The Futility of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

The statistics of planetary suitability are insuperable. We are alone. (Please read Rare Earth and The Privileged Planet, both science books.)

But if the statistics were not insuperable, the average, most probable distance to an alien habitat would be ridiculously out of communication range, a vew billion light years distant.

But if it were not, the alien's mode of communication would almost certainly be incompatible with our own.

But if it were not, we almost certainly could not understand anything sent to us, even as we did not understand Egyptian Heiroglyphics until the Rosetta Stone translation was unearthed just a few centuries ago.

As an example, translate this please:



But even if we could bridge each and every one of these contingent probabilities, all of them fatal, the turnaround time from receiving some communication, to sending back our response and feeble request for help and guidance and wisdom and technology would be a minimum of hundreds if not thousands of light years.

But even if it were not, the answer we might well receive from hypothetical E.T. could be, "You're asking US? What the! We wanted to ask YOU the same thing! We don't know for doodoo. HELP!"

But even if that were not the case, E.T. might well answer, "You're beyond help," or "You don't listen very well. Why should we even bother."
Or, "You're on the right track, except for the atheism and Islamic tyranny, masquerading as a religion."

 

Even if we stop at the third sentence, we discover some kind of incompatible form of communication, is there not inherent value in the revelation that intelligence exists elsewhere in the universe? Also, you've essentially presented a bunch of barriers with the implied idea that they will never be overcome. I prefer to be more optimistic.

 

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

Yes, the interception of a communication in an unknown language, may take an indefinite time to interpret. BUT, it takes almost no effort to recognize that the intercept (itself) is the detection of some intelligent source.

What makes the "Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence" is the ever changing limits to the • observable universe •... Effecting the "observable universe" is the ever expanding and accelerating space.

​

As you can see, some things are already outside our observable horizon. We will never be able to detect them; or detect modulation on a wave traveling at the speed of lights. Additionally, the Doppler Effect will be distorting the modulation (the intelligence) either by compression (Blue Shift) or stretching (Red Shift).

Most Respectfully,
R
R

 

I totally agree that the "statistics" of planets that can support life (goldilocks zone) are insuperable. You meant of course probability not statistics and those calculations make the hypothesis of extraterrestrial life a statistical certainty.

As to translation of the message - any intelligent life would understand that and would use mathematics, physics and cosmology to communicate. Much like the gold disk made for Voyager.

 

It's such a long shot that any amount of money listening for extraterrestrial life seems like a waste of money. I'd bet a dollar there isn't any other intelligent life out there.

 

Well someone did a modified Drake equation to include several stages of advancement of a biological ecosystem fro simple celled life to complex life and various levels of intelligence from simple primates to advanced technology as in humans and the hazards of galaxies to consider the inner large portion general hostile to carbon based life and they figured on average in a galaxy our size there might be two advanced civilizations a small one might have none and a large one more. Below that a number of species stuck at Neanderthal level of advancement, more primate level and a lot more animal level like sharks. They did add a small chance of other kinds of life such as silicon and energy pulse beings but these might be rarer but say one per couple galaxies or in a huge galaxy might sport one.

And they didn't assume any would be inside more than one third of a galaxy to the edges in most cases so our nearest peer if they survived extinction could be on the other side of the galaxy so we might never be able to communicate until we can travel through wormholes or something cool and fast enough.

Good news in a trillion years this will likely be a lot more since we are a young universe and well we would be the early species in it so good for us by the time we have lots of peers we will be a dominant super species if we survive and keep advancing and don't die out.

 

I'll put $10K up that nothing is found in the next 10 years, not even a single cell.

 

Your money is safe.

 

Your posts are all Fallacious Bullcrap, Conflation, and Disinformation,
ie, YOUR book above 'Rare Earth' says Microbial/Cellular life is probably very common.
Ooops. There goes your god/dog.

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review

"Do you feel lucky? Well do ya?" asked Dirty Harry. Paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee think all of us should feel lucky. Their rare Earth hypothesis predicts that while simple, Microbial Life will be Very Widespread in the universe, complex animal or plant life will be extremely rare. Ward and Brownlee admit that "It is very difficult to do statistics with an N of 1. But in our defense, we have staked out a position rarely articulated but increasingly accepted by many astrobiologists."......"
https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896​

Second, your "Translate This" example would be easily translatable by many on earth, especially if the aliens were even 1/10th as smart as us, as we also provided a key, Pictures, symbols, music etc. on Our only probe that has now left the solar system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
(even if that contact wasn't on purpose, and we couldn't gather infinitely more by pointing our listening in the same direction)
And consensus is life on earth is fairly 'early' in the universe in general and is/may get much more common.

And according to the odds you infer, you should offer "$10,000" vs a Penny, not even up!
Right?

As Usual/always you foist many Goofy Fallacies trying to prove god/immaculate/unique... Lying for Jesus.
`

 

Ok develop fusion reactors to gather enough energy to create enough antimatter. Develop warp drive. Develop a tether elevator then premanufacture a warp engined space ship. Surround said ship with a water envelope big enough to power and supply ship and people for a multigenerational voyage to the star(s). Or move into an asteroid large enough to farm and get raw materials and use it as a space ship. Gather together a crew compatible for long term space exploration that won't kill each other or subvert the mission. Find alien beings compatible with us and have a nice game of chess.

See. Totally doable.

 

Or they're all like 'our advanced technology made all this junk way easier for us than it would've been for you, and btw, nice to meet ya. Lets have a dialogue.'

But then they might say 'wait, theres children starving to death in you front yard and you spent *how much?* trying to contact us?

Or they'll be all 'we're taking ur stuff, and you look pretty tasty!'

This 'what if' game is fun!

 

The charlatans er, I mean the cosmologists will still (ostensibly?) keep on looking for it though. Well they need the proverbial 'research funding' to keep on pouring in so they can continue their lucrative jobs-for-life don't they!

 

RE: The Futility of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence
※→ Lil Mike, ChemEngineer, cerberus, et al,

Well, no one can say you guy's have a positive outlook on projects like Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).

(COMMENT)

With respect to the first position ("there isn't any other intelligent life out there"); that is probably wrong given then the shear size of the universe. What we can observe, Cosmic Light Horizon (CLH -See Posting #3), seems to be merely a tiny portion of the actual universe (See Olbers' Paradox).

As for the prospects of a significant discovery over the next decade, well that is to hard to calculate. But since there is (approximately) 160 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone, there is a very good chance that some time in the last 10 billion years, intelligent life evolved and then experienced an extinction event (Eª). Scientist think that the Earth has experienced as many as five Eª in the last 500 million years; the last one being about 65 million years ago.

It is less likely that an Extraterrestrial Intelligence will be purposely attempting to contact Earth; and more likely that SETI will discover an intelligence like the "WOW Signal" transmitted for some other purpose. Such a signal will just happened to reach Earth just as short burst signals to-and-from Earth orbiting satellites might some day be detectable in the far distant future (several hundred thousand light-years from now). This detection might happen after after Earth experiences an Eª. (See the WOW Signal.)

Just as we might someday discover a signal, someday, from a far distant civilization long extinct at the time we discovery it.

As for being "charlatans," SETI and the many that help SETI are not falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skills --- and not trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes. They tell it like it is probabilistically. You either choose to believe in the probability of mathematics or not. You either search for evidence of the truth or not. No one is twisting your arm. Just as, in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, no one had yet circumnavigated the Earth, I suppose that there were many people who believed the world was flat. Just as Galileo was imprisoned for suggesting the Earth was not the center of the Solar System, to there will be the spirit of Galileo in every Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

One man's minor thought.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

My thought on this is that we still have not been able to produce life in the laboratory. If it was easy enough to do that it would arrive at via common processes we probably would have figured out how to do it in the 1950's. As it is, it doesn't matter how many potential planets there are in the universe, if we can't figure out approximately what conditions lead to life, we don't have a basis for calculating the odds for it appearing anywhere else. Otherwise, that's like saying that assuming a large enough number of potentially habitable planets, a Rubiks Cube is likely to spontaneously appear on one of them.

 

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

I'm not sure that we actually have a very clear and unambiguous definition of "life." I agree that you commentary is (within the limitation of certain parameters) is true.

I don't understand the process on how to bind amino acids. In fact, I don't really know how enzymes are formed as catalysts that can do the job. But the Salk Institute has demonstrated these things were ingredients of Earth's early environment have created the necessary chemistry and conditions to do it.

(COMMENT)

But we have not be working at it for billions of years. In fact, the idea of creating life and reanimating life, under scientific conditions has only been around ≈ 200 years. NASA (Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA) have been able to create the building blocks for both DNA and RNA.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

Non sequitur.

 

While feeding your gullible imagination on all the wonderful things E.T. will teach us. Just ante up more millions please.

 

In your experiment they started with an "empty" cell. In other words, a living cell with DNA removed. Now, what are the odds of life arising from that process without any artificial help?

 

In the context of SETI, larger is irrelevant. We will NEVER EVER send any signal that will leave the Milky Way. That would take 100,000 light years to do so.
Secondly, we now hear the absurd claim by materialists that there are an infinite number of universes. Materialists pretend that if you simply keep multiplying up enough big numbers, all their dreams will work out! A few decades ago, the argument from materialists was that our ONE universe was too large. God wouldn't have wasted so many resources just for us. Now there are in infinite number, materialists claim, with a straight face. And more not in sight too!

"The probability of mathematics" is an inane phrase. Mathematics HAS no "probability."
Probability assessments require assumptions about what is being estimated or calculated. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

The ancient Greeks knew the earth was round. They could see it's shadow on the moon. As to "arm twisting," when the federal government throws hundreds of millions of dollars at satellites designed to search for E.T., that is wasteful and imprudent. It is not my "arm" but my tax dollar that is being twisted, extorted for the gain of people like Carl Sagan. The "spirit of Galileo" lives on today in those of us who reject outrageous claims of climate change conspirators. Have you once sided with us?
I seriously doubt it.

 

Nota bene: Nobody here has even TRIED to translate this message from E.T. Should be easy given all the technology and predictions and "probability of mathematics" bandied about.

 

Yoohoo, O Rocco! Where are YOU!
Why would I "side with" pathological liars and hypocrites, who fly and drive millions of miles to.... protest burning fossil fuels?
Who take "ecotours" (sic), a one-word oxymoron?
Who are members of the Sierra Club and drive to take outdoor hikes in the wilderness, so Sierra Club can mail them a nice patch to sew on their sweaters boasting of having DRIVEN to 100 mountains to hike them? Who tour the world, burning fossil fuels, while preaching exactly the opposite? Who deny John Kerry's admonition that we can do NOTHING to change the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

WHY would I side with such silliness, when I don't even throw feces and urine balloons at the police? Like YOUR SIDE does.

 

I repeat, nobody has TRIED to translate the original E.T. pretend message above. It if from Guardians of the Galaxy.

 

Personally... I believe in extra-dimensional alien life forms......

especially an infinitely ancient Intelligence in fundamental or nearly fundamental energy.

www.CarbonBias.blogspot.ca/

 

Highly advanced beings, perhaps a billion years more advanced than us, transmit their knowledge out into the cosmos for anyone listening. And it is designed to be easily decoded; since they are highly intelligent.

Personally, I'm waiting for a UFO to run into a SETI antenna.

 

How many hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent, with NOTHING to show? That is hardly "almost no effort".
What good would it do to "detect some intelligent source" if we had no hope of interpreting it?