The Futility of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Do you think our military has been ignoring unexplained findings in Earth's close vicinity?

 

Yes. I'm reminded of a recent event where Navy pilots demanded that their report of UAP sightings be taken seriously. And for the first time the Pentagon created guidelines for reporting that. Of course military sightings go back decades.

I couldn't find a news article about the Navy pilots thing, but here's another article with general information about it.

'Wow, What Is That?' Navy pilots report unexplained flying objects.

 

Still, I do not give any credence to the idea that our military ignores evidence of extreme technical capability from unknown sources. Improving reporting guidelines doesn't change that.

My second point is that those who WANT to believe in space invaders REFUSE the actual answers.

The "spinning top" sighting in your cite was almost immediately debunked as a weather balloon that looked like it was moving rapidly because of total misunderstanding of its altitude and relationship to aircraft movement.

I mention this, because the answer is WELL KNOW yet keeps getting repeated as if it is still some unknown!!!

The UFO believers include an army of flat out, bald faced liars. And, that includes the press that prints only the "startling" claims and not the results of analysts.

 

The military doesn't ignore it, they've just hidden it as a secret until now.

Harry Reid had started a UFO/UAP task force some years ago at the Pentagon. That program was later unfunded. But, then a new program started up in its place, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

The only questions are whether or not the AATIP is the end of the road program for the public, finally at last? Or, if another secret program will pop up in its place and AATIP is just another dead end?

 

They let out some tapes. In no way does that count as some sort of full disclosure.

In fact, they didn't provide any analysis even on the nonsense in those tapes.

I view these as purely political actions. I'm sure they made some who love UFO's very happy.

To make anything of this, one would have to believe that our military has zero interest in what could be demonstrations of amazing new technology.

I just do not even slightly believe that. And, I'm pretty dang sure the military isn't going to demonstrate to the world how they analyze anything that is remotely questionable or significant.

 

I want to know...can we find intelligent life in D.C.?

 

I don't believe that's the problem. There certainly are intelligent people on both sides of the aisle.

The catch has more to do with motivations we allow - and, promote, for that matter.

 

I'm saying; Debunking UFO sightings is not SETI...

 

Without new physics I don't see any civilization traveling around the galaxies. With trillions of planets and billions of galaxies and solar systems spread across billions of light years what's the chance there will be a meet-and-greet? If there were new physics that allowed travel across the Universe it would have happened by now. I think all civilizations are in the same boat as us; curious and intellectual but hampered by the space/time issue...

 

I answered this somewhere here.

Briefly, an advanced society could possibly create craft that can duplicate themselves using raw materials found on natural objects in space.

These compact factories, if you will, could then launch these newly built replica factories in various directions - essentially creating faster than linear growth in fleet size.

Over a few billion years the fleet could be gigantic. And, the universe is old enough that one could postulate that there is enough time for this strategy to have taken place.

 

Good thing they don't need to eat...

 

And no evolution happens. None of the bottlenecks that always dooms pretty much any form of life after several million years.

And billions of years? What a fantasy. Just a single billion years ago, the most advanced life on the planet were the most basic multi-celled sea animals. And you are talking "few billion".

 

No, I wasn't talking about Earthly life.

I was pointing out that there has been plenty of time for intelligent life to have existed a few billion years ago somewhere in this universe.

Thus one might guess that such a super ancient civilization could have learned to build space traveling robotic factories that could duplicate themselves and thus start an exponential growth curve of alien craft exploring the vast reaches of space.

Think what a powerful exploratory tool that would be for that advanced civilization! All we can do is shoot something up and then use it during its short life.

After a few billion years of that growth curve populating at least sections of the universe with these craft, we might run into one.

I doubt that's likely, but I think care has to be used when we say we will "never" see anything from alien life.

 

Uh, no. You see, the kinds of planets that could support life only evolved around 6-7 billion years ago. It took a great many cycles of star birth, death, and supernovas until enough metals formed to allow for the creation of "rocky planets". And this is confirmed by looking at the most distant galaxies, which is confirmed by looking at the Hubble Deep Field images. These are of galaxies 12 billion light years away, and were of the light they were giving out 12 billion years ago. Only a few billion years after the Big Bang itself.

And other than the majority of the elements being hydrogen, the only other element we have detected in any measurable amounts from there other than helium is sodium. Way down on the periodic table at 11. That sodium will have to be cooked for many more billions of years inside of stars then released as supernovas before it begins to become iron.

This has been discussed for decades now. It took about 100 million years for even the first stars to form. And over a billion before galaxies started to form. The oldest planetary system we have discovered is 375 light years away, and that is HIP 11952. It is a metal poor star, and has 2 massive gas giants. That is all that would have formed at that time it was formed, just under 13 billion years ago.

The actual "window" for the evolution of intelligent life is really only in the last 7 billion years or so. And considering it took over 5 billion years for our own system to form and evolve enough to produce us, that is really a very small window. At most, some that happened to be in just the right place 2 billion years before us. And have just the right things to ultimately evolve intelligent life. And avoided all the other things that almost destroyed it on our own planet, from asteroids to massive solar flares and radiation bursts from neighboring systems.

In fact, most do not even realize we are not even on the "original Earth" anymore. What many now call "Earth Mark I" was smaller than it is now, and was just another typical rocky inner planet with a small core. Then around 4.5 billion years ago, it was truck by a rogue trojan called Thea. A lot of the early crust was ejected and formed our moon, our core and that of Thea combined, which is why we still have a unusually hot and active core (where as the core of Mars went dormant long ago).

Many are also now starting to realize how that alone makes our planet unusual. Most planetary cores die out in a few billion years. Unless they are so close to their star (Venus) that tidal forces keep them active. But our injection of extra core material from Thea (and protection from bombardment by the Moon) means we still have one. Long after most of the atmosphere was stripped from Mars when its core died.

It is so much more than just being in the "Goldilocks Zone", a civilization also has to evolve fast enough to become space colonizers in only a few billion years after life becomes possible, because the core would grow cold, and the protection from the star would vanish. Case in point, Mars. It evolved at around the same time as Earth, around 5.6 billion years ago. But it's core went cold 4 billion years ago. So any chance of life evolving or advancing pretty much died then.

Sure, it may very well have happened before. But we will never know, given the distances. There could have been a thriving civilization in the Andromeda Galaxy, even at the time of the Dinosaurs. But at over 2.5 MLY away, it could have been born, lived, and died when our lineage was only starting to break way from monkeys.

 

Interstellar distances are a problem.

But I don't think we can say with certainty that interstellar travel is impossible.

One, maybe new discoveries in physics will one day make it possible. For now we do not have spacecraft capable of getting even close to light speed, let alone faster-than-light. But we just can't rule out that one day some different drive and different power source won't be developed that will dramatically increase the speed of spacecraft, and maybe while our current state of physics postulates that FTL is not possible, theories change and things once felt to be impossible are later turned possible.

Two, given enough resources, it doesn't seem like it would be impossible to develop a huge generational ship that would be a self-sustainable environment, to travel for hundreds or thousands of years to the closer stars in our own corner of our galaxy, using the regular speeds that we're already capable of. Let's say, a huge comet gets discovered, in unavoidable collision course with Earth, and it's an extinction-level event that can't be avoided with the available technology. There would then be an incentive to build a generational ship and try to keep part of humankind alive, and try to reach a life-sustaining planet in another solar system, which hopefully we'd have identified. Who knows if at the end of such interstellar voyage, contact with another intelligent species could occur? So the impossibility of a meet-and-greet like another poster here said, for me is not guaranteed.

Of course, a generational ship intended to travel for hundreds or thousands of years would have to get around the hurdles of not only being a self-sustainable long-term ecological bubble, but would also need repairing capabilities and materials/parts for the inevitable wear and tear, and a durable and renewable power source. I am not certain that such an enterprise (pun intended) is possible outside of the realm of science fiction, but I don't feel we can say with certainty that it would be completely impossible.

Now, an obstacle to building a generational ship to avoid humankind's extinction, is that the reason to build it would have to be really compelling, in order to truly engage all Earth resources in the effort. So, the extinction-level event would have to be such that a simpler alternative for humankind's survival would have to be impossible. I'd think that colonizing Mars and building dome cities there would probably be easier and more feasible with existing technology than building a successful generational ship. So the extinction level event that would motivate all humankind's resources to go into a generational ship, would have to also wipe out easier alternatives like the moon or Mars.

 

Whether it's colonizing Mars or building a Biosphere 2 to go where no man has gone before...it will never be a solution for Earth's 7+ billion inhabitants. Maybe a few hundred/thousand on Mars and a few hundred on Biosphere 2. If on Earth we are experiencing an extinction-level event, I suspect most of our 7+ billion will perish. So it comes down basically to survival of the species in which a chosen few can somehow find a sustainable life elsewhere. Both Mars and a Biosphere 2 would be immensely challenging! Too bad more people don't understand the critical need to take care of planet Earth...

 

Yes, I never implied that all 7+ billion humans would be saved. I just said, instead of the whole species being wiped out for good, a few thousand might survive and restart somewhere else if we colonized Mars or the Moon or got a generational ship going. Yes, I'm sure there are huge challenges. And yes, of course we could take better care of our planet. It's a precious one. It's no easy to find another one like this one and travel there.

 

To date we only know of one place where 'humans' can survive. And since humans have evolved on planet Earth, human development has been influenced by Earth's gravity, atmosphere, sunlight levels, 24-hour days and 365 day years, orbits and rotations, etc. and I question how human physiology will do on other planets/moons with their unique characteristics that greatly differ from Earth? Whatever is done will not be a cake-walk...

 

No cake-walk, but beats the alternative, if the alternative is a full extinction event.
I'm talking full extinction event because it's the only way I think the huge effort in time, money, and technology would be engaged, for a generational ship.

 

I agree...I always say people won't do much until their asses are on fire...even then it is begrudingly done...

 

But that then gets you to another issue, time dilation.

There was a documentary on this I saw several years ago. Creating a spacecraft that will reach C is theoretically possible, but then you get other issues. In it, it was estimated that it took about 10 years to reach .9C, and about a quarter light year of distance. Then the same at the other side to slow back down again. Otherwise, any passengers on board the craft would be killed at one end or the other.

Then, the effects of traveling at that speed. Say the target is 100 light years away. For those on the vessel, about 120 years will pass. But on Earth (and the rest of the universe), over 400 years would have passed.

To put that in human terms, if such a vessel left the Earth at the time of Galileo to Nu Draconis, it would only now be arriving. That is at a speed of around .9C, and the message they had arrived would reach here in around 2410.

That is the one thing that almost every single movie, TV show, and book ignores about even what Star Trek calls "Sub-light Speeds". That operating at those speeds and the time dilation effects are always ignored.

 

Yes, sure, but I'm talking about a full extinction event back home, and the spacecraft being humankind's last chance of surviving elsewhere, so, how much time would have passed on Earth would be irrelevant to the mission. Earth would have been destroyed shortly after the departure of the interstellar spacecraft.

 

Space Opera Fantasy.

There is no conceivable ELE that would give enough time to do anything even close to that.

The most likely such events would be either some kind of impact, which would be a year of warning or less. Or some kind of radiation burst, either from the sun or from another system. Which would give absolutely no warning at all.

Even the most ambitious such story I am aware of by Harlan Ellison, they took almost 20 years to build an ark that saved only 3 million people. And that was set 300 years in the future, and was a generational ship that would take over 700 years to reach its destination. And we can't colonize either the Moon or Mars.

 

Fantasy sometimes becomes reality.

 

Really: