General / Off-Topic Do you think we are alone in the Milky Way?
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Several folks have posted versions of this idea, so I think a point of clarification is in order. The whole point of the Drake Equation is to plug in some guesstimates, including how long you imagine the average civilization will last , and tell how many such civilizations are likely to exist right now . The only reason the answer is ever larger than one, given the various low-probabiliy factors involved, is the staggeringly large number of stars and planets in our galaxy. You have to use pretty pessimistic guesses to get even a two-digit result. If we ever find evidence of life on Mars or Europa, the number will creep even further upwards as that would tend to confirm our suspicion that life is pretty common and will develop most places where it can plausibly exist.
This is likely, one of the real puzzles with the Fermi Paradox. Our current level of progress with mechanical and computer technology shows that self-replicating AI isn't all that hard in the grand scheme of things. We're less than a century out from the origins of spaceflight and computers, and we're probably less than a century from being able to make such a thing ourselves. So the likelihood that some civilization somewhere in the galaxy has already done so is very high. There are huge difficulties posed by FTL, sub-light travel by organic beings, or interstellar radio communications, so it's easy to imagine reasons we haven't encountered alien intelligence via any of those routes. Self-replicating probes, on the other hand, you have to stretch to invent reasons why they wouldn't eventually reach every system in the galaxy.
True story: as an eager young grad student, I once had the opportunity to have dinner with Jill Tartar, at the time head of the SETI project. If you ask her about the Fermi Paradox, she uses the same line of reasoning to assert that they're almost certainly here already, in the form of such probes. But those robots likely have no ability to land on large bodies, being designed to reproduce themselves using comet or asteroid materials, and likely have no means of communicating with us. So until we are able to explore a significant fraction of the billions of small bodies in our solar system, we'll probably never know.
The surest proof there is intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has contacted us.
LoL! That reminds me of a situation I had years ago at one of the jobs I had.
We hired a guy. Our boss that hired him claimed that this guy was the smartest and most intelligent person he ever met. The guy came in for a day and didn't show up again.
We joked around and said that he must've been the smartest guy since he knew from start how terrible our workplace was.
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This! ^
The chance of their being life in the galaxy is > 0. We know this because we exist.
It is pretty certain life doesn't evolve everywhere because we know life doesn't exist in places like our moon or on Mars (or at least fairly sure, Mars still potentially could have life or have had life). There are also some systems which will not have life due to having either no planets or planets which (as far as we know) could not support life in any shape or form.
So, like with most things in reality there is probably a bell shaped distribution curve to this in relation to the probability of life having arisen in our galaxy multiple times and the same goes for advanced lifeforms and then for intelligent life (with each further "advance" - if i dare use that phrase - being smaller probabilities than the previous).
Given the number of planets and systems involved is massive, then even a small probability becomes a near certainty, especially when you factor in time as well.
Based on this, i'd be willing to believe the galaxy has/has had/will have many advanced civilizations. However, besed on those same factors, we might be separated by incredible distances as well as being separated in time.
The chances of humanity ever contacting another advanced civilization, even if it exists concurrently with humanty, is probably vanishingly small, unless we (or they) invent FtL and get out there actively trying to find that life.
ED is a great example of how hard this might actually be.
Let's say there are 1000 advanced civilizations in the galaxy right now. Taking what we have discovered in ED to date, what is the chance of us having found any of those civilizations? Even if all CMDRs ignored the unlikely systems such as neutron stars, black holes, L type stars, etc and focused on the most likely systems, even years later we might not have discovered them. And we can jump from system to system and scan it fully in a matter of minutes. That isn't likely in even the most optimistic realistic scenarios unless there is some sort of awesome breakthrough in science. Also could humanity have thousands of ships going out to discover things? Even if we got FtL ships, how many would we realistically send out? 1? 3? 10? 20??? Probes might be a better choice for economic and social reasons, but then, a probe might miss something a human would spot. We could program them to recognize civilization as we know it, or detect life as we know it, but things out there might not be as we know it.
It is pretty certain life doesn't evolve everywhere because we know life doesn't exist in places like our moon or on Mars (or at least fairly sure, Mars still potentially could have life or have had life). There are also some systems which will not have life due to having either no planets or planets which (as far as we know) could not support life in any shape or form.
So, like with most things in reality there is probably a bell shaped distribution curve to this in relation to the probability of life having arisen in our galaxy multiple times and the same goes for advanced lifeforms and then for intelligent life (with each further "advance" - if i dare use that phrase - being smaller probabilities than the previous).
Given the number of planets and systems involved is massive, then even a small probability becomes a near certainty, especially when you factor in time as well.
Based on this, i'd be willing to believe the galaxy has/has had/will have many advanced civilizations. However, besed on those same factors, we might be separated by incredible distances as well as being separated in time.
The chances of humanity ever contacting another advanced civilization, even if it exists concurrently with humanty, is probably vanishingly small, unless we (or they) invent FtL and get out there actively trying to find that life.
ED is a great example of how hard this might actually be.
Let's say there are 1000 advanced civilizations in the galaxy right now. Taking what we have discovered in ED to date, what is the chance of us having found any of those civilizations? Even if all CMDRs ignored the unlikely systems such as neutron stars, black holes, L type stars, etc and focused on the most likely systems, even years later we might not have discovered them. And we can jump from system to system and scan it fully in a matter of minutes. That isn't likely in even the most optimistic realistic scenarios unless there is some sort of awesome breakthrough in science. Also could humanity have thousands of ships going out to discover things? Even if we got FtL ships, how many would we realistically send out? 1? 3? 10? 20??? Probes might be a better choice for economic and social reasons, but then, a probe might miss something a human would spot. We could program them to recognize civilization as we know it, or detect life as we know it, but things out there might not be as we know it.
Hopefully, these probes won't cause a catastrophe by carrying earth bacteria onto a different world, killing an important figure on impact or release radioactive waste into the biosphere (dependent on the way it generate energy), by colliding with promising worlds.
The problem is not how much civilisations can exist at all in the milkyway, but how many can exist at the same time. If you look at our history, we are existing just a fragment of the time that the dinosaurs have had, yet we are already one step from erasing our own species from earth.
Maybe there have been and will be hundreds of thousands of civilisations.....yet it's still possible that the previous one is gone since a long time before the next one evolves.
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I consider myself 99% atheist and 1% agnostic; I can't be certain there isn't a god but I'm as sure as I can be without ruling it out entirely.
The reverse applies to life on other planets; I'm 99% sure it must exist but can't be sure until there is some evidence to back up the statistical certainty.
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Hello, 1st time i post on this forum. Just bought the game and i love it. You guys should watch Brian Cox in JRE. Its mindblowing. I can find the talk about different civilisations and how they are trying to find microbes on different planet, but the whole show worth the trouble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wieRZoJSVtw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wieRZoJSVtw
Took me a moment to get what you meant there
I reckon Ronald Regan was right about that. If mankind knew for sure it was not alone in the universe it would change everything.... for the better.
Yaffle
Volunteer Moderator
Remember, Prof Cox is not a biologist. Indeed he quite openly struggles with (and says so) biology if you listen to him on 'the infinite monkey cage'.
IIRC he talks few times during that show about particularities of the Planet that can host life from science, biology and age of the planet and how many billions of years it takes for a cell to become a multi cell, etc. So basically, anything older than our planet with similar conditions, might worth checking
If its advanced civ why it should contact us considering we barely call our friends and from modern civ pov we are not allowed to contact primitive tribes around the world (Sentinelese, Amazon ones, etc.).
If its advanced civ why it should contact us considering we barely call our friends and from modern civ pov we are not allowed to contact primitive tribes around the world (Sentinelese, Amazon ones, etc.).
Welcome to Elite
Brian Cox has done some fantastic documentaries; I highly recommend BBC "Wonders of the Universe" and "Wonders of the Solar system".
[video=youtube_share;Zlk3RmL7NHE]https://youtu.be/Zlk3RmL7NHE[/video]
We're getting a lot closer to transcending biology than we are to colonizing Mars, let alone anything more ambitious. Any civilization that becomes sufficiently advanced realizes that the body is the primary thing holding you back and preventing you from undertaking a 1000 year journey, enduring the elements or packing light. It makes no sense why you'd explore space in a bio-bag instead of being the ship. Hence everyone in the future that has a body looks like T-1000 and the rest are in the virtual world, except for a few nature reserves for those who want to stay squishy.
Long before we land people on Europa we won't have people as we know it involved in tasks they're so unsuited for. Squishy people stay on Earth where it's warm and there's food. Any astronaut that isn't a test animal trades their body in. Eventually most of us prefer an indefinite lifespan, hyperintelligence and a lack of dependency on food, water and temperature with all the freedom that brings.
Want to stay normal? We build you a playground where you can grow 7 feet tall and never have to worry a day in your life.
An indefinite lifespan also puts stellar distances in perspective. The idea that with modern technology, in an ideal state, we could get a probe to A. Centauri and back within 100 years, seems like a bargain to me.
1000 year journeys are just realistic when you're talking star travel. Time is something we still hang onto and use to measure the seperation of events but with ultimate technological stagnation at the pico, femto or whatever barrier...when economy of scale has yielded all it's emergent properties to us, there will be no more advancement. You can go to sleep for 10,000 years secure in the knowledge that those you love will be there when you decide to awaken. Things won't have changed. Time will mean even less than it has since supersonic flight.
What is time when you have all the time in the world?
I wish people would get over the need for it to be done in weeks in a human body but that's the only way it's entertaining.
Long before we land people on Europa we won't have people as we know it involved in tasks they're so unsuited for. Squishy people stay on Earth where it's warm and there's food. Any astronaut that isn't a test animal trades their body in. Eventually most of us prefer an indefinite lifespan, hyperintelligence and a lack of dependency on food, water and temperature with all the freedom that brings.
Want to stay normal? We build you a playground where you can grow 7 feet tall and never have to worry a day in your life.
An indefinite lifespan also puts stellar distances in perspective. The idea that with modern technology, in an ideal state, we could get a probe to A. Centauri and back within 100 years, seems like a bargain to me.
1000 year journeys are just realistic when you're talking star travel. Time is something we still hang onto and use to measure the seperation of events but with ultimate technological stagnation at the pico, femto or whatever barrier...when economy of scale has yielded all it's emergent properties to us, there will be no more advancement. You can go to sleep for 10,000 years secure in the knowledge that those you love will be there when you decide to awaken. Things won't have changed. Time will mean even less than it has since supersonic flight.
What is time when you have all the time in the world?
I wish people would get over the need for it to be done in weeks in a human body but that's the only way it's entertaining.
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the problem with that formula is that the more we know it appears more limited. we can't really know. it may illustrate that in principle other life with similar sentience could, or even should, be possible, but using it statistically for such a complex event with so much uncertainty is naive. and it might simply not be the case. i indeed wish we had some more evolved and peaceful neighbours but there is also a possibility that we are the first.
[video=youtube;qaIghx4QRN4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaIghx4QRN4[/video]
[video=youtube;qaIghx4QRN4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaIghx4QRN4[/video]
That's my default in ship audio for long journeys.