant to our location. We’re very likely already noticeable if something were looking, both due to technology but also due due so the gasses in the atmosphere that can only be produced by life.

Seems highly unlikely we’ll contact anything, but you’d never know. It’s an infinitely big universe. It would be a hell of a waste of space if there’s no other life anywhere.

We could end up contacting something so far away that all we ever get is an intelligent, but utterly incomprehensible signal that takes a very long time to send and receive. Like a beep every 100 years.

auspicious

Yes grand we accept that.
But further to the thread my hypothetical stands. Since the presumption of alien exists and is presumably unknown, how does one address my question?

440Hertz

Well given that they’d be part of an ecosystem that evolved entirely separately from us, the likelihood of them being able to eat us is slim.

They’d probably have a totally different biology. We evolved to eat things that are part of the eco system that we are embedded in.

We can get nutrients from plant and animal proteins and other components because that’s what we evolved as part of. An alien very likely wouldn’t have any way of interacting with Earth proteins and biological material to digest it.

Eating an earthling, might be as much use as you eating an iPhone.

It’s also quite possible that we encounter a signal from artificial intelligence or an intelligent probe, rather than biological life.

The sci-fi notions of space monsters or conveniently familiar humanoid species all over the galaxy, like Star Trek are pretty unlikely / impossible.

If we encounter something from somewhere else it’s very likely we’ll have very little in common or that it may be a machine. We might not even recognise it as being live at all.

auspicious

You're moving the hypothetical's rules. I said they were obligate carnivores, and as such human flesh would meet their biological nutritional demands.

440Hertz

auspicious wrote: »

You're moving the hypothetical's rules. I said they were obligate carnivores, and such human flesh would meet their biological nutritional demands.

Your hypothesis doesn’t really make sense, so there’s no way of responding.

auspicious

of course it makes sense. It's a hypothetical.

Peregrinus

440Hertz wrote: »

Your hypothesis doesn’t really make sense, so there’s no way of responding.

You may think it unlikely or improbable, but it's perfectly sensible. If a carbon-based life-form such as ours evolved on Earth, there is no reason to suppose that similar life forms cannot have evolved in similar planetary environments elsewhere.

McGinniesta

antiskeptic wrote: »

The search for extra terrestrial intelligence involves beaming information into space in the hope that there is a sufficiently advanced intelligence out there to pick it up. The allied hope must be that said life will respond.

Such intelligence would have to be as at least as advanced as we are - it is only comparatively recently that we have been in a position to beam the fact and location of our existence into space.

The chance of an intelligence only being as advanced as we are must be pretty slim. They are more likely than not going be more advanced than us (in the event ETI exists).

Now, we have a pretty good indication of what a species who superior to other species or even others of their own species tend to do. Look at all of history.

Yet we actively go looking for what would, in all likelyhood, be a superior species. The blind assumption ( one which appears to be contra-indicated, given said history) is that ETI would be benevolent.

The one thing that protects us is vast space, just like great distance protects you as a snooker player.

Yet we're putting our name up in lights .. which strikes me as stupidity of the highest order.

If intelligent alien life exists then I can't see that being an issue.

toffee dave

ThunderCat wrote: »

One of the proposed reasons why we haven't found signs of intelligent life in the cosmos yet is because it is a dark forest. Meaning that a truly advanced civilization will do all it can to mask its existence for fear of being wiped out by another advanced civilization. It is young civilizations such as our own that get destroyed because our existence is easily detectable for advanced civilizations. Perhaps we are far enough out of the galactic centre and away from much older stars that we get to become advanced enough to start disguising our existence. Who knows.

The Chinese author Liu Cixin has a trilogy of books based on exactly this. It's called the Three Body Problem. Probably my favorite books ever.

And here is an article on The Fermi Paradox taken from the Wait But Why website that goes into detail all the different scenarios as to why we haven't found intelligent life yet. Amazing read:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Love the Three Body Problem trilogy.Netflix are supposedly turning them into a series.David Benioff and D.B Weiss of Game of Thrones fame will serve as writers and executive producers.

440Hertz

Peregrinus wrote: »

You may think it unlikely or improbable, but it's perfectly sensible. If a carbon-based life-form such as ours evolved on Earth, there is no reason to suppose that similar life forms cannot have evolved in similar planetary environments elsewhere.

The likelihood of it being able to consume us is a bit far fetched to put it mildly.

1) biological incompatibility. We evolved to digest Earth biology. They’ll have evolved to digest their biology. Our systems extract things like sugars, proteins and so on, not fundamental elements. So unless they’re like plants, that’s unlikely.

2) If you’ve the resources to travel the universe, you’re highly unlikely to need to munch on small planets. You’d very likely have resources beyond our imagination, particularly access to energy. Also there’s an abundance of most elements in far easier and less high risk locations : asteroids, uninhabited moons and planets etc are.

3) If life is that unusual, it seems unlikely any intelligence curious enough to explore is going to want to travel billions of km just to nuke it from space, for the craic. I mean they could have any motive but it just seems very very unlikely.

The strongest theories at the moment is that we might first contact something perhaps like a self replicating AI probe. The most logical way of exploring the galaxy might be to send technology. We’ve already begun to do that. Putting biological life into spaceships is fairly high risk and difficult. So it could be artificial life or, something that’s reporting back it it.

We’ve also rather a narrow understanding of potential communication technology. It’s very unlikely that anyone would use radio to communicate over vast distance. It’s too slow. So either vast distances can’t be communicated over, or something else is used. For example maybe quantum entanglement could be something used for this, and it’s an area we’ve only begun to barely scratch the surface of.

Listening to radio spectrum could be as useful as a 1800s explorer looking for smoke semaphore signal stations in a 21sr century city.

Even look at how far our technology has moved.

We weren’t broadcasting any radio waves at all until 1900. Within 20 years we had commercial radio. RTE was on air in 1926. An entire industry was born and we take it for granted. Before that there was radio silence.

We went from no radio to WiFi, GSM and digital broadcasting, satellites & talking to our space probes within one longer lived human lifetime.

If you think about it though. If a 1950s radio technician were presented with say an environment with LTE 4G and 5G transmission, it’s been likely they might not even be able to detect them or would discount them as background noise as that’s what they sound and look like if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

It’s not unreasonable that there are all sorts of signals out there but we can’t see them.

Smiles35

Radio Seti is so overshadowed by the advent of the James Webb that is hard to keep going with them.

If a civiazations star is so distant from any others that the very notion of sending a probe is out of the question. Then they would keep a radio seti project going. There are places like that in the universe aren't there? I wonder how common that is.