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Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Nearby
rossgneumann writes If there's intelligent life in the cosmos, it's probably nowhere we can get to anytime soon. At least that's the finding of the astrobiologist who, for the first time in decades, has rendered a major update to the key formula scientists use to seek out interstellar life. That'd be the Drake equation, which was developed over half a century ago to determine where life might lurk in the universe. Using the new Kepler data, astrobiologist Amri Wandel did some calculations to estimate the density of life-bearing worlds in our corner of the universe.
Eh we have psychology even when we really haven't found a biological basis for consciousness.
intelligent non-human life is most likely everywhere around us, but beyond the perceptual capacities of the vast majority of humans. Goldfish don't see you walking by their bowl, they just see a flash of light (and maybe color?) and fit it into the only perceptual framework they can grasp. Every species on the planet does this on a continuum of consciousness.. perceiving the less sentient, but blind to the nature of the more advanced. to think that we humans are conveniently at the very top of this continuum is both height of hubris, as well as statistically unlikely.
The birthday paradox would mean that even if planets with intelligent life are an average of thousands of light years from the nearest alien planet with intelligent life, the likelihood of one pair of planets with intelligent life existing much closer together than that is high. Those two planets would be like the two people who share a birthday in the paradox. That's a completely different idea than this article is about.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
for the first time in decades, has rendered a major update to the key formula scientists use to seek out interstellar life
The formula hasn't changed, the variables are still unknown. Someone simply used recent data to make an educated guess as to the value of one variable. The Drake equation is basically a thought experiment, it was never meant to give a real answer. People who attempt to plug in "more accurate values" are missing the point.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So let me see if I got this straight. Less than 300 years ago the fastest method of transportation was horse and buggey and sail ships on the Ocean.
In 300 years we now can put ships in space that can travel at 87,000 mph (143kph), and your best reasoning borrowed from Astrophysicists no less, is that aliens can't be here or make it here because the distances are just too vast ?!?!?
This lacks basic reasoning at minimum and surely imagination.
Imagine if you can how fast we'll be able to travel in space another 300 years from now. Now imagine how fast an alien race could travel if they were 5,000 years more advanced than we are. What about 100,000 years? 1 Million? 10 Million? Pretty sure after even a few thousand years the problem of going across these vast distances will be solved.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
And then there's the whole problem of, as your speed increases, impacts from dust and micrometeorites become a serious problem. It'll do a lot more than just scraping the paint off the hull.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
...or it wouldn't, and it's not.
Who knows.
The idea that we've got it all figured out and we've reached the limits of what the physical world will allow is pretty narrow thinking.
If humanity survives for another thousand years (let alone a million), think where we'll be. In the last hundred years we did more than the thousand before it. [*With thanks to the thousand before it.] What happens next?
Slow down there, buckwheat.
The speed of light is a universal constant, and it doesn't actually make much sense to talk about exceeding it. You break causality and travel backwards in time. If you are sure that these problems can be overcome you have no idea what the problem is. Relativity is a description of the geometry of the universe, and explicitly covers what happens if you try to go really fast. It has been verified to a ridiculous number of decimal places. What you're talking about is equivalent to talking about exceeding the Planck constant or the fine structure constant.
Science fiction is easier and more fun to read than science, but you should probably spend some time reading about this universe, because you're gonna be here for a while.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
"it's reasonable to assume that the speed of light barrier will be overcome."
How is it in any way "reasonable"? We don't travel anywhere even near below the speed of light, and as a matter of fact we used to travel faster than sound but now we don't even have Concorde anymore.
Our entire civilization is running on fumes and we're scrambling to get the last dregs of fossil fuels out of the Earth. Where does your naive, almost child-like naive optimism come from?
" we have no way to know"
But we do know NOW. And everything points to : game over.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...
Let me guess: you're a programmer.