Study: Earthlings Not Ready For Alien Encounters, Yet

astroengine (1577233) writes "The people of planet Earth would be wise to raise their cosmic consciousness prior to contact with an extraterrestrial civilization, a new study shows. 'The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years,' said Gabriel De la Torre, a clinical neuropsychologist and human factors specialist at the University of Cádiz in Spain. 'Consequently, we are becoming more concerned about this possibility and its aftermath Certainly the topic of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations raises a number of questions that are not easy to answer. We estimate that this type of event will have not only a social effect, but also on both consciousness and biology as well.' Although we may not have the necessary social skill set to deal with an encounter of the third kind, scientists or astronauts might make the best candidates for the first alien conversation."

Comments

next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

based on scanning we are doing of star systems out to thousands of light years? even if we find a sign of ET intelligent life, we have light-centuries to light-millennia of speed-of-light buffer time to protect ourselves after "they" discover our presence, before "contact" of any kind could be made

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[quintus_horatius]

Really. Do these guys know something the rest of us don't?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[TheNarrator]

That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rmdingler]

Remotely near, harmless advanced alien life capable of interstellar travel would leave us alone for a few more centuries whilst we iron out this leftover primal aggression and god fallacy..

Remotely near, exploitative advanced alien life would have already arrived and , well, exploited us and our resources.

Depending on how far down along the great filter we find ourselves, we are quite plausibly the Universe's best hope for intergalactic explorer, settler, and exploiter. Deal with that.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[roc97007]

That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.

Certainly possible. But then, who of us could receive it?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

we have light-centuries to light-millennia of speed-of-light buffer time to protect ourselves after "they" discover our presence, before "contact" of any kind could be made

A sufficiently advanced entity may have the ability to travel faster than light.

If they arrive I'll be sure to send them to you, so you can tell them it is not
possible for them to have arrived so soon.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[icebike]

That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.

Certainly possible. But then, who of us could receive it?

Probably all of us would receive it.

After all, they would understand our limitations, by virtue of examining our transmissions, and adjust their
transmissions accordingly.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stephen Hawking once said that if aliens visit us they will most likely not be friendly. Whether or not he is right is irrelevant because the aliens aren't coming. Ever.

The idea of aliens coming to earth has been the subject of countless novels, movies and televison shows, and even though those stories are entirely fictional, they have greatly influenced the way we think about the idea of encountering beings from other worlds. Unfortunately, our thinking on this subject is very small and limited. If we step back and think a little bigger, we will realize that any aliens with the ability to come visit us almost certainly would not care to.

Sci-fi stories can ignore the bits that aren't very interesting. Movie aliens rarely get sick or worry about eating. Sci-fi stories rarely mention gravity because, given our limited view, we expect gravity to just work and shooting a movie without it would be a pain. So, screw it, all movie aliens have invented artificial gravity. After all, warp-drive engines and pew-pew energy-blasters are much more fun to think about.

In the real world, however, science tends to advance in all directions, because advances in one field almost always results in advances in many others. For example, the invention of the computer accelerated all other fields of human science.

A race of aliens capable of reaching earth has, at a minimum, perfected faster-than-light travel (or perfected a way to travel for thousands of years at sub-light), conquered the long term biological effects of space radiation, and mastered extreme long distance space navigation, just so they can come to earth and . . . . . what? Steal our water? Study us?

So why *WOULD* aliens come to earth?

Do they really want our water (or minerals or whatever)? That implies an economic model in their decision. By definition, they need and value those resources and coming here to get them is their most economical choice. Getting them somewhere closer to home or manufacturing them must be more "expensive" (in some sense of the word) than the cost of traveling all the way here, gathering our resources and flying them home.

While not impossible, that seems unlikely - both technologically and economically. Even we have (expensively) already mastered alchemy. We have the tech to create matter from energy. Imagine that tech in a few hundred years, or whenever it is you think we'll be able to travel several light years for a mining expedition. What would be cheaper and better, making stuff at home or building a fleet of galactic warships and sending them (along with thousands of soldiers and miners) to some far off planet?

Currently, getting to Proxima Centauri (the closest star outside our solar system) in less than a few hundred years would require technolgy that is several orders of magnitude beyond what we have now. If getting humans to another star system is a 100 on some "technology ability scale", then we're currently at about 2, which is not far ahead of poodles who are probably at 1.

What about the idea that aliens might come to Earth to colonize the planet (and maybe vaporize us in the process)? You could argue that terraforming (or maybe aliens would call it xenoforming) could be a technology more advanced than FTL travel. With that assumption, you could imagine an alien race that can travel across the galaxy but not alter planets to suit their biological needs. Coming to colonize Earth could make sense. But this ignores the fact that several other requisite technologies would probably make their need to colonize obsolete.

Before they had FTL travel, they likely spent many decades traveling at less that light speed and so chances are their ships are quite comfortable. In fact probably more like sailing biodomes than ships - someplace they could live indefinitely. Assuming their other scientists were hard at work while their engineers were busy perfecting FTL, stuff like air and food have long been technologied away.

The only thing something like Ear

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Immerman]

Doesn't matter how many smoke signals you see from the natives, thy still won't be able to receive your radio transmissions. Unless they can send a physical receiver for their tachyon communicator they'll be stuck talking to us the only way we can hear them: via EM emissions.

Of course their first transmission could potentially be instructions on how to build a tachyon transceiver, but there would still be that initial round-trip lightspeed delay. unless of course they have physical FTL as well, or are already here.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[icebike]

If you knew the natives only spoke smoke signals you would have to be even less educated than the natives to respond with radio.

The more capable civilization adjusts communication means to fit the capabilities of less capable.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

No, but they think they do.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rogoshen1]

suppose for a second that 'greed' is an evolutionary construct -- which i think is plausible (IE, organisms acting in their own self interest, possibly with some altruistic tendencies towards members of it's own species in higher order critters).

Is it unreasonable to assume that the evolutionary pressures that led to humans with our 'greed' and desire to dominate would also come into play on another planet with a different set of starting conditions? IE, they might not look like us, or share the same chemical building blocks, but they'd certainly act like us.

The idea that we as a species are some kind of petulant greedy child just needing to grow up a bit might not be accurate -- it might be baked into our DNA, and by extension other alien life would have the same tendencies: Overuse and over extension of resources, a desire to explore and 'conquer'.. climbing the galactic Mount Everest because it's 'there'.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Charliemopps]

Well, I'd argue it like this: The only means of interstellar communication we know of so far is Electromagnetic waves. With the number of stars in the sky, it's pretty clear that the number of intelligent civilizations out there has to be infinite. Yet the sky is not saturated with their communications. So therefor those civilizations must be using some other technology. Now if they are communicating with entangled particles, we're kind of screwed. You can't eves drop on that. But all the science has so far lead us to believe that you can't actually communicate this way.

But now we're starting to find other fields we could use. Gravity wave detectors are getting better and better. There's the higgs field. Maybe we'll find some other new and interesting ways to relay information. But our tech is advancing at an almost exponential rate now, so I think it's entirely plausible that in the next 100 years we finally figure out how advanced life transmits information long distances. It's probably in some way encrypted so we may just hear noise, but at least we'll know it's there.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Camel Pilot]

I agree ET would have similar behavior... if they are technically advanced they would most certainly be social, curious and have empathy.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[The Grim Reefer]

That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.

Certainly possible. But then, who of us could receive it?

Probably all of us would receive it.

After all, they would understand our limitations, by virtue of examining our transmissions, and adjust their transmissions accordingly.

You're assuming they would want to talk to us at all. Perhaps we are too backward to even bother saying hello to. Or perhaps they are preparing a sneak attack. Granted, we have little that could harm an advanced race, but why give us a couple of decades to prepare. If they've been watching us, they would certainly have figured out that humans are pretty good at finding creative ways of killing things when threatened.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[lister king of smeg]

If their hypothetical communications are encrypted then it would look like random noise could that not then simply be interpreted as more noise in the cosmic microwave background radiation?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[The Grim Reefer]

If you knew the natives only spoke smoke signals you would have to be even less educated than the natives to respond with radio.

The more capable civilization adjusts communication means to fit the capabilities of less capable.

How'd that work out for the native americans? Or the Mayans?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[lister king of smeg]

Alternatively we could just have won the race to sentients within this galaxy and others just haven't evolved there yet or are less advanced then us, who says other extra planetary lifeforms have to have evolved first.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[The Grim Reefer]

I agree ET would have similar behavior... if they are technically advanced they would most certainly be social, curious and have empathy.

And if they evolved from something analogous to ants, how much empathy do you think they will have?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[NotSanguine]

That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.

Certainly possible. But then, who of us could receive it?

Probably all of us would receive it.

After all, they would understand our limitations, by virtue of examining our transmissions, and adjust their transmissions accordingly.

You're assuming they would want to talk to us at all. Perhaps we are too backward to even bother saying hello to. Or perhaps they are preparing a sneak attack. Granted, we have little that could harm an advanced race, but why give us a couple of decades to prepare. If they've been watching us, they would certainly have figured out that humans are pretty good at finding creative ways of killing things when threatened.

Actually, they wouldn't need to be all that much more advanced than we are militarily. We sit at the bottom of a gravity well. As Heinlein suggested in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, they could just "throw rocks" at us.

Not very high tech, is it?

Getting here is a completely different story, but the thought that extraterrestrial intelligence would need to be enormously more technologically advanced than we are is just not true. We (in cosmological terms) aren't so far off from creating devices that can autonomously manufacture machines to mine the moon or asteroids for rocks that can be set on intersecting trajectories with the Earth. Presumably, any intelligence that can build an autonomous probe capable of reaching us, could include that sort of technology in the probe. Berserkers are an (albeit fictional) example.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr

Translation. I'm too lazy to bother to read your post, but I'm narcissistic enough to want to get my $.02 in, so I'm going to attempt (and in this case, fail) to make a snarky comment rather than contribute to the discussion.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[arth1]

Well, I'd argue it like this: The only means of interstellar communication we know of so far is Electromagnetic waves.

Well, no. We can fire off particles with mass (unlike the photons in electromagnetic waves), from a particle accelerator. Whether they can be "heard" over the cosmic ray noise is a different matter, but then again, EM suffers the same problem. That's a receptor problem, not a transmission problem.

And interstellar vessels like the Voyager, Pioneer and New Horizons. They're a tad slow, but do qualify as interstellar communication. :)

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DarwinSurvivor]

Who says the other communication method can't be detected in other ways? A very simple example is using focused EM (or otherwise) radiation to cause a bush to catch fire (and thus produce smoke). Perhaps they have a technology that could disrupt EM radiation, alter the colour spectrum in select areas, vibrate objects to produce sound. Those would definitely be detectable by us. Even if we would have no way to respond along their medium, they could potentially instruct us how to build a transmitter.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[arth1]

A sufficiently advanced entity may have the ability to travel faster than light.

Fermi's paradox says otherwise - where are they?
If FTL (and thus time travel) were possible, we should have plenty of evidence for it.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[mark-t]

assuming, of course, that said ET's don't have any kind of technology which can effectively fold space, making faster than light transportation possible.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[duke_cheetah2003]

OK first, you have to make one assumption. The so called other species is curious. Only a curious species would acquire the technologies necessary to make a trip to earth.

With just this one assumption, studying us is definitely on the table for a good reason to come here. Studying ALL life on earth is a good reason. We're curious too and we love studying all the life around us. I think a curious species would be all over the place studying.

As a consequence of this, we as a curious species have developed a sense of 'conservation.' That is, leaving things on earth, at least in some parts, exactly how it evolved with as little of our interference as possible. It comes to me, our other species may develop this same sense, as a curious species. We did. Now add in the wildly advanced technology this curious species would require to make the trip, maybe they ARE studying us and we just don't know it. For all we know, our entire world is a 'wildlife refuge' in the eyes of another curious species.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Charliemopps]

Yes, but it would behave in an unnatural way. The CMB agrees with our models of the universe. If there was something un-natural it would be screwing up our measurements. The only thing we have like that is Dark Matter/Energy and I doubt the aliens communication network is THAT powerful.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Jason Levine]

They don't even have to reveal themselves to us (and thus risk some sort of counterattack). If they are patient enough, they could park a ship in the asteroid belt and fire a few asteroids in our direction. A few years later, the asteroids would come crashing down on Earth. To us, it would look like a completely natural event, albeit one with disastrous consequences for our civilization. The last human alive could die without ever having known that alien life not only exists, but killed off humanity.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[RubberDogBone]

We do have plenty of evidence. Something is definitely going on.

The real truth is that humanity is merely a curiosity at this point. We think very highly indeed of ourselves but we're barely better than zoo animals and we go out of our way to ensure we stay that way.

Those who have come here to see what's up haven't felt any need to establish an open, formal relationship. It brings no benefit to them. We have nothing to offer they can't get now while they continue to operate as they have, and there's nothing we can do about it. Zero. So why bother talking to us?

That's the really sad thing: it's not that we can't find ET or if there is or is not an ET at all; it's that ET is around and just doesn't care about us.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Jason Levine]

There are still many reasons an alien civilization might come here. For example, Xenophobia. They use their super-Hubble to see Earth and can tell there's life on the planet. They even see indications that the life might be intelligent. They send a probe to get a closer look. (With their technology, this doesn't need to be a ship that enter's Earth's orbit. This might be a small probe that orbits Neptune.) They get confirmation that we're here and that we're intelligent. This upsets them because their beliefs state that they are the ONLY intelligent life forms in the Universe. So either their beliefs are wrong or we're wrong for existing. Obviously, the latter is true so they come here to exterminate us. (And, no, The Doctor doesn't save us.)

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[RubberDogBone]

Greed about what? What would we, either as a race of creatures, or as a populated biosphere, or even as the raw planet itself, what would we have that an advanced race could not find somewhere else for less hassle?

This assumes advanced races couldn't just do "magic" with materials sciences and simply make whatever they needed. If they still need raw material, why come here?

Water? We know there's a LOT of it out there. Our own Oort cloud could be mined for water for close to forever and we wouldn't know about it or be able to do anything. They won't need our oceans.

Gold? Metals? Asteroids. Free. Nobody with spears guarding them. They don't need your dental fillings.

Food? Oh come on, advanced races surely have sorted out getting rid of biological needs like food and waste processing. So they won't need to eat us.

Reproduction? Laughable. Our reproductive process is ridiculous. And probably not compatible. We don't have horse-humans running around and our DNA is already close to the horse DNA. Alien DNA won't be that similar. It would have to be modified, tested, modified more, tested more, to get to a viable hybrid. Hmmm....

Toys? Now this is really the only reason for them to come here. A set of living toys. If all we are to aliens is a set of toys, then we have no hope. This is worse than if they wanted to come here to eat us and take our water. Being a toy means we're only here until somebody decides they want new toys.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Electricity Likes Me]

I'm not sure anyone would bother encrypting light-speed communications. They're so slow that the real problem is hoping anybody knows what you were saying hundreds of years later.

The thing I've been hanging out for is if we discover any possible means of FTL, then the first thing we should go looking for is whether there's FTL radio communications being performed via that method.

Although the best possibility at the moment I guess is beacons transmitting warp-bubbles between each other with Alcubierre-drives.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[arth1]

We do have plenty of evidence. Something is definitely going on.

What evidence? If FTL were possible, time travel would also be possible, and Earth should be swarmed with visitors, from afar and from our own future.

The real truth is that humanity is merely a curiosity at this point.

Ah. You're a faither, knowing The Real Truth(tm).
We don't have anything more to talk about then, as there's no reasoning with faith.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Electricity Likes Me]

The main problem is we know other lifeforms evolved on this planet before us, and we're not the oldest planetary system out there. Unless there is an absurd statistical imbalance in the formation of actual Earth-like planets - which survey data suggests is very unlikely - then the conditions were ripe for complex multi-cellular life to arise for billions of years prior to humans coming on the scene.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Wycliffe]

If FTL travel is possible then FTL communication is possible and they would presumably be using some
form of FTL communication channel which we have no knowledge of and therefore can't detect.

If FTL travel is not possible then we are stuck on this rock and they on theirs and it doesn't really matter
much if we discover another civilization 1000 light years away as interaction will be minimal.

Anyone sufficiently advanced to communicate in any meaningful way we should be very very scared of
because that means they are far far more advanced than we are. They either have FTL travel or some
means of traveling great distances while we have neither.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Wycliffe]

This is all assuming they WANT to talk to us.
Why would they want to talk to us? Study us maybe but if there are
thousands of other worlds with life then we probably wouldn't be that
interesting. They certainly aren't going to want our primitive technology.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[evilviper]

With the number of stars in the sky, it's pretty clear that the number of intelligent civilizations out there has to be infinite.

Nonsense. That's purely wishful thinking.

We have precisely ONE example of abiogenesis. That's statistically insignificant, so we have NO POSSIBLE WAY to extrapolate out how likely or unlikely it is to happen anywhere else.

We do not have any evidence that it happened a second time in the history of Earth, otherwise we'd see crazy branches in DNA trees. We have not made it happen in a lab, so that we'd have the faintest concept of how difficult it would be.

We similarly have only one example of higher life-forms developing from the lower life-forms... Again, no sign in the DNA tree that it happened, independently, twice, so that might be a pretty rare and difficult thing, itself.

And finally, we have just one example of those higher life-forms becoming sentient beings, in the form of humans. As smart as dolphins may be, they're not building radios or space ships. Same goes for millions of years of dinosaurs. Why don't we see left-over buildings constructed by smart, pre-human animals? Probably weren't any other sentiences on Earth.

So there you've got 3-in-a-row long-shots... If each is a billion-to-one shot, the combined odds would be a stretch of happening more than once, even with trillions of planets out there. But that's just as much of a wild-assed guess as yours...

It seems to be wishful thinking that people WANT to have, not just life, not just higher life-forms, and not just sentient life out there, but sentient life that's much more advanced than us. Creatures that are going to swoop in, give us advanced technology, and solve all our problems for us. No matter how little we know of the odds, many people will just keep assuming they're out there, because they WANT it to be true.

Meanwhile, nobody has solved the Drake Equation, to actually give us the correct odds of either extreme.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[JRV31]

Our messages are transmitted over a carrier signal that is very obvious, even if the data is encrypted.

It's more than just the encryption, you also need to figure out the alphabet. Even if you figure out that 01000001 means "A" what does "A" mean?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have precisely ONE example of abiogenesis. That's statistically insignificant, so we have NO POSSIBLE WAY to extrapolate out how likely or unlikely it is to happen anywhere else.

Yet we happily assume it's the same 92 stable chemical elements all across the universe. And all we have is a tiny sample of matter right here.

How did we extrapolate that it's the same particles and same atoms wall to wall?

If it's the same chemicals, they'll act the same way.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Zebai]

I think I have to comment on this one. Say your right, there is 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance of even micro organisms being on another planet, and another 1 in billion of it being intelligent. That would still leave chances of life to be in the BILLIONS and we can't even see all of it because the light takes so long to travel the birth of distant stars from billions of years ago hasn't even reached us yet. As long as the chance is not 0% which it is not because we are here then some where in the universe there are other intelligent life forms however our chance of ever being able find them are equally infinitesimal.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rtb61]

One only need look at how advanced elements of humanity treat wild regions of earth, seeking to preserve them rather than exploit them and to allow them to develop naturally whilst observing them with minimal interaction. Interaction only significantly increases if threat exceeds acceptable levels and then would likely be quite hostile of the typical cull variety. For example in the human case that would likely extend to genetic targeting of psychopaths and narcissists the root cause of humanities social ails.

Of course the logical expectation is that humanity like any other advancing species would learn how to properly deal with it social problems, like psychopaths and narcissists as well as reach out with advanced communications prior to being accepted.

So are earthlings ready, likely a reasonable proportion are, however there are a sufficient proportion of unacceptable types which reduce the average acceptable and thus exclude the species. Logically it would be the junior societies problem to be able to demonstrate its ability to deal with its problems and not up to others to do it for it, its failure to do so precludes from advancing. Notionally low IQ or undeveloped types are not necessarily a disadvantage as nature preserves would seem logical, not all humans would need to reach for the stars in order for a significant portion to gain access.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[dryeo]

If it happened once, and us being here is pretty good evidence that abiogenesis did happen, then in an infinite universe it must have happened infinite times. Of course those other times may not have been in the finite visible universe.
As for sentience, I think what you actually mean is technological life. Life could be sentient and never interested in technology or only minimally interested in technology. Has to be capable too, an octopus might be sentient but living under water is limiting and not having families to propagate a culture is also limiting when it comes to producing much technology.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[LionKimbro]

FUTHERMORE. The size of the universe is unknown. Furthermore: By present estimates, the universe is near uniformly "flat." That means, you go to the edge of the visible universe on one side, and you do *not* wrap around "the other side." Rather, there's more universe past what we can see. If the universe were infinite in all directions, it'd be completely consistent with known measurements. If the universe is infinite in all directions, we can absolutely count on there being intelligent life way, way out there.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Rare Earth hypothesis. Life on Earth is a cascade of absolutely unlikely events with close to 0 chance to ever repeating. And yes it says for this hypothesis they have only 1 data point, this planet.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Currently, getting to Proxima Centauri (the closest star outside our solar system) in less than a few hundred years would require technolgy that is several orders of magnitude beyond what we have now"
                            ----- Maybe, but how many orders of magnitude are we now beyond where we as a species only 100 years ago?

"The word "want" might not even apply to someone 1000 times smarter than us"
                                    -----Simply as smart as would suffice given enough head start.

why would they want to come here? Its isn't resource, not to conquer us or any other practical reason. They would do it for the same reason we would. Because they can.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[amorsen]

Communications are likely to be point-to-point, and we only get to catch the signal if it randomly points at us for a moment.

We emit lots of radar, and we could be easily detected that way, but military radar is going spread-spectrum or passive and civilian radar is relying more and more on active transponders. If we fixed our light pollution as well, intelligent life on Earth would be quite well hidden.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[evilviper]

Except you missed a whole other billion in there, leaving the odds of it EVER happening (in this universe) just in the single-digits or perhaps the teens.

Besides, my whole point was that 1 example can't be used to extrapolate ANY odds, big or small. The odds could be 1 in 500 trillion, or one in 10. We don't have a clue, and making a guess either way is a utterly baseless, bald-assed assumption.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[evilviper]

The Universe is NOT infinite. It is unimaginably, astronomically ginormous, but decidedly finite. If it was infinite, the Big Bang theory couldn't work.

And since the Universe is finite, it's absolutely possible for odds to be so long, that something (or a series of interdependant somethings) is unlikely to have happened more than once. Whether that's true of advanced life remains to be seen, but is entirely possible.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[American Patent Guy]

I'm sure if they're watching our communications, they'd love to watch some better afternoon television programs...

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[lurcher]

Our messages are transmitted over a carrier signal that is very obvious, even if the data is encrypted.

Not so sure, if someone from the 50's recieved a 16-QAM signal, it would look very like noise. But more and more of our comm's are now either short range, point to point or not using RF.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more than just the encryption, you also need to figure out the alphabet. Even if you figure out that 01000001 means "A" what does "A" mean?

It's the first letter of the alphabet, dipshit.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[arvindsg]

Trillions of planets is a huge underestimate with 10^11 galaxies in our observable universe each with about 10^11 stars

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[pitchpipe]

Overuse and over extension of resources, a desire to explore and 'conquer'...

You had better hope that aliens that show up here don't want to conquer us, because if they can travel interstellar distances with something resembling an invasion force... well, let's just say they aren't going to forget their raincoats.
I doubt anyone would know what was happening before they were dead.

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[dnaumov]

You are looking at this in precisely the wrong way: there are countless and countless planets in the universe, as such, the odds of our planet being the only one to have civilization are extremely poor.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[qbast]

Quite well. It did not take them long to understand basic message - 'we want loot all your riches and kill you all'.

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[threepoint141592]

Awesome technology. Good on you for having the courage to comment.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[cyber-vandal]

The Alcubierre Drive is theoretically possible. Would that lead to time travel?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[theedgeofoblivious]

Because even though life has existed on this planet through 3.8 billion years you're pretty sure they'll only detect it and start heading this way within the next 100?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[theedgeofoblivious]

How long would it take for someone to walk from the southernmost tip of Africa to the southernmost tip of South America?

A long time, right? Has anyone done it?

But over generations, humans moved little-by-little, farther and farther out, and given a hundred thousand years or so, there were humans all over the face of this planet. It's not like one person left Africa and made the trip by themself in one day. No, but humans multiplied and spread out.

Given the universe's age, more billions of years old than we can comprehend, even if we can't bet on a traveler making a non-stop streak across the sky to our backyard, why is it unreasonable to assume that they might have learned to live in space, and might have moved further and further out, little-by-little, and that they could be within a lifetime's travel of Earth right now?

The fact that you're unlikely to meet some form of life from another planet is in no way an indication that you're unlikely to encounter something whose great great great* ancestor was from said other planet.

We're so busy searching for signs of life that we don't realize that a sufficiently capable civilization might be able to exist where such signs of life don't exist, in the same way that we can exist in a plane or on a submarine. For all we know, the first bacteria on Earth could have been scraped off of the "boot" of some interstellar traveler visiting the Earth as the cosmic equivalent of the Grand Canyon. They could have been nearby before we were even here.

And we're searching for intelligence, even though it's much more likely that we'd find simple life akin to bacteria? Has a scientist ever considered that if we do find bacteria and we set out in that direction, by the time any of us get there there might be intelligent life there? And has anyone ever considered that somewhere out there some extrasolar travelers might have made the same bet regarding Earth?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[AlecC]

While the number of civilisations may be infinite, they are scattered through infinite space. Their density may be low even when their number is infinite, If there is only one civilisation per billion galaxies at any one time, they will be hard to spot.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Xest]

Have you ever been to the zoo? or been on a nature holiday?

Sometimes the reason for going places, even if you've seen it all in the books and on TV, is because experience different species in their own habitat is something you just cannot get any other way.

Life evolves many different things in many different ways, and each can be fascinating to observe.

The reason for coming here may simply be the reason we go to the zoo, because to see a termite mound is an impressive natural structure to see for yourself, and watching the termites work is fascinating. Our architecture, our culture, and the habits we've formed may simply give them a feeling that reading about theoretical versions of us in books just cannot give them.

That's before you consider other possibilities, that it may even be a sports thing - a competitive race seeing how many planets they can visit/destroy/troll/advance.

The problem is that throughout your assumptions about why are that you're assuming there must be an end, a goal in visiting us. What if the goal in itself is simply to visit us and watch us? or is an altruistic psychological need they have to help other intelligent species advance? Do we not send charity to poor 3rd world nations to help them advance and live better lives, because doing so in itself makes us feel better about ourselves?

"The question of why aliens might "want to come here" is fundamentally flawed because we are forming that question from our current (tiny) viewpoint. "

Ironically, I think that's the problem with your viewpoint - you're arguing that they wouldn't bother coming here based on arbitrary and very human logic. As you said, that might not even apply, it might not apply in a manner that means they have as much reason to visit us as it means they do not. Their reasons for visiting us may even be completely incomprehensible to all current human minds.

You've taken the argument of greater intelligence and tried to turn it into a suggestion that it's a reason not to visit us, when in reality, if it's an intelligence so great we cannot comprehend it, we also cannot rationally suggest it would give them reason not to visit anymore than it would give them reason to visit. If we don't understand it we simply have no idea what we would mean to them. We may mean a lot, or we may mean nothing.

For all we know an alien high school kid may simply be doing a school project studying various intergalactic intelligent life forms.

We just do not know, we cannot say one way or the other whether they would or wouldn't want to come here.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[gtall]

The reason aliens would come to earth is our women. It turns out alien women screech a lot about alien men always zipping off their planets and never taking them anywhere. Plus, have you ever seen alien women? No wonder the alien men want to come here.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Warma]

I honestly think your reasoning is fundamentally flawed, because you assume a very artificial set of motivations for any and all possible visitors. A simple counter-example would be to ask yourself, would you visit an alien civilization, no matter how primitive, if it was possible? If you are dishonest enough to claim that if we had chances to visit any number of other civilizations, we wouldn't visit all of them all the time, I don't really know what to do with you.

In my opinion, rationalizations like this are simply a way for hopeful people to populate an empty universe by inventing esoteric reasons for why we fail to see anybody, even if we should. A more likely explanation is, that sentient life is much more rare than we expect it to be, and that we are essentially alone.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[dreamchaser]

Nothing is infinite. There could be billions of intelligent species but that's still a finite number, and it the vastness of the observable Universe they could still be scattered so far and wide that we'll never contact or detect them. The simplest answer to the observation of no intelligent communications going on is there is nobody intelligent anywhere near close to us for us to detect their transmissions. It's certainly not that they are all using some magical form of communication that may or may not even be possible.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[dogvomit]

The Universe is NOT infinite. It is unimaginably, astronomically ginormous, but decidedly finite. If it was infinite, the Big Bang theory couldn't work.

That is not correct. The preponderance of data are consistent with an infinite flat universe and there is nothing about an infinite flat universe that is inconsistent with big bang cosmology.

See, for example:
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/unive...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Aphadon]

There's a very interesting xkcd what-if on this. Turns out nowadays aliens would have a better chance at finding us based on the reflected light anomalies created by our atmosphere, rather than picking up radio transmissions.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Caesar Tjalbo]

Yes, they do.

"to some degree"

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[wonkey_monkey]

we can absolutely count on there being intelligent life way, way out there.

I can't believe we've got this far without deferring to Douglas Adams:

Population: None. Although you might see people from time to time, they are most likely products of your imagination. Simple mathematics tells us that the population of the Universe must be zero. Why? Well given that the volume of the universe is infinite there must be an infinite number of worlds. But not all of them are populated; therefore only a finite number are. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no odds, therefore we can round the average population of the Universe to zero, and so the total population must be zero.

(yes, yes, I know where the error is, shh)

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[UnknownSoldier]

They are coming by 2024 to check on their *children*. The fact that we look so similar will be the more interesting archtype question.

In the future *we* will do the same as we spiritually evolve to a higher level of intelligence, wisdom, and properly balance Science and Spirituality.

The *cycle* of consciousness has been going on for billions of years; nothing is going to stop it simply because of your myopic view.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[evilviper]

Most won't be potentially habitable, Earth-like planets.

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[evilviper]

The odds against advanced life sprouting up could very well be equally countless. You can't fill in half of the Drake equation, and just assume the other half are some numbers you'd prefer.

Then you run up against Fermi's paradox. Occam's razor says my explanation is better than yours.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[arth1]

The Alcubierre Drive is theoretically possible. Would that lead to time travel?

There is no agreement on Alcubierre drives being possible; first you need negative mass matter, for example.

And yes, it implies backwards time travel, unless introducing untestable rules like "quantum effects will not allow paradoxes", with an invisible hand stopping you. That borders on faith, and just the wrong side of the border.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[evilviper]

Yes, I'm probably misusing accepted terminology here. Finite time and finite planets, versus a non-finite space.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[AthanasiusKircher]

The main problem is we know other lifeforms evolved on this planet before us, and we're not the oldest planetary system out there.

Anecdote is not data.

Unless there is an absurd statistical imbalance in the formation of actual Earth-like planets - which survey data suggests is very unlikely - then the conditions were ripe for complex multi-cellular life to arise

Yeah, here's the problem: what, precisely, is "Earth-like"? Or, specifically, what is "Earth-like" enough that life is statistically likely (or even possible) to arise?

If you made your argument 50 or 60 years ago to most scientists, you'd be laughed out of the room. The idea that the universe was teeming with life just seemed a bit absurd, and not only because of religious views. Even if there were other stars and other galaxies, speculating about what was there just seemed like science fiction.

And precisely what has changed since then, other than people like Carl Sagan and other proponents of SETI convincing us to take sci-fi more seriously (not based on much evidence)?

Yes, we've verified that planets outside our solar system actually exist, but I doubt most astronomers 60 years ago would have assumed otherwise. And we've done experiments (beginning with the Miller-Urey experiment) that show that amino acids and various other organic molecules could form in what we assume was early Earth's chemistry.

But producing a few spontaneous amino acids is a far cry from abiogenesis. I know there is further speculative research trying to sort out how various processes might have led to spontaneous order arising, but there are A LOT of steps between amino acids and a self-replicating cell. Precisely which "Earth-like" conditions would be necessary to allow those things to happen? Given that we haven't sorted out all the details, it's really hard to know.

Sure, it could be that most planets with some vague approximation to the right chemical mix will produce life over a period of a billion years or so. But it could also be that conditions needed to be much more specific, or even that some crazy set of things came together for a very short time window to make it work out on Earth. So, the probability that an "Earth-like" planet according to your specifications might form life could be 90%, or it could be 1 in a billion or a trillion or a quadrillion. Life could be present around neighboring stars, or it could be more like once per galaxy, or it could be that we truly are unique.

I'm not saying it's likely that we're unique; I'm saying that we have only one data point to extrapolate from. Until we actually find life somewhere else, or it comes to us, or we mix together something in a lab and spontaneously generate a self-replicating cell, we're all just speculating.

So, your assertion that "the conditions were ripe for complex multi-cellular life to arise" is nothing more than idle speculation. I agree that it seems pretty likely that once you have multicellular life, it is likely to evolve to more complex things. Evolution with self-replicating life as a response to environmental conditions makes sense, and it has been actually observed on a smaller scale. But the problem is getting to that self-replicating life in the first place. People are working on theories to explain that, but we simply have no idea what the probability is. Thus anyone who claims to be able to use the Drake equation to produce a realistic estimate is full of crap.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[AmiMoJo]

It's not a good analogy. We know enough about slugs to know that they are not sentient and don't experience much suffering when we kill them for pest control or whatever. We understand quite well how they are different to other animals, like say dogs who do experience pain and psychological suffering on a very different level.

It seems unlikely any intelligence species that had a grasp of biology and sociology would not recognize us as being very different from a slug. They too would have slug-like creatures to compare us with, at the very least.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Mariner28]

Encryption on a link, however good, looks not like white noise but like "pink" noise - as it isn't truly random. Just as we're getting better at detecting gravity waves, the Higgs field, we'll eventually be able to separate pseudo-random "pink" noise from the cosmic background radiation. Another problem will be the fact that for the galactic Internet, the current IPv8 standard is running out of addresses, so everyone's hiding private address behind NAT/PAT firewalls. The upside, though, is that even with IPSec encryption, we'd still be able to tell that there's a connection out there since the address headers will still have to be in the clear ;-)

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[hypergreatthing]

It's the same reason that led them into space to begin with.
Curiosity and a exploration nature will lead them to contact other species.
If they're not curious about what's out there in space, why would they ever venture into it?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

Yep. Many other species have means of survival of their species other than "intelligence", and many with impressive intelligence create organizations but don't build things or leave much around for their descendants, information-wise, other than what's slowly coded in genes. Most assume that enough intelligence results in beings "striving for the stars". I know a lot of humans about which that's not true.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

no, there are other means we know of and actually do: neutrinos (we have experiments that make pulsed sources) or highly energetic particle beams (so near light speed differences neglibigle) that could be modulated

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[kheldan]

You're all kidding me, right?
With all the stupid shit the Human race does to the planet and to themselves? Sure, I 100% believe there's sentient alien life out there, and I'm willing to believe that they have interstellar capabilities. But they see how fucked-up we are as a race, and are making a point of not introducing themselves to us because we act too much like animals. If they're capable of the emotion of embarassment, they're probably embarassed for the Human race because of the dumb shit we do. 50 to 100 years? Ha, try 5000 to 10000 years! If we haven't killed ourselves off by then, then maybe we'll have evolved, biologically and socially, beyond this embarassing stage of our development!

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

based on your sample size of one? you are funny, the universe may be teaming with life, microbal life. That's all Earth had for the first 3.5 billion years, that may well be the norm and whatever freak accident made multicellular life never happens elsewhere

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

yes, certainty of life is one thing, but fact is most of the time the natural state is single celled. I present you with hard proof of 3.5 billion years of single cell life on earth, no multicellular life at all, let alone anything with a brain. that's the norm, pretty boring ET

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

single celled life existed until 1 billion years ago (which I believe is the only thing to be found on almost all habitable planets unless extremely rare freak accident occurs, that length of time is the proof), and no land plants until less than 500 million years ago. nothing of interest here for most of the time

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[datavirtue]

So therefor those civilizations must be using some other technology.

My vote is smoke signals...or that weird thing that octopi do. The most likely possibility of communication is one which most people do no consider. Quantum mental communication--remote viewing. Perhaps some of us have been doing it for a long time now without really quantifying it?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

News for you, it is the same elements in well-known proportions which can be quoted accurately for any time given in the last 13 billion years. There is very hard proof, our samples are from all the visible universe. We thus also know the physical constants at any time in those 13 billion years, again very hard proof

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

leading to a fraction being "habitable", all filled with single celled organisms, which we know is the norm

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

sorry, Heinlein screwed up the math, those kinetic weapons of some tons don't have nuclear-weapon type yield. such weapons would mostly annoy us and piss us off

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[xanadu113]

Couldn't they use quantum entanglement, and send information faster than the speed of light..?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[datavirtue]

Same thing happened with the Etruscans. They used the Greek alphabet but we do not know what any of the words mean.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[sceincegeek]

Brilliant answer! It is absolute nonsense to use any kind of statistic to answer that question. It is really only wishful thinking that lead us to use such vague arguments. If the wish was that we are alone in the universe you have several good arguments in your post that shows it is the "most possible" situation. All in all what it shows is that we still know very very little about these topics and that we need to continue to do some serious research on the subject instead of shooting around with almost religious wishes and guesses using our so called "logical common sense".

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[nblender]

Something I always wondered since I was a kid (40 years ago) is what if 'space' is infinite but our universe is still expanding to fill it? What if another big-bang happened elsewhere creating another universe, that is slowly expanding to fill it's portion of space? What if, eventually, billions and billions of years from now, the edges of the various universes meet and gravity causes new stars and black holes eventually causing another huge implosion and another Big Bang with all new laws, constants, etc ... This has been happening forever and will continue happening forever...

It made more sense when I was 12 ...

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[nblender]

or it could happen elsewhere, but a million years before or after our existance...

The odds that there is intelligent life, anywhere near here, at the same time as us, is even smaller...

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[phorm]

"These creatures do not exhibit behaviour of an intelligent being. While they are smarter than the average krrrthat, they appear to lack the ability for direct mind-to-mind communication and instead use a primitive form of sound-wave propagation which would not be feasible in non-planetary environments. Similarly, their ocular organs appears to only discern a limited spectrum of light and cannot see more useful forms of radiation.

Furthermore, their mating and excretory habits are disgusting. Do you know that they rely on precious water to dispose of their waste material. They have a primitive filtration system but still contaminate their overall water supply. Mating involves direct orifice copulation instead of through a Zzapht intermediary.

Truly primitive. Perhaps they might be useful for study or dissection, though.
"

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[painandgreed]

Lebensraum? A gravity well with magnetic shield in the range where water is liquid might be worth fighting over. If they can make it here, they can probably build space habitats, but like ships, all space habitats are going to leak. The Earth is quite simply a cheap and easy place to live, especially in the long run of thousands of years. Terraforming another planet like Mars will take a lot of energy, something like three days output of the sun last time I did the numbers. If they got here in a generation ship or have technical troubles that would prevent them from going anywhere else, they might not have a choice as to what to do, especially if we are competing for the same resources.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[doublebackslash]

Actually an infinite universe does not contradict the Big Bang theory.
One explanation with a handy diagram (authored by an astrophysicist) http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wri...
Another more comprehensive answer is here https://answers.yahoo.com/ques...
And something from NASA for shiggles http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/univ...

I'm certain there are plenty of other discussions of the topic. AFIK we are not yet certain that the universe is('nt) infinite, we don't even know its shape, but it is possible for it to be infinite.

Currently observational evidence points to an extremely flat universe (as flat as we can measure as yet), implying its size is tremendously larger than the Hubble Volume and allowing for an infinite universe (but obviously doesn't require it).

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[NotSanguine]

sorry, Heinlein screwed up the math, those kinetic weapons of some tons don't have nuclear-weapon type yield. such weapons would mostly annoy us and piss us off

Not exactly. A 1,000KG object falling from the moon (as an example), would generate a force of 3,753,633,945,600J (or 3.75 Kilotons of TNT equivalent). This is roughly 1/4 the energy of the atomic bomb ("Little Boy") dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. While the energy is dwarfed by modern nuclear weapons, it is still ~85 times more powerful than the largest conventional bombs.

I suspect that a 3.75 Kiloton blast would do a little more than annoy or piss us off. Especially if there were more than one.

Please. Check my calculations.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Dr. Sheldon Cooper]

Consider this please...

We currently are basing our search on EM communications. We have only been using this type of communication mechanism for a short time, cosmically speaking. I don't think it will be very long before we either discover (on purpose) or stumble upon some other exotic communication mechanism. If this is true for us, then it is likely to be true for other civilizations as well. So we are looking for signs based on a communication mechanism that is nearly infinitesimally short-lived in a civilization's development.

In short, I don't think we even know *what* to look for yet.

Disclaimer: I am neither a physicist, nor a mathematician, just an average geek, and this is all conjecture.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[NotSanguine]

sorry, Heinlein screwed up the math, those kinetic weapons of some tons don't have nuclear-weapon type yield. such weapons would mostly annoy us and piss us off

Not exactly. A 1,000KG object falling from the moon (as an example), would generate a force of 3,753,633,945,600J (or 3.75 Kilotons of TNT equivalent). This is roughly 1/4 the energy of the atomic bomb ("Little Boy") dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. While the energy is dwarfed by modern nuclear weapons, it is still ~85 times more powerful than the largest conventional bombs.

I suspect that a 3.75 Kiloton blast would do a little more than annoy or piss us off. Especially if there were more than one.

Please. Check my calculations.

Okay. I checked my own calculations and I was wrong. That 1,000KG object would generate the equivalent of 897 tons of TNT. However, that's still 20 times more than the largest conventional bombs. And a lot more than, IMHO, we would consider just an annoyance. Especially if there are many such projectiles. What is more, why stop at 1,000KG? How about 10,000 (~9 Kilotons) or 1,000,000 (897 Kilotons)?

In any case, I admitted my mistake in calculation. Perhaps you should admit yours? Or not. That's up to you.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

I like the Technology Ability Scale standardized on a standard poodle. It has that nice ring to it, like a "standard candle".

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

Or on the other hand, that compared to them intellectually, we're similar to ants. Let's just hope they have a regional PETA chapter.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Nothing is infinite

[Citation Needed]

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Maybe they have none of that technology.

One of my favourite short stories.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[jzatopa]

That is where you are wrong, there is no cushion. If and when this happens we will have some serious socio-economic dilemmas we will need to address. Lets assume there is an Alien group that wishes to contact us, you need to put in to perspective just how advanced they would need to be. To travel space effectively there are three things they need. A way to travel to a location in a reasonable amount of time, a way to communicate and a life support system. Traditional space travel as we know it is relatively useless in the big scheme of things. The Aliens would need to have developed a way to move across the universe in short periods of time ie. wormhole technology. To do this you would need to bend space time so that two points that don't normally touch, touch. Then you could pass through. It would look like you traveled faster then light but in reality you just shortened the distance for yourself. The same is true with communication. You need a way to communicate with other ships as well as home. Light just doesn't travel fast enough to be effective. Personally I think that quantum entanglement will one day show that you can communicate FTL, even though we have shown that information is not passed through entanglement. I think that the physics that allows quantum entanglement will show some sort of tunneling/wormhole exists. It would look like FTL measuring through traditional physics, but really be very slow measured though a tunnel/wormhole. Life support is obvious but if you are able to travel across the universe in the blink of an eye, it becomes less of a burden. If such a group were to contact us we would have all sorts of questions answered but we would also have huge amounts of fear, which is pretty natural. Just look at any movie with aliens to see our underlying fears. They would have fears as well. Once you develop the technology I outlined, you would then realize that the universe is abundant with material and space, traditional supply and demand would change as supply moves to infinite. A culture that is space-faring would have a very different value system then what we have here. I love thinking about this stuff because its just our imaginations tempered with the future we see with our current technology. The reality is that we may be one of the most advanced life forms in the universe and just don't want to be alone.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[SoftwareArtist]

Or maybe they're using exactly the types of communication we're steadily moving toward: fiber optics for long distances, lots of low power transmitters for short distances. If they've expanded beyond their home planet, interplanetary communication would probably use lasers, so very very highly directional. All of these signals would of course be digital, not analog.

Anyone in a distant star system listening for messages would hear absolutely nothing.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[david_thornley]

Are you sure we have only one example of higher life-forms developing from lower? I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'higher" and "lower", but I'd say that both octopi and humans are examples of "higher", and I don't know how long ago we separated, or what our nearest common ancestors were.

I think you want "technological" rather than "sentient" in the next paragraph. Do we know that giant squids aren't sentient? (Heck, are cats sentient?) For all I know, Tau Ceti has a planet with superintelligent telepathic barnacloids all over, with far greater insights into religion and philosophy than humanity can muster. Unless we actually go there, we aren't going to detect them, unless they telekinetically construct massive technological devices that emit lots of EM radiation.

I don't know how many technologically advanced species there are out there (my guess is "lots", more or less, but that opinion is really for entertainment purposes only), but it seems likely that most of them are considerably more advanced than we are, by virtue of having had technology longer.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[david_thornley]

However, we can only interact with a finite (although very large) part of the Universe, and what was more than 13.8 billion light-years away 13.8 billion years ago is irrelevant for most practical purposes.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Mike Van Pelt]

Meanwhile, nobody has solved the Drake Equation, to actually give us the correct odds of either extreme.

No, but one term in it, the probability of a star having planets, has recently been determined to be pretty close to 1.0.

Doesn't tell us anything about abiogenesis, etc., of course.

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[HeX314]

But we could hibernate on the trip, which wouldn't feel like that long at near light speed. I'm ready! Get me off this moldy speck!

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

That made me think of ant farms.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

Yeah, even before I got through yours, I was thinking that maybe religion is involved. Most assume that another few centuries of advancement will spell the end of proselytizing. I'm not so sure. Maybe aliens will come to save us from our wrong-to-them religions. Of course, those that can't be converted must be eliminated.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[david_thornley]

Anybody with the tech to go between star systems has the tech to throw large numbers of really big rocks at us.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

Earth girls are easy?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

Or maybe alien men sent the women away, to Earth, and they're seriously mad about it. Guess who's handy to take it out on?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Grishnakh]

If FTL travel is not possible then we are stuck on this rock and they on theirs and it doesn't really matter
much if we discover another civilization 1000 light years away as interaction will be minimal.

That's not really true. While you're right that two-way communication would be quite minimal with that kind of lag, it's still quite possible to communicate in a one-sided fashion. Suppose that many millenia ago, some advanced ET civilization 1000 ly away decided to build a probe packed with the equivalent of their Wikipedia and send it to us. When it arrives to us, we analyze it and learn not only that we're not alone, but all about an alien culture. That would have profound implications for our society and our view of the universe, even if we never bother to send anything back.

Anyone sufficiently advanced to communicate in any meaningful way we should be very very scared of
because that means they are far far more advanced than we are.

I don't see why we should fear any such civilization. A highly advanced civilization would have no need to harm us. Invasions happen because one party has something the invading party wants. An FTL-capable civilization would not be resource-constrained, so it'd have no need to invade us as it could get whatever it wants at some more convenient location; the only reason it'd want to establish contact is for peaceful communication.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DriveDog]

Perhaps stars are the life we're not understanding. We're just parasites. Just a hot ball of gas? There's a lot of very complicated stuff going on inside of stars. Can we know they're not engaged in processing information in a meaningful way? Also, the type of star and the way it dies affects the types of its children. Just not the way we think about biology—"offspring are similar to their parents".

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[NotSanguine]

Anybody with the tech to go between star systems has the tech to throw large numbers of really big rocks at us.

Exactly my point. Thanks.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[dreamchaser]

Sorry but in this case the extraordinary claim that something IS infinite is what requires proof.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

How do you even begin to make an argument against "nothing is infinite"? What evidence is there either way? And how could you prove it one way or the other?

I think the extraordinary claim here is that one could gather enough information to even form an informed opinion.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[deboli]

There could be an additional reason: Their star is about to go nova and they need a new home...

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

Admit what, you just went from 4kt to 0.9 kt and are still incorrect in your math. Nothing can "fall from the moon", anything launched on ballistic trajectory from there will *lose* energy because of force of moon until object reaches pount (about 310,000km from earth) where earth's gravity will begin to accelerate it (and NOT at 9.8m/s^2 but nearly zero) Let me clue you in, your 1 ton object will strike with about a tenth of a kiloton of force, a one kt explosion will require a 10 ton object. see? it's a pointless expenditure of energy.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Sabriel]

Two words: hyperspace bypass.

Longer version: That's a "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reference. In other words, as much I hope you're right, your theory assumes that what an FTL-capable civilization wants can't involve (1) us being in the way somehow and (2) them not caring about what we want.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[mcswell]

"All we have is a tiny sample of matter right here." In 1835, Auguste Comte (a French philosopher) claimed that we would never be able to know the chemical composition of stars. Then someone discovered spectroscopy.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Sabriel]

Or, as another poster mentioned, launch your rock from the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter instead of from the Moon. For bonus points, use a near-solar trajectory for a gravity slingshot to give your rock a more antagonistic vector.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[NotSanguine]

Admit what, you just went from 4kt to 0.9 kt and are still incorrect in your math. Nothing can "fall from the moon", anything launched on ballistic trajectory from there will *lose* energy because of force of moon until object reaches pount (about 310,000km from earth) where earth's gravity will begin to accelerate it (and NOT at 9.8m/s^2 but nearly zero) Let me clue you in, your 1 ton object will strike with about a tenth of a kiloton of force, a one kt explosion will require a 10 ton object. see? it's a pointless expenditure of energy.

Actually, you're flat wrong. I should have been more explicit, but I thought I was dealing with someone who had even a little knowledge about this topic that wanted to have an informed discussion. I guess that's what happens when you assume.

Such a device (the payload, with an appropriate casing and attitude rockets for course adjustment) would be accelerated from space or from the moon via some sort of mass driver (coil/rail gun, linear motor, etc.) to accelerate the device out of the moon's gravitational field at six, eight or even ten Gs. Deep space or orbital launch would be even simpler and require less energy (not being in the moon's gravity well).

While such a weapon system has never been deployed, it has been studied, over the years, in various forms by both the US and the former USSR.

As such, you are either being deliberately obtuse or are just woefully uninformed. So enough of this. Have a nice day.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Anecdote is not data.

Fossil and DNA evidence from millions of years ago, found all over the world, is not an anecdote.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[dogvomit]

Yes, I'm probably misusing accepted terminology here. Finite time and finite planets, versus a non-finite space.

Finite time so far, but it will probably go on forever — the jury is still out.

But if the space is infinite, so probably too is the number of stars and planets. Otherwise there would be something special about space around here, and there is no reason to think we are special.

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[ceoyoyo]

Not necessarily in any sense, and quite plausibly not really in any practical sense.

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[ceoyoyo]

Your point is somewhat valid, but you're overstating it.

We have one firm example. That's not enough to do regular stats with. However, we're not trying to do that (btw - you've used the term "statistically insignificant" incorrectly).

We do know something about each of the individual steps involved in abiogenesis and the evolution of intelligence. We have examples of amino acids and other biological precursors forming independently many times in very unlikely places. We also know of several plausible ways to go from those to self reproducing cell analogues. Moving up, we're beginning to get some hard data on the types of changes that are necessary to go from great ape-style intelligence to radio-building intelligence.

We've got some details to work out, but most of these steps don't seem terribly unlikely. Probably the most difficult is having a planet of the right size in the right place, but we're becoming more confident that the universe is littered with such things.

From the other side, we know of very good reasons why we would not have detected another intelligent species yet, if they existed.

It's quite likely that in the next twenty to fifty years we'll have duplicated all the steps necessary to go from inorganic compounds to intelligent life, although probably not in a single chain. Then we'll be able to assign fairly good probabilities to them happening. So even though we'll still almost certainly not have observed another intelligent species by then, we will be able to make reasonable statements about the likelihood of such things, just as we can predict the performance of a new aircraft before we actually fly it. We can do so now, in fact, just with much larger error bars.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Grishnakh]

Yes, I remember that much about HHGTTG, but again, I think it's pretty silly (like most of the book). Space is incredibly vast; the idea of a star system (or worse, a single planet) being "in the way" of anything is utterly ridiculous. I suppose it's remotely possible, but so improbable it's not worth considering. The way I see it, there's only two valid reasons a starfaring civilization would ever want to visit any particular planet: 1) that planet has resources they want, or 2) they want to visit for some reason (diplomacy, curiosity, trade, tourism). Actually traveling to any planet would either require an enormous amount of energy and resources (assuming non-FTL), not to mention time, plus a very high degree of technological capability, or it would require a level of technology we can barely comprehend (basically Star Trek tech) plus an understanding of fundamental physics far beyond our own (assuming FTL is possible). If it's the latter, then you're talking about a minimum Type-I civilization (probably not far from Type II really, to have that capability), and a civilization that, like Star Trek, is not resource-constrained. If you have warp drive, you can go anywhere and harvest infinite dead worlds for all the resources you desire. If it's the former (non-FTL-capable), then there's very little likelihood the resources we have would be worth the amount of resources (and time) needed to come here to get them.

Now I suppose it is possible I've overlooked something. Maybe the physics needed for FTL travel really isn't hard at all, and we've just managed to overlook it somehow. Maybe some other civilization that is at 1950s tech has figured it out, and that civilization is warlike and expansionist, and will be visiting us soon. Someone wrote a short story about that a while ago, about some alien invaders who figured out FTL but still used medieval-level firearms tech, so we humans easily defeated them, took their FTL tech, and then embarked on a wave of expansion and conquering throughout the galaxy. But I do think this is pretty remote; all indications are that FTL is not possible, or if it is, it's far, far beyond our capabiliities since we don't even understand the physics.

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

actually, yes that's what the most reliable equations we have for motion and kinetic energy say. To go faster than light is to be able to send objects and information into the past, and moreover create certain reference frames for which cause and effect are switched and creating paradoxes of something existing and not existing at the same time. in other words, impossible.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

eh, the first seven items you list have no physical evidence whatsoever for their existence. As for aliens, we have at least a possibility of intelligent life arising on rocky planet in certain zone about a star, proved by a known successful instance. While it is also provable that the most likely form of life, the norm, is single celled, again at least we have proof multi-cellular life can arise and moreover so can technological beings.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

no it could not, we have no means to make a ship go half the speed of light, nevermind that an encounter with the smallest grain of sand would be catastrophic. Instead, with any known working technology we could build, a certain type of nuclear reactor, we could manage a craft with 3.5 percent C velocity at most, using over two hundred of thousand tons of fissionable fuel. It would take on the order of 130 years to reach Proxima or Alpha (better destination choice) Centauri

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

ah, but that is human money, good for only human things.

anything else is available in ridiculous copious quantities in space: water, metals, gems, fusion fuel, fission fuel

we have nothing of value in the solar system for a space faring race

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

but rocky planets with metalic cores of the proper size in habitable zone are plentiful, we looked for that and we found it to be so

the whole visible universe is the same shit repeated over and over, stars of certain types surrounded by known elements of certain types, rocky planets and gas giants.

there is no compelling reason whatsoever to come here

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[uninformedLuddite]

They may require the salt from out oceans to preserve their food - taste's like pork

Re: next 50 to 100 years?

[locke.th]

Pointed at us briefly....maybe like the wow signal?

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[rubycodez]

you said we have tiny sample here, and also the word extrapolate.

no, we have huge samples we have measured, huge in spacial and temporal sense

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[gzuckier]

Well, they do need somebody to anally probe.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[gzuckier]

Well, they have sent their minions to ensure that we complete the task of returning all that fossil carbon to the atmosphere so they can have the type of hot, humid climate which they enjoy

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[ebvwfbw]

Well, I'd argue it like this: The only means of interstellar communication we know of so far is Electromagnetic waves. ...

And I'd argue that you're not up to date. Gravitation waves were discovered in the 1990s. Theory is that with gravitation you can traverse the entire universe in a matter of seconds, like touching a spider web in any place effects the entire web. Of course, you're mileage may vary since T&S is relative.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[evilviper]

But if the space is infinite, so probably too is the number of stars and planets.

I don't see how you can develop infinite anything in a finite time, but maybe I'm just dumb that way.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Sardaukar86]

The hypothetical aliens may consider atheism primitive and dangerous.

Looks like you misspelt organised religion there my friend. We've ample evidence throughout history that religion keeps people primitive and makes them more dangerous than they ever were before their religious 'enlightenment'.

I think it quite understandable that an advanced species would choose to avoid Earth until this particularly nasty form of collective insanity and off-loading of personal responsibility has run its course.

Does that mean believing in God puts you into this group as well? What about if you are 'spiritually' inclined?

Well, perhaps surprisingly, I'm actually with you on those last two; there are few deaths attributed to spiritualism after all. However it seems to me that when such beliefs are allowed to develop into organised religion, the self-preservation instincts of said organisation soon take over and the original purpose is lost; worse, the organisation can easily become a dark parody of the original intent.

Is it any wonder I'd rather listen to atheists and people who identify as 'spiritual' rather than 'religious'? We've all seen what religion has managed to achieve throughout our history. Time for a new direction, I'd say.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[Wycliffe]

They may require the salt from out oceans to preserve their food - taste's like pork

Even if this was true. We have plenty to spare. We could probably lose half our ocean and still be ok.
I think the most probable worst case scenerio would be something like Stargate where an alien race
has developed FTL travel but not AI and therefore would have use for semi-intelligent slaves.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[arth1]

FTL no more implies time travel than supersonic flight did.

No matter how fast you travel, it still takes *positive* time to reach your destination. (Even if said positive time duration is different to yourself, and an outside observer.)

No, you are mistaken here, probably thinking in Newtonian terms.
The subjective time passed for a traveller decreases with the speed, until it is zero at c. I.e. If you travel at the speed of light, you can go anywhere in the universe instantaneously. If you transcend c, time will become negative for you.
See this link for why that is a problem and leads to time travel.

Since we don't receive any messages from our future, nor is the earth full of visitors from the outside, the safe presumption right now is that FTL is impossible.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[jwhitener]

http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_concepts.html
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110922114914AAVHoJQ
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/24017/is-the-universe-finite-or-infinite
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Is_the_Universe_finite_or_infinite_An_interview_with_Joseph_Silk

Unless something in science has changed since I last google searched:), I'm pretty certain the BB theory doesn't rule out the possibility of an infinite universe.

Re:next 50 to 100 years?

[jwhitener]

Greed might not be the motivator, but what about gardening?

I know if I don't pull that weed out of the garden, by the end of the season the garden will be filled with weeds. Maybe if we do run into aliens they just want to destroy us, knowing that we will eventually grow and make the universe messy for them:)

Study?

[Irate Engineer]

What was this based on? Did the PI rent Independence Day from Redbox last week and suddenly get an idea to spin a humanities degree into notoriety?

Stuff that *might* happen *might* lead to other stuff that *might* happen.

Slashdot makes me want to throw my laptop against the wall and punch people. Gahhh....

Re:Study?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Psychology: never put your trust in a field where people can make stuff up and have it accepted as canon by everyone else: http://www.arachnoid.com/psych...

So what would happen if aliens made an appearance?

That very much depends on the aliens.

Nice friendly Vulcan types with an interest in the betterment of intelligences in general would have a very different effect on global civilisation and this yahoo's "consciousness" than Battle for LA type aliens, or even random leviathan seeder drones sent out to terraform likely worlds into Cybertron-alikes to serve as industrial waystations for the sleeper colonists drifting through the cold void millions of years in their wake.

Re:Study?

[RazorSharp]

My sentiments exactly. When did conjecture constitute a study? I've read sci-fi that made more plausible predictions than this 'study.' Someone give Ray Bradbury a posthumous Ph.D in Extraterrestrial Studies!

Re:Study?

[Frosty Piss]

What was this based on? Did the PI rent Independence Day from Redbox last week...

Yes, and they determined based on some convoluted elitist bullshit that people are just too stupid to have a clue.

I know hearing this from "pencil necked neck-beards" is harsh, but believe me, if you haven't spent your life isolated from reality on some college campus, you are simply not qualified to speak on the issue.

Ack Ack Ack .... I want to thank my Grandma for always being so good to me, and, and for helping save the world and everything.

Re:Study?

[Jason Levine]

It would also depend on what the aliens looked like. Suppose you had a nice, friendly alien species - who just so happened to bear a striking resemblance to images of Satan. Let's assume that the aliens even looked sinister because it just so happens that what we term as "looking sinister" they think of as "looking friendly." We'd freak out (or at least a subset of our population would) and would call for their slaughter.

Then, suppose you had an alien species visit who looked like angels. They smiled all the time and practically radiated "goodness" - but were really evil creatures out to destroy us.

Or suppose that the aliens landed and they turned out to be 7 foot tall cockroaches covered in slime. Would we really welcome them or try to manufacture a giant can of RAID?

Re:Study?

[macbeth66]

"It's a cookbook!"

Re:Study?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

There was a short story about satanic looking aliens, I completely forget what it was called though.

Re:Study?

[I'm New Around Here]

It was called "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke. The aliens looked like the classic image of Satan, complete with horns and bat-wings.

I read it a couple years ago. Not a bad story, but not my favorite of his.

Re:Study?

[wasteoid]

You're proving his point. Stuff that *might* happen (reading a dubious science article) *might* lead to other stuff (throwing your laptop against the wall) that *might* happen.

Re:Study?

[Stuarticus]

My sentiments exactly. When did conjecture constitute a study?

Seems to work for economists.

Re:Study?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Then there's this gem:

> Further, by means of self-consciousness, man becomes capable of treating his
> own mental states as objects of consciousness. The prime characteristic of
> cosmic consciousness is, as its name implies, a consciousness of the cosmos,
> that is, of the life and order of the universe,” De la Torre writes in a study
> published in the journal Freewheelin' Bullshit .

Re:Study?

[DriveDog]

Nice sig. Us Greenertarians appreciate it.

Re:Study?

[DriveDog]

Having more experience & knowledge of economics, I tend to think that of cosmologists. In fact, for different reasons, neither can really perform experiments on a grand scale.

Re:Study?

[gzuckier]

Imagine that the aliens closely resemble slices of bacon.

Bullshit.

[UnknownSoldier]

First Contact will happen by 2024.

Enough people are ready to handle the truth: The human body is a arch-type.

Re:Bullshit.

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Ah that explains all those people they need to hold up the roofs of cathedrals.

Re:Bullshit.

[Grog6]

2024; That's the year the Pak show up to seed the planet with thallium and tree-of-life.

I, for one welcome our new Pak Overlords. What's that smell, dammit...

Of course, it could be Kzin... :)

Re:Bullshit.

[I'm New Around Here]

Of course, it could be Kzin... :)

I have a large ball of yarn in my garage, just in case.

Re:Bullshit.

[Stuarticus]

At least the pak won't try and rish you.

Re:Bullshit.

[UnknownSoldier]

I think you mean Pleiadians :)

Re:Bullshit.

[UnknownSoldier]

Religion, which is simply _one_ *tool* to help towards enlightenment, has nothing to do with our spiritual parents (Pleiadians) coming to check in to see how their "children" are doing.

Re:Bullshit.

[cyberchondriac]

The older I get, the more I begin to wish this were real.

It doesn't matter

[sunking2]

If we can't find an airliner somewhere on this planet what the odds of us or anyone else finding us in the universe.

Re:It doesn't matter

[roc97007]

we can put a man on the moon, so...

*Can* we? We could at one time. I have wondered for awhile if projects like putting a living person on another planet and returning them safely to earth is something that a nation can do only at a certain stage of development, when the thirst for adventure is greater than the perceived need for safety, and bureaucracy has not yet quite managed to strangle large undertakings.

Re:It doesn't matter

[Nutria]

I have wondered for awhile if ...

+1

Toss in not much land left to conquer, and lowered birthrates + concomitant increase in fear of losing The One Child.

bureaucracy has not yet quite managed to strangle large undertakings.

Why did you add not yet? It contradicts the rest of your argument.

Re:It doesn't matter

[Opportunist]

This.

The US of the 60s was a dream factory. Anything was possible, anything you could think of someone could make. And that someone was the US, no doubt about that. If anyone can, the US can. Notice how anything the US did was by default good and sacred? Even Vietnam, a war that had by some margin less tangible effects on Europe, had mixed reactions in good ol' Europe and quite a bit of support, rather than the unanimous opposition the current wars of the United States are met with.

The US of the 60s could do anything in the mind of the people around the globe. In both senses, they were allowed to, and they were able to.

The US of today qualify for neither.

Re:It doesn't matter

[RazorSharp]

I would think the main constraint would be economic. What nation wants to commit so many resources for so little in return. The lunar missions were more important for political reasons (the Cold War) during their time than anything else. Would that thirst for adventure have existed had we not been competing with our red adversaries? It certainly wouldn't have had the urgency if not for the competition.

The main thing the lunar missions gave us was the various technologies that were produced as a result of them. So far the moon hasn't proved to be worth mining and it certainly has no appeal for colonization.

I could spend all my money on a giant diamond encrusted neckless. But my girlfriend would probably be real pissed and kick me out when I can no longer contribute. Similarly, our government could go back to the moon. But the electorate would be pissed because like an oversized diamond encrusted neckless it doesn't do anything but costs a shit ton. I guess it always sounds good to vilify the word bureaucracy and to make fun of nancys who are overly concerned with safety, but I just don't think it's a sound argument in this case.

Re:It doesn't matter

[roc97007]

What I meant was that I don't believe that the US government could put a man on the moon now. I suspect that, inevitably as a nation ages, bureaucracy increases to the point where no matter how rich the nation is, the cost of large undertakings balloons out of control until the project can't be done anymore. I suspect that a nation can do big projects -- the national electrical power infrastructure, building a comprehensive, integrated road system over almost 4 million square miles, and putting a man on the moon and bringing him back, can only be done during a "sweet spot" in a government's history. And we are past that point now.

Test by: In the 1960's, we built the largest, most complicated machine ever built by man (the Saturn V stack) and sent a payload to the moon and back. In the 1980's, we just barely, at tremendous cost, created a cargo plane that could make it into LEO and most of the time return safely to Earth. In the three decades since then, there's been a few attempts to recreate the heavy lifting and spacecraft capabilities we had in the 60's, but costs became too great and they were canceled. My point is, I don't think the US government could do it anymore.

Maybe private companies could, but the danger there is government over-regulation making it too costly. And then, with what are we left? Bond villains?

Re:It doesn't matter

[roc97007]

I agree with a lot of what you said. What I'm trying to say is that yes, the moon shots cost a shit-ton in the 1960's, but even adjusted for inflation, the cost of doing it now after the inevitable budget ballooning out of control, due to the process itself becoming fundamentally broken, would be so great that no amount of money could achieve it. The more money you would pour into such a project, the more money it would cost, with the goal being forever out of reach. I'm not saying a moon shot is not practical (that's a sound argument and a good subject for debate) but that it's not even *possible* anymore. Another case in point: A certain modern fighter plane intended to be an affordable replacement for a very expensive older model, has become so much more expensive than the plane it was supposed to replace that it's now in danger of cancellation.

Re:It doesn't matter

[Hamsterdan]

"But the electorate would be pissed because like an oversized diamond encrusted neckless it doesn't do anything but costs a shit ton"

Like the multiple wars US is engaged in?

There's the budget for NASA, Healthcare, Welfare, Education and probably room for a couple other things

Re:It doesn't matter

[duke_cheetah2003]

Would that thirst for adventure have existed had we not been competing with our red adversaries?

I agree with this. Competition drives humanity to do extraordinary things. It's just unfortunate that most of the time, these extraordinary things are very very destructive. I believe the missions to the moon in the 60's were exactly this. Dual purpose technology being tested in a non-aggressive way. I'm sure if there was a lack of parallel development of ICBM's and using much the same technology as was necessary to launch a rocket to the moon..yeah. Wouldn't have happened if ICBM development wasn't along side.

Re:It doesn't matter

[roc97007]

It doesn't work that way. The more money you make available, the more it costs. It doesn't end.

Re:It doesn't matter

[cyberchondriac]

France was involved in the Vietnam War before the US was.

Re:It doesn't matter

[RazorSharp]

I see what you're saying. I'm not sure if I totally agree -- I think that the money's there if we're willing to make sacrifices elsewhere (such as that stupid plane, which I believe is only still being worked on because important parts of it are produced in a certain congressman's district), but the political hurdles to make those sacrifices probably aren't possible.

I guess you could say we agree that, for whatever reasons, putting a man on the moon isn't a feasible option for the U.S. government at this point in time. The Chinese, however. . .

Re:It doesn't matter

[roc97007]

> The Chinese, however. . .

Yes.

At one point I had hope for a commercial mission. I think the money is there, private companies don't have the same issues as governments, and they have more freedom to adopt new technologies and push the envelope a bit. My fear, though, is that government institutions (faa, et al) would put so many road blocks in place that a launch could not take place.

Perhaps on a remote island.... hence the "Bond villain". Or, if you will, Tracy Island. :-)

Re:It doesn't matter

[DriveDog]

Also the LHC.

Rather than bureaucracy, I think it's greed and lack of leadership. When the greedy scrape 50, 75, or 90% off the funds available to build something, that's a problem, but when they take 99% and avoid paying taxes, the populace doesn't want to do it any more. Plus when an elected top dog doesn't appear to be solidly behind something, others don't tend to follow. There's a limit to how many people will work their fingers to nubs not knowing if their project will be funded at all next year.

Re:It doesn't matter

[DriveDog]

OK. We put a man on the bottom of the deepest point in the ocean before we put the man on the moon. Why can't we find the airplane down there? J/K, but if we hope to find life on Titan or Europa we'd better figure out how to work in a liquid environment.

Re:It doesn't matter

[myowntrueself]

"But the electorate would be pissed because like an oversized diamond encrusted neckless it doesn't do anything but costs a shit ton"

Like the multiple wars US is engaged in?

The way all those damn war-on-X's are working out, holy shit I'm glad they aren't declaring war on war.

Re:It doesn't matter

[Opportunist]

Yeah, but let's be honest here: Who takes the French serious as an army, and who likes them in the first place?

Re:It doesn't matter

[gzuckier]

The difficulty with the lunar program was largely a function of it being "out of sequence", so to speak; running a marathon when we had barely learned to crawl. Any rational plan for space exploration recognizes the twofold nature of the task; getting from the earth's surface into orbit, which pushes the limits of our capability, and getting from orbit to someplace else, technologically less difficult, although the biology etc is still a question. thus the universal plan for a space station, a base camp at the lower slopes from which we launch the assault on the peak. This was slightly used on the Apollo missions but mostly not, requiring huge boosters to get the whole thing up there at once instead of shipping pieces up with smaller boosters. Of course, it seems now that if we had waited until we had a workable space station, we'd never have gotten to the Moon.

Re:It doesn't matter

[gzuckier]

The cost of a lunar mission has risen because now it would require air bags, power windows, climate control, cup holders, and iPod compatibility.

Re:It doesn't matter

[gzuckier]

Wonder if we could have had a lunar program for the price of that Iraq war that would pay for itself.

Re:It doesn't matter

[ebvwfbw]

Tell you what. Come up with 10 billion (USD) (used to be 3, adjusted for inflation) and I'll get you to the moon and back within 10 years.

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[account_deleted]

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...what scientific community?

[Rinikusu]

And where are they getting their data?

Re:...what scientific community?

[Anonymous Coward]

4chan

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Human Beings...

[stox]

the other white meat.

Ideal for a quick layover when exploring the back waters of the Milky Way.

The probability of it being a friendly encounter has got to be pretty low. I am not sure we will ever be ready.

Re:Human Beings...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The one point in our favor, would be that a species capable of bridging the vast distances between the stars would presumably have vast technology and sufficiently advanced materials engineering and biological manipulation techniques that they would pretty much just need various useful atoms and lots and lots of energy. Our planet isn't worthless, in terms of material; but it's a hell of a lot less interesting than the solar system's larger objects in terms of volume, and it has a much more annoying escape velocity than the zillion-odd asteroids and comets and various bits of junk floating around.

This hardly means that they wouldn't consume earth in due time, possibly without even remarking on the fact that some of the carbon based macromolecules on the surface seemed pretty agitated about it, nor does it exclude the possibility that they'd fuck us up in some creative way just for the lulz, or because their hobby is eating as many different sentient organisms as possible; but, unlike the 'technologically advanced human culture kicks the shit out of primitive one, takes their stuff' story of history, anything that is doing interstellar travel might be advanced to the point of near-total disinterest. Pop out of treknobabble-travel-space in the vicinity of the sun, do a bit of scanning, consume the gas giants to refuel their world-ships, then leave to go do whatever it is has them traveling all this way in the first place.

Or they might drop a small singularity into our gravity well, just to watch us freak out on a global scale, knowing that it's sitting somewhere near the planet's core, steadily consuming it from the inside and there is nothing we can do except await an increasingly nasty series of geological upheavals and our inevitable doom; but that would be purely for spite's sake.

Re:Human Beings...

[DriveDog]

Energy needs... suppose they're fusion-powered. Then sucking hydrogen or deuterium from our oceans might be a lot quicker than other sources in the region. But I guess they'll need a transparent aluminum tank. Might as well stock it with a whale or two for entertainment.

Which 'scientific community'

[Anonymous Coward]

'The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years,' said Gabriel De la Torre

Really? Which peer-reviewed journal was that published in?

Cuz the scientific community I'm aware of, at least the ones who do astrophysics and astronomy, conclude there's no evidence for any life beyond Earth.

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Earthlings Not Ready For Alien Encounters" is false.

Inter-species erotica will take it to the next level!

Re:Hmm...

[DriveDog]

You laugh.

"scientists or astronauts ..the best candidates.."

[Anonymous Coward]

"..scientists or astronauts might make the best candidates for the first alien conversation.."

- wtf, why? - I would probably select (seriously) the biggest stoner I could find, the point being mainly to demonstrate non-aggression. A scientist would start prodding them, or arguing; a 'naut would bore them with speeches, then plant a flag in the wrong part of their ectoplasma.

- nope, send some stoners to the meet-and-greet (hey, doods!) - the hope of finding shared humor remains, our only chance.

Found proof that earthlings are not ready

[Shompol]

proof

Re:Three words

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Three other words: Michael Crichton: Sphere.

Re:It will be a disaster.

[Lost Race]

The human race is incapable of being second fiddle to any other life form,

Nonsense. Look back at history and see the millions of humans who allowed themselves to be enslaved, subjugated, or otherwise oppressed. Humans are excellent at playing second fiddle.

And much of that oppression / subjugation / slavery was based on race or religion, so it doesn't particularly matter if the new overlords are some new kind of "alien", and it doesn't matter what our gods tell us about them. If they stomp their boots on our necks hard enough we will kneel before them.

who says WE will find THEM?

[subtropolis]

Our own planet has shown signs of life for ~a billion years or more -- the same features we ourselves are only now learning to detect in other star systems have long been apparent to all who know what to look for. Who's to say how long ago some other civilisation might have spotted us? It's not like WE are going to ignore other life-providing planets simply because there are no radio signals emanating from it. If we can conclude that another planet, however far away, harbours some kind of life that alone will place it quite high on our list of planets to keep a close eye on. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to assume that ours would hold a similar place for others out there. It's possible, IOW, that Earth was spotted long before any large mammals -- or even reptiles -- were crawling around on its surface.

Re:We'll be ready.

[Nutria]

What a heaping crap-load of nonsense.

My, aren't we proud of ourselves!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh, after countless millennia when we could have been contacted by sentient aliens, all of a sudden they will chose to appear, because we wish it so? I don't think so. In the slim likelihood that anything would consider contacting us, any such civilization so advanced would be aware of the disruptive affects of such an encounter. And as such,they would most likely decline the opportunity. We ourselves, even with out limitations, recognize frail ecosystems where we dare not tread. If we mean alien lifeforms such as microbial life, even that ensuing debate would dwarf all climate discussions in rancor and animosity. No winners, no decision.

Huh?

[cascadingstylesheet]

'The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years,'

Based on .... what, exactly? The complete, utter, absolute, comprehensive lack of any previous contact?

Re:Huh?

[Brett Buck]

Given that there is absolutely no evidence for aliens over last 4.8 billion years, I think we are due.

     

Re:Huh?

[Grog6]

FTA: apparently, If you pull enough shit out of your ass, you eventually get Aliens, lol.

Nevermind the whole "Space is huge" thing, the no radio thing, and the lack of confirmed-non-whacko-sightings, Aliens it must be... :)

Re:Huh?

[joe_frisch]

note the "may".
I completely agree, we may contact aliens in the next 50-100 years. The probability isn't zero.

Re:Huh?

[AthanasiusKircher]

note the "may".
I completely agree, we may contact aliens in the next 50-100 years. The probability isn't zero.

Sure, that makes sense.

And, you know what, every Slashdot user who posted on this story may win the lottery in the next 50 years too. The probability isn't zero. Why not have a discussion about that? Let's have a big long thread about how we'll spend all the money we'll be getting.

(And if you say, "Nah -- I don't even buy lottery tickets," well, neither do I, and I've won almost $200 on scratch tickets some of my relatives have given me Christmas gifts... so even if you don't buy tickets, the probability of winning isn't zero. You could find a winning ticket on the street.)

Oh -- what's that? All of us winning the lottery seems too unlikely for us to waste time in discussion? Yeah, I agree.

There's a difference in discussing something that has a 1 in 10 chance of happening or even 1 in 100 or 1 in a million... compared to something that is, say, 1 in a google or 1 in a googleplex. Just because a probability is nonzero does not make it worth considering -- something that has a 1 in a googleplex chance of occurring is effectively impossible, though technically it "may" happen.

I'm not saying alien contact is impossible, though you have no evidence that it actually IS possible, since we only have one clear example of life proven to exist in the universe so far. Anecdote is not data. You can't extrapolate from one data point.

So, the probability of encountering aliens in the next 50-100 years could be 99% (perhaps ships are heading toward us right now and are only right outside our solar system), or it could be 1 in a google, because maybe life simply is much harder to spontaneously arise in the universe than some people think.

Just because something "may" happen doesn't automatically mean that the probability is high enough to care about. It doesn't mean it's too low not to care about either. Without any data, it simply means nothing, and your statement that "we may contact aliens in the next X" is effectively meaningless.

Re:Huh?

[mcswell]

"1 in a googleplex": Wasn't that what Doc Brown said about Clara? That she was one in a googleplex?

Re:Rubbish

[deviated_prevert]

Republican Political Scientists always want to keep the common, working class man down.

There fixed that for you.

blinding me with science

[swell]

- The scientific community now accepts to some degree -
- a clinical neuropsychologist and human factors specialist -

While some may prefer citations
and some may prefer credentials that include some basic science skills,
others will be happy to forge ahead with imaginative fantasies.

Plenty of time

[manu0601]

We have a lot of time to find plausible explanation for various stupid things we invented, such as HFT or austerity policies.

In the real world

[seoras]

"scientists or astronauts might make the best candidates for the first alien conversation"

Of course this would never happen as politicians understand far too well the huge benefits of being the man in front of the camera for historical events.
Which is why, unless we get change our politically controlled & manipulated civilisation, no extraterrestrial intelligence will never show up here.

Re:In the real world

[PPH]

Any aliens sufficiently advanced to make the trip here probably already have a much better idea of the socio-political implications of first contact. They will send in advanced scouts to collect information about us, including studies relating to how such contact will be received by various political and economic factions. And they will control the terms of such contact.

In fact, I suspect they will look for a progressive, politically neutral group for initial contact. And after meeting with their representatives, they will put together a plan to reveal themselves gradually. I'd bet on a country like Switzerland or Sweden. And full public revelation would occur years after the first contact with the selected group so that they will understand our culture and be able to protect themselves and their hosts from groups that would exploit them.

In fact, they may already be here. If things get out of hand in Europe (Russia, Ukraine, etc.) and another World War breaks out, the Swiss may be defending their borders with advanced plasma weapons and shields.

Re:Totalitarian Government issues

[gargleblast]

... whilst only allowing the president or the military to make first contact ...

... only then to find out that interplanetary aliens really hate synth music.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oblig HHGTTG reference

[Kittenman]

Probably a 'teaser": Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them, meaning that they find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one's going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.


TFA is junk, of course. But hey, it's Friday down here in Middle Earth. I don't care.

Re:"scientists or astronauts ..the best candidates

[mevets]

We may not have the necessary social skills; so sending the least socially adept people we can find will do what? Lower their expectations? Elicit sympathy?

crush us before we leave the nest

[subtropolis]

I think they would want to come here for the same reasons that we would want to investigate some other planet which shows strong signs of harbouring life. However, having seen how we have developed, it might not be too unlikely that they would at least consider destroying us before we've reached the point where we can leave our own solar system. Note: I've never even seen Independence Day. The notion that aliens would want to come all the way here just to destroy us had always seemed pretty silly to me. But upon further reflection i don't think it's at all silly now.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Known Nutter]

Crush us before we leave the nest!??

Isn't that what the Borg tried to do? You see how well that worked out for them...

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[evilviper]

The notion that aliens would want to come all the way here just to destroy us had always seemed pretty silly to me. But upon further reflection i don't think it's at all silly now.

Do you feel an uncontrollable desire to nuke the African continent? If not, I can't see why a superior alien species would want to destroy our planet.

If they're more advanced than us, they'll have cheap and easy defenses against anything we could do to them. And why wouldn't their technology continue to develop just as quickly as ours, so that they continue to maintain their vast superiority?

Devastating conflicts tend to arise when two rivals are evenly matched. When one is much superior, the balance of power is obvious, and the weaker side doing something to anger the other, is just stupid, suicidal, and short-lived at worse.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Raenex]

Do you feel an uncontrollable desire to nuke the African continent? If not, I can't see why a superior alien species would want to destroy our planet.

At one point the US had a significant lead on the USSR in nuclear warfare. There were arguments that the US should preemptively strike, most famously by Von Neumann. This was a very real debate that took place in policy circles. An alternative history where the United States did so is quite plausible.

And why wouldn't their technology continue to develop just as quickly as ours, so that they continue to maintain their vast superiority?

That assumes you can keep a constant rate going. Despite Ray Kurzweil's "Rapture of the Nerds" (Singularity) ideas, it doesn't hold up. Just look at processor speeds. For decades they were exponentially improving -- until they hit a wall around 2002. Now we have multicores and more transistors, but it's not the same.

Look at nuclear warfare. Once the Russians caught up, we couldn't maintain the initial vast supremacy.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[evilviper]

The USSR was very closely matched with the US. It's an utterly different scenario than I outlined.

And processor speed increases just slightly slowing for a few years is an insignificant blip. Other technologies are positioned to replace silicon in the coming decades. No singularity is needed. Progress has been exponential for centuries now, and there's no reason to believe it will stop.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[drinkypoo]

Do you feel an uncontrollable desire to nuke the African continent? If not, I can't see why a superior alien species would want to destroy our planet.

Hasn't this been covered before? It depends on how superior. If we're vermin to them, it's cheap and convenient to dispose of us before we become a major infestation.

I don't buy it either, but it's at least an explanation.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[cyberchondriac]

In Independence Day, they didn't come *here* specifically just to wipe us out. The premise was that they were like locusts, hopping from system to system, traveling the galaxy, and stripping planets of their resources along the way. They sent scouts out ahead of time for the best candidates, and it seems logical that Earth would be a good target for it's resources.
Not that the movie was exactly a bastion of logic, I'm just saying that particular aspect of it was not too far fetched, it was one of the better plot devices, relatively speaking.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Raenex]

The USSR was very closely matched with the US. It's an utterly different scenario than I outlined.

The US had a several-year head start. And if you want to talk about Africa, now that the genie is out of the bottle, a determined country can get nukes. Just look at countries like Pakistan or North Korea. Pakistan is even scarier than North Korea having nukes, given all the Muslim extremism they harbor.

And processor speed increases just slightly slowing for a few years is an insignificant blip.

Give me a break. It's been over a decade, and the speed increases haven't slowed "just slightly". I grew up with an 8MHz PC in the 80s. Ten years later and CPU speeds were in the hundreds of MHz, and another ten years it was GHz. Then they hit a wall, with over ten years of non-exponential CPU speed increases. If anything, they have gone down as they have focused on multicore and reducing power requirements.

Progress has been exponential for centuries now, and there's no reason to believe it will stop.

Just like there was no reason to believe CPU speeds would stop progressing, based on decades of history.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[evilviper]

The US had a several-year head start.

A few short years, and a small head-start, countered by other military weakness. The main reason for the US to nuke the USSR was their overwhelming superiority in ground forces. That's completely and totally different than the scenario here, of two massively mismatched forces.

. I grew up with an 8MHz PC in the 80s.

This is just the MHz myth in full force... The performance of a processor core can be improved DRAMATICALLY, even while REDUCING the clock frequency.

Just like there was no reason to believe CPU speeds would stop progressing, based on decades of history.

CPU speeds HAVEN'T stopped progressing. And furthermore, the physical limitations of silicon, and the approximate time-frame at which they could not longer be shrunk any further, have been known for quite a long time.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[DriveDog]

I'm influenced by Arthur C. Clarke's 3001, I admit. I can imagine there being other reasons besides preemptive self-defense that another civilization might want to terminate an apparently belligerent one. Maybe to keep us from causing problems with other similar-to-our-level-of-advancement civilizations.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Raenex]

The main reason for the US to nuke the USSR was their overwhelming superiority in ground forces. That's completely and totally different than the scenario here, of two massively mismatched forces.

Then consider a country like Pakistan as I mentioned in my previous post. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle. Eventually all the countries that you scoff at, like the entire continent of Africa, can go nuclear if they wanted to. That's the whole reason we have the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

This is just the MHz myth in full force... The performance of a processor core can be improved DRAMATICALLY, even while REDUCING the clock frequency.

I don't give a shit what your architecture is, when you forgo exponential clock increases for a decade because of technological limits, there is no myth. You've hit a wall.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[evilviper]

Clock increases are not performance increases. Intel figured that out when the P4 got trounced, and now everyone is TRYING to keep clock speeds low, precisely because higher clocks waste energy for no benefit, and performance improvements are happening at a decent clip even while they lower clock speeds. I think AMD may have created their PR ratings system just for you, personally.

Higher clock speeds give you NOTHING. That's why it's called the MHz myth.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Raenex]

Clock increases are not performance increases. Intel figured that out when the P4 got trounced

When clock speeds are sustained at an exponential pace, they are performance increases. The problem with Pentium's Netburst was that they couldn't continue scaling up their CPU speeds. If they could have, the Megahertz Myth would have been the Gigahertz Reality, and we'd be running crazy-fast processors by now and happy to have them.

and now everyone is TRYING to keep clock speeds low, precisely because higher clocks waste energy for no benefit, and performance improvements are happening at a decent clip even while they lower clock speeds

Both AMD and Intel moved away from higher clock speeds because they couldn't sustain them, and they moved into multicore to compensate. This is well documented, and just repeating the mantra of Megahertz Myth only showcases your ignorance. You think they gave up on decades of exponential clock increases because it didn't gain anything?

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[evilviper]

When clock speeds are sustained at an exponential pace, they are performance increases.

They can be, unless the processors are getting pipeline increases at the same time. But the opposite is absolutely, positively NOT true. ie. It doesn't REQUIRE clock speed increases to provide core performance improvements.

Instead of all your bullshit wordplay, all you need to do is look up some benchmarks. They'll prove your assertions wrong in 30 seconds flat.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Raenex]

Instead of all your bullshit wordplay, all you need to do is look up some benchmarks. They'll prove your assertions wrong in 30 seconds flat.

The bullshit wordplay is on your end by repeating "Megahertz Myth" like a mantra. You have NO answer for why both Intel and AMD abandoned decades worth of exponential clock increases and instead focused on multicore. As I said, it's well documented. That article includes benchmarks.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[evilviper]

The article you link to CLEARLY slows single-core performance continues to INCREASE quickly, even as clock speeds have reduced. Just not as quickly as it did pre-2004. In fact the whole thing is a detailed rebuttal to those who claim speeds are falling, as they are not.

Your claims were that single-core performance did "stop progressing" and even "gone down".

The graphs also show that speed increases were never "exponentially improving" but only linearly increasing.

How does that support your claims in any way?

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Raenex]

Your claims were that single-core performance did "stop progressing" and even "gone down".

Let's quote what I actually said, and pay attention to the details, because I never said single-core performance stopped progressing or went down:

"Just look at processor speeds. For decades they were exponentially improving -- until they hit a wall around 2002. Now we have multicores and more transistors, but it's not the same."

And let's look at your followup:

"And processor speed increases just slightly slowing for a few years is an insignificant blip."

So now that we are on the same page, I demonstrated that CPU speed (and I mean frequency, and you know it, since we've been arguing about the "Megahertz Myth") increases did indeed have a drastic reduction from the previous decades, and in many cases they have indeed gone backwards to save on power.

The graphs also show that speed increases were never "exponentially improving" but only linearly increasing.

If you had any skill in these matters (or even just read the article carefully), you'd realize they were plotted on a logarithmic scale. A straight line indicates exponential increases. The graphs clearly show a sharp deviation from that straight line.

Now read the opening paragraph of the article:

Throughout the 80's and 90's, CPUs were able to run virtually any kind of software twice as fast every 18-20 months. The rate of change was incredible. Your 486SX-16 was almost obsolete by the time you got it through the door. But eventually, at some point in the mid-2000's, progress slowed down considerably for single-threaded software -- which was most software.

(bold mine)

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[evilviper]

I never said single-core performance stopped progressing or went down

Haha! That's pretty explicit backpedaling, there. Are you familiar with the concept of quotation marks? Because it kinda, sorta means that's EXACTLY what you said.

I kept telling you: "The performance of a processor core can be improved DRAMATICALLY, even while REDUCING the clock frequency." But you just wouldn't listen. You just kept it up, claiming "they are performance increases".

Oh well. I've wasted far too much time on this pointless thread of ignorance, already.

Re:crush us before we leave the nest

[Raenex]

Haha! That's pretty explicit backpedaling, there. Are you familiar with the concept of quotation marks? Because it kinda, sorta means that's EXACTLY what you said.

Are you? That's why I quoted what I actually said, versus what you said I said. Speed is not the same word as performance. I've been buying computers all along, and I know performance has improved somewhat for single-threaded tasks.

What my point was, and the article made clear, was that the amazing exponential performance gains that occurred regularly because of clock speed gains were gone. You haven't refuted that. All you did was make a fool of yourself by misreading a graph.

And you have no answer for the paragraph I quoted. It's what I was referring to all along. It's a clear-cut example of exponential progress that did not continue, despite having occurred for decades. As I said, the issue is well-documented.

Go ahead, answer it: "Throughout the 80's and 90's, CPUs were able to run virtually any kind of software twice as fast every 18-20 months. The rate of change was incredible. Your 486SX-16 was almost obsolete by the time you got it through the door. But eventually, at some point in the mid-2000's, progress slowed down considerably for single-threaded software -- which was most software."

You can't, because it's true, and your position, exactly quoted (not paraphrased) was bullshit: "And processor speed increases just slightly slowing for a few years is an insignificant blip."

No, it was a dramatic slowdown, and a well-documented one.

I hope they don't come too soon.

[thatkid_2002]

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. -- Agent Kay

Re:I hope they don't come too soon.

[Lord Kano]

DAMN IT. You beat me by 30 minutes.

LK

You looking at the wrong people for contact

[Anonymous Coward]

Children are the ones that should make first contact not adults. They still have the wonder with out the baggage of life. Our child to their child.

()-()

Good Ole Larry

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

If the aliens trurn out to be like Kzinti?

Re:Good Ole Larry

[Grog6]

We're Fucked, pretty much; No lol. :)

Re:Good Ole Larry

[ah.clem]

If the aliens trurn out to be like Kzinti?

As per the surreptitious Puppeteer breeding programs, they'll attack too soon and we will be victorious! Kinda makes you wonder what the Puppeteers have been doing to us, besides breeding for luck...

Scoring

[shikaisi]

The main reason we are not ready to meet aliens is that a large proportion of our population would shoot them, just to see how many points they got.

Too many creationists

[statemachine]

Too many people believe the Earth was created 6000 years ago, among other things.

Conquer scientific illiteracy, and we'll go to the stars.

Re:Too many creationists

[statemachine]

I see a creationist got mod points today.

Re:Too many creationists

[gzuckier]

Well, when you think about it, expecting aliens to show up within the next 50 years is more likely of they haven't shown up for 6000 years than if they haven't shown up for 5 billion years.

Prepare to be filtered

[sinij]

We are not going to encounter any aliens until we are ourselves are past great filter. If we make it past great filtering, than social, evolutionary, and environmental factors imposing change on humanity over time-frames involved in below-speed-of-light space travel will produce plenty of "aliens". They will be our descendants but they will be nothing like us.

duh.

[MadMaverick9]

Bozeman, Montana on 5 April 2063.

49 years from now.

Bullshit New Agey Pseudoscience

[Ironlenny]

How can “The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years.” be true if we haven't even established that there is life outside of Earth!

Then you have this tripe: "'Further, by means of self-consciousness, man becomes capable of treating his own mental states as objects of consciousness. The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is, as its name implies, a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the universe,' De la Torre writes in a study published in the journal Acta Astronautica."

I am very disappointed in you Slashdot.

Re:Three words .. depends on your Aliens

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the article might be right to a certain extent, but as was said above it largely depends on the aliens.
If it were a race like the Vulcans.. like most of us have been conditioned to expect by the media:

1- The science guys and general public will love it, Good morning America will have no shortage of interesting interviews and Neil Degrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins will bust a nut.
2- The religious extremists will go ape shit insane.. not that they haven't already, but this will happen regardless, They are always convinced it is either the devil, a sign of the end times or something sent to test their faith. This is a non- starter for inter-species relations of any type.
3- Politicians will go nuts, in good and bad ways.
4- Mind melds would be scare the hell out of everyone.

if it is a race like the Borg.

1- we are screwed, there is no 2.. we would be assimilated into the collective and our way of life would be over.

If it is a race like the Vorlons or the Shadows..
1- All the religious people will go nuts and think it is a sign of the end times, the devil or something sent to test their faith
2- All the academic and scholarly and scientific types, will probably find religion and join those in 1.
3- There is a good chance this has been going on for quite a while and we are just not in the "know"

If it is a race like the Monolith Builders in 2001 a space odyssey ,

1- we are not yet good enough "easter egg finders" to know they have been here longer than we have.
2- as soon as we make contact, we will surely put our foot in our mouth and they will want to wipe us out.
3- The Monolith Builders seemed to have enough on their plate to have to worry about us, so if you find a Monolith type device it might be a better idea to leave it be, Tell your associates, either it is something like 2001 or something like HellRaiser.. do you want to find out which? Me neither!

If it is a race like Klingons or Romulans..
1- Our Governments will want to go to war
2- This type of war would be like fight club
3- Remember rule 1 of fight club.
4- we never find out.. see StarGate.

If it is a race like the Goauld or the Ancients, the Asguardians, the Furlings, (whatever the hell they are) the Nox, the Wraith or the Ori..

1- there is a good 50% chance we would never find out
2- rule 1 , plausible deniability, we would never know, while the United States Air Force was busy taking over the universe
3- Most of the really cool races would only care about us if we were threatened by the really nasty races
4- The outcome will be either, we never find out and the USAF takes over this galaxy and one or two others in the local group and kills all the godlike aliens or
We die and get told BS stories about all the stuff being rogue comet bombardments, and atmospheric experiments and one day we just get blown to pieces.. (assuming there aren't at least a few people in this world dumb enough to accept the "truths" in the book of origin.. fortunately there are probably a race like the Jaffa, who have developed a very strong distaste for "False Gods" in which case.. I would love to party with them.. and contribute my biological and technological distinctiveness and skills to theirs.. to take down those "naughty gods".)
5- Beau Bridges is very probably a military commander in charge of all of this and we are none the wiser.
6- Atlantis is in San Francisco Bay, cloaked, we have teams all over the galaxy and one at the extreme edge of the universe in permanent hibernation, lead by a kind in a very smelly red "you are here" t-shirt.

Finally, the one that keeps me awake at night..

That the closest Sci Fi to the truth is Lexx,
There is an undead guy, a hot hooker and a dirty old man and a robot head, flying an advanced "planet killer" bug around, looking to get laid, but will just end up blowing us up because they are stupid. in summary "Rendezvous with Rama" - EPIC FAIL.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

stop eating meat

[morkk]

Contact won't happen until we stop eating sentient animals. Imagine what would happen if a space-faring race that looked like giant prawns turned up ... om nom nom!

Re:stop eating meat

[twosat]

You beat me to it. Here's a video version of "They're made out of meat" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Wait a minute!...

[kreigiron]

That advanced flying ships aren't extraterrestrial at all, IT'S JESUSCHRIST'S SECOND COMING IN A FLYING SAUCER!

Scientists?

[saleenS281]

PSHHHH. Obviously the first question we should ask them is if they've met our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Scientists need not apply.

What SETI can pick up

[Doug Merritt]

Yet the sky is not saturated with their communications. So therefor those civilizations must be using some other technology.

That seems logical, but that turns out not to be the case. A SETI scientist said in a talk (and I've seen this in articles since) that our deployed SETI listening technology is still nowhere near sensitive enough to pick up signals even from as close as the nearest star (Proxima Centauri, 4 light years away), if a planet there was broadcasting RF at current Earth levels.

(That doesn't mean SETI to date is pointless, because there's always a chance of a highly directional signal beamed our way, or of just something unexpected, like signals far far brighter than Earth's.)

So no, we have no idea whether the sky is saturated with radio waves or not.

Re:What SETI can pick up

[Anonymous Coward]

SETI would not be able to pick up our communication from 1ly. so..

http://www.satsig.net/seticalc...

http://stason.org/TULARC/scien...

It should be apparent then from these results that the detection of AM
radio, FM radio, or TV pictures much beyond the orbit of Pluto will be
extremely difficult even for an Arecibo-like 305 meter diameter radio
telescope! Even a 3000 meter diameter radio telescope could not
detect the "I Love Lucy" TV show (re-runs) at a distance of 0.01
Light-Years!

It is only the narrowband high intensity emissions from Earth
(narrowband radar generally) that will be detectable at significant
ranges (greater than 1 LY). Perhaps they'll show up very much like
the narrowband, short duration, and non-repeating, signals observed by
our SETI telescopes. Perhaps we should document all these
"non-repeating" detections very carefully to see if any long term
spatial detection patterns show up.

but who knows, maybe others are trying to send signals through their big horns too,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Re:What SETI can pick up

[Jane Q. Public]

A SETI scientist said in a talk (and I've seen this in articles since) that our deployed SETI listening technology is still nowhere near sensitive enough to pick up signals even from as close as the nearest star (Proxima Centauri, 4 light years away), if a planet there was broadcasting RF at current Earth levels.

It isn't the technology, it's just the hardware. Not the same thing. Saying you don't have a big enough wrench is not the same as saying you don't know how to build a bridge.

In theory, if we can capture coherent pictures in the visible spectrum from many billions of light years away, we should be able to do the same with RF. It's not exactly the same but the basic principles are. It's just that nobody wants to spend the money. That's why we have things like the Very Large Array: nobody has the money to build a telescope that big so we find a cheaper way. That's different from not knowing how.

Re:What SETI can pick up

[DriveDog]

'Even a 3000 meter diameter radio telescope could not detect the "I Love Lucy"...'

Good. Less reason for ET to want to terminate us. If they're advanced enough to be able to wipe us out, they're certainly advanced enough to not tolerate laugh tracks.

Re:What SETI can pick up

[rubycodez]

besides which optical SETI is far, far more logical. Very easy to make a detectable light pulse that is easily distinguished from other cosmic sources.

Our efforts at optical SETI are way, way behind what they should be

Re:What SETI can pick up

[Doug Merritt]

In theory, if we can capture coherent pictures in the visible spectrum from many billions of light years away, we should be able to do the same with RF.

It's actually very easy to see why the opposite is true: stars famously broadcast a truly vast amount of power in the visible spectrum, which is what makes solar energy and photosynthesis effective.

Humans clearly do not have the power resources of the entire sun to use to power RF broadcasts. The total amount of power we have at our disposal from all sources is a tiny, tiny fraction of what the sun broadcasts.

And most of our power does not go into RF in the first place, it goes into transportation, manufacturing, etc.

So it's quite straightforward that there is no comparison between the brightness of stars in the visible spectrum versus the Earth in RF. Stars win hands down.

It isn't the technology, it's just the hardware.

Unfortunately, it is very much both. It's true that we can do better by building better listening arrays, and SETI has been continually doing that for many years, but there is also a problem of signal to noise ratio that gives a hard limit on sensitivity due to noise from terrestrial sources and from thermal and quantum noise in the receiving electronics.

Part of that could be improved by putting radio telescopes e.g. on the far side of the moon. The electronics issue simply needs better technology.

Re:What SETI can pick up

[Jane Q. Public]

Humans clearly do not have the power resources of the entire sun to use to power RF broadcasts. The total amount of power we have at our disposal from all sources is a tiny, tiny fraction of what the sun broadcasts.

GP's comment was about receiving broadcasts, not sending them. IF there were a signal of sufficient, strength, we DO have the technology to receive it. That's what the discussion was about.

but there is also a problem of signal to noise ratio that gives a hard limit on sensitivity due to noise from terrestrial sources and from thermal and quantum noise in the receiving electronics.

But we have the very SAME problem with light. Again: we have the technology to counter it; it's just a matter of not having the resources or budget to tackle it. It's not a matter of not knowing how. In fact you suggested one possible solution yourself.

And again, I will concede that it's not exactly the same problem. But it is pretty similar, and we do have a pretty good idea of what to do.

Why the f*ck would they come here?

[macbeth66]

I've often wondered how stupid would an extraterrestrial civilization be to want to come to this planet?

Re:Why the f*ck would they come here?

[Grog6]

Lots and lots of meaty humans.

Lots and Lots...

Re:Why the f*ck would they come here?

[Cro Magnon]

They might want to study us, much like we would study the odd creatures on some isolated island.

Re:Why the f*ck would they come here?

[rhalstead]

Nice planet.Primary Indigenous lifeforms leave a bit to be desired.

Re:Three words

[I'm New Around Here]

I wondered why that sounded familiar.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Who paid for this?

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Time for a very serious question. Did a government grant pay for this report?

Invisibility Cloaks

[MikeSyposs]

Human technology is on the cusp of developing cloaking technology. An advanced alien civilization would have perfected this method of bending light waves to allow transparent transmission of signals and invisible transportation. What exactly will we possibly see when they are completely hidden from our view?

I'm ready today.

[leftie]

The grown men who still clutch rosaries at the Family Research Council, not so much.

everyone is hiding

[Singularitarian2048]

One solution to the Fermi paradox is that everyone is hiding.

And we should seriously consider hiding too.

Or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you drink coffee or beer or eat peppers or yogurt?

These are all things that are capable of altering your mood and your behavior. Most of the time we don't notice the alteration, both because it's subtle and because believing in one's own self-ness is a survival characteristic.

The sophistication that allows trans-galactic travel will also allow substantial self-modification, including and especially modification of behavior to null out the instincts to honor self above others and the instinct to win at all costs.

Technology is simply leverage; the means of wielding power beyond that which we physically possess. To make a simplifying example: probably no one on earth today could responsibly handle an antimatter-powered 10 gigawatt hand-held ray-gun-type device. Normal people would be hard-pressed just to keep it safe from the rest of us and never use it. Anyone who actually has the power to keep it safe is already in the position of dominating others by virtue of how our society works. They are either at risk of being sacked by greedy competitors or they dominate so completely that they are already corrupt in their power.

Probably the real danger isn't in the form of a ray-gun. It's likely a virus or an AI or a self-replicating nano-tech. Even if you took away the part of our selves that generates our dangerous and anti-social behaviors, we would still have to deal with the real danger of just being too clumsy to come up with a safe way to handle some things like nano-tech or AI. We just aren't any good at evaluating things that exhibit geometric growth networks effects. Of course, the good news is that once you have control of the design of your own mind, you get to choose what you're good at.

A civilization that has tremendous technology will almost certainly have modified itself to be responsible in wielding it. To do otherwise would make survival less and less probable as the technology advances. Also, we can see that this is a pretty good parallel to the evolution of human society. When we were just smart mammals focused on survival, we had no particular qualms about killing each other. As technology has progressed, our notion of humanity has progressed roughly apiece. We're still brutal and horrible to each other, but on average, I think we're becoming more human all the time.

All of that said, I think that there's still a situation in which aliens would visit. I think it would be simply to foster the on-going proliferation and advancement of consciousness in the universe. At the end of the day, I think we'd all like for something of ourselves, some kind of consciousness to survive in the universe rather than for it to all die out. Having more creative, capable and varied consciousness in the universe is the best way to further that goal. Letting us know that there's something else out there could go a long way to waking us up to our part of the consciousness mission.

:P

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the NSA should ask them to turn over their private keys.

Fermi Paradox Solved: No one understands Econ101

[VortexCortex]

Aliens can't contact us because they would destroy our current world wide idea and information markets. Alien visitors would have "prior art" for every technological advancement we will create for the foreseeable future. Any with access to said technology would dominate all earth technological advancement. The RIAA and MPAA would sue the aliens for copying their copyrighted RF transmissions in order to inform others they'd discovered us.

Patents and Copyrights are based on artificial scarcity of infinitely reproducible ideas and information. Instead just monetize what's scarce: The labor to create new ideas and information. There is no evidence that "Intellectual Property" is even beneficial for society, and yet no one has tried to test the hypothesis that it is. Humans don't apply the scientific method to their methods of governance and lawmaking, they're a laughing stock; Their higher order socio-economic structures primarily demonstrate primitive desire to kill and die for greed -- and they do so most inefficiently! The world runs exclusively upon governance by way of untested hypotheses.

Economics 101: That which is infinite supply has zero price regardless of cost to create.

Belgians and Congo...

[sithlord2]

Do some research about what we did during the colonization of Africa. The same story goes for the discovery of America. We promised them "civilization", promised them better lives, but in the end we just exploited the native population for our own benefits.

If suddenly an alien civilization would show up and make the same promises, we are in deep trouble...

Re:Belgians and Congo...

[captainpanic]

Eehm... based on your own analysis, I would think that the aliens are in deep trouble, not us.

There is no foundation for the assumption that aliens would treat us like Europeans did in Africa and America. However, here is plenty of support for the assumption that Europeans (or humans in general) would make that same mistake again and exploit the aliens. After all, we're still exploiting each other right now.

Re:Belgians and Congo...

[sithlord2]

And why do you assume that the aliens are any better than us?

Q: Why would an alien civilization contact us in the first place?
A: Because they need something from us.

We already know that providing modern technology to civilizations that are not on the same level as us, is not a good idea. Since an alien civilization is more advanced than us (I mean, they are able to visit earth, while we are not capable of visiting other inhabitable planets yet), they already know that too.

So the only reason they would contact us, is if they need something from us, and they need it very badly. And they will probably take it by whatever means necessary.

An alien civilization that contacts us, means big trouble, no matter what...

scrap funding...

[SuperDre]

If a university is coming out with a report like that, than it was not handled properly and public funding should be scrapped (IMHO a lot of public funding for universities should be scrapped IMHO, as a lot of time they are really 'researching' crappy subjects just to get their funding..

People are ready enough to learn about the existence of 'aliens'. There will always be some people who aren't ready for it (especially religious people, but then again, they believe in stuff like the bible, thoran and Qur'an which are mostly nothing more than fictitious stories laced with some thruth, but then again cinderella and little red riding hood are also..)

The people responsible for censoring every information about aliens are really just holding back the information for themselves, so they can thrive through the knowledge they get from them, and use it for their own profit..

We all know (at least if you're not a moron) we aren't the only ones in this whole universe, that's just impossible..

The whole "GOD": thingy..

[FirstOne]

With 95% of humanoid population believing in a GOD who created mankind in his image,... has got to go..

The risk biological contamination, (both ways), is far to high, at best they'll send a sterile probe... land it on the moon, observe, and move on.. Until we start doing some really impressive space engineering projects, their isn't much to talk about.

Re:The whole "GOD": thingy..

[mcswell]

Aslan, maybe.

Good points

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I think they would come is because their local scholars have mindboggingly stupid requirements, just like ours have. They just need to find something new to study to rise up among their ranks. Why not study Earth. I mean, even if it does look like it's way too wet and cold to support life as they know it it might be worth it to make a small case study how magnetic fields form in a smallish planet like this. Hey, it's worth the 2 credits you get towards your alien Masters Degree in interstellar planet formation.

Do you really think humans would stop going places if we had the technology to live and breed in space? Humans have walked to the damn north pole for no good reason. Climbed to mountains just because it's there. Went to moon just to show off. Why would you assume aliens wouldn't be the same? And if they weren't, why wouldn't they have their own reasons to wonder around and go places. Maybe the ones who come are alien kids that haven't seen a real alien before and want to come kick the anthill to see how they run around.

Pray they don't find us before we find them ...

[Qbertino]

Pray they don't find us before we find them.

Given todays state of humanity they'd turn us into Zoo spectacles. Or wipe us out entirely, for the planet to florish again.

Seriously, any race far advanced enough to feasibly travel the vastness of space is likely to be orders of magnitude more advanced, both technologically and intellectually. We'd be to them what apes are to us, more or less. And given the current state of affairs anybody would consider taking this planet away from us the right thing to do. And I certainly couldn't blame them for that notion.

My 2 cents.

Alternatives; might take quadrillions of universes

[Paul Fernhout]

... in a multiverse to generate one Earth?

Just to add to the possibility of unlikelihood of other space civilizations, with quadrillions of totally empty universes...

Great analysis.

All that said, we just don't know the odds of alternatives within out universe. And we may be living in a computer simulation (like Minecraft?) with parameters set to generate either one or trillions of different space civilizations.

Although given how hardy bacteria are, it would not surprise me if our solar system had been inoculated by bacteria from far away.

A big irony of all this SETI stuff is that so many people act like finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe with a different culture or technology elsewhere would be a big deal, whereas we in the USA and also globally are so busy killing off whales, elephants, octopods, and people of different countries and religions for various short-term economic or xenophobic reasons... And our culture also have a history of ignoring great technologies like Smalltalk or QNX. Comments on SETI are often just some weird mix of irony, hypocrisy, and blindness... Not to say I have not been guilty of such myself sometimes...

Someone in another post talked about a popular fantasy that some alien technology would solve all our problems, but is that true? As Bucky Fuller said in the 1960s, and is only more true now, we have more than enough resources and technology to make life pleasant for everyone on Earth (well, except haters and greeders maybe). Eat more vegetables and fruits, get out in the sunshine and walk in nature, hang out with other people locally, sleep well, do good work, and so on are the basics for a healthy happy life (see "BlueZones"). People in the USA can see much happier and healthier people in Europe or Canada if they bothered to look, but US politics in general can't admit that. Can you imagine what the US political parties (either left or right) would say about some happier healthier more prosperous space civilization that was more communal? Or that had different sex roles? Or had different religious rituals? Or whatever?

Example of the kind of nonsense people in the USA would start spouting in talk-radio: "Yeah, those red-skinned aliens live 100,000 years each in perfect health traveling the universe if they want in FTL ships that can print anything they want in 3D, but it's an unhappy 10,000 years because they have high taxes and have a different notion of God/Universe and different rituals. We need to help these backward aliens come to know our loving God (by torture if need be) and how to vote correctly to give all their money to wealthy Earthlings who will create good jobs for all of them. Their medical care system sucks because they don't have private sick care insurance to deliver medicine by board-certified entrepreneurial MDs and the health care facilities and testing labs the MDs own and so the alien's million-year old political obviously will surely be insolvent soon. Anyone who explores or advocates their ways is an alien-sympathizer traitor, guilty of treason, and needs to be imprisoned or re-educated. Anyone who harbors an alien is guilty of aiding terrorists because these aliens want to destroy our way of life. For our citizens' own protection, we will not issue passports to anyone dumb enough to want to go visit them and anyone attempting to board an alien vessel will be shot out of our boundless compassion. The aliens are obviously here to corrupt our morality and sap the ardor of the hard-working minimum-wage-paid American to cause the USA to collapse. These aliens in their crappy ZPE-powered FTL ships obviously want to steal our fossil fuel coal, oil, and natural gas. We need to increase out military spending to counter this alien threat, and it is sensible to take simple precautions like a first-strike with nukes and plagues on the alien homeworld using stolen alien spaceships to keep this alien menace at bay. Better dead than Red."

For this playing out historically in North America centuries ago to "R

Study: StarTrek now a news story

[danknight48]

Somebody found StarTrek on Netflix and decided to write an article on their experience with the Vulcan's.

Important skill to have when the time comes...

[rnturn]

``Although we may not have the necessary social skill set to deal with an encounter of the third kind, scientists or astronauts might make the best candidates for the first alien conversation.''

... is to be able to tell dirty jokes for a couple of hours.

maybe

[shadowrat]

All good points. It's still a fair bit of anthropomorphizing to make any assumptions about what an alien race would and would not be interested in. However, since I only have one "intelligent" species to go on, i notice that not all individuals find the same things interesting. Some people will devote their lives and all the technology at their disposal to studying some seemingly insignificant insect.

50 to 100 years

[aepervius]

"'The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years" said Gabriel De la Torre, a clinical neuropsychologist.

He should really ask a physicist really , instead of consulting a movie program/ tv shows program.

he said he consulted the SCIENTIFIC community

[aepervius]

That assumes that we know as much physics as they do. They might be using some medium to communicate that we haven't even discovered yet.

and you can assume pretty much anything whatsoever even instant wormhole stargate to ancient egyptian dude enslaving people. But within the scientific community this guy pretend to have consulted, we have a standard, and it is called what we have evidence for. As such, medium to communicate is light, and very slow compared to the interstellar distances, and distance to travel mind bogglingly vaste and nigh impossible to bridge with known physic. Etc....

Did I just wake up in 1950?

[slfnflctd]

Seriously, TFS could have been taken 60+ years ago, word for word, right out of some pulpy newsstand rag with respectability in the middling range. I mean, it's great stuff, and I'm glad we're adding to the conversation... it's just that the essence of the conversation doesn't seem to have changed much.

BS assumptions

[DarthVain]

Show your math. Which would also BS. Yes I know some equations exist, but they are also BS making huge assumptions.

Realistically, based on what we actually know the assumptions should be the opposite. If we assume that ANY planet that is earth like will eventually develop life (ours did, why not most). The idea that we are some how special and unique is like when people thought Earth was the center of everything, not the sun, and then not at all. And that all life will eventually develop intelligence (again, our only reference is ourselves, if we did certainly others can).

The actually difficulty in finding life is because of exactly two things.

1) Space is BIG. Even with all earth like planets, and all life being intelligent, there would be a VAST number of civilizations. However they will be separate by immense (I can't even give a word that actually describes the gravity (sry pun) of the situation) distances. So far that actual travel is impractical if not impossible. Even simple detection is a very long shot. Things that might indicate a civilization like radio waves and the like are just not going to work. Hell even if they produced a light source that is detectable (doing so would likely wipe out their existence anyway), even that is pretty much not going to work.

2) Time is LONG. As in the before mentioned part about detection, radio waves would take millions of years to reach us, light would take much less, but it would have to be directional and exact and of huge magnitude for use to even get it, which would require fore knowledge which they nor we would have. However more importantly, even if we assume that all life started *about* the same time, and that all earth like planets were created *about* the same time, that time period is measured in lengths that is barely comprehensible to us, and likely to any living being. The fact is we as animals haven't been around long, as intelligence, even less, as a civilization, far less, and as group even remotely able to go into space or detect objects such a small sliver it is crazy. Now how long will we last? We don't know. However looking at where we are headed, maybe not all that long. Certainly not in the geological sense of time. That is a VERY brief and unlikely window for all those ducks to get in a row. Considering that communication is a two way street, all of that in both arguments would have to happen at more less the exact same time, among neighbors, which is even less likely.

So my response is that I think it is very likely that the universe is full of intelligent life, only they nor us will ever see any of it. Baring Magic of course (FTL blah blah blah).

Re:But but but but there's a CONSENSUS!!!!!

[Dareth]

'The scientific community now accepts to some degree that this contact may occur in the next 50 to 100 years,'

Not a very strong consensus.

Re:But but but but there's a CONSENSUS!!!!!

[datavirtue]

Why 50 to 100 years for something with a likelihood stretched over millions of years and further potentially complicated by other civilizations with millions of years head start? I doubt any civilization would last that long without getting fucked up by a cosmic natural disaster, but...

Re:Alternatives; might take quadrillions of univer

[DriveDog]

Whew. I generally agree that instances where people have learned to be happy are quashed pretty quickly. And certainly what happened in the Americas was physical and cultural genocide. But although many of the perps have been "white", I suspect it's more about greed and addiction to power than ethnicity. My understanding of your underlying premise, that cultures where people are happy and some aren't downtrodden must be exterminated, rings true.

Thinking about it from the aliens' point of view, there might be some contingent that seeks Earthlings just out of curiosity and scientific yearning. But coming here is likely to involve a significant effort, one which might only occur if there's something material to be taken from Earth. Am I anthropomorphizing ET? Yep. Why? I have no other model, except perhaps for settlers looking to escape their greed-ridden world. In which case you and I should be adding to the Nazca lines a symbol the hobos used to mean "don't stop here" or "leave quickly". Notice that films, E.T., 8mm, etc. often have ET trying to escape rather than get to Earth? Hmmmm.

Let me add a couple of examples that to me fit in with your list... 1) Burning Man, an experiment known for its gift economy (among many other things, not all good). It's become too popular and isn't based on scarcity, greed, and power, therefore something must be done. It's increasingly being demonized, even here on /. (comments in a recent item). The biggest change has been that the number of participants has now hit the limit. What limit? A limit artificially imposed by BLM. Why? Because it's no longer under the radar and there's pressure to quash it (yes, I've heard the "reasons", and those "problems" can be readily solved). I'd like to see some leaked memos from within BLM or between legislative staffers and the executive branch concerning the event (anyone know of any?). 2) Bonobos. I'll let those with a lot more knowledge compare Bonobos & Chimps to differing humans' cultures. AFAIK, Bonobos are much more endangered than Chimpanzees. 3) Any number of South Pacific island cultures before 17th-20th century invasions. Some suffered from true scarcity (Rapa Nui, yikes), but on many people were happily sharing nature's abundance right up until foreign sailors landed.

They will wait for us

[kilfarsnar]

I personally believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. If that is the case, they would have to develop technology beyond our current understanding in order to travel here. My guess is that they would have to be able to access dimensions beyond the 3+1 that we can perceive so they could get around the relativistic effects of near-light-speed travel and have the time to get anywhere (light speed is too slow for inter-stellar travel). In order to get to that technological level, their society would have to be stable over a long period of time; much longer than our civilization. I suspect that means at least a sustainable economic and resource-management structure, and the elimination of war as a way to solve problems and get what one wants. In short, they must have learned to live together in relative harmony to get where they are.

Peaceful coexistence is something we still struggle with. Plenty of people on this planet still prefer power over others. Many of us also still hold outdated spiritual and religious beliefs. Basically we still have ignorant, fearful, coercive civilizations. If extraterrestrials were to arrive here and make their presence known, we would have two basic reactions: worship or war. Some people would worship the aliens as gods and others would want to attack them out of fear. Neither outcome would be good for them or us (remember, they likely have eliminated domination and conquest from their motives, so they would not want to be worshiped).

Any race advanced enough to travel here would be advanced enough to know that we are not equipped to deal with contact with them. At least not on a wide, public scale. We are still too primitive, mentally and spiritually. They would likely just hang back and observe, waiting to see if we can learn to live together, or kill each other over power and resources. Giving advanced alien technology to a race as primitive as ours would be like giving a handgun to a toddler. They would know this too, and it would be one more reason for them to remain hidden. I doubt they would help us until they could be sure we could be mature and responsible. And we are neither of those things yet.

In a shocking revelation today

[idontgno]

Scientists have released a very scientific study saying that scientists should conduct our first contact with aliens.

And also run the world.

50 to 100 years?

[nealric]

It strikes me as rather odd that supposedly sober-minded scientists abandon the scientific method and engage in magical thinking when it comes to the idea of aliens. Here's why I say that: for meaningful communication to occur with Aliens, our current understanding of physics needs to be essentially wrong. It's possible that we are wrong, but there is not as of yet any evidence to support that hypothesis. It's fine to hypothesize that our current understanding is wrong, but until you have any evidence, making statements like "contact is likely in 50 to 100 years" has gone from science into magical thinking.

Here's why I say our current understanding would need to be wrong: Even assuming extremely generous variables to the Drake equation (say one out of 100 planets in the habitable zone produces intelligent life), and based on our current exoplanet discoveries, it still seems highly probable that any intelligent life form lives further away than is possible to communicate with using methods that are limited to light speed. There is as of yet, no evidence that faster than light communication is possible. None. Unless relativity is essentially wrong, faster than light communication implies time travel.

Realistically, the maximum distance for meaningful light speed communication is about 50-60 light years (short enough that one scientist could send and receive one communication within a human life time). Even expanding that distance to several thousand light years to account for massive coordination across generations (the lifespan of previous successful human civilizations such as the Roman empire), you are still not talking about a lot of prospects for alien pen pals. Simply intercepting a communication stream does us little good if we can't decode it. I would posit that intercepting a communications stream from an alien civilization a billion light years away would have little impact on us beyond a curiosity. We probably couldn't decode it, and the civilization that sent it would likely be millions of years dead.

That doesn't even begin to address the problems of actually traveling to the alien planet (or them traveling to ours). Again, our current understanding of physics basically has to be proven wrong in order for this to be possible. Maybe traveling 4 light years is a technology problem. Traveling 50 light years on a human timescale is beyond our understanding of physics, and, based on current evidence and understanding of physics, actually impossible. Sure, there are fanciful ideas of "generation" star ships and such, but again, that goes way beyond the "50 to 100" years claim thrown out by the article.

Again, we could be wrong, and there could be a way, but there is no scientific evidence yet. Talk about meeting with aliens isn't science. It's fantasy.

The most likely scenario

[ajyand]

By the time they receive our signal, our Sun would have eaten us up.
Of course those bacteria would be more interested in newly discovered sexual mode of reproduction than our signal falling on them and would be hoping to completely switch over to the new mode before their sun eats them up.

Re:I suspect that they have already occurred.

[kilfarsnar]

For thousands of years, people have been reporting contact with various and sundry non-human entities. Today people talk about aliens, in the past people talked about fairies, in the distant past people spoke of Gods, angels and demons who walked among them. I'm not prepared to go the full von Däniken and declare that is precisely what has been happening but I don't discount the possibility either.

If humanity has had encounters with extraterrestrial life forms, you don't think everyday people would know about it yet. Do you?

Remember this "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet." - Agent Kay

LK

I would agree. If you research the reports given by modern military personnel about strange occurrences in the sky, during missile testing and at at military bases, it seems like something is going on. It's hard to say what, given the amount of secret testing of various technologies that we do. But I think the possibility of alien contact shouldn't be discounted.

"Not ready" goes without saying

[paulxnuke]

I'm not too worried about aliens being hostile. If they have the technology to get here, they already know about us and we'd already know about them.

Interstellar travel is hard enough that anyone who can do it has had time to solve their problems, including how to get along with others. Our behavior towards our own people alone disqualifies us from going anywhere near equal or less advanced races, hopefully starfaring ethics would prevent them from meddling. Aliens who make open contact are probably up to something shady; aliens who deal secretly with the very worst of humanity (i.e., most governments) are a step worse than that.

And what would "shady" consist of? If they need materials of some kind, maybe because they don't have an asteroid belt, they could mine ours or scoop H3 from Jupiter or water from Saturn's rings without our ever noticing; we have nothing to offer them, so why put up with our gravity and behavior? It's hard to imagine how an interstellar colony would be better than a space habitat in one's own system, given the technology to do either. Taking a (sort of) habitable planet from an industrialized race is even worse: who wants the campsite where someone has (radioactively as well as organically) crapped on the picnic table and taken every scrap of firewood and edible berry?

Re:"scientists or astronauts ..the best candidates

[DriveDog]

Is your candidate expected to offer them something? What if it doesn't work on aliens?

Re:"scientists or astronauts ..the best candidates

[mcswell]

I think linguists will need to be first. (Disclaimer: I am a linguist, with field experience. And I keep waiting for ET to phone home...) As for the "conversation" part, it's going to be an odd conversation if they're, say, 100 light years away. That's 200 years for a round-trip communication. "Hi! This is John Doe. How are you?" "I'm fine, my name is Zlxyao. How are you, John Doe?" "Dead."

Re:I suspect that they have already occurred.

[Lord Kano]

Military and Commercial pilots as well as tens of thousands of laypeople have reported seeing things that at least warrant further investigation.

Pretty much anything seen in the past 45-50 years could possibly be top secret military projects but there are plenty of things that go much further back but from your comment, I suspect that you already know this.

LK

sure we xare....non east coasters at least.

[JimNoord]

Watching"alien culture" from a distance is no more different than our (most of america) contact with washington. The culture of D C is as foreign to us in tthe midwest as it would be another species. The aliens are already here.

Re:Alternatives; might take quadrillions of univer

[Paul Fernhout]

"My understanding of your underlying premise, that cultures where people are happy and some aren't downtrodden must be exterminated, rings true."

I'm not sure I'd go that far. :-) It is more like Western capitalist-oriented culture over the past several hundred years has a history of not valuing cultural diversity in favor of taking the physical stuff other people have or exploiting their physical labor. Yet something like the US Constitution being inspired in part by the Iroquois Confederacy (see Benjamin Franklin) is really a much bigger transfer of wealth, and in a way that does not deplete the giver... Too bad we did not also back then embrace the Iroquois idea that women essentially should be the only ones who can vote -- although generally only for men they knew from birth. :-)

However that valuing of diversity in the USA is changing. See for example:
"The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Diff...

And even though I can say so many comments about SETI are ironic and so on, if I look back on my youth and watching Star Trek or Space 1999 and such, or reading lots of sci-fi books with aliens including about "Darkover" or set where "The Word for World is Forest", I can see how it may be easier at first to get some people in Western culture to accept the idea of space aliens than to accept people from other countries (like from the USSR for a US American of those times). So, in that sense, discussions about SETI may be a step towards more acceptance of other cultures on Earth. And that is a good thing. Maybe if we can have a child-like compassion for "E.T.", there is still still hope.

Thanks for the other examples though. I'm thinking there are three kinds of madness/insanity:
* a private madness that messes up our lives and those around us locally (and we all have this to some degree with out foibles and addictions and ignorances and imbalances so on)
* a public madness where people make a big deal out of the way they are (some talk show hosts) and that way might hurt many others via promoting selfishness or war
* an expansive cultural madness where the Borg-like culture seeks to overwrite everything around it with its own way (although in the Borg's defense, at least they claimed to add a culture's distinctiveness to the Borg collective as a form of growth, which can not be said the same of so many mainstream economists...)

It't that third type of widespread madness that is the biggest problem (e.g. WWII Germany and Japan, but there are many other examples closer to home). The villain in Aliens vs. Monsters is a good example.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt08...
"Gallaxhar: Humans of Earth, I come in peace. You need not fear me, I mean you no harm. However, it is important to note that most of you will not survive the next 24 hours. The few of you that do survive will be enslaved and experimented upon. You should, in no way, take any of this personally. It's just business. So to recap, I come in peace, I mean you no harm, and you all will die. Gallaxhar out."

Or also:
"Gallaxhar: Now I can finally rebuild my civilization. Any thought on where I can set up shop? Your planet, perhaps?
Susan Murphy: You keep your slimy tentacles off my planet...
Gallaxhar: [Grabs Susan with one of his tentacles] Or what? If you wanted to stop me, you should have done it when you possessed the quantonium. Now you're nothing.
Susan Murphy: There are innocent people down there who didn't do anything!
Gallaxhar: [Throws Susan down to the ground] Bah! There were innocent people in my home planet when it was destroyed.
Susan Murphy: Look, I'm sorry your planet was destroyed.
Gallaxhar: Oh, don't be. I was the one who destroyed it."

The other reply (by AC) suggesting enlightened cultures may be protecting the Earth from less enlightened individuals in their own cultures may well be true...

Banging on the floor

[CmdrTamale]

Our discovery and understanding of modulated neutrino radiation is advanced greatly when researchers realise the neutrino flux can be demodulated.

It is audio.

It says over and over "TURN DOWN THE SOUND".

In a Desi Arnaz voice.
--
We're monsters. We all are. We're history's most average monsters. -- Ryan North

Astyraunats Probably, Scientists? Probably not.

[rhalstead]

Most scientists I've met and I worked with them every day, were not the most adept at anything outside their realm and would be the next to last choice. Last choice would be religious leaders. Many religions including Christians teach good concepts that if we all lived by them, the world would be a better place. Their basics OTOH leave much to be desired, while some are downright violent In basics and practice. "Join us or die" might not be a good greeting for a species most likely more advanced than our own. Then again as in sci-fi, they may just be looking for a place filled with useless critters that would never be missed, so they could eliminate them and settle in.

Shouldn't you rephrase that?

[rhalstead]

To, Somewhere in the universe there is likely to be intelligent life.

first contact

[tebjmd]

I am an engineer and a scientist. one of my wife's comments just prior to our divorce after I listed the numerous benefits of a continued relationship, was "you just don't get it, it is like living with a pentium II." (the best and the hottest going at the time, what the hell did she want?) Rather a nice comment when someone is leaving you I thought.. Perhaps Scientists and Engineers are not the best choices for the first meeting.I am still an engineer and have a pentium 4 poster above this desktop but live without human company. perhaps scientists are not the best choice for human contact. Tj

Its not likely to ever happen

[jbee02]

Its more likely that ftl technology necessary for such a contact isn't even possible regardless of any scientific advancement by any civilization, human or other wise

Contact?

[FreedomFirstThenPeac]

By "contact" he probably means "irrefutable evidence of life", as in, for example, we find ourselves hearing radio transmissions (not necessarily directed outward, but incidental to technological life). The impact on society would be tremendous even without physical or two-way contact. Just knowing someone else is out there is disruptive.