peterms Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 3 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said: If a life form was both intelligent enough and advanced enough to make it all the way over to Earth in a space ship, said intelligent life form would not then be afraid to make contact with us. What could we possibly do to harm it? If it is curious enough to travel all this way, it wouldn't then skulk around in the dark whizzing around the sky like, as one poster put it, a woman driver trying to park in Sainsbury's. Nor would it fecking crash. Nor would we shoot it down. Aliens have not been to earth. Not while we have been around. The size of the universe is so mind bogglingly big, our sun will likely explode before they do. We will be extinct within a few million years anyway so, whatevs. There's also the possibility that intelligent life from elsewhere has visited, and been so appalled by what it has seen that it is just trying to slip away quietly, without drawing attention to itself. Like someone who thought they had a ticket for King Lear and finds themself watching Big Brother. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dom_Wren Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 Not without shagging kim k they wouldn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted November 29, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted November 29, 2016 1 hour ago, tonyh29 said: we wouldn't be here if they hadn't ...Aliens don't have to be Green men that stick probes up peoples arse from my (very) limited understanding of these things , everything on earth got here from space , water , elements such as gold , Uranium and so on .... in amongst that lot was bacteria that under the right conditions mutated and were the first forms of life ( stromatolites ?) everything kinda grew from that I believe ? To elaborate on the other comments, everything came from space, planets were formed by dust and random rock in the aftermath of the big bang, heavy elements in them came from things like supernovas. Bacteria came from those constituents in the right conditions after the fact. There is the panspermia theory which suggests that Earth was 'seeded' by bacteria etc from elsewhere (on meteorites, etc), which has some merit, but they weren't floating around with the other constituent elements of the universe. They did come from the things that came from space, ultimately, but they weren't there themselves. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 What he said ^ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted November 29, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted November 29, 2016 We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 1 hour ago, peterms said: There's also the possibility that intelligent life from elsewhere has visited, and been so appalled by what it has seen that it is just trying to slip away quietly, without drawing attention to itself. Like someone who thought they had a ticket for King Lear and finds themself watching Big Brother. They wouldn't even know what "appalled" means, what are the odds that they have a similar moral code to us? Similar emotional responses? They might not even have emotions at all, though they must be able to reason to some capacity I guess. In my opinion, the odds on there being two species of sufficient intelligence to communicate being around at the same infinitesimally small point in time, with one of them having the ability to span light-years before hitting upon the other are so ridiculously small it renders the conversation moot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amsterdam_Neil_D Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 Just now, dont_do_it_doug. said: Like someone who thought they had a ticket for King Lear and finds themself watching Big Brother. My life in a nutshell right there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sexbelowsound Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 2 hours ago, tonyh29 said: we wouldn't be here if they hadn't ...Aliens don't have to be Green men that stick probes up peoples arse from my (very) limited understanding of these things , everything on earth got here from space , water , elements such as gold , Uranium and so on .... in amongst that lot was bacteria that under the right conditions mutated and were the first forms of life ( stromatolites ?) everything kinda grew from that I believe ? You mean Jebus, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villakram Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 what about prometheus... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted November 29, 2016 Administrator Share Posted November 29, 2016 1 hour ago, dont_do_it_doug. said: In my opinion, the odds on there being two species of sufficient intelligence to communicate being around at the same infinitesimally small point in time, with one of them having the ability to span light-years before hitting upon the other are so ridiculously small it renders the conversation moot. Compare with us and the other great apes. Similar moral codes, shared genetics, similar intelligence and we still can't meaningfully communicate. Yet people think we'll be able to communicate with aliens. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 41 minutes ago, limpid said: Compare with us and the other great apes. Similar moral codes, shared genetics, similar intelligence and we still can't meaningfully communicate. Yet people think we'll be able to communicate with aliens. Just to be clear, I didn't say we would be able to communicate. In fact, I'm basically saying it won't happen at all. The odds are ridiculous and I don't mean Leicester winning the league ridiculous. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted November 29, 2016 Administrator Share Posted November 29, 2016 16 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said: Just to be clear, I didn't say we would be able to communicate. In fact, I'm basically saying it won't happen at all. The odds are ridiculous and I don't mean Leicester winning the league ridiculous. I was agreeing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 (edited) 28 minutes ago, limpid said: I was agreeing I thought so, I just wasn't sure I was clear enough first time around! We will never meet Aliens. Peeps need to get over it. Edit - unless you count the occasional Albion fan. Edited November 29, 2016 by dont_do_it_doug. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villakram Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 Errr, all correct... assuming the laws of physics as currently understood hold, but see dark energy/matter, inflation etc. Given the size of the Galaxy, it could be teeming with life and we'd still only bump into it rarely, nevermind the Universe. There are large parts of our planet where aliens could have landed on and had a huge party with the locals only ~1000 yrs ago and zero record would remain due to the use of perishable materials for structures and record keeping. I guess what I'm getting at is how important it is for us to remember how ignorant we now know that we were only 100 yrs ago, yet we assume we are quasi all knowing now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 1 minute ago, villakram said: I guess what I'm getting at is how important it is for us to remember how ignorant we now know that we were only 100 yrs ago, yet we assume we are quasi all knowing now. Actually I assume the opposite. I think we're idiots, constantly on the brink of destroying ourselves. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 1 hour ago, limpid said: Yet people think we'll be able to communicate with aliens. Alien bacteria on an asteroid, no. I'm not underestimating anything that's mastered travel between star systems. Particularly if it was a co-operative effort between individuals... and if it could be arsed to bother trying? 17 minutes ago, villakram said: ... yet we assume we are quasi all knowing now. We're thick as pigshit. The last model I saw for the way black holes operate, made it look like a system designed to repeatably roll the dice with the matter in the universe. Don't get out the way, you're back in the mix, perhaps to form life next time? Snowflakes have an intricate structure that looks like deliberate design, but the above black hole set up also has a faint whiff of agar plate, which can't be completely discounted with our current level of understanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuthority Posted November 30, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted November 30, 2016 13 hours ago, coda said: The Great Filter. We're **** basically. The Fermi Paradox! A great article here from one of my favorite blogs. It's long but well worth the read. Quote So there are 100 Earth-like planets for every grain of sand in the world. Think about that next time you’re on the beach. Moving forward, we have no choice but to get completely speculative. Let’s imagine that after billions of years in existence, 1% of Earth-like planets develop life (if that’s true, every grain of sand would represent one planet with life on it). And imagine that on 1% of those planets, the life advances to an intelligent level like it did here on Earth. That would mean there were 10 quadrillion, or 10 million billion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe. Moving back to just our galaxy, and doing the same math on the lowest estimate for stars in the Milky Way (100 billion), we’d estimate that there are 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.1 SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is an organization dedicated to listening for signals from other intelligent life. If we’re right that there are 100,000 or more intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, and even a fraction of them are sending out radio waves or laser beams or other modes of attempting to contact others, shouldn’t SETI’s satellite dish array pick up all kinds of signals? But it hasn’t. Not one. Ever. Where is everybody? http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted November 30, 2016 Share Posted November 30, 2016 The Fermi Paradox, rather incredibly, doesn't take time into account. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dom_Wren Posted November 30, 2016 Share Posted November 30, 2016 This thread should be renamed "If you are a PE teacher, stay out, you have no business being in here" 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted November 30, 2016 Share Posted November 30, 2016 19 hours ago, TheAuthority said: The Fermi Paradox! A great article here from one of my favorite blogs. It's long but well worth the read. http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html Just got back from seeing Brian Cox in Guildford tonight and he kinda said the same thing I'm paraphrasing but ... Our universe is 13.6 billion years old but to use Carl Sagan to get your head around this think of that as the 1st Jan on a calendar , earth was formed on the 28th September "life" began sometime late October .... more advanced life in November ....humans arrived on the 31st December ... there are 200 trillion galaxy's in our universe , lord only knows how many stars that equates to but roughly there is a chance that 1 in 10 of those stars would have a planet that could support life .... now on one hand there could be life but it's just too far away that we'll never hear from them but like we've sent probes and broadcasts into space , equally there is no sign so far not a squeak from anywhere else An interesting theory he put forward was that potentially there could be life that evolved a billion years before us but its just possible that every advance civilisation technologically ends up wiping itself out .... for example nuclear fusion is almost inevitable within any advanced civilisation ,would we be around had we split the atom 5 years earlier than we did (as a very generic example ) We've had computers around 80 years (if you took the z1 to be the first modern computer ) ... when Einstein put this theory together we thought the universe ended at the end of the Milky Way , now with the aid of computers we've been and seen the cosmic microwaves (I think it was ) from that explosion 13.6 bn years ago ( if you want to be precise we can't see the first 380,000 years after Big Bang ) and produced a model from it that predicts wave formation of galaxies within our universe , that we have now mapped and proven the computer model ( from Durham no less ) was correct ... mind blowing stuff 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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