Are We Alone?

Oh, My!! tcmtech's operation is a little bigger then I expected!

As cold as it gets in Minot, you gotta do something to thaw out your coffee!

Yes, they are a little colder then the northern Detroit suburbs where I live, but Damn, leave me some tires to keep warm with.

Is this for real? I hope the manager or the director of that plant, sniff on that smoke without leftovers.

Hey, I've been waiting for you to chime in. What took you so long?

We could always serve as a bad example. A species whose tool-making abilities far outstrip its wisdom? One so bold as to routinely apply the word 'civilised' to itself as though it actually knew what the word meant? Perhaps they're quarantining us the way we would an ebola virus and could we blame them? We're the most toxic life form on this planet.

Yes, but there are subgroups that skew the toxicity factor.

Lawyers, politicians, accountants, bankers, lobbyists and terrorists come to mind.

Those of us who work for a living (and tcmtech) are mostly harmless.

Life after people was a great show. I think I have watched it every time it was broadcast.

The Blunt Skulls are getting suspicious....

We must move the invasion plans forward....

One idea is that life is the scum that forms on a planet when the conditions are right. As far as consciousness? Could it not be an advanced defense mechanism?

Maybe not a defence mechanism so much as a way to keep themselves fed.

Predators are typically smarter than their prey. That's one way. Sheep, for example, have probably had as long to develop intelligence as wolves, but guess who gets the upper paw when push comes to shove? On the other flipper, baleen whales don't have to employ a great deal of strategy and forethought to chase down a shoal of krill, so what explains their need for large brains? Dolphins also, but they're a little more predatory and complex socially.

a plant has little use for consciousness as a food source for the herbivore.

The larger the brain. the more developed, the more threats perceived. The more mechanism to defend.

as for predator/prey herbivore/carnivore etc.? I don't have all the hypothetical answers worked out just yet.

But I can imagine the sheep is the food source for the carnivore.

The sheep.. like all life forms is as capable of defending itself against a variety of threats. They can reproduce in large numbers as well as run and jump etc. Not all sheep are killed by wolves.

We're a higher life form than wolves, pit bulls, lions etc, but I wouldn't have an un armed tangle with any of them. It's my defense mechanism. (run/jump/hide)

Wolves still haven't found a way to get humans to take care of them, protect them from harm and keep them well fed. Sheep managed to do this many centuries ago.

As for the whales, perhaps they have more diverse interests that employ that larger brain and finding food is merely a necessity.

Removing tongue from cheek in ...3,2,1

So how do you account for dogs.

Would those be Bayesian statistics?

Well said, pastor.

Lol, yes!. While I'm on the pulpit, I'd like to point out that we have millions of lines of code for machine intelligence and AFAIK three lines of code for machine morality.

I dunno, Windows does seem to have a propensity for self-harm, even going so far as to make a public spectacle of itself:

Of course this may also be seen as an altruistic act of the highest order: taking itself offline.

This is one of those perennial, ambiguous questions where how one clarifies the ambiguity will determine the answer to the question.

I'm certain that Earth is not the only location that can ever support life. The universe is so large and life is so "pushy" that anywhere a foothold where life can start, I bet it will. However, while the immense size of the universe makes it likely for life to exist somewhere else, it also makes it very, very unlikely we will ever directly know of this life. Our lifespans are incredibly tiny fractions of the lifespans we've observed of stars.

Like gnats observing eternity, so are the days of our lives....

I think there are not only aliens, but intelligent ones, and they are here already. They are too smart to actually go public, but maybe they act or advise behind the scenes in governments. I doubt they are hostile, or we would already know way too much about them, and if they are not hostile, then they are probably working to keep us from going extinct. Or maybe there are hostile ones and friendly ones.

Maybe this video by KDVR News in Denver is evidence of their presence, but I will not swear to it. I'm persuaded by the fact that the video was produced by a TV news station.

I doubt aliens use radio or any lightspeed communication. Too slow. I think they use the equivalent of lucid dreaming, communicating telepathically or psychically. I have seen enough evidence of communication that is independent of time, including dreams of my own that were prophetic, to persuade me that we don't know much at all about the nature of the universe. So if they have figured out how to use that, then why use radio? I have a friend who has communicated with an old friend from her country of origin through lucid dreams. Even odder than that was that they were both asleep when they communicated, but not at the same time. Time gets weird in that mode.

That would explain why we don't, and maybe never will, see any evidence of their civilization using radio.

Well? wowwow ...That's as good a theory as any. and the link is great! I didn't see the whole clip as it mysteriously cut out?

I want someones to simultaneously shoot video from miles apart in a triangle.

and then shoot more video getting progressively closer to where the object is closest to the ground.

You can also see it on YouTube here.

Yeah, I'm surprised nobody has tried to get closer and see the actual source. Or maybe they have. If I lived in Denver I'd do as you describe.

ye.. it looks like that.. except for the lack of sound and the invisibility to the naked eye. from miles away an RC jet would appear rather slooow.

I don't think it's miles away.....but far enough not to hear the engine...maybe with a directional mic some sound could be heard....these turbine jets are very fast, the one you're looking at goes 440 mph!

"I think there are not only aliens, but intelligent ones, and they are here already."

I agree.

Stephen Hawking seems to be quite worried about aliens. I just hope that if they eat me I taste really lousy.

I'm not so worried. I figure that if they actually arrived here, we would be far more like a tourist attraction than like something to eat.

Safari operators in Africa would lose big if they killed off all the animals.

Another idea:

If you imagine that there was an intelligent species on a planet a long time ago, and the planet was slowly consumed by its star turning into a red giant, then the species would move into space. No choice. But then they would become a space-based species. No need to go find a new planet and deal with the whole gravity well thing. Just stay in space after that and use asteroids and comets and such for raw materials.

So they might drift after thousands of years into the vicinity of good old Sol, and make amusing comments about the critters on the third planet as they pass by, in their ginormous home that is powered by absorbing all radiation that impinges on it.

Short answer:- No
Longer answer:- It's only our immense arrogance and stupidity that makes us even think we could be alone whilst at the same time believing in "god".
Basically we simply can't comprehend the sheer vastness of space and time... at some time and place there is doubtless some other form of life, it maybe so far away in either space or time that it is impossible for us to make contact.
Our existence on this planet is merely a blink of an eye, (and our ability to scan for other life even briefer) so why do we think we are so significant or that life will exist at the same time and close enough to make contact?
Expecting to make contact is orders of magnitude harder than expecting us to find the contact lens that my wife lost on an beach... when I won't tell you when or where she lost it, (it may not even have been on this planet knowing her)
Most people can't even understand how big a million is, never mind the size of our solar system or the galaxy.
Del

here's a million just for you.

The wallet would have to be pretty fat.

And $100 trillion

I have one of these, uncirculated 2005 note. Paid USD $25 for it.

Of course it's only worth half that now what with inflation and all....yukyuk

Just for education, Zimbabwe money has a date expiry and they no longer use Zim $, They have been using S Africa Rand for a few years now.

Somebody needs to teach those guys exponential notation.

The money they would've saved on the ink alone would've paid for the money they would've saved on the ink alone.

I don't think I am mistaken but Zim $ are/were printed by the mint in Midrand, Pretoria, S Africa

That's because Zim had to sell their printing presses to pay for the ink to print all those zeros.

With compound interest, by the time the universe ends, it might be worth its face value.

I agree with what you say, but the search for another technologically advanced life form is like playing the lottery. My chances of buying the winning ticket are infinitesimally small, but if I don't buy a ticket, my chance of winning is exactly zero. We can never discover what we never look for.

I personally don't believe we are alone in the universe. Statistically that seems very unlikely. I just think we are being anthropocentric and looking for signatures of our own form of intelligent life in the stars (which may be far more rare). I think we are probably severely underestimating the variety of forms that life, and therefore intelligent life, can take.

I think rather than looking for things that we would produce (radio signals, light signals, etc.), we should instead look for unexplained small scale anomalies as a signature of intelligent life. I believe as our technology for observing exoplanets improves, more of these anomalies will emerge.

Agreed, but I think we should for them all, including radio signals, light signals, etc.

Sure, but I think we also need to take a step back and adjust our expectations. For instance, my personal belief is those things we describe as "morals" are basically behaviors which have proved beneficial to us as a species as we evolved. Since we essentially evolved from pack animals, a lot of our morality reflects this.

In other words, our way of looking at the universe, and our ideas of right and wrong, are based on a specific evolutionary path, and therefore it is very unlikely that any other extra-solar species we meet will share this morality.

Statistically it is very improbable we will view the universe the same way, have the same sense of right and wrong, solve problems the same way (the scientific method was created to correct for human fallacies), have the same sort of views about life and death (spirituality). Things that are natural and good to us may strike them as ghastly and horrific and vice versa. How will we reconcile this when we can't even seem to reconcile the small spectrum of morality, ways of thinking, and spirituality we have on this planet?

Heck, we haven't really learnt how to communicate effectively with other apparently-self-aware species on this planet. Dolphins, for instance, but how do morals, et al relate to the context of detecting intelligent life elsewhere by various means?

Good question! I'm not sure.

Part of me feels that because of the likely extreme differences between us and aliens (moral, spiritual, how we think, instinct), trying to anticipate what kind of signature of life to look for is pointless.

I'd rather look for something that might be universal to advanced life that isn't anthropocentric. What is fundamental about advanced life, regardless of evolutionary path? Does all advance life modify nature to its benefit? Could such modification be detected as small scale anomalies in extra-solar systems? Maybe? If so then the answer would be to improve the resolution of our tools to detect these anomalies. I guess that's my line of thinking but I'm open to other suggestions regarding fundamental signatures of advanced life that aren't anthropocentric.

Rereading my comment (#94) I feel like I've contradicted myself somewhat. I think I should have stopped at "I'm not sure", lol.

The James Webb telescope will go far in looking for such signatures (significant IR excess which may suggest the presence of a Type II civilisation harnessing the bulk of its stars' energy, for example).

Life itself being a rather complex chemical process that's bound to produce all sorts of reaction byproducts which can be detected spectroscopically, we should be (and are) looking for these in other planetary atmospheres, regardless of whether we would consider the source intelligent or not. Anomalous methane in Mars' atmosphere for example. Non-biological processes produce it of course, but as it is a very common byproduct of organic processes it might be well worth the trouble to investigate. In Mars hostile climate, atmospheric methane tends to disassociate quickly, so we know it is being freshly vented from somewhere (in Mars' northern hemisphere as it turns out).

A very good point on the "morals" of extraterrestrial species. One of the greats of Science Fiction, Hal Clement, dealt with this in many of his novels. In The Nitrogen Fix the extraterrestrial species reproduced itself like yeast in an act of parthenogenic budding. One of the very first acts the parent did was what humans thought was a grooming ritual. Instead this was an act that verified that the genes and memories of parent were accurately replicated in the bud. A change that could not be corrected was a perceived to be a threat to the species and immediately destroyed.

I just read his wikipedia page, pretty cool. I'll have to check him out.

His most widely acclaimed extraterrestrials were introduced in the novel Mission of Gravity. My personal favorite novel of his was Needle. In this story he brings a whole new perspective to the thin line between parasites and symbiosis.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of my storage unit I have an anthology featuring his novella Planetfall. I have not read it. His other works sound intriguing too. Thanks for bringing him to mind.

I Pool:

Your question doesn't make any sense.

First you say, " There are no right or wrong answers here ", then you say, " I think it is extremely egotistical ".

On this basis:

If a person said yes, then judgement, predetermined, would be positive.

And if a person said no, then judgement, predetermined, would be negative.

Conditions can not be preset, when the only answers to the affirmative are biased.

It makes perfect sense. He's asking an open question and in the second paragraph starting off the discussion by voicing his personal opinion. The open question remains.

Andrew. First, I think there are those that want to believe that there is intelligent life, other than ourselves somewhere in the universe, clearly that has been shown in the plethora of media portrayals.

Then there is another group that thinks we are the only ones through divine intervention.

Then there is another group that couldn't give a rats patooie.

As for us humans discovering life outside of our own solar system, we physically haven't even got past our own moon and the space program has been ongoing for almost 75 years.

In the scope of time, that is but a grain of sand on a endless shoreline.

OK, I will post an opinion then. ( Actually it's not an opinion ) For the sake of argument, let's say there was intelligent life.

A. Let's say a traveler from a distant planet came here:

1. What would they eat ? ( Raw food / cooked food )

2. How would they communicate with us ? ( Language or mathematical symbols )

3. What shared interests would we have ? ( Things in or not in common )

4. Would they have resistance to our bacteria ? ( Terra and aqueous virus )

5. What kind of body claddings ? ( Exoskeleton suit or internal temperature control )

6. Who gets contacted first ? ( Government or private individual )

7. Would there be a gender issue ? ( Male or female )

8. Physical attributes ? ( + / - )

9. Psychological.

10. Reciprocality.

See that Andrew, I enter a post and SOMEBODY, with weak knees, gets offended and gives it an, " off topic " vote.

Pfhh !

It's not a directive, it's a glitch in the software....Lyn would have exceeded the limit years ago! It's probably from pushing the back button too many times...Try a hard refresh(_{Hold down Ctrl and press F5}) when it happens....

I wrote down your suggestion in my Babcock & Wilcox book of useful tables in the notes.

It is a counter CR4's webcode maintains on a per-user basis and compared to a per-user threshold, adjustable by the admins/mods. Once the counter reaches the threshold a timer is invoked which disables the user's ability to post additional comments for a prescribed period - 8 hours (though it evidently was once 24 hours as implied by the message text which tells the user to 'come back tomorrow'). Once the timer has timed-out the counter is reset and the user is once again permitted to comment.

The most convenient place to maintain the count would of course be in the user's cookie and so resetting the counter by deleting the cookie makes perfect sense, but 'a glitch in the software' it is not. Glitches don't typically issue coherent error messages, allow thresholds to be adjusted by mods, start and stop timers, and so forth.

No, it is a bit of functionality deliberately designed into CR4's webcode, presumably in an effort to help thwart spammers and trolls but not actually effective. Spammers who exceed the threshold can of course simply create another account from which to continue spamming, easy-peasy. The unintended result of all this is that the group this 'feature' ends up 'punishing' most are not the spammers and trolls, but the forum's own rule-abiding (albeit chatty) members. Oops.

Really, it would make far more sense to limit the number of posts in a given period, to prevent 'flood-posting.' Spammers don't typically (if ever) respond with comments, and so limiting the number of comments does nothing to thwart spammers at all. Flood-posting can be a real problem, on the other hand. I see it all the time on the big social-media sites - people posting 20, 30, 40 pictures of cats or what-have-you, in a 20-minute time frame. Very annoying, but not something you typically see on more topical sites like this one.

Happens to blabber mouth me all the time, almost a daily basis now.

How do you know they have to eat or have sex?

The Bible mentions "The hosts of heaven", and I think it refers to the second heaven above the firmament (of old), thus these hosts are from the stars.

I believe Earth might be off-limits to any race that wishes to maintain a status of innocence before God, since we happen to be on rebellious planet.

For that matter, we cannot distinguish those among us from another country that wish to harm us (apparently), much less detect an ancient race among us that is disguised as us.

Yes this is quite possible, the Earth is an unclean place...

This tread has 150 responses, many of them against life outside of earth. Did you see one post from me bashing that opinion? I stated my own damn opinion of this matter to get this thread going, what I believe. I have no proof one way or the other, my belief is that it is extremely egotistical to think we are the only ones here. But it is only my opinion, everyone has one like a$$holes and elbows. I didn't predetermine anyone, unlike you who predetermined me for my original post. Now, do you have an opinion on whether we are alone in the universe or not?

J pool.

It is OK to ask a question, but if you want honest opinions, you can't classify individuals who don't share your view.

If you want to classify yourself, that is your right.

And you should know that if you use vulgarities to support your position, then it is a weak position from the get go.

Besides, you have better linguistic skills than that.

Logically: if "we" cannot communicate with "them" in "our" "lifetimes", then "we" are "alone". Funding supports the notion that it is worth trying to find "them". Upon "we" finding "them", "we" and "them" then become "us", which simply makes "us" "alone", instead of "we".

Pick any definition for the words in italics; the statements are logically true for all possibilities.

What if quotation marks are sentient?
"Del"

Tell 'em to give you a little space.

^{_{(cuz it looks like they're trying to do something unspeakable )}}

I'm going to issue a warning ticket here for wasting space....anymore space wasting activity will be dealt with by lowering your response quota...!!!

Are you sure this entire thread is not lowering the quota on everyone involved?

Upon finding them, 'we' and 'them' might not so readily become 'us'. Even accepting that premise does not necessarily lead to 'us' being alone.

Perhaps those we discover or discover us, describe and provide evidence of another group known to appear suddenly and harass them? We (as well as us) would not be alone.

...cause its bugger all down here on earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0SY

Well said.

That's exactly what I said.