Prevalence of life and intelligent life in the Universe…

[A Horse Named Stranger]

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

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. 

Maybe we are the product of a colonization attempt. Some amino acids stored on spacecraft(s) a billion years ago in some of the older parts in the universe. That piece of space junk with frozen water hit a rock in the habital zone, give it some time and evolution and here we are. With possibly very little resemblance to the original (evolution is a bitch). So maybe our replication one day will result in a planet of the dolphins on a watery planet (or maybe it has already on another planet with the original samples taking a different evolutionary route).

[Kalbear]

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

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. 

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.

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.

Great. That's what we've done in 50 total years, with technology that wouldn't be sufficient to power a watch these days. And that's one probe. 

And that's only a million years. And only 100,000 probes, something that if we wanted to we could launch right now without too much of an issue. And these aren't self-replicating, these aren't designed to do more than just fly out there. 

Let's instead talk about a billion years. Imagine you can do what you said - which is still absurdly small in terms of scope! - every million years. Now we're talking about 100,000 probes sent out every million years 1000 times, each expanding the scope and size of where they go. And if we're sending something to actually go exoplanetary we are going to make it faster, so covering that 57 light years in a million years is also small - even though that goes to 57,000 light years in a billion years timeframe. 57000 light years is literally half the size of the milky way!

And THAT is why I say it would fill a galaxy. Given a large enough time period you do that easily with relatively rudimentary technology from a single planet. When you start getting into autofactory ideas and geometric growth it becomes even more easy to determine that at that time period.

So the question should then become - why hasn't that happened?

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

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.

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

And you continue to think way too small, or assume that you have to hit a technological peak and then decline in some way. Which is fine - that's one of the Fermi paradox answers, that intelligent species effectively end themselves - but you need to actually state that as a thesis instead of just wildly saying that things are big, therefore it's okay. 

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

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.

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

Obviously something that looks like our tech would need to be 3000 light years away for us to detect it. My point is not that it needs to be precisely that timing - only that given tech like our current level, we could easily detect that sort of tech coming from planets at that distance in spacetime. 

 

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

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

How about you do it then? Because again I'm not talking about a million years - that's an absurdly small timescale. I'm talking about a species that can harness the power of its solar system and chooses to explore, with a long dedicated goal. Just one would be able to send artifacts to every corner of the galaxy in a billion years. Earth is young by comparison to a lot of the systems and worlds out there; a civilization a billion years ago is not particularly weird. 

So please, you should get your facts straight - because you're basically saying that the expansionist nature of the human race and our trends are impossible. One of the better things to base predictions on is on what we've observed in the past with our own species, because we know that to be actually possible. Refuting my claims is refuting the existence of things like us. 

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

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. 

And I'm not suggesting that you make contact, only that you are aware. Bidirectional communication is not necessary any more than it was necessary for us to determine Sumerians existed 6000 years ago. 

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

 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.

And that's exactly my thesis - that they WOULD come close to the solar system. Many times, in fact. 

And that, well, we can detect readily. 

It's remarkable how angry and how incorrect you are, just by assuming certain things. You assume we have to look at planets to see the life and ignore the notion of life going out and looking on its own. You assume passivity in exploration despite humanity's verdant examples of active exploration. You assume only a million years and the technology of the 1960s and ignore even what we've done in the last 50 years. Is it because you really want life to exist but not be noisy, and will be disappointed if you're wrong? Is this a matter of faith and not science?

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

But we can barely see planets, so...

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?

We have a probe that launched from the 1970s that has survived for 50 years. Who needs to launch life? Is the hang

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

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.

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

They'd be able to if they started early enough, and with enough of a thought about doing exactly that. Again we almost have the technology to do that in our lifetimes right now - we could fill the galaxy with von neumann machines without major difficulty. It wouldn't even take nanotech or anything magical; simple robots that can self replicate and extract fuels while using solar power to bootstrap is already something that we either can do or could do real soon. It doesn't take esoteric or imagined tech to do something like this - you don't need small fusion reactors or more efficient rocket engines than we have or nanotech. 

You seem to think that time is somehow short in the galaxy or the universe. It's very odd. The universe and the galaxy are vast, but time is much more vast. 

What's especially weird to me is that you think that intelligent life could not possibly do something like this, but you also believe 100% that any intelligent life will have something like religion. 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Maybe we are the product of a colonization attempt. Some amino acids stored on spacecraft(s) a billion years ago in some of the older parts in the universe. That piece of space junk with frozen water hit a rock in the habital zone, give it some time and evolution and here we are. With possibly very little resemblance to the original (evolution is a bitch). So maybe our replication one day will result in a planet of the dolphins on a watery planet (or maybe it has already on another planet with the original samples taking a different evolutionary route).

It's certainly possible! That's one of the various ideas of what aliens would do. Seeding primordial oceans with interesting chemicals is a possibility. But that still raises the question of what actually seeded these things and why we've not found evidence of them yet. Or why only Earth succeeded in our general light cone. 

[Kalbear]

9 hours 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.

Again, I don't really need communication between species to matter. The thought process is not why we haven't talked with another species - it's why we have no evidence that we understand that they exist. 

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

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. 

It also got a lot less dickish, honestly. I'm a bit surprised by how angry folks are in this thread; maybe they need to take out their frustrations about Gaza on these poor alien theories. 

8 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. 

This is one of the things I also believe - that our problem is that we are digging in the wrong place. We assume alien life that would do things similar to us, using mechanical systems and photonic broadcasts. And that's not necessarily wrong, but it's very limited in terms of detectability. Biological seeding is another one that would be very hard for us to actually detect and ascertain it came from another species. In more sci-fi thoughts, things like quantum communication and entanglement might mean that things talk to each other without having any artifact of communication. 

But one way or another one major conclusion comes from the above - that we are largely unique and pretty special. Either we're faster than every other intelligent species, or we're way more expansionistic and exploratory, or we're way too noisy, or we're way too uncautious - but we are pretty different.  

[Kalbear]

Also, since I rarely get to do a QUADRUPLE post, here's the previous thread.

 

[Celestial]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Great. That's what we've done in 50 total years, with technology that wouldn't be sufficient to power a watch these days. And that's one probe. 

And that's only a million years. And only 100,000 probes, something that if we wanted to we could launch right now without too much of an issue. And these aren't self-replicating, these aren't designed to do more than just fly out there. 

Let's instead talk about a billion years. Imagine you can do what you said - which is still absurdly small in terms of scope! - every million years. Now we're talking about 100,000 probes sent out every million years 1000 times, each expanding the scope and size of where they go. And if we're sending something to actually go exoplanetary we are going to make it faster, so covering that 57 light years in a million years is also small - even though that goes to 57,000 light years in a billion years timeframe. 57000 light years is literally half the size of the milky way!

And THAT is why I say it would fill a galaxy. Given a large enough time period you do that easily with relatively rudimentary technology from a single planet. When you start getting into autofactory ideas and geometric growth it becomes even more easy to determine that at that time period.

So the question should then become - why hasn't that happened?

And you continue to think way too small, or assume that you have to hit a technological peak and then decline in some way. Which is fine - that's one of the Fermi paradox answers, that intelligent species effectively end themselves - but you need to actually state that as a thesis instead of just wildly saying that things are big, therefore it's okay. 

Obviously something that looks like our tech would need to be 3000 light years away for us to detect it. My point is not that it needs to be precisely that timing - only that given tech like our current level, we could easily detect that sort of tech coming from planets at that distance in spacetime. 

 

How about you do it then? Because again I'm not talking about a million years - that's an absurdly small timescale. I'm talking about a species that can harness the power of its solar system and chooses to explore, with a long dedicated goal. Just one would be able to send artifacts to every corner of the galaxy in a billion years. Earth is young by comparison to a lot of the systems and worlds out there; a civilization a billion years ago is not particularly weird. 

So please, you should get your facts straight - because you're basically saying that the expansionist nature of the human race and our trends are impossible. One of the better things to base predictions on is on what we've observed in the past with our own species, because we know that to be actually possible. Refuting my claims is refuting the existence of things like us. 

And I'm not suggesting that you make contact, only that you are aware. Bidirectional communication is not necessary any more than it was necessary for us to determine Sumerians existed 6000 years ago. 

And that's exactly my thesis - that they WOULD come close to the solar system. Many times, in fact. 

And that, well, we can detect readily. 

It's remarkable how angry and how incorrect you are, just by assuming certain things. You assume we have to look at planets to see the life and ignore the notion of life going out and looking on its own. You assume passivity in exploration despite humanity's verdant examples of active exploration. You assume only a million years and the technology of the 1960s and ignore even what we've done in the last 50 years. Is it because you really want life to exist but not be noisy, and will be disappointed if you're wrong? Is this a matter of faith and not science?

We have a probe that launched from the 1970s that has survived for 50 years. Who needs to launch life? Is the hang

They'd be able to if they started early enough, and with enough of a thought about doing exactly that. Again we almost have the technology to do that in our lifetimes right now - we could fill the galaxy with von neumann machines without major difficulty. It wouldn't even take nanotech or anything magical; simple robots that can self replicate and extract fuels while using solar power to bootstrap is already something that we either can do or could do real soon. It doesn't take esoteric or imagined tech to do something like this - you don't need small fusion reactors or more efficient rocket engines than we have or nanotech. 

You seem to think that time is somehow short in the galaxy or the universe. It's very odd. The universe and the galaxy are vast, but time is much more vast. 

What's especially weird to me is that you think that intelligent life could not possibly do something like this, but you also believe 100% that any intelligent life will have something like religion. 

The simplest and most logical explanation to this paradox is that Earth-sized rocky planets where life is likely to evolve do not possess enough resources and energy to allow an intelligent species to actually develop into an interstellar civilization.

We have already reached a point where we use more resources than the planet can regenerate within a year and we are nowhere close to possessing the engineering capability to exploit the resources of own Solar system, although there is nothing in the laws of physics that says we can't.

In terms of the laws of physics, mining the asteroid belt, Mars or the rocky moons of the gas giants is easy. Yet, at the current moment, doing more than taking pictures and mineral samples is beyond our grasp.

There is a finite amount of oil, hydrogen, uranium, rare metals, etc on Earth and it might not be enough to provide us with the capability of building at least interplanetary ships capable of taking significant amounts of resources from the Solar system and bringing them back to Earth.

Most of your statements also assume that technological progress can continue forever, which is not a given. We know, for instance, that fusion happens, but we have no idea if an artificial fusion reactor is technologically possible (to be economically viable, not just as an exotic toy in a lab).

It does not have to be something as dramatic as "intelligent species effectively ending themselves". At one point, technological development can stall because most which was feasible for a sentient civilization was achieved or, if theoretical developments would still occur, putting them into practice might not be achievable within the constraints of a planetary civilization.

[A True Kaniggit]

22 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

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

We can’t all be me. 

Edited April 5 by A True Kaniggit

[williamjm]

On 4/5/2024 at 8:45 AM, Loge said:

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.

The Andromeda Galaxy is heading towards us at about 300 km/s and the prediction is that it will collide with the Milky Way in about 5 Billion years.

[A True Kaniggit]

24 minutes ago, williamjm said:

The Andromeda Galaxy is heading towards us at about 300 km/s and the prediction is that it will collide with the Milky Way in about 5 Billion years.

An event I look forward to. We should be absorbed by Andromeda. 

Because our galaxy’s name is stupid. Milky Way. 
 

What do you call a resident of the Milky Way?

Milky Waytian?

[williamjm]

20 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

An event I look forward to. We should be absorbed by Andromeda. 

Because our galaxy’s name is stupid. Milky Way. 
 

What do you call a resident of the Milky Way?

Milky Waytian?

It is a bit lacking in gravitas.

We do have a few billion years to come up with a good name for the merged galaxy, hopefully we can manage something better than Milkdromeda or Andromeway.

[The Mance]

The Raw Milky Way, surely.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

23 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It's certainly possible! That's one of the various ideas of what aliens would do. Seeding primordial oceans with interesting chemicals is a possibility. But that still raises the question of what actually seeded these things and why we've not found evidence of them yet. Or why only Earth succeeded in our general light cone. 

Why only Earth has succeeded?

Habital Zone is a problem. You need a sun that has just enough mass and energy to keep water fluid without the gravitational pull of the bigger stars. At least to get our version of life. In addition this rock has had the fortune to have been hit by an asteroid early enough to have a relatively large moon (compared to planet size), which steadies things quite a bit.

So this rock was a lucky hit, other satelites hit duds.

[Luzifer's right hand]

20 hours ago, Celestial said:

The simplest and most logical explanation to this paradox is that Earth-sized rocky planets where life is likely to evolve do not possess enough resources and energy to allow an intelligent species to actually develop into an interstellar civilization.

We have already reached a point where we use more resources than the planet can regenerate within a year and we are nowhere close to possessing the engineering capability to exploit the resources of own Solar system, although there is nothing in the laws of physics that says we can't.

In terms of the laws of physics, mining the asteroid belt, Mars or the rocky moons of the gas giants is easy. Yet, at the current moment, doing more than taking pictures and mineral samples is beyond our grasp.

There is a finite amount of oil, hydrogen, uranium, rare metals, etc on Earth and it might not be enough to provide us with the capability of building at least interplanetary ships capable of taking significant amounts of resources from the Solar system and bringing them back to Earth.

Most of your statements also assume that technological progress can continue forever, which is not a given. We know, for instance, that fusion happens, but we have no idea if an artificial fusion reactor is technologically possible (to be economically viable, not just as an exotic toy in a lab).

It does not have to be something as dramatic as "intelligent species effectively ending themselves". At one point, technological development can stall because most which was feasible for a sentient civilization was achieved or, if theoretical developments would still occur, putting them into practice might not be achievable within the constraints of a planetary civilization.

It might be that technology has long no long term survival benefits past a point.

We are at best slowing the destruction of our only natural habitat down at this point. As you say it is not necessary for all intelligent lifeforms to end themselves just the kind of lifeforms that act like cancer or humans.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

An event I look forward to. We should be absorbed by Andromeda. 

Because our galaxy’s name is stupid. Milky Way. 
 

What do you call a resident of the Milky Way?

Milky Waytian?

When I was a kid I always wondered why our galaxy was named after a candy bar… a good candy bar… but a candy bar nonetheless.

Then I learned the history behind the name…

[JGP]

 

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

In addition this rock has had the fortune to have been hit by an asteroid early enough to have a relatively large moon (compared to planet size), which steadies things quite a bit.

 

 

Without confirmation because of my rational laziness, I still hold the tides played an important offshoot to life's variation on Earth to date. 

 

There's been plenty of threads on climate change, lots of thoughtful posters providing undeniable data about our unsustainable growth. Even if we had the will, Humanity, no way it happens if it's not entirely international.

Paradigm flipping on a dime isn't something we seem capable of.

That's my bias.

An appleseed kind of colonization by an alien species possessing a mastery we're incapable of, with what, continuation being prime motivation of sowing out into the expanse of space? Is that a staggering amount of ego or lack of it, it would do nothing for us.

The points about materials are real, yet the known Universe is plenty old and cohesive enough I'd stake life has happened on a scale we can't imagine. In whatever form come or gone, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous of the resolve of any species out there that figured it out.   

[A Horse Named Stranger]

As for the Wilky Way, just walk on it.

 

 

[Kalbear]

23 hours ago, Celestial said:

There is a finite amount of oil, hydrogen, uranium, rare metals, etc on Earth and it might not be enough to provide us with the capability of building at least interplanetary ships capable of taking significant amounts of resources from the Solar system and bringing them back to Earth.

Maybe! And that's totally fine if you want to talk about that as a reason why it's not been done too! 

I personally suspect that this is somewhat misleading - an intelligent species would not go as fast with the kind of bootstrapping and energy-debt systems that we're doing, but there's no requirement that that has to occur - and renewable energy sources are going to be relatively easy to figure out. 

23 hours ago, Celestial said:

Most of your statements also assume that technological progress can continue forever, which is not a given. We know, for instance, that fusion happens, but we have no idea if an artificial fusion reactor is technologically possible (to be economically viable, not just as an exotic toy in a lab).

Most of my statements explicitly stated otherwise; you don't have to have technological progression, you have to have willpower. Again, if we wanted to set up autofactories to go out and build and rebuild we could do that literally right now. We literally have the scientific know-how to do it. 

3 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Why only Earth has succeeded?

Habital Zone is a problem. You need a sun that has just enough mass and energy to keep water fluid without the gravitational pull of the bigger stars. At least to get our version of life. In addition this rock has had the fortune to have been hit by an asteroid early enough to have a relatively large moon (compared to planet size), which steadies things quite a bit.

So this rock was a lucky hit, other satelites hit duds.

As @Werthead pointed out in the previous thread there are a lot of very special things about Earth that we probably took for granted that we're just learning about - which again is an answer to the Fermi paradox idea. It may be that this specific combination of things means that it was exceedingly unlikely, even with the massive amount of overall chances. It may be that life is not a particularly easy thing to have happen either. One of the things I talked about with my wife recently is that in order for intelligent life to evolve you need to have the right kinds of evolutionary pressures. You need to have catastrophes but none that are permanent erasers of life - so the Jupiter sweepers and no weird 3-body problem orbits. You need to have mutagens but not too many, so that you get variants. Your climate needs to change and vary, but not so much that you get runaway greenhouses (like Venus) or a dead, cold planet. And you need to have that happen for close to a billion years potentially.

That's a whole lot of ifs!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Maybe! And that's totally fine if you want to talk about that as a reason why it's not been done too! 

I personally suspect that this is somewhat misleading - an intelligent species would not go as fast with the kind of bootstrapping and energy-debt systems that we're doing, but there's no requirement that that has to occur - and renewable energy sources are going to be relatively easy to figure out. 

Most of my statements explicitly stated otherwise; you don't have to have technological progression, you have to have willpower. Again, if we wanted to set up autofactories to go out and build and rebuild we could do that literally right now. We literally have the scientific know-how to do it. 

As @Werthead pointed out in the previous thread there are a lot of very special things about Earth that we probably took for granted that we're just learning about - which again is an answer to the Fermi paradox idea. It may be that this specific combination of things means that it was exceedingly unlikely, even with the massive amount of overall chances. It may be that life is not a particularly easy thing to have happen either. One of the things I talked about with my wife recently is that in order for intelligent life to evolve you need to have the right kinds of evolutionary pressures. You need to have catastrophes but none that are permanent erasers of life - so the Jupiter sweepers and no weird 3-body problem orbits. You need to have mutagens but not too many, so that you get variants. Your climate needs to change and vary, but not so much that you get runaway greenhouses (like Venus) or a dead, cold planet. And you need to have that happen for close to a billion years potentially.

That's a whole lot of ifs!

Yeah, but then again, winning in the lottery is also not particularly likely, but it happens regularly, because a whole lot of people (or morons) play. To go back to our extra terrestrial progenitors shooting amino acid satelites/asteroids. If they sold enough lottery tickets (fired enough satelites, which were ofc called Saddlelites) there's a chance someone else won another jackpot, the Universe is full of planets (suckers who bought the tickets). If you consider us a jackpot.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

 

Then I learned the history behind the name…

Let's not make a big deal out of Little Mikey Mars nocturnal sojourns to his neighbors dairy stalls, wherein he became obsessed with the ritual of pressing his lips to the bloating udder, pausing between mouthfuls to jam a spoonful of cocoa powder and sugar into his mouth in a fit of mania devoted to that glycemic lactic thrill.  Years later he'd distill it into the candy bar that gave you the stars in your own youth.  Let's not make a big deal out of it.  

[A True Kaniggit]

6 hours ago, The Mance said:

The Raw Milky Way, surely.

When we conjoin I hope the galaxy is using a condom. 

And don’t call me Shirley.