QuoteOxford University researchers run the numbers and conclude intelligent life beyond Earth is highly unlikely.
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/stop-looking-for-et-modelling-suggests-we-re-alone-in-the-universe
If we are, indeed, alone in the (observable) universe, then we are the only generators and carriers of meaning. If we die off, so will any meaning we've generated, and no further meaning can be generated unless others like us come to exist.
Highly improbable...
(https://i.imgur.com/ex0rqf4.jpg)
It doesn't matter if they are out there or not, space is too vast for us to ever meet each other. Anyway, I suspect intelligent life has a tendency to destroy itself like we are right now with fossil fuels.
https://bigthink.com/matt-davis/is-the-universe-a-graveyard-the-great-filter-theory-explains-why-we-havent-found-alien-life
Everything shall return to nothing... that's just the way it is.
Quote from: Shiranu on April 25, 2019, 09:33:29 PM
Everything shall return to nothing... that's just the way it is.
But also, nothing returns to everything...
The Fermi paradox never truck me as a paradox anyway.
Just an inability to comprehend the vastness of space.
As it is said above: highly improbable.
However, this actually started to get on my nerves as much as 'the aliens are everywhere among us wohoooo' bullshit. What is the purpose here? Questioning the math? Questioning the laws of physics? What's the idea?
I think this is the good old anthropomorphism in the new age. Humans inherently think they are special in the universe and that any extra terrestrial intelligence of course should contact, may be even seek for them. It will look equally stupid, but for the sake of looking for a logic in this; if you can pitch something like this while the matter of size is clear, when you don't even have the technology of transportation in your star system -let alone the galaxy- any practical technology to seek life at least around your neighbourhood that means you are expecting a call. How laughable is that? Why? Why do they think some ET should contact human civilisation? Same vision of the middle ages with the world in the center of the universe.
Pretty much with in the same vision, we can also assume that may be they marked our species as reavers and programmed the traffic to avoid the region in general, for extreme caution.
So it's pretty much the otherway around. Even we manage to spread to other planets and moons in Solar System and live hundreds of thousands, millions of years, it is possible we might not get a contact. Ever.
Yes, we are that fucking small. Yes, it's that big. Get over it.
Quote from: Mr.Obvious on April 26, 2019, 01:48:27 AM
The Fermi paradox never truck me as a paradox anyway.
Just an inability to comprehend the vastness of space.
It was a "quick jot down" that got out of control.
Quote from: Unbeliever on April 25, 2019, 08:25:36 PM
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/stop-looking-for-et-modelling-suggests-we-re-alone-in-the-universe
If we are, indeed, alone in the (observable) universe, then we are the only generators and carriers of meaning. If we die off, so will any meaning we've generated, and no further meaning can be generated unless others like us come to exist.
And "meaning" is meaningless. Races like humans could be popping up everywhere with regularity and then dying away, and the Universe doesn't even have the capacity to give a fuck about them.
For me, the math demonstrates that it would be impossible for us to be the only 'life' (that is a word very difficult to describe accurately) in the universe; and 'intelligent' life only slightly less likely. So, I think, life does exist elsewhere in the universe. That does not mean we will ever know for the universe is that vast. As for meaning, there isn't any, except on a deeply personal level.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on April 26, 2019, 07:41:47 AM
It was a "quick jot down" that got out of control.
Read a biography of Fermi, when I was in HS ... he was one smart nuclear scientist.
Quote from: Baruch on April 26, 2019, 09:18:09 AM
Read a biography of Fermi, when I was in HS ... he was one smart nuclear scientist.
https://www.seti.org/if-extraterrestrials-are-out-there-why-havent-we-found-them
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on April 26, 2019, 07:43:34 AM
And "meaning" is meaningless. Races like humans could be popping up everywhere with regularity and then dying away, and the Universe doesn't even have the capacity to give a fuck about them.
But they are the universe, since the universe is within them as much as it's outside them. We humans, for example, are made of the same atoms and molecules we see out there in deepest space, and in the same proportions. So if we have meaning for ourselves, the meaning we give to our lives, then the universe, through us, has meaning as well. We give meaning to the universe, not the other way round.
Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 01:34:04 PM
But they are the universe, since the universe is within them as much as it's outside them. We humans, for example, are made of the same atoms and molecules we see out there in deepest space, and in the same proportions. So if we have meaning for ourselves, the meaning we give to our lives, then the universe, through us, has meaning as well. We give meaning to the universe, not the other way round.
Correct ... but check your privilege ... chordate ;-) Echinoderms arise!
So basically, you can see why I say ... demigods. Pebbles and sand don't give much meaning.
Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 01:34:04 PM
But they are the universe, since the universe is within them as much as it's outside them. We humans, for example, are made of the same atoms and molecules we see out there in deepest space, and in the same proportions. So if we have meaning for ourselves, the meaning we give to our lives, then the universe, through us, has meaning as well. We give meaning to the universe, not the other way round.
Bullshit.
Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 01:34:04 PM
But they are the universe, since the universe is within them as much as it's outside them. We humans, for example, are made of the same atoms and molecules we see out there in deepest space, and in the same proportions. So if we have meaning for ourselves, the meaning we give to our lives, then the universe, through us, has meaning as well. We give meaning to the universe, not the other way round.
Well, I won't be so nice as Zilla, I will just say.....well....allllllrighty then!
Used bubble gum has awareness of the cosmic all. I know, it says so on the flip side of the comic.
I'm partial to the Drake equation, but as already pointed out, what's the difference? I'm guessing we will never know about it. It seems to me that that the vastness of the known universe contributes to the likelihood that someone else is out there, but timing is also a critical factor that works against us. Assuming that extra terrestrial intelligence resembles ours, the chances go down that both of us exist at the same time. Species go extinct, even the most resilient like turtles and crocodiles. And mankind, for all our glory and dominance, hasn't been around long enough to even produce a pickup load of fossils. Even our less intelligent kin, now long extinct, have lasted longer than we have. Hopes for mankind as specialized as he is to survive in a temperate but extraordinarily atypical Earthly environment don't bode well for our long term serviceability. On cosmic scale, I picture intelligent life like us popping in and out of existence like isolated flashbulbs separated by long drawn out periods of lonely darkness.
We would need at least one extraordinary race of beings before connections between more mundane races could be made.
There may be intelligent life out there that's just too far away for their light to have gotten here yet. A million light years away there could be something like us, but they only evolved in the last few hundred thousand years, like us, so we couldn't know about them yet, or they us.
Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 04:12:22 PM
There may be intelligent life out there that's just too far away for their light to have gotten here yet. A million light years away there could be something like us, but they only evolved in the last few hundred thousand years, like us, so we couldn't know about them yet, or they us.
Ed Zachery. That's why interstellar/intergalactic communications/travel must wait on a race that can transcend mundane limitations.
Quote from: Unbeliever on April 26, 2019, 04:12:22 PM
There may be intelligent life out there that's just too far away for their light to have gotten here yet. A million light years away there could be something like us, but they only evolved in the last few hundred thousand years, like us, so we couldn't know about them yet, or they us.
And Soundwaves take evn longer than that to reach us. Especially if our celestial bodies are moving apart from one another (if I'm getting that right).
And it don't need to be intelligent. We had millions upon millions of years of life without civilisation or technology on earth. Let alone invent radio waves. Fuck it, maybe they don't even use the same senses and sound means nothing to them.
I picture a super-civilization, one that roams the galaxies looking for intelligent life. It samples Earth every billion years. Why? Because even they could be subject to inherent biases and that's how long it took them to get to their current position.
Quote from: Mr.Obvious on April 26, 2019, 01:48:27 AM
The Fermi paradox never truck me as a paradox anyway.
Just an inability to comprehend the vastness of space.
The Fermi paradox is only a paradox in an infinite static universe -- which theory was still viable at the time he posited it. In a universe with a beginning in time, there is necessarily a time lag before enough supernovæ have exploded to provide sufficient concentrations of heavier elements for life to develop.
As for the original article linked in the OP... wow, what a sloppy piece of writing. Virtually nothing of any use with regard to methodology, and what they do mention suggests an unnecessarily Earth-centered basis for their calculations. Who says advanced life has to be based on Terrestrial-style RNA, DNA, and/or eukaryotic cells with mitochondria? That's just the way it happened
here. It's not
the way it
has to happen, period.
And nothing of any use with regard to results except for the vague phrase "no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilizations". I want to see that quantified. One in a quintillion? Sextillion? Septillion? Decillion?
And more to the point, how do you draw probabilistic inferences from
one data point?
Now, I looked at the original paper, and the range of estimates they give at the end are so broad that they're hard to call conclusions... and their starting point of assuming life developing the same way it did on Earth (RNA World or an analogue thereof) is a spectacular failure of scientific imagination, especially considering the single data point problem. Lastly, relying on the canonical Drake Equation, which is only really useful in framing one's thinking about ETIs rather than having any actual predictive power, causes the whole enterprise to fall down.
Ultimately, the only thing the might have done is to give a reasoned argument not to expect to find mitochondrial cells based on DNA elsewhere.
My greater worry is various fundamentalists grabbing hold of this and claiming "scientists just proved we're so improbable that goddidit". Because they only give a shit about science when it can be twisted into backing up what they already believe.
Quote from: Mr.Obvious on April 26, 2019, 04:24:29 PM
And Soundwaves take evn longer than that to reach us. Especially if our celestial bodies are moving apart from one another (if I'm getting that right).
And it don't need to be intelligent. We had millions upon millions of years of life without civilisation or technology on earth. Let alone invent radio waves. Fuck it, maybe they don't even use the same senses and sound means nothing to them.
What, no sound? Then they will never reach the Rock & Roll stage of civilization ;-(
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on April 26, 2019, 04:10:54 PM
We would need at least one extraordinary race of beings before connections between more mundane races could be made.
That is the theory behind Contact.
Quote from: Baruch on April 26, 2019, 09:49:28 PM
What, no sound? Then they will never reach the Rock & Roll stage of civilization ;-(
Asad sad thing indeed.