17 replies to this topic

[Great Ape]

Which is the more shocking proposition: that our universe is riddled with advanced alien civilizations? Or that we humans are a solitary beacon of intelligent life in a silent universe of almost incomprehensible vastness?

We don't know whether or not there is other intelligent life in the universe. There is no reason there shouldn't be. We know by our own existence that the universe is conducive to life. I would say, the smart money, is on the universe being full of life. That our Earth contains the only life in the universe, makes absolutely no sense. I recognize that there is, as yet, no evidence to support this belief of mine. Nonetheless, I am confident that life exists beyond our planet.

Consider the numbers involved. We live in a universe with billions upon billions of stars, many of which are very much like our own Sun, and each may well have a clutch of planets. So, even if the probability of intelligent life emerging is infinitesimally small, the sheer number of stars in the heavens makes it likely we're not alone.

The Wow! signal was a strong narrow-band radio signal detected by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman on August 15, 1977, while working on a SETI project at the Big Ear radio telescope of The Ohio State University then located at Ohio Wesleyan University's Perkins Observatory, Delaware, Ohio. The signal bore expected hallmarks of potential non-terrestrial and non-solar system origin. It lasted for the full 72-second duration that Big Ear observed it, but has not been detected again. The signal has been the subject of significant media attention.

Amazed at how closely the signal matched the expected signature of an interstellar signal in the antenna used, Ehman circled the signal on the computer printout and wrote the comment "Wow!" on its side. This comment became the name of the signal.

The Wow! Signal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKHAVAuFcjU

Have a look at the video above. The immensity of the universe and the density of stars is awe inspiring. And you are looking at only a small portion of the known universe. There must be life somewhere in that majestic, incredible, vastness of space.

• [Related Articles]
  
  
• Earth like planets in outer space
• Silent witness
• Only a matter of time
• The Wow! signal
• Nova: The Drake Equation

Continued...

Edited by Great Ape, 20 February 2012 - 08:10 AM.

[Great Ape]

I found this video interesting too. It shows how enormous the universe is. Keep in mind that the universe is still expanding. Contrary to previous scientific belief, the expansion of the universe is not slowing down. It is actually speeding up. So the universe is growing, not only expanding but accelerating outward.





Large scale structure of the universe:

Edited by Great Ape, 20 February 2012 - 08:04 AM.

[Joe Bloe]

Fascinating videos - just had a quick look at the longer one. Will get back to it later.

Regarding Life in the universe, I like like to flip-flop between two extremes.

Sometimes I think that Life is probably inevitable on any planet with the right conditions, and there may be life forms every few million light years across the whole universe. At other times I marvel at the "accidental" turning points in Earth's history (eg, the asteroid that gave mammals the opportunity to evolve) and wonder if maybe we are completely alone in the universe. Both ideas fill me with awe.

[Great Ape]

Sometimes I think that Life is probably inevitable on any planet with the right conditions, and there may be life forms every few million light years across the whole universe. At other times I marvel at the "accidental" turning points in Earth's history (eg, the asteroid that gave mammals the opportunity to evolve) and wonder if maybe we are completely alone in the universe. Both ideas fill me with awe.

The universe has always filled me with awe too. Whether or not life exists beyond our Earth, the universe is still an amazing place. The pure majesty and beauty of it is awe inspiring. The enormity of it is truly mind boggling. Alien life would be icing on the cake. I truly believe there is life out there. I think some day it will be proven so. I hope it happens in my lifetime. That would be fantastic.

[Ungodly]

Carl Sagan did a pretty good job of convincing me that alien life is highly likely simply because of the enormous number of possibilities that must have existed over billions of years in billions of places. However I do not share the populist view that contact with alien life is likely or desirable.

With our fascination with weapons and our innate penchant for wanton violence I would expect any alien species that became aware of us to choose either to avoid us like the plague we almost certainly are, or wipe us off the map as an act of preemptive self defense.

If I was an alien fleet admiral charged with destroying all human life on Earth I would find the task extremely easy. given the current layout of this solar system. Just take one asteroid the size of, oh, Washington DC and throw it at the Earth from the asteroid belt. A few months or years later there would be a new mass extermination event and the fleet admiral would get a big promotion for saving the galaxy from the Earthling threat.

Until such time in the future, if ever, that the human race becomes civilized I hope we have no contact with spacefaring aliens. As imperfect as we are, I like us.

[Great Ape]

However I do not share the populist view that contact with alien life is likely or desirable.

I have to agree with you on this. Intelligent sentient extraterrestrials may indeed be hostile to us humans. There is no reason to think that they would be warm and cuddly like ET. They may very well be our worst nightmare. Even Stephen Hawking agrees. Which makes one wonder why we want to contact them so badly. Personally, I am hoping when we do make contact, they are friendly and want to share their technology with us. As opposed to being hostile and wanting to either exterminate or enslave the human race.

In a new Discovery Channel series entitled Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist posits the idea that humans should probably not be in a hurry to televise our existence to the universe at large. Hawking suggests that, if we do manage to make contact with advanced alien life forms, it is entirely possible that they will be much more technologically advanced than humans. That sounds great, right? Maybe we can learn something from them. According to Hawking, this scenario is highly unlikely. Instead, Hawking warns that advanced, intelligent alien life is more likely to want to conquer humanity and take over Earth than to be our friends. Now he tells us.

In all fairness, few scientists are giving Hawking’s comments much attention. Even Hawking concludes that the chance of aggressive aliens showing up for dinner, at least any time soon, is pretty small. Statistically, Earth is likely not the only planet with life, and humans are likely not the most intelligent life in the universe (I often think we aren’t the most intelligent life on Earth). Hawking explains that we obviously live rather far away from other highly advanced planetary societies, and that alien aggressors would take just as long to get to us as it would take for us to get to them. For now at least, humans are apparently the most dangerous thing flying around the galaxy.

Hawking's warns that aliens may not be nice

Stephen Hawking - Possible alien invasion scenario:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6moLrJCG2Xs

[nogodbutdog]

With our fascination with weapons and our innate penchant for wanton violence I would expect any alien species that became aware of us to choose either to avoid us like the plague we almost certainly are, or wipe us off the map as an act of preemptive self defense.

Your opinion is hardly representative of terrans in general, so I'll leave your paranoid outburst out of my next report to Zargonian High Command.

Besides, your species is so plentiful and tasty, it would be a shame to cull the entire herd on account of a few rogues. You are conveniently corralled on a single planet and easy to domesticate. We're prepared to offer a complete package of tech support in biosphere stabilization and population augmentation if you make worth it worth our while.

You might as well accept our deal for the greater glory of Zargon. It's not as if you can resist.

[Joe Bloe]

Your opinion is hardly representative of terrans in general, so I'll leave your paranoid outburst out of my next report to Zargonian High Command.

Besides, your species is so plentiful and tasty, it would be a shame to cull the entire herd on account of a few rogues. You are conveniently corralled on a single planet and easy to domesticate. We're prepared to offer a complete package of tech support in biosphere stabilization and population augmentation if you make worth it worth our while.

You might as well accept our deal for the greater glory of Zargon. It's not as if you can resist.

It's the Kannamits we've got to watch out for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne5eP0OAsTs

[Great Ape]

When Aliens Attack! National Geographic. The threat of alien invasion is being taken seriously. It is being explored by astronomers, governments and military strategists alike.

Edited by Great Ape, 21 February 2012 - 10:46 AM.

[Ungodly]

We can take it seriously, that is not a bad idea, but it seems there is not much we can do to prepare for an improbable non-specific threat.

[nogodbutdog]

When Aliens Attack! National Geographic. The threat of alien invasion is being taken seriously.

Until we possess the capability to divert a dinosaur killer from its path, we won't have a credible defense against a more technologically advanced ET.

The sequel is never as good as the original. I hope NatGeo hires better script writers and CGI talent for their zombie apocalypse movie. I'm going to watch Independence Day #1 now.

[Great Ape]

Until we possess the capability to divert a dinosaur killer from its path, we won't have a credible defense against a more technologically advanced ET.

They may or may not be true. The point is that governments take the threat seriously. Whether we have a credible defense against an alien invasion or not. I should think it is better to have contingency plans than none at all.

The sequel is never as good as the original. I hope NatGeo hires better script writers and CGI talent for their zombie apocalypse movie. I'm going to watch Independence Day #1 now.

Obviously a National Geographic episode is going to compare unfavorably to a major Hollywood studio movie with millions of dollars in its budget. I didn't know NatGeo was making a zombie apocalypse movie.

Edited by Great Ape, 21 February 2012 - 04:25 PM.

[nogodbutdog]

Have a look at the video above. The immensity of the universe and the density of stars is awe inspiring. And you are looking at only a small portion of the known universe. There must be life somewhere in that majestic, incredible, vastness of space.

• [Related Articles]
  
  
• Earth like planets in outer space
• Silent witness
• Only a matter of time
• The Wow! signal
• Nova: The Drake Equation

Back to your original point. I have always been fascinated by Drake's equation as a method of estimating the likelihood of alien civilizations in our galaxy, ever since watching Carl Sagan describe it on Cosmos. It neatly displays the probable number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy as a simple function understandable by nearly anyone. Sure, it's too oversimplified to provide any degree of certainty; plausible ranges of values for individual variables could give an end result from 1 to thousands. Major scientific studies could be devoted to any of these variable without agreeing on a precise value. But it's food for thought; each variable sure to stimulate a discussion on its own. Which it did, when Frank Drake presented it to the Green Bank conference. I can still hardly believe he thought of it on his way to the meeting.

My personal opinion on why we haven't found extraterrestrial life so far? Consider how precise and narrow-ranged the environmental conditions supportive of complex life have to be. At least two or three stellar generations had to precede our own, to accumulate enough heavy elements to produce a life-sustaining planet. In our own Solar system, out of the four most worlds most likely to have ever formed liquid water, only one retained it on its surface up to this time. Although life formed early in our geologic history, other transitional barriers took significantly more time, prokaryotic cells and multicellular life among them. That's several billion years before forming the first organism with a central nervous system. And we live in the 'Goldilocks' zone of the galaxy; not in the metal-deprived periphery, nor too close to the calamitous core. Even under nearly ideal conditions, our biosphere took a long time to form and incubate to produce a sentient life form. There may be many others on the way, but there's a very real possibility of us being the first.

[Great Ape]

There may be many others on the way, but there's a very real possibility of us being the first.

If this is indeed the case, then we don't have to worry about a technologically superior, extraterrestrial, civilization conquering us. At least that concern would become superfluous. If there are other emerging, intelligent, sentient civilizations in the universe. Perhaps it is they who should be worried about us. Since the human species, being the first civilization to arise, should have the upper hand technologically. And we are all familiar with our history of colonization.

Life doesn't necessarily have to be carbon based. Because carbon has worked for the conditions on Earth, we speculate that the same must be true throughout the universe. In reality, there are many elements that could potentially do the trick. Life could take many other forms. Scientists have postulated for example that water isn't necessarily a key ingredient to life. Hydrogen fluoride methanol, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, and formamide have all been suggested as suitable solvents that could theoretically support alternative biochemistry.

Other prominent scientists have warned that we humans may be blinded by our familiarity with carbon and Earth like conditions. In other words, what we’re looking for may not even lie in our version of a “sweet spot”. After all, even here on Earth, one species “sweet spot” is another species worst nightmare. In any case, it is not beyond the realm of feasibility that our first encounter with extraterrestrial life could be non carbon based.

I suspect that in a universe as vast, complex and unknown as ours, there are many possibilities.

Edited by Great Ape, 22 February 2012 - 10:16 AM.

[Great Ape]

Gliese 581g Exoplanet May Be 'Potentially Habitable' Alien World After All

The Huffington Post | July 25, 2012

Nearly two years after spotting Gliese 581g, the celebrated "first potentially habitable" alien world, the planet's discoverers continue to fight for its existence.

The discovery of Gliese 581g made headlines around the world in September 2010, because the planet was said to orbit in the middle of its star's "habitable zone" — that just-right range of distances where liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, could exist.

Just a few weeks later, however, another prominent research team began casting doubt on the find, saying the alien planet didn't show up in their observations. This group, led by Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, had found the previously known four planets in the Gliese 581 system.

But in a new study that will be published Aug. 1, 581g's discoverers examine the Swiss team's since-expanded data set and take issue with their conclusions, saying that the evidence supports the planet's existence after all.

The data and analyses "point to there being at least one other planet beyond the confirmed 4, a 5th planet, with a period in the 26-39-day regime," lead author Steve Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com via email. [The Strangest Alien Planets]

"This 5th planet would have a mass of only 2-3 [times that of] Earth, and would orbit pretty much squarely in the star's habitable zone," he added.

--snip--

Many habitable planets out there

It will likely take more observations to sort out for sure how many planets circle the star Gliese 581, Vogt said. But the exoplanet community isn't exactly fixated on the issue.

Planet hunters are finding more and more worlds beyond our solar system. The tally is nearing 800 by some counts, with thousands more awaiting confirmation by follow-up observations. And while researchers have yet to find a true alien Earth, they're getting closer and closer.

This past December, for example, NASA's Kepler space telescope confirmed its first planet in the habitable zone, a "super Earth" known as Kepler-22b that's thought to be 2.4 times as wide as our planet. And Vogt is part of a team that announced another potentially habitable super Earth, known as Gliese 667Cc, in February.

"The take-away message is, regardless of who eventually gets bragging rights to the discovery of the first truly confirmed habitable Earth-sized planet, we are starting to find them in unexpected numbers, and unexpectedly nearby," Vogt said. "That means there are many, many out there, at least tens of billions or more, in our own galaxy alone."

[Full Story]

With the growing possibility of at least tens of billions or more planets conducive to life in our own galaxy, it seems Earth isn't so extraordinary after all. I never doubted life existed outside our planet. I've always thought it the height of human arrogance to assume we are the only species and habitable world in the entire universe.

Of course finding a planet in the habitable zone of a star doesn't mean there is life there. But why not? As an atheist I don't believe God created the universe and mankind. So if we subtract the special creation by God equation from the human species, there is no reason to think life couldn't take root and propagate on other habitable planets. If it happened on Earth, it can most certainly happen on other planets conducive to life.

Note: I cut out a lot of the story because of the length of the article.

Edited by Great Ape, 26 July 2012 - 06:34 AM.

[Joe Bloe]

I can still remember when the reports came through that the first extrasolar planet had been discovered. I never thought that 20 years later they would have found hundreds of them. It just gets better and better.

[Ungodly]

That our Earth contains the only life in the universe, makes absolutely no sense. I recognize that there is, as yet, no evidence to support this belief of mine.

I'm glad you have not made the mistake many people do make and confused your notion with evidence.

It does seem incredible that life would exist only on our planet. If there are alien life forms that are technological as we are, and they are able to travel between the stars, I sure hope we never have any contact with them. If such a race learned about the nature and typical behavior of Homo Sapiens I would expect them to consider us a threat. It would be trivial to virtually wipe out all life on this planet with one or two well placed de-orbited asteroids. They would never have to come within a million miles of Earth to kill us all.

I love science fiction, and I love speculation about alien life forms, but I have no utopian fantasies about First Contact. Dystopian futures seem so realistic by comparison.

<silly>
I think we need to create planetary immigration laws and immediately outlaw the use of asteroids to wipe out the planet.
</silly>

[Great Ape]

I can still remember when the reports came through that the first extrasolar planet had been discovered. I never thought that 20 years later they would have found hundreds of them. It just gets better and better

I just wish I could be alive fifty years from now. By then, all kinds of wondrous things previously unknown will be known about our universe. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what we know about the universe. Much more fascinating and extraordinary revelations wait to be revealed by technology.

I love science fiction, and I love speculation about alien life forms, but I have no utopian fantasies about First Contact. Dystopian futures seem so realistic by comparison.

I've always been an avid reader and the science fiction genre was my first love. I also like fantasy and the macabre, historical novels, etc and will read just about anything. But science fiction is still my true love.

I too, have no illusions about peaceful first contact with an intelligent, sentient, extraterrestrial species. It might be something good, it might be something bad. We just don't know.




 

<silly>
I think we need to create planetary immigration laws and immediately outlaw the use of asteroids to wipe out the planet.
</silly>

Sounds reasonable to me.

Edited by Great Ape, 26 July 2012 - 09:29 AM.