Are We Alone?

I can't even detect the image I am supposed to click....

...oh, clever.

I can't see on my mobile, but I can see it on my computer. Very strange.

It is too late to edit the comment. Maybe the mods can fix it when they come in tomorrow.

Let me try to re-post it here.

We should ask whoever took that picture. Maybe they've seen some aliens.

Now I can see on my phone and my computer. Glitch?

Yes but it's kind of fun to imagine that some terrestrial signals do some how sneak through some kind of worm hole, and arrive intact at some alien planet. Imagine their disappointment when they realise they have a coherent signal, and, spend billions of quatloos decoding it only find that they have an episode of "Here's Lucy" or "the Simpsons" or "Sponge Bob Square pants".

Then we get a message back: "We greet you in peace. Please send us the recipe for Vitameatavegamin."

That would be from the good folks on GJ 536b, a 'super-Earth' orbiting a red dwarf about 32.5 light years distant. They saw Lucy's advert in Sept 1984 and and were so enthusiastic they immediately replied with the request. Tell them it's:

1 small peeled cucumber, 8 oz, coarsely chopped

1 red bell pepper

1 cup tomato juice

3 drops tabasco sauce

4 drops worcestershire sauce

1 tsp. prepared horseradish

2 tsp. rose’s lime juice

3/4 cup vodka (Karlsson's or Heavy Water, undeuterated)

Hold pepper over medium high flame to blacken skin, then peel under running water.

In food processor, mix cucumber and red pepper by pulsing til a puree is obtained. Mix puree with remaining ingredients. Pour into a tall chilled glass filled with ice. Makes 4 drinks.

After they drank that, they were banned by the Galactic Agency from space travel for their fugitive emissions.

That actually sounds like it might be good.

Quite good. If you like Bloody Marys you'd probably like this too.

I do like spicy Bloody Marys.

Wow! I could have had a V-8!

Sounds like it, doesn't it?

I drink a V-8 every morning at work for breakfast. My day is not right without one.

V-8's are so good, I wonder if we could entice alien life to visit us for one. If not, I bet Andrews drink could work....

It would certainly explain the Mose Eisley weirdness.

Mos Eisley? That's CR4's Break Room.

"Mos Eisley? That's CR4's Break Room."

It can't be.

It looks too clean to be our break room.

(You knew a line like that was inbound.)

Probably why neither we or "they" never "responded".

Don't lose heart. What is not at all obvious from the map's scale and limited resolution is that there are an estimated 11,200 to 14,600 stars within that little blue sphere.* 117 of these are known to have one or more exoplanets. As the surveys conducted by Kepler are highly directional and thus only cover a tiny (1/400th) part of the sky, it is quite likely there are many more exoplanets than this just within 100 light years of Earth.

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* estimated from the density of known stars closer to Earth (within about 16 light years). Beyond this the density appears to decrease because many stars are too faint to see (red dwarfs particularly). Beyond around 1000 light years the density of stars does vary as you move outside of the local spiral arm of our galaxy and into the less-populated regions above and below the galactic disk.

Oh. I think I get your point. I was reading you comment differently than I now realize you probably intended.

There may be ways to look for earlier processes in the sequence we consider to be most likely to have occurred here. An atmosphere with significant amount of O2 would likely suggest processes working against entropy. High O2 concentrations might be observable from great distances.

Look at that, my earth-centric bias is showing. We should look for significant concentrations of reactive gasses in the atmosphere. Something that without replenishment unlikely by nonliving processes, would be gone soon.

'...If they can do anything faster than light then they will probably not care at all about us....'

Would you mind running through the though process that brings you to that conclusion?

I can and will one day drive from Long Island, NY to the Grand Canyon National Park, AZ. When I get there I may take a passing interest of some of the more advanced flora and fauna (e.g. deer, eagle, cactus) but my attention will be drawn to the geology and vistas that location will uniquely provide. That is why I made this trip. I won't notice at all the ants there.

Any civilization capable of faster than light anything will probably consider us ants at a mundane location.

So this is some sort of quasi-relativistic effect? The faster you go, the more mundane small things become?

.

Maybe you are right. Perhaps faster than light travel is bound to cause a bias towards life with greater mass. If that is the case, perhaps we should ask the blue whales or perhaps look for evidence near the honey fungus in Blue Mountains Oregon.

You are so close to getting my point. Our clever buildings or art or RF communication will not attract a being that can travel into and out of faster than light travel. Ants and the other insects at the Grand Canyon have fascinating traits for many people, ask any entomologist. Our yellow dwarf, G-type main-sequence star (G2V), that we call sun, is very mundane for a stellar object. While our star being a common star does improve the likelihood of others similar to us to exist in the universe. It also makes us hard to notice. Also as in the earlier sited novel "Dragon's Egg" creatures capable of FTL travel may not originate from a G-type star system and thus may not immediately recognize us as life.

"It isn't the flesh and blood that we want to interact with."

You haven't watched much Star Trek, have you?

Kirk (and in Next Gen, Riker) were all about seducing alien women. And they weren't the only ones wanting flesh and blood Interaction, Spock and Counselor Troi were both half-human, half-alien hybrids.

And when you look at the Space Opera novels that lead to Roddenberry pitching Trek to NBC, there's a LONG history of 'virile space captains' who have 'a gal in every (space)port.'

You do have a clear point on that one: I have no way to prove or disprove that any of you out there are real, rather, you could all be pigments of my imagination gone wrong.

So, gutmonarch, as you said in another thread, we are alone in this universe....

So you believe life can not exist outside of this planet but we are surrounded by ghosts?

Interesting!

"No, its not you. Some person(spirit) just imitated you. Sometimes they have no faces. It's not clear image, but sometimes just a silhouette."

Like these?

Hey Andrew It turns out that by an amazing coincidence you are the spitting image of the famous Ausy. outlaw Ned Kelly:-

It was that or a pic of brightly-coloured shoelaces.

Interesting. I met and befriended a fellow long ago that others often said we were "dopplegangers". Neither he nor I could see any resemblences between our appearances. But we became fast friends.

First thing you have ever said in all of you different personalities on CR4 that I totally agree with. "I don't think there is another me in another universe". At least God, I hope not.....

Now, is that suppose to be a joke or what?

Like you, I am and was created unique. God would have made us like that, like finger prints and iris. No two or more are alike.

Twins, may look the same but, mentally and spiritually they are not.

Met myself in Bombay. Just a different colour and we both looked horrified just before we broke into laughter along with another 50 or so onlookers. Your other you is out there, you just have not been out enough to bump into him, yet!

Stay the hell out of Bombay. Doppelgangs everywhere.

Have you ever been accosted and beaten up by a doppelgang?

It almost seemed that way but once they got close enough they couldn't tell who was who and beat the #@!$ out of each other instead.

ROFLMAO (twice even)

You guys are like hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, need to keep you separated.

Maybe you should not have divulged that...even if it does explain some things.

Yea, probably didn't come out right. I live for my kids, recently divorced and have my kids. My kids are the most important thing in my life so I don't have much time or energy for anything else. But, If I was invited to a drinking date and could go, I would not be late. Especially if there was some good bocks or dopplebocks. I do love my thick, malty German beers. Ayers Brewery, Celabrator, is my favorite.

Do you still have your tie-dyeds and love beads? Peace brother.

How about my former tenant who had seven kids, each with a different last name! Each of them had a different problem, hence momma got paid social security money every month (ashtma = $450, ADD = $475, Color blindness = $430, etc).

Crack or no crack, she was not a good example to her kids and I'm pretty sure that when her kids grow up, they're going to make a lot of fatherless kids and they'll be on the government dole.

I have a solution; just make them take responsibility for their actions. You want seven kids, then find a way to pay for it. No free ride. No poor me money. No stealing our tax money.

Or, for the bleeding hearts, why not set up a welfare system in the middle of the desert. You want a free ride, FINE! It's just not going to be easy and you can forget about your cell phone and cable tv. AC! Hah - not a chance. Enjoy the heat and if you want out, get a job and work your way out.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox.

"I have a solution; just make them take responsibility for their actions. You want seven kids, then find a way to pay for it. No free ride. No poor me money. No stealing our tax money."

But what if she DIDN'T want the seven kids? What if she had no idea what birth control was or what made babies show up in her? If she had had affordable access⁽¹⁾ to any of the following, she would not have added seven 'burdens to society' into the system:

• Education on sexual and reproductive matters.
• Effective birth control.
• Family Planning services, either an abortion clinic or a non-"overstocked" adoption agency.

I also note that you are laying all the blame on only one eighth of the problem, you are saying nothing about the seven irresponsible males who did this to her, either because they did not have the knowledge and supplies to prevent it, or they just didn't care about what they were doing to her.

This is why the Liberal agenda is proponents of both sex ed and abortion clinics: either of those will reduce the quantity of 'unwanted babies' burdening the system. The Conservatives seem to want to increase the number on 'unwanted babies' in society, if only to heap more shame on the women forced to care for these kids alone.

Don't they still have forced sterilization for those with severe mental disability?

Really. In such a case, euthanasia would be defined as putting her out of our misery.

On the other hand, and I sure each of the seven could grow up to become another Dr. Ben Carson, and each child is worthy of love, respect, help, and edumacation.

"doesn't know what causes babies" -- Really? After seven successful trial runs, I suspect even the mentally deficient would be able to decide something about sex.

Hear, hear!

I don't think a paternity tests is an unreasonable requirement for assistance. Going after the irresponsible fathers would be a good start to demonstrating consequences paid for actions taken.

<...for all practical purposes...> Now, that's Engineering!

All else is debate.

The theory of panspermia makes a concise definition of <...we...> fundamental to addressing this matter!

Panspermia was a surprisingly dumb idea to come from Francis Crick and/or Fred Hoyle. Fundamentally, it has no explanatory power; it just moves the origin-of-life question to somewhere else.

If the group [all of life] is labelled <...we...> then the answer is "Yes, though exactly where it all is, and how much of it there is, is currently unknown."

My thoughts exactly, nothing more than kicking the can down the road.

It isn't necessarily wrong merely because it is not revealing enough to satisfy our curiosity.

In 1977, a mysterious signal was received by a radio telescope at Ohio State University. The famous "Wow!" signal might have finally been explained...

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/mysterious-wow-signal-may-finally-have-explanation

Turns out the researcher was an alien dyslexic stranded on Earth and of course meant to write "Mom?"

Oh, it's just the cat peeing down a grounded line.

I've lived here my whole life and personally I don't even find my neighbors interesting enough to go and visit unless they want something so given that if any alien species has any degree of similarity to me I can't see them ever wanting to come light years distances to see us either.

On the grand scale of things we are pretty boring and don't have much of anything of resources that can't be found in vast abundance floating around all over the universe.

Whats a lost tribe of primitive people living in the Amazon jungle have to offer to any modern person of typical modern technical lifestyles other than to be a passing curiosity that for the most part is best off observed from a distance rather than being directly integrated with?

Would you want to come light years to visit us? We are barbarians bent on our own destruction. Why would any intelligent life want to visit us? We would be cynical and want to know why they are here, violently I might add.

The best evidence for intelligent life in other places in the universe, is that this life has used this planet for its loony bin.

"I lived here my whole life" not thinking anybody else thought you lived on mars...

Not so fast! Much of what the Notorious North Dakota Tire Burner says seems alien to me.

Ok, believable but not Mars, maybe Alpha Centauri B.

Mars' thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere doesn't support the burning of tyres.

OK, leave the tire burner alone, Is he hurting anything right now?

No.