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Remembering Pioneer 10
Daniel Goldman writes "Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun). Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to enter the asteroid belt, the ring of giant rocks beyond Mars. It survived and zoomed on to Jupiter in late 1973, where it became the first spacecraft to take close-up photographs of the storms on the giant planet's surface. After Jupiter, it kept going, collecting data on the particles and radiation it encountered. More info about Pioneer 10 at Wikipedia."
Twenty one years ago today, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave our solar system, by crossing the orbit of Neptune (which was then the farthest planet from the Sun).
I guess that depends on where you define the edge of the solar system. What about the Oort Cloud? What about that tenth planet we can never seem to pin down?
Long Live Pioneer 10. It is amazing to think that a human creation has traveled so far and survived so long.
/Rant
Built back when things were made to last, Pioneer 10 (according to WiKi) was still used as a training platform just a few years back.
And the two Mars rovers are a reminder that smart people still are working for NASA, as they have out lasted anyone's prediction.
Makes me proud
--sig fault--
What's truly amazing about Pioneer and all the other satellites of the era is that they have lasted so far beyond their expected lifetimes. If I remember correctly, Pioneer was supposed to die after reaching the outer planets, but it died in late 2003. The work they do at NASA and especially JPL (where most of the unmanned devices are designed and built) is truly impressive, and even more so considering there usually aren't any second chances available (with the noteworthy exception of Hubble).
It's actually highly unlikely that any race more advanced than us exists in this galaxy. The reason? Well, we are very, very close to the point where we'll be able to send AI-guided probes out into the galaxy at near-light speeds. Logically, if any race even just a bit more advanced than us were living nearby, we'd already be encoutering their probes flying around our system. Crazy conspiracy theories aside, this hasn't happened yet. (And, no, realistically I don't believe aliens would go to all the trouble to completely hide their existence from us just to satisfy some sort of "prime directive".)
Sure, it's possible that the probes are still on their way. However, the furthest point from us in the milky way is only some 80,000 light years away. Considering that it took us several billion years to evolve on this planet, what are the chances that some alien race would just happen to be within 80,000 years of us, yet no race is more than 80,000 year ahead? Pretty slim, really. And if you only consider our immediate surroundings (like, within 100 lightyears), the chances get that much slimmer. No, we will not be meeting any beings more advanced than us in our lifetime.
Dude, have you taken a look at Earth lately? If I was a super intelligent alien with 80,000 years greater technology at my fingertips, a galactic slum infested with psychotic and homicidal creatures would probably be dead-last on my "places to visit" list. ;)
No offense to my fellow earthlings.
So you're saying that we're "very, very close" to having the technology to send a probe to each of the several billion star systems in our galaxy? Let me tell ya, bub, we're nowhere near that, by a long shot! Sure, I'm willing to believe that within the next hundred years or so we'll probably have the technology be able to whip a probe off somewhere at near light speed. But a few billion? Just where do you think we're going to get the raw materials for this project? And the energy? And the political willpower?
Also, you're assuming that any civilization that happens to evolve to that level of intelligence and skill will necessarily want to make contact via physical probes (which further assumes that they're interested in making contact at all, which is another matter entirely). It seems more likely to me that in the interests of practicality, sending messages via electromagnetic waves or some other form of ether would be the more common way to reach out to the rest of the galaxy. And as far as we know, there may be several of these messages hitting our humble little planet as we speak. SETI has thus far barely touched the surface in its attempt to scan the heavens at the various likely frequencies looking for such messages.
(As an aside, lets assume for the moment that we may actually be the only intelligent civilization in the galaxy at the moment. There are still billions of other galaxies out there that may also contain intelligent life. Unfortunately, the distances we're talking about here are so incredibly vast (way vaster than the already-mindboglingly vast distances between the stars in our own galaxy), that the chances of ever knowing whether intelligent life exists (or had ever existed) in another galaxy is pretty much zero. Pretty depressing, really.)
Logically speaking you have commited an appeal to ignorance fallacy. Just because we have not seen any probes flying around our solar system does not mean that more intelligent life does not exist somewhere out there. Hell, it doesn't even mean that the existance of more intelligent life is "highly unlikely". All it means is that we have a question for which we have no confirmed answer.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Uh... No, we are not going to produce a billion of them. We will produce a handful and send them to the nearest stars. They will then replicate themselves using raw materials available at those stars and move on. Remember, each of these things will be loaded with an AI much more intelligent than any human. And, frankly, with the exponential rate of advancement we are experiencing, we will have such AI within a half-century... probably 25 years. See Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiratual Machines for some pretty convincing math to back up these predictions.
But, even if you don't believe that... Do you think we'll have such technology within 10,000 years? Because even 10,000 years is a lot less that 80,000 years, and could still be considered "very, very close" when compared with the five billion years we've spent evolving.
And, yes, I am assuming that any civilization with the ability to do so will want to explore the galaxy physically, not just sit back and watch it. I don't think that's such a stretch.
An argument of that form would be valid, however your first assumption is false. The existance of more intelligent life does not require that the more intelligent life would necessarily attempt to contact us. They could very will just observere us from afar or ignore us completely. Also, depending on how you define event e, we might not necessarily observer it.
As originally presented you did not specifically say the first two assumptions, so just looking at 3 and 4, it looks like an appeal to ignorance (to me at least).
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
I think both you and Kurzweil greatly overestimate the ability for technology to evolve. IMHO all exponential growth is unsustainable, and there will soon be a point where technological growth will no longer be exponential, so most of what the dreamers of today are imagining will never come to fruition, for reasons we will have to discover the hard way. :)
My vision for the future is that things wont really change that much except we will be a little smarter, healthier, wealthier and with one heck of a lot of cool new toys