Prevalence of life and intelligent life in the Universe…

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

To end the derail in the international events thread… discuss…

[kissdbyfire]

I’m as certain as I can be w/o definitive proof that there is life and intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I believe it because the universe is possibly more vast than we can fathom at this point, so it doesn’t really make sense to me that there’s only life on Earth - how very typical of our hubris and ignorance! 
Another reason is, we can’t really be the best the universe has to offer, seriously. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I’m as certain as I can be w/o definitive proof that there is life and intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I believe it because the universe is possibly more vast than we can fathom at this point, so it doesn’t really make sense to me that there’s only life on Earth - how very typical of our hubris and ignorance! 
Another reason is, we can’t really be the best the universe has to offer, seriously. 

I agree.  But… we do not have enough data to make concrete predictions as to where…

[kissdbyfire]

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I agree.  But… we do not have enough data to make concrete predictions as to where…

Yeah, I don’t think we do. I mean, we’re not even out of our own backyard yet.

[Sw33t Summ3r Ch1ld]

I believe there's a total chance of there being other life forms in the entire universe. To state it clearly, I do believe there is life somewhere in the universe. I've opened up my mind as to acknowledge this and to place my faith in the world as it examines this universe and solar system and galaxy and come up with the real facts behind it all. It rests with all the leaders in science to put to rest the dismay in the world others feel toward opening their hearts and homes to life and intelligent life in the universe. We all know what sort of dismay we all must feel towards the disjunction in the beliefs of all the people in the world since there are so many different things and even opposite things. And I guess we must all pray there is truth to finding life and intelligence in the universe. I hope this is good for others to know 

[fionwe1987]

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Eh. That's only true for signals of communication. Other signs of life - artifacts, materials, etc - last a whole lot longer.

Define "a whole lot longer". In cosmological timescales, they do not. Nor are they detectable by us yet, beyond a fairly small radius surrounding Earth. 

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

That's ignoring the notion that once a species starts sending things out they would do so for, like, ever, too.

For ever while they continue to exist, right? Even their creations that outlast them won't last for "ever". 

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I've heard this idea repeatedly - the notion of timeshifting - and it continues to be the wrong way of thinking about things. We don't need to have constant communication with the Romans to know that Romans existed. 

 If the Romans were a civilization 3000 light years away, we wouldn't know they existed. Its not time alone, it is time coupled with the distance. There's nothing wrong with this "way of thinking". Its basic reality. 

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The big one is that there's no signs of anything, not just signals in the photonic spectrum. Or at least not ones we're interpreting as information that indicates other life. 

We do not have the resolution to detect "anything" beyond "blurry spheroid that dims the light of a star, with the following spectral changes to the light of the star when this happens" for an overwhelming majority of planets outside our solar system. So how exactly are we supposed to detect these things?

4 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

I’m as certain as I can be w/o definitive proof that there is life and intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I believe it because the universe is possibly more vast than we can fathom at this point, so it doesn’t really make sense to me that there’s only life on Earth - how very typical of our hubris and ignorance! 

I'm certain too, that we're not unique, though its more of a faith, bolstered by the fact of the spatiotemporal scope of the Universe. I'm just not certain we'll necessarily detect this life. Sparseness of life is a definite possibility. And even if the universe is teeming with life, we don't really have much ability to detect it currently. And we don't have any guarantees we'll be around long enough to do a high resolution search of the entire Universe, or that when/if we get to it, we'll find life that is current.

The worst thing is, the further out life is, the longer the gap between our detection of it and its existence. And if that existence is relatively brief, like 50-100,000 years, the further away it is, the less likely any signals of its existence will reach us with sufficient coherence to offer proof.

SciFi gets around all this with FTL/Wormholes/jumpgates. But the stark reality is, if the speed of light is indeed the absolute we currently think it is, the Universe evolves in a way that makes it very hard for life from two different biospheres to interact. 

Its fucking diabolical. 

4 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

Another reason is, we can’t really be the best the universe has to offer, seriously. 

The good thing is, I doubt we're even the best Earth can offer. Long after we fuck up, other species may come that do better. Or maybe, just maybe, we get better someday too. 

 

[Kalbear]

Just now, fionwe1987 said:

Define "a whole lot longer". In cosmological timescales, they do not. Nor are they detectable by us yet, beyond a fairly small radius surrounding Earth. 

For ever while they continue to exist, right? Even their creations that outlast them won't last for "ever". 

Millions of years, then? Maybe billions? As an example, how long will the Voyager spacecraft last, or parts of it? I'm not even suggesting functional - just random garbage. 

A whole lot of the artifacts that we produce will potentially exist for millions and millions of years, and that's just us in the last 100 or so. 

In any case, a major problem that seems to be ignored is the notion of exponential expansion. Even if you're talking slower-than-light, and even if you're talking slow behaviors, you're still looking at creatures that potentially can fill up a galaxy in millions of years' time with various cruft. And that would include the solar system. We don't need to see them first; the most surprising thing to me is that there isn't something here, already. 

Just now, fionwe1987 said:

 If the Romans were a civilization 3000 light years away, we wouldn't know they existed. Its not time alone, it is time coupled with the distance. There's nothing wrong with this "way of thinking". Its basic reality. 

It is time alone - see above. It's a lot easier problem to solve when you're not just talking about us seeing others on their planets and are instead talking about us seeing others on our own. 

And if there was a civilization like ours that existed 3000 years ago at our current tech time frame we could, actually, detect its signals. Pretty clearly even. The only way we couldn't is if they were technologically behind us - but that's not nearly as plausible. Really, all it takes is one very noisy, very exploratory, very expansionist intelligence to have happened to be in this galaxy at some point in the last few billion years to show crazy evidence that they have been around here that is visible to us.

Now, it's certainly possible that that didn't happen, and it's certainly possible that we're looking in the wrong, poorly-human designed ways. But the idea that all the life out there just...didn't go exploring, ever? That's a pretty implausible notion that requires a whole lot of special thinking. 

Just now, fionwe1987 said:

We do not have the resolution to detect "anything" beyond "blurry spheroid that dims the light of a star, with the following spectral changes to the light of the star when this happens" for an overwhelming majority of planets outside our solar system. So how exactly are we supposed to detect these things?

We have the resolution to detect all sorts of things heading out in all directions, everywhere. Again, we don't need to just see a planet to see the evidence of intelligent life. 

Put it another way - if we can reasonably think of ways to colonize and seed the galaxy given enough time, it is highly implausible that we are the only things that could ever do it, or have ever done it - if others exist. 

So why hasn't that happened in the billions of years of the universe or the galaxy's existence? 

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Millions of years, then? Maybe billions? As an example, how long will the Voyager spacecraft last, or parts of it? I'm not even suggesting functional - just random garbage. 

We don't know? Right now, its in a bit of open space where random collisions are unlikely, and there's no nearby gravity well to pull it in. Over a million years, I don't think anyone has attempted to chart its possible trajectory, but if you want to bet it will survive, have at at.

Lets assume we launch a hundred thousand Voyager type craft all around us. They still won't be detectable very far out from us. 

Voyager 1's current speed is 38210 mph. That's 917040 miles a day, 334,719,600 miles a year. So over a million years, it will go out 3.347196e+14 miles. Seems mighty impressive. But that's a grand total of 57 light years from Earth. That is if it holds its speed steady, but it is actually slowing down. And in those best case 57 light years distance, we're assuming no debris, no gravity well that pulls it away, no flares or ionized gases to harm it.

And still, a spacecraft like this would, in a million years, have moved through just 0.05% of the Milky Way's diameter. 

Let's say we improve on these craft and send a 100,000 out... we'd still be covering a tiny fraction of a percent of the diameter of just our galaxy in a million years, radiating out from our planet, and hoping and assuming nothing destrooys most of them, and still, something just a 100 light years away could be finding oil and thinking about going into space, and we'd never fucking know about it. 

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

A whole lot of the artifacts that we produce will potentially exist for millions and millions of years, and that's just us in the last 100 or so. 

And still, they wouldn't move very far from where we are. Nor will they be large enough for detection from much farther away. You seem very underappreciative of the scale of just our galaxy, let alone the universe.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

In any case, a major problem that seems to be ignored is the notion of exponential expansion. Even if you're talking slower-than-light, and even if you're talking slow behaviors, you're still looking at creatures that potentially can fill up a galaxy in millions of years' time with various cruft.

Fill up a galaxy? Please. The galaxy isn't the size of your back yard. Please go look up some actual numbers before making these kinds of statements.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

And that would include the solar system. We don't need to see them first; the most surprising thing to me is that there isn't something here, already. 

You're going to continue to remain surprised for your life, then. Which, however long it lasts, is a fraction of a rounding error at the spatiotemporal scales the universe operates in.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

It is time alone - see above.

See what above? You addressed nothing about the distances in any coherent way above.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

It's a lot easier problem to solve when you're not just talking about us seeing others on their planets and are instead talking about us seeing others on our own. 

Unless they're a couple of stars over and happen to reach their technological peaks in rough sync with us, we never will see others on our own planet.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

And if there was a civilization like ours that existed 3000 years ago at our current tech time frame we could, actually, detect its signals. Pretty clearly even.

And where would this civilization need to be located for that statement to be true?

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

The only way we couldn't is if they were technologically behind us - but that's not nearly as plausible. Really, all it takes is one very noisy, very exploratory, very expansionist intelligence to have happened to be in this galaxy at some point in the last few billion years to show crazy evidence that they have been around here that is visible to us.

God no. Please, get your damn facts straight before making such grandiose claims.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Now, it's certainly possible that that didn't happen, and it's certainly possible that we're looking in the wrong, poorly-human designed ways. But the idea that all the life out there just...didn't go exploring, ever? That's a pretty implausible notion that requires a whole lot of special thinking. 

That is not what anyone here is claiming. However exploratory a species gets, spacetime is vast enough to make contact with another exploratory species hard, unless something like faster than light travel is actually possible. That is all I'm saying. 

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

We have the resolution to detect all sorts of things heading out in all directions, everywhere.

 With such precise scientific statements, no wonder you're making so much sense. We have barely the resolution to tell if the spectral shifts we see from planetary shadows in our own backyard of the galaxy indicate certain gasses whose presence in the atmosphere might indicate life. Our current resolution has entire planets fill a few pixels of our sensors. So dinky little structures like Voyager will not be detected, at all, unless they're coming very close to the Solar System.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Again, we don't need to just see a planet to see the evidence of intelligent life. 

But we can barely see planets, so...

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Put it another way - if we can reasonably think of ways to colonize and seed the galaxy given enough time,

We cannot. We don't even know for certain humans can endure a flight to Mars. I think you've swalloed a whole lot of science fiction and forgotten the fiction part of those stories?

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

it is highly implausible that we are the only things that could ever do it, or have ever done it - if others exist. 

Sure, but even IF another species figured it out, they'd not be able to "seed the galaxy" unless they can break the speed of light.

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

So why hasn't that happened in the billions of years of the universe or the galaxy's existence? 

Because the galaxy is vast, and you seem to think it is tiny. 

Edited April 5 by fionwe1987

[horangi]

I'll add also to fionwe's comments that the expansion of the universe itself diminishes the ability for light and thus anything to move between points and bit by bit eliminates the ability for communication between them.  With sophisticated technologies we might be able to move close to light speed, but the universe is foiling our plots by constantly expanding.  The reason other galaxies aren't on the menu for our future near-light speed vessels isn't because of current distance, but because those other galaxies are moving away at nearly the same speed. Our current galaxy is probably the only petri dish we have to play in and as noted above, its as equally large as it is old.

[fionwe1987]

This seems the appropriate thread to post this (link should work for 30 days):

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/science/space/astronomy-universe-dark-energy.html?ugrp=m&unlocked_article_code=1.iE0.jIVT.KPZKrhwQghDB&smid=url-share

Gives a good sense of the scope of the Universe, at the very least. And the video on top is some of the best resolution we can currently achieve, pointed at one tiny fraction of the view of the Universe from Earth. Even plant sized constructs made by an alien species will not show up.

And as the article points out, however variably, the Universe is expanding. So far, our galaxy is cohesive, but this restrains us to any attempts at discerning life to just our dinky little, not-so-large galaxy. Entire multi-stellar species could have all-out wars in galaxies far, far away, and we wouldn't know it.

This is wonderful for science fiction, because here you have a giant canvas on which you can paint pretty much anything. But when it comes to actual detection of life, even our own Galaxy is frustratingly hard to catalog. For one, the Galactic center is so bright that a ton of stuff on the other side just isn't imageable. And as noted, the Milky Way is statistically nothing special, Universe-wise, but from our own perspective, it might as well be the universe (and for a long time, that's what we thought, in truth).  

Edited April 5 by fionwe1987

[Loge]

43 minutes ago, horangi said:

I'll add also to fionwe's comments that the expansion of the universe itself diminishes the ability for light and thus anything to move between points and bit by bit eliminates the ability for communication between them.  With sophisticated technologies we might be able to move close to light speed, but the universe is foiling our plots by constantly expanding.  The reason other galaxies aren't on the menu for our future near-light speed vessels isn't because of current distance, but because those other galaxies are moving away at nearly the same speed. Our current galaxy is probably the only petri dish we have to play in and as noted above, its as equally large as it is old.

Our Galaxy is about 30 kpc or 100,000 light years in diameter, so distance definitely is an issue as the universe is now. On the other hand, if by some magic we could travel across the galaxy in a reasonable time, we could also reach our neighbor galaxies. They don't move away from us either, because of gravity. Of course, that's just our backyard.

As for intelligent life, there's probably a lot of it but it doesn't really matter because we won't make contact. Maybe we'll find signatures of life in the atmospheres of planets orbiting nearby stars but that's about it.

[polishgenius]

I swear we had this same exact debate a few months ago, with the exact same scenario of Kalbear insisting everyone else's grasp of scale and time was wrong. Though it got less tetchy that time. 

 

 

Anyway yeah I am still of the opinion that the 'paradox' part of Fermi Paradox annoys me because it isn't one. There's no logical breakdown in life having not found us yet- we just don't have all the information we need to know why it hasn't. 

 

 

 

On a sci-fi, but interesting, note, has anyone read the Xeelee books of Stephen Baxter? In particular the Vacuum Diagram short story collection. The latter parts of it would likely be a bit confusing to anyone who hasn't read the four books in the series proper, but the first few stories are really interesting speculations on how completely unfamiliar-to-us lifeforms could exist. 


The whole series is about that to an extent tbh, but the rest hangs a big overrarching narrative on it, those shorts are one-and-dones. Anyway, recommended reading in general for anyone interested in that kind of subject, even if it's not, you know, real. 

[Toth]

There are a couple of plausible sounding theories around that you need to be in the second generation of stars for there to even be enough heavier materials in the galaxy to form solid planets. Then comes the above mentioned issue with distance. We are looking right now far into the past of the galaxy and even further into the past of the rest of the universe, given that the other galaxies are moving away from us with more than light speed and speeding up. Whatever life there currently is in other galaxies, there is absolutely zero chance for us to ever detect it, because all we can see is those galaxies in a primordial state.

While I find it also vexing that there are no obvious signs of life in the direct neighborhood, I'm willing to think that most sentient life is just incredibly rare and odds are, it developed too far away and too recently for us to get clear signals as of yet. We ourselves  are 26.000ly away from the galactic core. Let's say, there is a civilization at the other side of the galaxy within the same "habitable zone" where stars exploded close enough for there to be enough of the necessary matter, but not so close that you get constantly messed up by gravitational pulls and more supernovae ruining your day, so a further 52.000ly away. Let's say this civilization started to do what we did when we first started out, sending our radio wave messages. And if we are lucky that there is no inference between us that scrambles the waves... that civilization needs to have existed 52.000 years in the past. And like fionwe noted, there is a huge fucking black hole and an absurdly thick cluster of stars between us, so there is only so much we can detect at this range that can be discerned from the immense background noise of said black hole, star clusters, star foundries and even more background chatter from the forming of other galaxies. It's a damned huge haystack out there. Probability says something will be out there. Heck, I'm even fairly sure there is more primitive life here in this star system. I'm thinking of the ocean floors of Ganymede and Europa or the clouds of Venus. Probably just some microbes, but life is tough and the building blocks are there. Sentient life certainly will be out there somewhere as well. It's just a question of whether it's close enough for us to ever run into them.

[DaveSumm]

3 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Anyway yeah I am still of the opinion that the 'paradox' part of Fermi Paradox annoys me because it isn't one. There's no logical breakdown in life having not found us yet- we just don't have all the information we need to know why it hasn't.  

Whole heartedly agree with the first part, I’ve never grasped what’s paradoxical about all this. But not sure I agree with the second; we know quite a lot about why we wouldn’t have heard from aliens. The light speed limit is very likely the hard speed limit for the universe. We know it’d take an immense amount of energy to transmit any signal loudly enough for anyone to reasonable hear, even assuming you pointed it in the right direction.

It is fundamentally not surprising that we have not detected signs of alien life, and it’s bizarre that people suggest otherwise given that we don’t even have a workable theory of how they would do that. My depressing conclusion is that aliens pretty much definitely exist, and we will pretty much definitely never find out.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

13 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

To end the derail in the international events thread… discuss…

Dayum news travels.

So, since yesterday evening I have a new flatmate. A fucking rat found its way through the kitchen window.

Little bugger managed to quickly find a spot under the washing machine I couldn't access. Fast forward a day.

I have it now trapped inside a metal bin (ca 50. cm in height), I usually use for dirty clothes. It's very much alive, and I intend to set it free outside. And yes, this was my way of a bragging to have succesfully constructed a live trap with a bin, a paper bag, some old chocolate-hazelnut bar, and some boards.

Horses are smarter than rats. Anyway, gotta set the bugger free now.

 

Edited April 5 by A Horse Named Stranger

[TheLastWolf]

22 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Dayum news travels.

So, since yesterday evening I have a new flatmate. A fucking rat found its way through the kitchen window.

Little bugger managed to quickly find a spot under the washing machine I couldn't access. Fast forward a day.

I have it now trapped inside a metal bin (ca 50. cm in height), I usually use for dirty clothes. It's very much alive, and I intend to set it free outside. And yes, this was my way of a bragging to have succesfully constructed a live trap with a bin, a paper bag, some old chocolate-hazelnut bar, and some boards.

Horses are smarter than rats. Anyway, gotta set the bugger free now.

 

No one can certainly accuse you of going off-topic!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Rats are Intelligent. I set it free and hope that our paths will never cross again.

Edited April 5 by A Horse Named Stranger

[fionwe1987]

2 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Rats are Intelligent. I set it free and hope that our paths will never cross again.

Hopefully, a few miles away. Rats are good at returning to alien life forms they have had previous contact with, unless the challenge of traversing the spacetime continuum is too great, and they head to other stars.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just keeping the kitchen window closed will hopefully do and it dashed off into the opposite direction.

Otherwise pest control has set out some more lethal traps around the place (joys of living in a major city) and there are quite a few cats around roaming outside by their humans. Like I said, it was not a long term co-residential agreement we had. Squatter showed up last evening/night. If it had not learnt the lesson, I will resort to a more permanent solution the next time our paths cross. Tbph, the idea of "gifting" it to the "house dragon" (lady in her 80s who's annoying everyone in the house) very briefly crossed my mind (as did paying a visit a to the next MacDonald's).

Edited April 5 by A Horse Named Stranger

[Daeron the Daring]

Who are we to tell what is our own species' driving factor? I think we are in no position to assume anything of our own future and driving factor, let alone that of an intelligent alien lifeform.