# Why haven't aliens got in contact with us yet?



## Morrus (Apr 2, 2016)

I expect many of us know of the Fermi Paradox. If there are so many opportunities for intelligent life in the universe, then where are they?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

There are various solutions suggested to the paradox (it's badly named; it's not much of a paradox!) 20 common ones are listed at the above link, ranging from "they're here already" to "they don't exist" with a whole bunch in-between.

What do you think the answer is?


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## redmonde (Apr 2, 2016)

That is why it called paradox because it can be possible truth. However, there is proof to be true.


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## was (Apr 2, 2016)

For me:

...Intelligent civilizations are too far apart in space or time.


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## Morrus (Apr 2, 2016)

redmonde said:


> That is why it called paradox because it can be possible truth. However, there is proof to be true.




What?


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## Kramodlog (Apr 2, 2016)

I like Charles Stross' answer in _Accelerando_. Basically, the singularity will stop us from exploring space. In space there is little energy to sustain the computers that contain the downloaded minds of intelligent life. Once aliens reach the singularity, they will huddle close to their sun (energy) and live many lives in virtual worlds instead of looking at the stars or exploring space. Aliens aren't reaching out to other life forms because they became cosmic introverts once they reached the singularity.

Some meat body aliens might leave their solar system before all life is downloaded into computers, but the singularity is inevitable for all intelligent alien life. So if these exiles settle near a sun, the singularity will catch up to them again. To find meat body intelligent life who is not threaten by the singularity, you have too look between the stars in the great vacuum of space, where energy and metal is rare to find the exiles of the singularity. Right now we are looking at stars and not between them when we are looking for life.


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## Ryujin (Apr 2, 2016)

was said:


> For me:
> 
> ...Intelligent civilizations are too far apart in space or time.




Yup, time and distance. We've only been around for an eye blink and odds are slim that there's anyone in our immediate neighbourhood, who might hear our pitiful whimpers.


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## Tonguez (Apr 2, 2016)

Rare intelligence is my go to. Humans are the most advanced race in the universe, every other life form is either primitive, unintelligent or gone extinct.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 2, 2016)

One answer is an inversion of the question.  Not, where is all of the alien intelligent life, but rather, what are we misunderstanding that we expect something (alien intelligent life) that to all indications just isn't there.  One way to answer that is to take the Drake equation and see how to make the product very low.  Since the Drake equation is presented as a multiplication of independent values, that can be further used to frame the question as a choice of terms of the equation as the most likely to be very small.

Thx!
TomB


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## Radaceus (Apr 2, 2016)

Tonguez said:


> Rare intelligence is my go to. Humans are the most advanced race in the universe, every other life form is either primitive, unintelligent or gone extinct.




What a sad fate for the universe if this is true, heaven forbid we ever leap off this rock in our current condition...we parasites.


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## MechaPilot (Apr 2, 2016)

My answer is not going to be very uplifting.

Assuming that aliens exist, and that said aliens are capable of contacting us, I think they don't because we're a god-awful mess.  Aliens probably think of our planet the way most of our planet thinks of the middle east, or of African and South American nations who have difficulties with rebels.

And don't forget our sphere of transmissions.  If aliens are technologically capable of contacting us, they could well be able to read our sphere of transmissions through the cosmic static.  If they can do that, then they probably see what we think of aliens.  How eager would you be to contact a people who, based on the evidence available to you, believe that you are as likely to invade, or abduct and rectal probe, them as you were to make peaceful contact with them?


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## MechaPilot (Apr 2, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> The basic answer is an inversion of the question.  Not, where is all of the alien intelligent life, but rather, what are we misunderstanding that we expect something (alien intelligent life) that to all indications just isn't there.  One way to answer that is to take the Drake equation and see how to make the product very low.  Since the Drake equation is presented as a multiplication of independent values, that can be further used to frame the question as a choice of terms of the equation as the most likely to be very small.
> 
> Thx!
> TomB




My personal belief is that the smallest multiplier in the Drake equation is the longevity factor.  Whether through natural disasters or self-extermination, it seems likely to me that many intelligent forms of life will die out before contacting any others.  We just barely avoided nuclear and biological annihilation before our space program even reached beyond our own moon.  Our first contact with an alien culture could very well be finding the radioactive ruin of their civilization with an automated probe.


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## Tonguez (Apr 2, 2016)

Radaceus said:


> What a sad fate for the universe if this is true, heaven forbid we ever leap off this rock in our current condition...we parasites.






MechaPilot said:


> My answer is not going to be very uplifting.
> Assuming that aliens exist, and that said aliens are capable of contacting us, I think they don't because we're a god-awful mess.  Aliens probably think of our planet the way most of our planet thinks of the middle east, or of African and South American nations who have difficulties with rebels.




Why do we presume that intelligent aliens will be any better than that?

theres an Twilight Zone episode that tells of an Alein Race that appears to the UN and reveals that they created humanity and are disgusted how things have turned out, they give humanity a year (or something) to sort things out. Humans immediately get together and work hard to eliminate war, disarm the nuclear threat and achieve global peace.
The aliens then return, humans present their peace accord and the aliens show their scorn stating something like "no!We created humanity to be our weapon, a force of destruction - this need for peace is a flaw, you have failed!"

ie why can't Aliens be bigger s than we are?


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## Radaceus (Apr 2, 2016)

Touching on the Fermi paradox,

what if our solar system in the outer rim of the galaxy is just in the unknown, in our own existance we have only come into contact with other peoples around the globe recently ( yes this also arguable, but in our known history, its in the last 500 years). What if we are the Aboriginals of that last continent yet to be colonized?

What if there is a golden mean to determine sentient life, that once irradiated cosmic goo becomes lodged into the primal clay of a young planetary system the clock of existence begins. Add into the mix all the variables for a young galaxy, collisions, novas, and etc, that set back the growth rate of an intelligent species ( read: nuked into the stone ages and global extinction events); interfering with the perfect parameters of a species evolving to interstellar colonization. Also add into  he mix, as noted above, how difficult it would be for our species to travel for a million years across the galaxy (as suggested by Fermi) with our current means. Homo Sapiens, young on the scene, are only now at a pivotal moment between self-annihilation and preservation of the species , the most likely pretense of our planet hopping will be to escape our own destruction, as a last ditch effort. This last point, superimposed onto the parameters, infers: how many species of intelligent life can evolve past the warlike nature inherent in the advance of technology in order to work as a whole to become an interstellar race.

And all of this aside, back to what TomB mentioned: are we capable of understanding alien intelligence? When we only recently have come to understand other intelligences on par to our own in our own biosphere!


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## Radaceus (Apr 2, 2016)

Tonguez said:


> Why do we presume that intelligent aliens will be any better than that?
> 
> 
> theres an Twilight Zone episode that tells of an Alein Race that appears to the UN and reveals that they created humanity and are disgusted how things have turned out, they give humanity a year (or something) to sort things out. Humans immediately get together and work hard to eliminate war, disarm the nuclear threat and achieve global peace.
> ...




Fair point,

And we do not, I simply state that we are parasites, implying if humanity set off into the unknown with our current mindset it the cycle will continue. And perhaps this could be the case, the human condition, war is in our DNA...and between global extinction events and our nature for destruction we have worked ourselves into an endgame position


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## MechaPilot (Apr 2, 2016)

Tonguez said:


> Why do we presume that intelligent aliens will be any better than that?
> 
> theres an Twilight Zone episode that tells of an Alein Race that appears to the UN and reveals that they created humanity and are disgusted how things have turned out, they give humanity a year (or something) to sort things out. Humans immediately get together and work hard to eliminate war, disarm the nuclear threat and achieve global peace.
> The aliens then return, humans present their peace accord and the aliens show their scorn stating something like "no!We created humanity to be our weapon, a force of destruction - this need for peace is a flaw, you have failed!"
> ...




The potential certainly exists for them to be so.  However, I find it likely that if they are like that, then they will not be that way toward their own kind.  Surviving the ability to create weapons that can destroy one's entire planet, especially long enough to develop interstellar flight (or at least interstellar communication) requires a level of cooperation or unity that would probably preclude the kind of in-fighting we have on Earth.

However, they could easily be just as bloodthirsty as we are, only they would be searching for different planets to dominate and conquer instead of going after their neighbors on their own planet.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Apr 2, 2016)

Truly intelligent civilizations ignore the galactic equivalent of baby talk.


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## Umbran (Apr 2, 2016)

MechaPilot said:


> Assuming that aliens exist, and that said aliens are capable of contacting us, I think they don't because we're a god-awful mess.




That shouldn't be an issue - they'd also have been god-awful messes.  Our being a mess is a pretty direct result of evolution - all creatures are engaged in competition for resources.  All our formation of tribes, our "us vs them" attitudes, comes from this at the root.  Every species that comes to high technological advancement will be able to look back at their past and see their... ugly teenage years, so to speak.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Apr 2, 2016)

Every time these discussions come up, people bring up the idea that we're not "worthy" of being talked to by other aliens.

It might be something I could have believed once, too. But now I think that's bullsh*t. 
The thing to understand is that we're a product of evolution. The reason we are the way we are is because it allowed our continued survival. That means both our good and our bad is part of what made us successful. At least for now. Evolution is not a success guarantee. The fittest survive, but what is "fit" can, did, does and will change based on many factors. 
Maybe be all blow ourselves up or destroy our ecosystem because we were too selfish or too stupid to see how we'd hurt us. Maybe we die out from a random asteroid collision. But we have removed neither the altruists nor the egoistical sociopaths out of our genepool, and there is probably a reason for it - there are times where these traits can help humanity survive (even if it comes at a great individual cost.)

But most likely every intelligent species will have gone through a development like this, and quite possibly no species can actually go beyond that, because there is always a chance that maybe the species wasn't smart enough to forsee a critical threat or critical resource shortage, but the egoist secured a bit more for himself than he deserved, killing a bunch of others, but allowing others to survive. Just like other traits that might be considered negative can sometimes turn into positives. 
It's difficult to say if there ever is a stage in technological and biological development were such a scenario could not possibly happen. The trick is tempering the "negative traits" sufficiently to avoid it becoming a problem when it shouldn't. 



Anyway, I think the reason why aliens haven't yet talked to us is mostly for bleak reasons. Which are that Star Trek and Star Wars and Star Gate and Doctor Who will always be the realm of science fiction. We won't find ways to travel faster than light, we won't travel through time, we won't create worm holes. 

All these will simply prove physically impossible. That means that this ridiculous gigantic universe we have observed so far will be mostly out of reach for any human being - and also any alien being. We probably won't even get very close to the speed of light so that relativistic effects could become helpful for long-distance travel. 
So we would be stuck with century long travels to even get to the nearest star systems - and building a starship that can actually go the distance without running out of fuel or spare parts and without the ecosystem breaking down keeping the astronauts or colonists aboard alive will be so hard that it quite possibly can't be done.

And every alien will have the same problem. The best we either look in the right direction and detect a communication attempt by another alien, or that another alien is looking in our direction and detects our communication attempts. It might take centuries to actually get meaningful signals across.

Even if our galaxy has thousands or millions of planets that can sustain some form of life and over time most of these develop a civilization that doesn't die in a cosmic blink of an eye, the problem is that the mere attempt at communication will already be difficult - the hope of traveling there is non-existent.


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## Hand of Evil (Apr 2, 2016)

Let me mess up my hair like one of those plastic trolls (History Channel reference to Ancient Aliens) and say I think they have been here and are still here but try and keep away from us.  Every now and then they have made themselves know, working with governments that have turned around and misused technology, mostly for war.  This scares them and they are basically saying why did we not follow the Prime Directive! 

The other problem is Space Time; to meet these other intelligent races you have to be at the right place at the right time, the size of the galaxy and the amount of time to get anywhere, means it is high odds that you would be finding each other at a common intelligential point of reference.


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## Umbran (Apr 2, 2016)

There are so many possibilities.  For example:

Note that our technology rests on a base of fossil fuels.  We may be able to wean ourselves back off fossil fuels and maintain technology, but I don't think there was a path for us to our current technology and beyond *without* ever using fossil fuels - you probably can't plausibly jump from using wood straight to using solar and nuclear power. There are too many materials (like steel) you can't make at industrial scale with the energy output available in plant matter -which is limited by solar radiation, which is limited by being at a distance from your star where water will remain liquid on the surface of the planet.  So, without the fossil fuels, you might be limited to the equivalent of wood-burning steam tech, at best.

So, if the conditions for making abundant fossil fuels are rare, then that's going to cut down on the intelligent species available to see.


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## amerigoV (Apr 2, 2016)

I think Larry the Cable Guy has it right - Aliens have been in touch with us, but they seem to have a thing for redneck fellers.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 3, 2016)

It seems the question ought not to be about why we haven't been contacted.  It's about finding no evidence of the presence of aliens.  No stray emissions.  No remnants of van Neumann probes in the asteroid belt.  No biota of alien origin in an out of the way corner of the solar system.

The idea is that we are very close to being able to create at least van Neumann probes ourselves, and certainly should be able to do  so in the next millennium.  Then, we will be able to spread evidence of ourselves far and wide in this galaxy over several million years.  A long time for us, but not in a cosmological sense.

Thx!
TomB


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## MechaPilot (Apr 3, 2016)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Every time these discussions come up, people bring up the idea that we're not "worthy" of being talked to by other aliens.




At least on my part, it's not a "worth" issue.  It's not a value judgement.  We (i.e. humanity) certainly have it within us to be a great people.  We've had moments in history where it's shown through.  However, instead of a "worth" issue, it's simply a "let's not stick our hand in that hornets' nest" issue (as said from the perspective of the aliens).


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## Umbran (Apr 3, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> No biota of alien origin in an out of the way corner of the solar system.




Well, we've really only scratched the surface of the *in* the way corners of the solar system.  We shouldn't expect to have see what could be hidden out of the way, yet.



> The idea is that we are very close to being able to create at least van Neumann probes ourselves, and certainly should be able to do  so in the next millennium.




We have had something vaguely like powered technology for *less than 300 years* (I'm thinking Jame's Watt's patent on a steam engine here - a whopping 10 horsepower).  I don't see how something coming in the next *thousand* years is "very close".


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## Hand of Evil (Apr 3, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> It seems the question ought not to be about why we haven't been contacted.  It's about finding no evidence of the presence of aliens.  No stray emissions.




Watch NASA Unexplained Files on the Sci channel, it is shocking how many signals have been picked up are unknown and hushed.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 3, 2016)

Umbran said:


> Well, we've really only scratched the surface of the *in* the way corners of the solar system.  We shouldn't expect to have see what could be hidden out of the way, yet.
> 
> We have had something vaguely like powered technology for *less than 300 years* (I'm thinking Jame's Watt's patent on a steam engine here - a whopping 10 horsepower).  I don't see how something coming in the next *thousand* years is "very close".




Certainly this is one answer: We really haven't looked very hard for very long, and in not very many places.

On a cosmological time scale, 1,000 years is a blink of the eye, almost nothing.  But it wouldn't matter if the time taken is 10,000 or a million years, since the probe dispersion takes millions of years with known physics.  What matters is that the capability seems not unreasonably possible.  That is all that is needed to fuel the paradox: If we can send out probes, and intelligence similar to us is common, then we should see probes.  But we don't.  Either they aren't there, or we don't know how to find them.

Thx!
TomB


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 3, 2016)

Morrus said:


> I expect many of us know of the Fermi Paradox. If there are so many opportunities for intelligent life in the universe, then where are they?
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
> 
> ...




They don't want to be Rick-rolled.*



Hand of Evil said:


> Watch NASA Unexplained Files on the Sci channel, it is shocking how many signals have been picked up are unknown and hushed.




Like the WOW Signal!
[video=youtube;xrHoscethfc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrHoscethfc&sns=em[/video]

Ok...maybe not _that_ WOW signal.

















* 237,042 years from now, a multi-species intergalactic battle fleet will be launched to destroy humanity because Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" caused an Extinction Level Event by causing one species' AI to all go insane.

The battle fleet becomes lost in space as the accumulated gifs, memes, kitten/puppy vids, assorted clickbait and porn broadcast by humanity clusters all of their navcomps.


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## Tonguez (Apr 3, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> No biota of alien origin in an out of the way corner of the solar system.




do you give any credence to the Alien fungus theory ie that as the spores of certain fungi can survive in space that it is possible that fungi are of extraterrestrial origin.Fungi are markedly different from other life forms - Plant, Animal, Protozoan and still defy genetic classification. 

They are considered to be closer to animals than plants and do demonstrate sensitivity to the environment (sentience). 
It has been suggested that the mind altering effects of certain fungus contributed to the development of human intelligence (states of conciousness) and going out even further into the weird it has been suggested that the mycelium network (by which fungus connect various plants in a ecosystem) is concious and allows the transfer of data between nodes (plants) within the network. 

ie the mycelium network of fungus interacting with plants and animals is in fact an alien intelligence that humans are not currently equipped to understand.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Apr 3, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> Certainly this is one answer: We really haven't looked very hard for very long, and in not very many places.
> 
> On a cosmological time scale, 1,000 years is a blink of the eye, almost nothing.  But it wouldn't matter if the time taken is 10,000 or a million years, since the probe dispersion takes millions of years with known physics.  What matters is that the capability seems not unreasonably possible.  That is all that is needed to fuel the paradox: If we can send out probes, and intelligence similar to us is common, then we should see probes.  But we don't.  Either they aren't there, or we don't know how to find them.
> 
> ...




We can't send those Von Neumann probes yet, however. We can speculate that it might or should be possible - but maybe it is not. Or, once we know how it could be done, we realize that we might need to look in a direction we have not looked before. To actually get to a paradox we have to make some assumptions of what kind of technology is possible. 

Nothing humanity has build so far actually lasted millions of years. We haven't even been building things long enough for that. But in fact, most of what we can build is lucky to last more than a few years without maintenance (and usually even then, it requires optimal conditions.) We have nothing that is self-sustaining/maintaining and/or autonomously self-replicating. I believe the best we have now is 3D Printers that can print themselves, but they are not collecting their own rare materials.

Maybe Von Neumann probes end up not very small, but very huge, because something very small can't be fitted with the necessary intelligence and mechanical capabilities to find stuff to make itself from and detect anything about alien life or the universe. Maybe a "real" Von Neuman would look suspiciously like a complete star system.


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## Morrus (Apr 3, 2016)

Hand of Evil said:


> Watch NASA Unexplained Files on the Sci channel, it is shocking how many signals have been picked up are unknown and hushed.




Unknown and hushed like on a mass broadcast television show? That sounds rather known and non-hushed to me.


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## Hand of Evil (Apr 3, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Unknown and hushed like on a mass broadcast television show? That sounds rather known and non-hushed to me.



 just coming to light now from the Freedom of Information Act.

Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon...NASA Files  
Part 1
[video]https://youtu.be/bjLZBrQ-Oq4[/video]

Part 2
[video]https://youtu.be/_QYRVCqwuYI[/video]


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## tomBitonti (Apr 3, 2016)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> We can't send those Von Neumann probes yet, however. We can speculate that it might or should be possible - but maybe it is not. Or, once we know how it could be done, we realize that we might need to look in a direction we have not looked before. To actually get to a paradox we have to make some assumptions of what kind of technology is possible.
> 
> Nothing humanity has build so far actually lasted millions of years. We haven't even been building things long enough for that. But in fact, most of what we can build is lucky to last more than a few years without maintenance (and usually even then, it requires optimal conditions.) We have nothing that is self-sustaining/maintaining and/or autonomously self-replicating. I believe the best we have now is 3D Printers that can print themselves, but they are not collecting their own rare materials.
> 
> Maybe Von Neumann probes end up not very small, but very huge, because something very small can't be fitted with the necessary intelligence and mechanical capabilities to find stuff to make itself from and detect anything about alien life or the universe. Maybe a "real" Von Neuman would look suspiciously like a complete star system.




I think those are all valid responses.  Creation of van Neumann probes only seems feasible, and maybe that "seems" is much too generous.

That can be generalized to a good candidate answer to the paradox: Folks vastly underestimating the difficulty of interstellar travel.

Thx!
TomB


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## Janx (Apr 3, 2016)

Out of the last 300 years where our tech level has risen rapidly, only in the last 50 (or so), have we had technology that hints at being able to find aliens in space (radio, rockets, computers, nuclear energy,etc).  Might be our tech level will rise faster, so in a 100 years, we'll be pretty powerful.

but space is big.  Checking our entire solar system will take time.

And assuming there's aliens just like us in every other star system, rising up in tech level about the same rate as us and at the same time as us, a chunk of our work relies on expecting somebody to be far advanced of us and making noise we can see with radio and telescopes.

Look at the problem in reverse, what kind of activity can WE do that will get the attention of aliens who are looking for life from about 4 light years away?   Or 10, or 100?

We joke about radio signals from old TV shows being picked up by aliens, but really, how strong are they out 4 light years?  Would somebody on Alpha Centauri even notice the signal?


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## delericho (Apr 3, 2016)

My theory: the conditions that give rise to intelligent life also tend towards making that life self-destructive. We're in a race to get off-planet in sufficient numbers before we manage to nuke ourselves into extinction.

And each time a planet goes around the evolutionary merry-go-round, it becomes harder for the next intelligent species to make it off-planet, because the ones before may very well have used up some vital resource in their attempt.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 3, 2016)

> That can be generalized to a good candidate answer to the paradox: Folks vastly underestimating the difficulty of interstellar travel.




Coupled with a similar a misunderstanding as to what "billi-yuns and billi-yuns" of years REALLY means.  Entire civilizations could rise and crumble before anyone else in the neighborhood is around to see them.  They could have been here and gone already...while Earth was still molten.

In a sense, its like asking why more Princess Cruise liners haven't had collisions with pre-Columbian kayaks.


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## Umbran (Apr 3, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> That can be generalized to a good candidate answer to the paradox: Folks vastly underestimating the difficulty of interstellar travel.




To be specific - if faster-than-light travel is impossible or highly impractical, you are talking about creating devices that last for centuries of millennia in high-vacuum, high-radiation environments likely with only whatever materials it carries on board for repairs.  

The only things humans have created that last millennia are large piles of stone, and those show lots of wear and tear.


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## Morrus (Apr 3, 2016)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Coupled with a similar a misunderstanding as to what "billi-yuns and billi-yuns" of years REALLY means.




Carl Sagan? The only American to pronounce the word correctly.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 3, 2016)

Hail, Sagan!


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## Jester David (Apr 3, 2016)

I doubt there's *a* solution.
I imagine complex life is rare, intelligent life is even rarer. Intelligent life that doesn't die out or kill itself is rarer still. 

To even have complex life you need to be in the golilocks zone of stars. Rare. And the planet needs to be about the right size. Rare. The orbit should be stables. The star can't pump out too much radiation, there needs to be a magnetic field to protect against the rest. But no rads means less mutation. There can't be other hostile rad sources nearby, like a neutron star or supernova.
There also needs to be a nearby super planet (like Jupiter) to serve as an asteroid sweeper or the planet will be hammers by space rocks too often for life. 
However, some asteroid impacts are desirable. If things don't change on the planet, things don't evolve. They reach a happy state and changes slow down. The dinosaurs rules for tens of millions of years with limited changes because of the lack of sudden changes; the changes that did occur were slow and allowed adaptation and migration. A dramatic disaster (supervolcano, asteroid) keeps things shifting.

This "medium catastrophe" applies to us as well.
If you watch any human evolution documentaries, humans should have all died out two or three times in their early years, due to the rapid climate changes of the era. But without the pressure to adapt, we wouldn't have evolved our intelligence.
Too hostile and the life dies before it becomes intelligent, too habitable and it doesn't evolve or just doesn't spread out and remains clustered on one happy region. Without the Ice Age we wouldn't have been forced from central Africa to the south, and without a period of heavy monsoons, we wouldn't have been forced North into the Middle East (or survived the trek given the side of the Saharah at the time).

Humanity is also a very tribal species. We distinguish ourselves from our neighbours. This has really given rise to conflict, which has forced innovation and progress through technological evolution. Survival of the fittest culture. And divided cultures allow for continual progress, as when one empire stagnates or falls, the march of progress continues elsewhere (such as the Islamic empire continuing scientific advancement after Rome fell).  And if empires don't fall, people are slowler to change their thinking, less open to new ideas. 
A planet with fewer divides (a mono-continent) and less tribal people might develop much slower. And a more divided people might wipe themselves out.

Genius is also rate. You can count the number of true geniuses on a hand and a half. Faraday. Einstein. Newton. Tesla. Etc. Without one at the right time in the right place and given the right opportunities, we might be much less advanced. But too many advancements and technology outpaces society's ability to adapt. There's no time for refinement or practical applications of theory. 

All that makes a species even reaching our level of technology super rare. 

Why haven't we heard anything? 
Well, we were pumping out radio signals for maybe 75 years. They were weak and sporadic initially, mostly bouncing off the atmosphere. After a few light years they'd degrade beyond legibility. (So the chances of using space travel to recover the lost episodes of Doctor Who are unlikely.) Lost in the background noise of the universe. 
Now, radio is on the way out. Going wired and local short-range signals. To us, the planet is noisier than ever. To the moon, we're likely pretty quiet. 
The chances of two alien races that are transmitting for those short 100-year windows at the same time within range for the signals to be detected are pretty rare.  

Guessing at the future, the Singularity is a big potential killer as well. Some aliens might very well just stabilize their planet and go entirely into the Matrix, living as virtual gods. 
Other aliens might be more introverted and philosophical, not caring about contact or exploration. Buddhist monk aliens. 
Available minerals might affect things. Available fossil fuels certainly helped get our tech moving. Going from peat to nuclear would be a huge jump. If iron and similar hard metals are too rare, machinery is also hard.

Space is a factor as well. Space is huge. Space travel is hard. Dangerous. Getting anywhere takes hundreds of years. Presuming FTL is impossible (which is very likely). So the super rare survivors that can survive space travel, have the resources, and are interested in exploration haven't reached us yet.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Apr 3, 2016)

It may be that the real interstellar intelligence test is being able to make contact with another star system.  We haven't passed the test yet. Maybe FTL is possible but you have to be really clever to figure it out.

This seems to be a common sci-fi trope -- like humans in Star Trek weren't worth noticing until they figure out warp drive.


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## Ryujin (Apr 3, 2016)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> It may be that the real interstellar intelligence test is being able to make contact with another star system.  We haven't passed the test yet. Maybe FTL is possible but you have to be really clever to figure it out.
> 
> This seems to be a common sci-fi trope -- like humans in Star Trek weren't worth noticing until they figure out warp drive.




I remember reading a SciFi story in which it was the opposite; FTL travel was trivially simple and we had somehow missed it. Earth was invaded by an interstellar empire who used muzzle loaders and got the shock of their lives when they landed.


----------



## Eltab (Apr 4, 2016)

Ryujin said:


> I remember reading a SciFi story in which it was the opposite; FTL travel was trivially simple and we had somehow missed it. Earth was invaded by an interstellar empire who used muzzle loaders and got the shock of their lives when they landed.



I remember that story - but not the title - too.

Space aliens land on earth and point Thirty Years' War-era muskets at the Desert Storm-era US Army.  Earth easily copied the Star Drive (which could have been invented by Sir Isaac Newton and his era's technology, had he (or somebody) just thought to try a critical experiment) and conquered every spacefaring alien culture within reach, then expanded a bit more, then broke up into multiple squabbling governments.  Fast forward a hundred years.  A new space alien race has been discovered, but they seem to have followed "the road less travelled" - they have the Star Drive and internal combustion engines ... and the main characters of the story get to figure out WHAT ELSE they invented, and how dangerous they might really be.


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## Eltab (Apr 4, 2016)

To the main point of the thread:

We haven't discovered any space aliens yet, for similar reasons why Polynesians in their small boats and no maps did not discover NW American fisher-folk in their small boats and no maps, on the vast Pacific Ocean.

IF there are even space aliens to discover.  (the Rare Earth hypothesis looks really good, based on the nearby exoplanets we have found to date)

And if we are looking in the right place(s).  With the right tools.


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## Ryujin (Apr 4, 2016)

Eltab said:


> I remember that story - but not the title - too.
> 
> Space aliens land on earth and point Thirty Years' War-era muskets at the Desert Storm-era US Army.  Earth easily copied the Star Drive (which could have been invented by Sir Isaac Newton and his era's technology, had he (or somebody) just thought to try a critical experiment) and conquered every spacefaring alien culture within reach, then expanded a bit more, then broke up into multiple squabbling governments.  Fast forward a hundred years.  A new space alien race has been discovered, but they seem to have followed "the road less travelled" - they have the Star Drive and internal combustion engines ... and the main characters of the story get to figure out WHAT ELSE they invented, and how dangerous they might really be.




I didn't remember the title either. You almost had the title and what you said helped me remember enough to search for it. It's "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove, named for the poem by Frost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story)


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## Radaceus (Apr 4, 2016)

Eltab said:


> To the main point of the thread:
> 
> We haven't discovered any space aliens yet, for similar reasons why Polynesians in their small boats and no maps did not discover NW American fisher-folk in their small boats and no maps, on the vast Pacific Ocean.
> 
> ...




You hint at something hinted at earlier in the thread:

Considering that West Asians and Polynesians did in fact disperse their DNA into the Americas, and how all twilight memories lingered in said cultures and are all but lost tales to us now; the similar is more plausible in the greater scope of life being dispersed into our galaxy than multiple interstellar species existing at the same time; evolving to a point of contact with one another.
The seed, if it were, of what would become humanity. 
Our own evolution tracing back to roots as rodent sized creatures that look nothing like us and more like meercats, the missing links, the  mutations the led to us becoming us encoded in our DNA suggests the possibility.

But that is just a humans wishful thinking; grand designs. A possibility for our galaxy, and as suggested with the fungi corollary...only a hint, a nearly unseen spec in the wider lens of galactic possibilities.

Begging again the question, what is life?


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## Ryujin (Apr 4, 2016)

Radaceus said:


> You hint at something hinted at earlier in the thread:
> 
> Considering that West Asians and Polynesians did in fact disperse their DNA into the Americas, and how all twilight memories lingered in said cultures and are all but lost tales to us now; the similar is more plausible in the greater scope of life being dispersed into our galaxy than multiple interstellar species existing at the same time; evolving to a point of contact with one another.
> The seed, if it were, of what would become humanity.
> ...




Baby don't hurt me.

Oh, sorry, that's "love."

This takes us back into the ravings of von Daniken and his prophet Tsoukalos. Did the Engineers birth us for weapons testing? Are we the degenerate leavings of some Kryptonian outpost? Maybe in the beginnings of the beginnings some stellar seed started the process? Or maybe the petri dish just randomly mixed up chemicals a few billion times, until life was accidentally created? 


I'll go with the petri dish model. Try it enough times, in enough places, and you get life elsewhere without the need of an extra terrestrial "progenitor." That means, by virtue of how many star systems there are out there, life almost certainly exists on other planets. Different life. Life that likely doesn't think a whole lot like we do and may have no desire to know of anything outside of itself.


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## Radaceus (Apr 4, 2016)

Ryujin said:


> Baby don't hurt me.
> 
> Oh, sorry, that's "love."
> 
> ...




Haha!
I am certainly inferring the latter and not the former!

Petris dish with cometary impact catalyst is where I was leaning, not some creator race of Von Daniken design


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## Morrus (Apr 4, 2016)

Eltab said:


> IF there are even space aliens to discover.  (the Rare Earth hypothesis looks really good, based on the nearby exoplanets we have found to date)




Not really. We mainly find gas giants because they're easy to spot. Small rocky planets like ours are harder to see. Therefore the vast majority of planets we've detected so far have been the ones we're currently capable of seeing.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 4, 2016)

To actually answer the question as it seems to have been intended to be answered:

*) Civilization is destructive, not creative, with a form most akin to an explosion that feeds on free energy (fossil fuels, biodiversity, environment stability) and will eventually exhaust the available energy and go extinct.

*) Interstellar travel is not possible.  No mechanism or organism can survive the crossing due to fundamental physical limits.  Inevitably, but in short cosmological time, we will be destroyed by any number of possible catastrophes.

*) Civilization is extraordinarily rare -- less than 1 star faring civilization per 5 billion years and 200 billion stars -- working from the number of stars in our galaxy and giving an lead time for development.  Numbers are very approximate.

*) A "Great Filter" is killing nascent star faring civilizations.  Variations of the Great Filter: Elder civilizations which don't like noisy neighbors. Cosmic catastrophes. Horrors in a sub-dimension waiting for us to pierce the veil which will give them free reign to enter our realm.  (For a great read, "A Colder War" by Charles Stross, is a chilling answer to the paradox.  See http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm, which has the full text of the novelette online.  One of my favorite stories.)

*) A civilization capable of interstellar travel is also susceptible to a singularity, removing the civilization from the physical world as we are aware of it.  (Take your pick: Transcending our physical reality; Mapping to a finer structure of reality; Tunneling to an alternative universe or dimension.)

*) Wait, what do you mean, we don't have evidence of aliens?

*) Or: Putting "Aliens Amoung Us" (something I just made up) next to "Ghost Hunters" is a brilliant misinformation campaign.  Folks simultaneously believe but don't take seriously the invasion which has already co-opted our civilization and enslaved us.

*) Kindof the most boring: Alien life is out there, we just haven't looked _quite_ hard enough yet.

Thx!
TomB


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## Janx (Apr 4, 2016)

So I was watching some episodes of StarTalk on NEtflix this weekend.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson interviewed George Takei.

The topic of Fermi's paradox, getting to other stars, even the suitability of humanity for being worthy of getting out there came up.

Here's what I heard:
a) Tyson is a really smart dude
b) he's an optimist
c) he thinks we can come up with the ideas/energy/matter we'll need eventually to get to another planet
d) we as a species are a culmination of all of our evolution and traits that got us this far, which is farther than any other species (we have rockets and art, beavers just have dams).  We'd still be eating bananas and humping each other like those peace loving bonobos (or whatever they're called) if we weren't wired to strive for more.
e) any other species that might get as far, likely has gone through just as much
f) that means we are worthy to reach the stars.  Not because of some papal blessing, but because we are intrinsically not unworthy.  We are more than just our wars.  And if you look, just as much, if not more technological innovation is driven outside of war, rather than by war.


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## Istbor (Apr 4, 2016)

Janx said:


> So I was watching some episodes of StarTalk on NEtflix this weekend.
> 
> Neil DeGrasse Tyson interviewed George Takei.
> 
> ...




I don't know.  Looking at the internet, the pool of Humanity's collective knowledge and experiences.  I feel we are still just eating banana's and humping each other. 

However, I agree, there likely isn't a 'worth' factor involved.  Perhaps a more, let's leave them to their own devices and see what happens.  I mean, we already do that with ourselves. 

I certainly think there is something out there. The universe is just too big and too many chances for a happy accident not to occur again. But it is big. And we are not very close to overcoming that hurdle yet.  Sadly, we aren't even remotely trying.  I believe we have great potential for overcoming obstacles when we want or need to.  We just require that catalyst.

And perhaps, that is what someone out there is waiting for.  To see if we actually want it badly enough. Otherwise, why not leave the monkey-men to play in their sandbox?


----------



## Janx (Apr 4, 2016)

Istbor said:


> I don't know.  Looking at the internet, the pool of Humanity's collective knowledge and experiences.  I feel we are still just eating banana's and humping each other.




We watched TomorrowLand last week, and while I can be as pessimistic as the next guy, I agree with a core premise.  We spend a lot of time being grimddark, future's gonna suck.  It only sucks if we let it.

Sure, space is big.  Space is dangerous.  Sure there's no disaster that is easier to handle from Mars than it would be on Earth.  But even after the Singularity, our robot overlords will be thankful that we helped move the ball a little bit farther forward, so they could get to the next star system before Sol explodes.

Going virtual does not have to mean full abandonment of the real world.  Plenty of kids still go outside to ride bikes after playing video games for awhile.

What if we can warp spacetime well enough for data to transmit fast enough.  So we send a very robust machine to get to Alpha Centauri, then it folds space and our virtual selves relay info what it's like over there while starting to build robot bodies or something?  If we can get a ship going .1c, it's only 40 years to get there.


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## MechaPilot (Apr 4, 2016)

Janx said:


> We'd still be eating bananas and humping each other like those peace loving bonobos (or whatever they're called) if we weren't wired to strive for more.




Does it make me unevolved that a banana smoothie after a little naughty sweaty fun sounds pretty nice?


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## Umbran (Apr 4, 2016)

Istbor said:


> I feel we are still just eating banana's and humping each other.




Well, certain things are required for continuation of the species.  If we *aren't* doing these things, we have a problem.  And, if we have to do them, they might as well be entertaining.

If there's a base primate behavior that we probably could do without, it is the flinging of poo.  That's the one that turns out counter-productive in the modern world.



> And perhaps, that is what someone out there is waiting for.  To see if we actually want it badly enough. Otherwise, why not leave the monkey-men to play in their sandbox?




A pretty solid Star Trek: First Contact sort of idea.  And note that in that movie, they sent a gent who was solidly in the bananas and booty camp.


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## Istbor (Apr 4, 2016)

MechaPilot said:


> Does it make me unevolved that a banana smoothie after a little naughty sweaty fun sounds pretty nice?




I don't think so at all. It is good to get back to the basics. 
 [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]

Oh for sure.  If you are going to make first contact, why not send someone who can meet on some common ground who share the same interests? 

If some other race of beings were able to tap into our internet, and be able to glean meaning from it, I think they would see us as at least, a very creative people.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Apr 5, 2016)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> It may be that the real interstellar intelligence test is being able to make contact with another star system.  We haven't passed the test yet. Maybe FTL is possible but you have to be really clever to figure it out.
> 
> This seems to be a common sci-fi trope -- like humans in Star Trek weren't worth noticing until they figure out warp drive.



But would it? 

I think that any alien life form could potentially be interesting. 
You would need to posit that every alien has a similar opinion on how interesting other aliens are, or when they start to be interesting?

We humans find something interesting in almost everything on our planet - maybe not all at the same time for "all the things", but there are people interested in some one-celled lifeforms just as some are interested in "primitive" tribes in the Amazonas region or whatever.


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## Umbran (Apr 5, 2016)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> We humans find something interesting in almost everything on our planet - maybe not all at the same time for "all the things", but there are people interested in some one-celled lifeforms just as some are interested in "primitive" tribes in the Amazonas region or whatever.




Note, however, that we humans are also discovering that preserving the things that are interesting is a lot of work.  Mucking with them has this habit of, well, mucking with them.  We have seen, time and again, what happens when a technologically inferior culture is faced with notable contact with a tech superior culture.  It doesn't play out well.  We already knew this back in teh 60s, so that Roddenberry made up the "Prime Directive"...

"Let them get this far on their own without screwing them up," isn't a nonsensical position, however curious you might be.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 5, 2016)

I thought that in Star Trek, a part of the reason for contact was that the discovery of aliens was a given after warp travel was discovered.

Side question: in what sci-fi universes would the existence of aliens be obvious at our current level of technology?  For example, in Star Trek, I would expect the effects of aliens to be easy to see.

Thx!
TomB


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## Umbran (Apr 5, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> Side question: in what sci-fi universes would the existence of aliens be obvious at our current level of technology?  For example, in Star Trek, I would expect the effects of aliens to be easy to see.




I wouldn't expect them to be easy to see.  

At our current level of technology, we watch the skies for aliens in the radio band - but the aliens out there are using "subspace", and are surprised when they see radio transmissions.  

Beyond that, we don't generally directly image anything smaller than a star, and Trek culture doesn't build megastructures.  Our indirect observations catch things the size of large planets, but typically only get the existence of the planet - we are only starting to be able to glimpse atmospheric composition of a few of those planets.  

We'd not see Trek aliens, yet.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 5, 2016)

Umbran said:


> I wouldn't expect them to be easy to see.
> 
> At our current level of technology, we watch the skies for aliens in the radio band - but the aliens out there are using "subspace", and are surprised when they see radio transmissions.
> 
> ...




I dunno.  I agree that we wouldn't see the aliens.  But we should see their handiwork.  The gap created when the Dyson sphere was created (from the STNG episode).  Anomalous supernovas, of which there have been several.  Shock waves of various sorts.

Thx!
TomB


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## Ryujin (Apr 5, 2016)

(I'm doing this rather a lot, but....) I book I read, but again can't remember the title of, was based on the premise that a SETI installation detected a "Wow!" signal, that was composed of a high powered LASER transmission from a distant star. Clearly it was aimed at us. Clearly we had no way to know how they knew of our presence, because the star system in question was well outside our range of historic transmission (as in by millennia). It was a densely packed, three dimensional model transmission that included high physics concepts like the creation of wormholes, singularities, and the like. Information that could easily be used to destroy the Earth and more. One of the big questions in the story was why would they send all of that?

LASERs would be one way to send such data, that could be detected by our present day technology, and I believe it's one of the things that SETI is looking for. Single wavelength light isn't exactly a naturally occurring phenomenon.


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## Umbran (Apr 5, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> The gap created when the Dyson sphere was created (from the STNG episode).




1) Wasn't actually created by the culture of the Federation, or its allies/adversaries.  If I recall correctly, that Sphere had been abandoned.

2) The Dyson Sphere is a stellar-sized object, but it only emits in the infrared.  Technically that could be detected, but practically speaking - it is *one* star.  One.  Out of billions.  It'd have to be close by to expect us to note it by anything other than chance.



> Anomalous supernovas, of which there have been several.




You don't know it was anomalous unless you were watching the star *before* the supernova.  So, again, except by sheer chance, you won't realize, "Wait, that star shouldn't have exploded at all!"



> Shock waves of various sorts.




With respect, "shock waves" in the Trek sense are not a thing, despite what the treknobabble says.   In reality, a shock wave is what you get when a wave is moving through a medium faster than the speed of sound in that medium.  Note how in interstellar space, there is no medium to speak of, and you can't have a shock wave in a medium that doesn't exist.  If your shock wave is in subspace, we won't see it.


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## Umbran (Apr 5, 2016)

Ryujin said:


> LASERs would be one way to send such data, that could be detected by our present day technology, and I believe it's one of the things that SETI is looking for. Single wavelength light isn't exactly a naturally occurring phenomenon.




SETI has optical detection projects, but they aren't anywhere near comprehensive - meaning that there's a lot of sky, and they don't watch all of it all the time.  So, again, technically it *could* be detected, but in a practical sense, it likely wouldn't be.


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## Ryujin (Apr 5, 2016)

Umbran said:


> With respect, "shock waves" in the Trek sense are not a thing, despite what the treknobabble says.   In reality, a shock wave is what you get when a wave is moving through a medium faster than the speed of sound in that medium.  Note how in interstellar space, there is no medium to speak of, and you can't have a shock wave in a medium that doesn't exist.  If your shock wave is in subspace, we won't see it.




"Gravity waves"?



Umbran said:


> SETI has optical detection projects, but they aren't anywhere near comprehensive - meaning that there's a lot of sky, and they don't watch all of it all the time.  So, again, technically it *could* be detected, but in a practical sense, it likely wouldn't be.




In the book the source was improbably bright and stood out from the background. Virtually "naked eye" bright; the sort of thing that would take a sizable amount of the output of a star to create the single, coherent beam.


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## Eltab (Apr 5, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Not really. We mainly find gas giants because they're easy to spot. Small rocky planets like ours are harder to see. Therefore the vast majority of planets we've detected so far have been the ones we're currently capable of seeing.



Of course.  Not what I was alluding to.
The gas giants we have found, their non-circular orbits, and distance from their star are leaving very few systems where an Earth-like planet can exist at the right range from its star.

Then there is the problem that yellow (and nearly-so) stars are not all that common to start with.


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## Eltab (Apr 5, 2016)

Janx said:


> We spend a lot of time being grimddark, future's gonna suck.  It only sucks if we let it.



I was only a kid at the time, but I remember seeing grown adults cry when they heard that the Apollo Project was cancelled.  Because somebody had just reached out and killed a Dream.


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## Umbran (Apr 5, 2016)

Ryujin said:


> "Gravity waves"?




Gravity waves exist, yes.  But note that we only detected our first gravity waves *two months ago*.  And that was an event that turned three times the mass of our sun directly into gravity waves in a fraction of a second, and we only barely detected it.  The societies in the Trek universe aren't releasing energy on that magnitude.  So again, we'd not detect Star Trek cultures via our current gravity detection tech.


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## Ryujin (Apr 5, 2016)

Umbran said:


> Gravity waves exist, yes.  But note that we only detected our first gravity waves *two months ago*.  And that was an event that turned three times the mass of our sun directly into gravity waves in a fraction of a second, and we only barely detected it.  The societies in the Trek universe aren't releasing energy on that magnitude.  So again, we'd not detect Star Trek cultures via our current gravity detection tech.




You never know. We might be this galaxy's "hot girl" and some strapping young intergalactic culture might slap a couple of galactic core black holes together, to get our attention. After all, size does matter. Or anti-matter.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 5, 2016)

Umbran said:


> 1) Wasn't actually created by the culture of the Federation, or its allies/adversaries.  If I recall correctly, that Sphere had been abandoned.
> 
> 2) The Dyson Sphere is a stellar-sized object, but it only emits in the infrared.  Technically that could be detected, but practically speaking - it is *one* star.  One.  Out of billions.  It'd have to be close by to expect us to note it by anything other than chance.
> 
> ...




Based on the star trek timeline, there seems to be an extra supernova about every 100 years, if not more often.  That is already (about) 5-10x the number of supernovas per millenium for the milky way than the current observed rate.  And that rate is just in a our quite small neighborhood.  It seems that we might notice that the population of supernovas in our and other galaxies don't match up, or at least we would notice a particular type of supernova which is modeled as "anomalous main sequence supernova" with an unknown physical process causing fusion to stop.  Or rather, those would be the dominant type, since there would be a lot more of them than natural supernovae.

Not clear from the episode itself, but there is a ST novel about the Dyson sphere which described a 100ly void around it which were the stars and such which were dismantled to create the sphere.

Anyways, Star Trek has had a number of Kardashey type II civilizations, which seem likely to have noticeable impacts.

Or maybe not.  The impacts might not be noticeable for another few centuries, which for the ST universe is past when we achieved warp drive, so the point becomes moot.  But if we stay near our current technology for the next 1000 years, I'm thinking that is enough time for us to notice things.

Thx!
Tom


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## Morrus (Apr 5, 2016)

Umbran said:


> Gravity waves exist, yes.  But note that we only detected our first gravity waves *two months ago*.  And that was an event that turned three times the mass of our sun directly into gravity waves in a fraction of a second, and we only barely detected it.  The societies in the Trek universe aren't releasing energy on that magnitude.  So again, we'd not detect Star Trek cultures via our current gravity detection tech.




Societies might not, but random Romulans from the future and Vgers and Qs and stuff are all doing pretty wacky things.


----------



## megamania (Apr 5, 2016)

To answer why the Aliens have not contacted us...... Do scientists communicate with their lab rats?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Apr 5, 2016)

Umbran said:


> 1) Wasn't actually created by the culture of the Federation, or its allies/adversaries.  If I recall correctly, that Sphere had been abandoned.
> 
> 2) The Dyson Sphere is a stellar-sized object, but it only emits in the infrared.  Technically that could be detected, but practically speaking - it is *one* star.  One.  Out of billions.  It'd have to be close by to expect us to note it by anything other than chance.



Star Trek Online tells us a story on how build the Dyson Sphere, and why it was abandoned. (And there is more than one.)



> With respect, "shock waves" in the Trek sense are not a thing, despite what the treknobabble says.   In reality, a shock wave is what you get when a wave is moving through a medium faster than the speed of sound in that medium.  Note how in interstellar space, there is no medium to speak of, and you can't have a shock wave in a medium that doesn't exist.  If your shock wave is in subspace, we won't see it.



But even if they were real, they'd need to be close to be notable. 

I think one of the most spectacular things we might be able to glimpse if would be lucky is one of those starships exploding. All the anti-matter exploding in a warp core breach should make a nice, unexpected radiation source. But even that would be a very lucky incident to be detected by us.



> Space is so incredibly big.
> 
> I think the most astounding technology in Star Trek might not be warp drives or transporter technology or replicators. Their sensors alone are sheer amazing. They can detect starships across light years of distance. They can detect humans below the surface for several meters. And of course, they do it faster than light.
> 
> ...


----------



## RangerWickett (Apr 5, 2016)

Tonguez said:


> do you give any credence to the Alien fungus theory ie that as the spores of certain fungi can survive in space that it is possible that fungi are of extraterrestrial origin.Fungi are markedly different from other life forms - Plant, Animal, Protozoan and still defy genetic classification.




No, we've got a pretty good handle on fungal evolution. True, it hasn't been studied as much as animal or plant evolution, but fungi aren't mysterious aliens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_fungi


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## Umbran (Apr 5, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> Based on the star trek timeline, there seems to be an extra supernova about every 100 years, if not more often.  That is already (about) 5-10x the number of supernovas per millenium for the milky way than the current observed rate.




Eh.  The observed rate for supernovae in other, similar spiral galaxies is 5 times greater than the observed rate in the Milky Way.  The *observed* rate in the Milky Way cannot be trusted, as we see the galaxy edge-on, and the disc blocks our view.  So, there could be several that we don't see.



> Not clear from the episode itself, but there is a ST novel about the Dyson sphere which described a 100ly void around it which were the stars and such which were dismantled to create the sphere.




Um, that's improbable.  There are several *thousand* stars within 100 ly of Earth, as an example.  You can't put several *thousand* stars in a radius of 1 AU, and not have the thing simply collapse into a black hole.  



> Anyways, Star Trek has had a number of Kardashey type II civilizations, which seem likely to have noticeable impacts.




I'm not sure that's true.  Other than the Q, who are omnipotent and don't really live around here, there aren't many examples of Trek-universe civilizations with the ability to manipulate stars in the modes Kardashev suggests.


----------



## Janx (Apr 5, 2016)

Eltab said:


> I was only a kid at the time, but I remember seeing grown adults cry when they heard that the Apollo Project was cancelled.  Because somebody had just reached out and killed a Dream.




The death of a dream is a tragedy.  The only reason a thing is not done, is because we fool ourselves into thinking it can't be done.  That it costs too much.  That's what sacrifice is for.  Society has always gotten more out when people put their all in.


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## MechaPilot (Apr 5, 2016)

Janx said:


> The death of a dream is a tragedy.  The only reason a thing is not done, is because we fool ourselves into thinking it can't be done.  That it costs too much.  That's what sacrifice is for.  Society has always gotten more out when people put their all in.




Or into thinking that it "shouldn't" be done.  See cloning and human genetic engineering as examples.


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## Umbran (Apr 6, 2016)

MechaPilot said:


> Or into thinking that it "shouldn't" be done.  See cloning and human genetic engineering as examples.




You know, on those perhaps we *should* let them get a lot more practice on other animals before we start mucking about with humans.


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## MechaPilot (Apr 6, 2016)

Umbran said:


> You know, on that one, perhaps we *should* let them get a lot more practice on other animals before we start mucking about with humans.




I don't disagree.  I simply disagree with the "we shouldn't do it at all, ever" motivation that some people have.


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## tomBitonti (Apr 6, 2016)

Umbran said:


> Eh.  The observed rate for supernovae in other, similar spiral galaxies is 5 times greater than the observed rate in the Milky Way.  The *observed* rate in the Milky Way cannot be trusted, as we see the galaxy edge-on, and the disc blocks our view.  So, there could be several that we don't see.
> 
> Um, that's improbable.  There are several *thousand* stars within 100 ly of Earth, as an example.  You can't put several *thousand* stars in a radius of 1 AU, and not have the thing simply collapse into a black hole.




But one can make inferences based on how much of the galaxy we can see.  Regardless, if supernovae happen with the frequency shown in Star Trek, that's a *lot* more often, and with strange physics evident from most of them.

The expanse is what is described in the book.  I might have the size wrong, but I don't think so.

Thx!
TomB


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Apr 6, 2016)

tomBitonti said:


> But one can make inferences based on how much of the galaxy we can see.  Regardless, if supernovae happen with the frequency shown in Star Trek, that's a *lot* more often, and with strange physics evident from most of them.
> 
> The expanse is what is described in the book.  I might have the size wrong, but I don't think so.
> 
> ...




However, only artificially induced supernova would actually hint at intelligent aliens. Maybe the Star Trek Universe just happens to have some differences in physical laws or difference sin the composition of the Milky Way that makes it have more supernovae then we have in our world. 

Artififically induced novae or supernova happened rarely. Basically Soran created one, and tried a second one. The Hobus nova most likely was artificial (in Star Trek Online, it was), since it behaved nothing like a "realistic" supernova. (This one would certainly seem weird to us if we could observe it - the shockwave was pparently moving faster than light.)

The only other artificial supernovae happened in the Delta Quadrant due to the Civil War in the Q-Continuum. This seemed to have been a very singular event - we would have needed to be around at the right time to notice it (or may have yet to notice it.) It's one of those "blink and you miss it" events.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Apr 6, 2016)

megamania said:


> To answer why the Aliens have not contacted us...... Do scientists communicate with their lab rats?



Some probably do. And I think in general, they are not invisible entities to the rats. Rats are, as far as I know, capable of recognizing other "animals", even if they can't effectively communicate with them.


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## Umbran (Apr 6, 2016)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Some probably do. And I think in general, they are not invisible entities to the rats.




They certainly talk to and handle the rats, and pretty clearly the rats are cognizant of the researcher's existence.  Rats can even show affection for people (which is part of why they actually make good pets).


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## megamania (Apr 6, 2016)

But do the rats suffer from missing time afterwards?


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## Ryujin (Apr 6, 2016)

megamania said:


> But do the rats suffer from missing time afterwards?




I suppose that depends on how heavy the sedation is. Big glowy light. Someone picks you up. Sedation. Lost time. Back where you started.

Oh, wait. That's redneck abductees. As you were.


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## Umbran (Apr 6, 2016)

megamania said:


> But do the rats suffer from missing time afterwards?




Good question.  Let's find a rat that wears a watch, and knows how to tell time, and ask it!  Can probably spin that into its own research grant.


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## Janx (Apr 6, 2016)

Umbran said:


> Good question.  Let's find a rat that wears a watch, and knows how to tell time, and ask it!  Can probably spin that into its own research grant.




actually....

the core question is does a rat have a sense of time, and do they recognize time as lost?

So if you have a consistently lit room and feed the rat every 8 hours, can you set a pattern of expectation of dinner that you can detect when 8 hours has past?  Let's assume a real behavioral scientist will fine tune the concept, as they have a good idea on how to test stuff like that.

Then you kidnap and drug the rat in the middle of the 8 hours, so it "loses 3 hours time".

When the rat wakes up, does he exhibit the behavior at the actual right time, or as offset by 3 hours from being unconscious?

hunger probably isn't the right tool to use, as empty tummy works as a pretty good clock, but imagine some thing like that that we can test if the rats recognize the time pattern, and then jack with it.


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## Umbran (Apr 6, 2016)

Janx said:


> actually....
> 
> the core question is does a rat have a sense of time, and do they recognize time as lost?




I know.  That rats may not have the same perception of time as we do was sort of implied in the "find a rat with a watch" thing.


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## DarkMum (Apr 7, 2016)

Reads last couple of posts...
Runs off to write down story idea. 

"Wanna buy a watch?" asked the man in the coat, his whiskers twitching...

On topic, I'd suspect that a rat capable of telling time from a watch would be a research project in and of itself.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 7, 2016)

"Timex for Algernon"


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## Mark CMG (Apr 8, 2016)

Morrus said:


> Why haven't aliens got in contact with us yet?





No bars, no wifi.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Apr 8, 2016)

Mark CMG said:


> Morrus said:
> 
> 
> > What do you think the answer is?
> ...


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