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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.
I've always felt that the Drake Equation is not worthy of the term 'equation' since its just a simple probabilistic estimate from multiplying a ton of other probabilities and instances together. Consider for instance, the Schrödinger equation, which has a differential formulation that provides solutions to so many physical situations that arise in quantum mechanics, or Maxwell's equations, which explain all of electrodynamics, including light, and were the inspiration for Einstein's theory of special relativity.
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.
So you're telling me that things in other star systems are far away?
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
If we are merely looking for intelligent life, we should be ecstatic about finding an octopus. They are quite intelligent, and you don't even have to leave the planet to find them.
I mention this because what if we went to another planet in search of intelligent life and found something like an octopus? How would we communicate with them? My guess is by cooking them, and then eating them.
> 1. There needs to be a planet at an exact distance away from a star so things don't vaporize nor freeze
Which presumes life is based on this temperature range, and not silica or some other process.
> 2. There needs to be water
Again, not mandatory for life. Water-based life, sure. But we have no way of knowing if most life is based on water.
> 3. Atmosphere Oxygen-rich
Again, not mandatory for life. For all we know, oxygen is regarded as a poison by most life.
> 3.5. Atmosphere that isn't toxic
What's toxic for you may not be toxic for most life. Life on gas giants may be quite different, or life in the moons of a gas giant. Oxygen is a fairly toxic gas.
> 4.The Star needs to emit the right amount of energy so not to fry everything.
True. But different life may have different energy ranges. Water has a limited range.
> 5. Planet can't be too close to other stars.
This is most likely the biggest one. Being too close to more than one star means higher range of fluctuation.
> 6. Planet needs to have a core preferably iron to deflect electromagnetic radiation.
Or life exists in gas giants which have thick atmospheres, or beneath the crust.
> 7. Core also keeps ground warm which helps with supporting plant life.
For all we know, perhaps most intelligent life are avian in nature. Birdlike aliens who regard us as crippled freaks.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Thought experiments are not inherently meant to not give "real answers". Galileo used a thought experiment to prove Aristotle's theory of gravity wrong. Aristotle held that heavy objects fell faster than light ones. Galileo asked us to imagine a heavy object tied to a light object by a rope. Based on Aristotle's hypothesis, tying a light object to a heavy one would make the heavy one fall slower; as the light object would naturally fall more slowly than the heavy one, it would 'hold the heavy object back' in its fall. However, also based on Aristotle's hypothesis, tying a light object to a heavy object would make the heavy object fall faster, as its mass had now been increased by the mass of the light object. Given the fact that assuming the same premise ("Heavier objects fall faster than light ones") lead to opposite conclusions, Galileo reasoned that the premise had to be false, on the basis of the foregoing thought experiment.
The birthday paradox depends on days being measured modulo 365. There is a finite bound on the birthdays available. That doesn't extend to planetary distances in three dimensional space over the span of the universe.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
...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?
The fact that we are in a small galactic cluster, per typical cluster, suggests its small size has protected us from being visited or invaded. If we had evolved in a medium or large cluster, the most likely case otherwise due to density, then perhaps we'd have encountered ET's by now. ET's are less likely to visit & colonize sparse clusters because it's too far to travel for too few resources.
Copernican Principle and Anthropic Principle would suggest that some factor is involved to "keep us out" of denser clusters, where probability would otherwise place us. The boondocks are protecting us. Nobody is bothering us because we are stellar rednecks hidden in the difficult-to-reach woods.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
The birthday paradox depends on days being measured modulo 365. There is a finite bound on the birthdays available. That doesn't extend to planetary distances in three dimensional space over the span of the universe.
The whole birthday "paradox" is a human failing of not taking into account the number of possible pairings, it doesn't have to be modulo anything. If you have a thousand planets with life with a one in a million chance to be close, what's the total probabiliy of two planets being close? 1000/1000000? Bzzzzzzt wrong answer, because there's 1000*999/2 = ~500000 possible pairs. So the actual chance is more like 50%, instead of 0,1%. Not that it has any practical application, because it's the odds of two alien planets being close. Earth's chances would still be one in a million per planet, just like the odds of any person having my birthday is roughly 1/365.
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