The Futility of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Our species didn't even exist...

 

The 12,000 or 14,500 year boundary is based on credible evidence but is always subject to revision by new evidence. The 250,000 year figure is just a suggestion of how much room there is for new evidence.

However, the dates have recently been pushed back. Much seems to be based on genetic projections, but there is fossil evidence for 160,000 years.

“A new study places the origin of Homo sapiens 350,000 years ago”

https://www.burrosabio.net/homo-sapiens-origin/

However, preceding brutes such as neanderthals, habilis, and hiedelbergensis were not total slouches.

 

The issue of existence and of two way communication are fairly different, I think

We have telescopes in the works that will be capable of imaging exoplanets in our galaxy. That would mean that scientists will be able to examine the content of atmospheres, where life forms would leave permanent evidence.

With communication, there was never any doubt that heiroglyphics we've found are written communication. We didn't know what was said, but it was clear it was communication. I think this is fairly true for intelligent life outside of Earth, too. Communication will happen through physics. I don't see a justification for presuming methods of communication that don't use physics.

 

There is evidence that it may have been the Homo sapiens who were the brutes, not the Neanderthals.

Yes, those SOUND like long odds - especially if the full range of combinations were found to be equally likely, all components needed at once, no process enabling increasing complexity, etc.

Humans would seem impossible, too, if the postulation was that humans were created like the "whirlwind creates an jetliner" idea of everything comeing together under no influence other than total randomness and with no process guiding increasing coplexity.

However, here we are as product of materials and processes that existed.

In a similar manner, I think we need to know more about abiogenesis in order to know any actual odds or time requirements.

 

Ugh! More Kookiness! As soon as you have the subject line with the word "extraterrestrial" in it...

 

Our species is only 200,000 years old and and both fossil and archeological evidence doesn't indicate advanced intelligence (by modern standards) until about 50,000 years ago. If you want to say there was civilization that far back, you'd have better luck being taken seriously claiming it was aliens than our own yet to evolve species.

 

That's a reasonable position for the current circumstances. The status quo might be changed by anomalies if something legitimate arises from claims of modern-like items found embedded in solid rock dated millions of years old. I haven't yet tried to sort out and evaluate such oddities.

 

RE: The Futility of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence
※→ et al,

BLUF: We might never discover and extraterrestrial; but that does not mean they are not out there. In the three years since my last contribution to the discussion, new information has come to the forefront of this question.

(COMMENT)

There are over 4000 exoplanets cataloged to date. Thirty years ago, it was generally thought that an exoplanet would be to far away to be detected. It was last year that Jim Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz received the Nobel Prize for their discovery.

(COMMENT)

We may not meet and greet an extraterrestial, but we may find a foot print left behind. We don't know what new technologies and new Cosmoligist


Most Respectfully,
R

 

Wouldn't stuff like iron and copper be produced from volcanism? And who knows what other technologies may be discovered?

 

Obviously aliens do exist:

 

Uh.. that was more than likely just one of your garden variety demon

 

IMO The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a little redundant/ironic.

We're it

 

Discovering alien intelligence does not require an afternoon chat over tea. All we need to do is find a characteristic 'out there' that based on 'what we know' is a sign of intelligence and not natural or organic. The vastness of space/time and limited technology greatly exacerbate this search. In my mind I lean toward the idea that what has happened on Earth can happen in other places since Earth cannot be that special when considering trillions of planets in the Universe. I believe the building blocks of life as we know exist across the Universe but can they evolve into intelligent species...probably but rare? I cannot rationalize that humans are alone in the Universe. Bottom line is we don't know but why not continue SETI? We will never prove humans are alone but we might get lucky proving we are not alone...and if we do that day will be the most critical and exhilarating and momentous day in the history of mankind...

 

Our iron, copper, oxygen and other elements were made in supernovae that seeded these elements in the cloud of debris that condennsed to become our solar system.

"We are star stuff"

- Carl Sagan

 

What I am saying is that the metals and stuff would be recycled by the earth. Moving of tectonic plates and stuff.

 

I'm all for it as long no government money is used.

 

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom claims that it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation. If true, then the “existence” of other worlds with civilizations may not be possible because that would strain the memory capacity of the supercomputer.

 

Almost no governmnet money is spent on this.

Cosmology itself is a small budget item. And, the value is difficult to describe. What physicists know today is that there are two competing models of how our universe works - Einsteing and quantum mechanics. They both can not be correct.

The result is that there is room for an entirely new view of how physics works. Putting a limit on what a new and accurate understanding of physics could mean for us simply can't be estimated.

There is no way to address that issue outside of cosmology.


We could save money by ditching the ridiculous efforts to put humans on the moon and other planets. These efforts don't advance science - that's not even what they are designed for. And, there is no economic justification. It amounts to self gratification and bravado - fun and games at the cost of billions of dollars.

 

I really don't understand that limit.

Once there is capacity for maintaining a universe of at least nearly limited volume and providing for fake life on Earth that thinks it's real, the addition of some life somewhere else doesn't hit me as something that could possibly break the bank on memory capacity.

To me, this whole direction sounds like the standard "this is complex, it must be artificially created by a super-something" cop out.

 

Hmm. I mistconstrued you point.

I recently read a paper that pointed to tectonic plates as one of the features that made intelligent life on Earth more possible by doing that kind of recycling.

Also, it's believed that biodiversity was greately enhanced by the breakup of Pangaea by tectonic activity.

 

You're obviously not 'all for it' if you refuse to share in the funding. You can't have 'something' for nothing. I'm guessing today the US government does not fund SETI? But even if the government allocated $100 million towards SETI research, this is only $.30 per each US citizen. So what you are saying is you won't even pitch in a lousy 30 cents for SETI research but you are 'all for it'??

 

Based on how things are going these days...it's time for a reboot!!

 

I'd agree.. God's "computer" simulation.. we are just a figment of His imagination.

 

I don't know about that but we have like 97 different species of crayfish in Alabama alone. I have two species in my aquaponic system and aquariums. Separated of course.Crayfish are a good example of biodiversity. I want to breed big ones.