General / Off-Topic What if we are the first?

DragoonKnight

DragoonKnight
Ok, so you guys have probably played and watched a ton of sci-fi games / movies. I am sure that everyone is familiar with the story, used in many games and movies, of how there used to be a great and super advanced alien civilization. And now they are gone. Maybe they waged war on each other or looked for other civilizations or simply disappeared due to unknown circumstances.

We spend a lot of time and effort looking for evidence of other life in the universe. We have not found anything outside of a few microbe fossils. WHAT IF we are the first? What if there are no advanced civilizations anywhere near earth for hundreds or thousands of light years. Just something I was thinking about and wondering if any serious scientists have given this hypothesis any thought.

Feel free to share your comments/ideas/hatemail. All are welcome.
 

TheAntitheist Crusader

T
DragoonKnight said:
Ok, so you guys have probably played and watched a ton of sci-fi games / movies. I am sure that everyone is familiar with the story, used in many games and movies, of how there used to be a great and super advanced alien civilization. And now they are gone. Maybe they waged war on each other or looked for other civilizations or simply disappeared due to unknown circumstances.

We spend a lot of time and effort looking for evidence of other life in the universe. We have not found anything outside of a few microbe fossils. WHAT IF we are the first? What if there are no advanced civilizations anywhere near earth for hundreds or thousands of light years. Just something I was thinking about and wondering if any serious scientists have given this hypothesis any thought.

Feel free to share your comments/ideas/hatemail. All are welcome.
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No one knows, you could be right, you could be wrong. I personally hope we are not the first "advanced" life, we (our generation) will never know.
 

verminstar

Banned
verminstar
That matrix is everywhere...what if this was all a dream and we are merely batteries?

What if...famous last words of the human race. I believe that another form of intelligent life is already here and has been for a long time...not our creators before anyone thinks I'm gonna go off on a religious tangent. Although they might be because as a species, we didn't evolve properly in the way other species evolved according to darwin. Garden of eden was nothing more than an elaborate genetics and cloning lab being described by a simple minded people for whom "cloning" simply wasn't a part of their language. It would have been a miraculous and completely unexplainable concept to them which would actually reinforce what the bible tries to communicate to generations for whom it would have been translated into things that higher beings or "gods" would be capable off.

Certainly, if they had the technology to make their way to this planet and carry out the creation of an entire species, then they would certainly have the ability to control what that species consider to be their religion which becomes ingrained after just a few generations. They would almost certainly have the ability to stay hidden from sight...I very much doubt they are "little green men"

I very much doubt we are the first intelligent life in this universe...to think otherwise would be naive considering the sheer size and age of that which we see of our universe.
 
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mosteen

mosteen
DragoonKnight said:
Ok, so you guys have probably played and watched a ton of sci-fi games / movies. I am sure that everyone is familiar with the story, used in many games and movies, of how there used to be a great and super advanced alien civilization. And now they are gone. Maybe they waged war on each other or looked for other civilizations or simply disappeared due to unknown circumstances.

We spend a lot of time and effort looking for evidence of other life in the universe. We have not found anything outside of a few microbe fossils. WHAT IF we are the first? What if there are no advanced civilizations anywhere near earth for hundreds or thousands of light years. Just something I was thinking about and wondering if any serious scientists have given this hypothesis any thought.

Feel free to share your comments/ideas/hatemail. All are welcome.
Click to expand...

Interesting, but I find it very unlikely that we are either first, last or alone. The building blocks to create (intelligent) life, are few, simple and exist all over the galaxy. We also know broadly how long it took here on this planet, quite a short time actually. It's just extremely unlikely that SOL + Earth is the only place in our galaxy, let alone in the universe, that has life growing. But, at the same time, as sure I am that there are hundreds of million inhabited systems in the universe, I'm equally sure that we, or our descendants, will never know. The distances are just to big.
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Anything's possible but I don't think it's likely. The building blocks for life (complex chemicals) have been detected everywhere. The universe is 13 billion years old. The Earth is 6 billions years old. Assuming it takes another lifeform 6 billion years to get to where we are, we're already 7 billions years behind. There might be civilisations billions of years more advanced than we are, let that sink for a moment.
 

Caramel Clown

Caramel Clown
I'm more terrified at the opposite perspective - what if we are the last? Universe has been around for quite some time now. Literally countless amount of civilizations could've existed/exist by now. Maybe all of them had gone extinct?
Obviously it would be much more believable in a very very old universe, with very few stars still continuing to radiate massive amounts of heat and light.
 

SirDavros

SirDavros
You could most certainly be right but surely the more scary prospect is that we are? If you've jumped a few hundred LY even in E:D, you know what that sense of lonliness/helplessness can feel like. Imagine if it was really that way? If we (and it's highly likely we will) wipe ourselves out, all life in the universe is gone.

Also, there's some good books around claiming that we aren't - far from it. My wife bought me a great, highly entertaining book a couple of years ago that suggests we're not even the first on this planet/this part of the galaxy after a series of 'cosmic wars'; I highly recommend, even if just for the entertainment and 'what if.. ' value: https://www.amazon.com/Genes-Giants-Monsters-Men-Surviving/dp/1936239086
 

Arry

Arry
DragoonKnight said:
Ok, so you guys have probably played and watched a ton of sci-fi games / movies. I am sure that everyone is familiar with the story, used in many games and movies, of how there used to be a great and super advanced alien civilization. And now they are gone. Maybe they waged war on each other or looked for other civilizations or simply disappeared due to unknown circumstances.

We spend a lot of time and effort looking for evidence of other life in the universe. We have not found anything outside of a few microbe fossils. WHAT IF we are the first? What if there are no advanced civilizations anywhere near earth for hundreds or thousands of light years. Just something I was thinking about and wondering if any serious scientists have given this hypothesis any thought.

Feel free to share your comments/ideas/hatemail. All are welcome.
Click to expand...
A few things to think about:
1:- 'We have spent a lot of time and effort looking for evidence or other life in the universe'. Nope, we have spent a moment, a blink of the eye, even compared with the time, of human existence. How long have we been looking? The invention of the telescope has only been around for about 400 to 500 years and humans have been walking for over 10,000 years. We have only just started to look, using optical and radio devises and such technology will be surpassed over the next few 100s of years.
2:- The maths? No matter what the odds are against other life forms, even other intelligent life forms existing, are surpassed by the sheer number of systems, that could support such life. Elite offers us, 400,000,000,000, in just one Galaxy and that is a very big number to play with. The numbers don't just make it a possibility, but a probability, that life 'as we know it', carbon based oxygen breathing from a 'Goldilocks type of planet' exists. We also know, that life can form, grow and evolve, in other more 'hostile' environments; such as volcanic vents etc.. However: The numbers around the distances involved, make it hard, to have any contact, with such life and so logically, we won't be off to meet any of them, any time soon.
3:- 'Being the 1st?' Good old fashioned human/god egotism there. You wish, you can hope, even pray; but it will not make it a fact. Again, the maths, state otherwise. The question is: What form of intelligent life is out there? If it evolved that same as on this planet; is it reptile based? A big rock, took out a dominant species that was around, generally running things, for millions of years, on this planet. What if, elsewhere, the same environment pushed evolution along the same path, but with out that rock impact?

Logic and mathematics dictate something intelligent is out there somewhere. We have been sending out signals etc to inform others of our existence and it is only a matter of time, before those signals, are received, understood and the source, pin-pointed. We have no idea of what is coming and it/they, will be coming, long before humans have the technology, to go to them. We will have a new set of gods, to bow down too, to worship and fear.
 

Frank

Frank
I agree that it's highly unlikely that we are the first civilised inhabitants of the galaxy, but it is a possibility. We should act under that assumption, build spaceships to go out into space, and leave cryptic clues for subsequent alien civilisations to scratch their heads over.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
DragoonKnight said:
Ok, so you guys have probably played and watched a ton of sci-fi games / movies. I am sure that everyone is familiar with the story, used in many games and movies, of how there used to be a great and super advanced alien civilization. And now they are gone. Maybe they waged war on each other or looked for other civilizations or simply disappeared due to unknown circumstances.

We spend a lot of time and effort looking for evidence of other life in the universe. We have not found anything outside of a few microbe fossils. WHAT IF we are the first? What if there are no advanced civilizations anywhere near earth for hundreds or thousands of light years. Just something I was thinking about and wondering if any serious scientists have given this hypothesis any thought.

Feel free to share your comments/ideas/hatemail. All are welcome.
Click to expand...


Many scientist have given this thought.
Problem is the universe is so ridiculously huge that we might never know.

It would be quite disappointing if the only intelligent life the universe had spawned would be the murderous human ape.
 

who?

who?
Talarin said:
Is this a good time to mention the Fermi Paradox?
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Well, given the perpetually competitive, combative nature of... nature on this planet; perhaps the answer is really simple. Any civilisation sufficiently advanced to be able to traverse the galaxy and make contact with other species would also be sufficiently self-aware, and wary, that they would know it's a very bad idea.

Perhaps if we ever get an answer to all the EM transmissions we're broadcasting out into space, it'll just be: "Sssshhhhhh! They'll hear you!".
 

Adept

Adept
Our location isn't particularly unique. Due to the age of the Milky Way we are very unlikely to be the first tool using sentient beings. We are so far apart in time and space though, that even if civilizations like ours are common, and last an impressive million years each, we'd still be very unlikely to manage communicating with anybody, or even detecting them. We are quite likely effectively alone, as is everybody else.
 

Pyrotiger

Pyrotiger
Tell me this: in an infinite universe, or practically an infinite universe, surely it would be mathematically impossible that we are alone?
 

Talarin

T
Spacebaboy said:
Tell me this: in an infinite universe, or practically an infinite universe, surely it would be mathematically impossible that we are alone?
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You'd think. But it's more likely that any other existing alien civilisation is so far out of reach that we may as well be alone, even if we're actually not.
 

Adept

Adept
Spacebaboy said:
Tell me this: in an infinite universe, or practically an infinite universe, surely it would be mathematically impossible that we are alone?
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Yup, but you will feel pretty alone if you're alone on an uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific ocean with no way to reach anybody and nobody knows you're there (think Tom Hanks in Castaway). There are others out there, but they are unreachable, far in the spacetime.
 
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