Honestly what're your thoughts on Aliens and Extraterrestrials
I feel like this topic has gotten taboo over the years for some reason and showing any interest in it makes you look crazy on some level. I remember making a joke to an MD that soon there'll be bankers on Mars and he looked at me like I was literally insane, granted he was in his 50s so probably is not too in tune with how far technology is moving.
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My thoughts are without a doubt there is intelligent life out there in the universe and they might have visited earth before in the past or maybe even fairly recently. If you haven't already I implore you to read about Bob Lazar and his work in Area 51. I can say without a shadow of doubt I believe him due to a plethora of holes in the story presented by the FBI to debunk his story such as he being listed in the phone book as working there in the 90s despite them claiming he never worked there. If you don't know he claimed to have worked on UFOs and was told that the government doesn't know what they are and that they were discovered in archeological digs.
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I also believe Oumuamua was an alien space craft and not a comet as some people claim due to the fact that all the explanations claiming it was a natural asteroid rely on a lot of mental gymnastics.
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If there are no aliens on earth or nearby it is because the universe is inherently hostile and no one wants to make their presence known out of fear of being destroyed by an even greater race that is technologically superior and feels threatened.
Either that or due to the vast amount of time the universe has existed for, it is unlikely that two advanced civilizations meets. Lets say the human race lasts 10,000 more years before something wipes us out, if another civilization rises in the solar system a billion years later, they would have no way of knowing we existed.
What do you guys all think? I don't think there are aliens running the government or anything but if I were to bet, I would bet that they have at least taken note of out existence and probably visit periodically.
Sorry for the rambling
I'm in the "rare Earth" camp, i.e., planets conducive to life are rare, planets conducive to intelligent life are extremely rare, and the likelihood of a biological entity being capable of looking to the stars and wondering "why?" is vanishingly rare. That doesn't mean that I reject the possibility of intelligent ET life in other places in space and time, but I think it's breathtakingly rare.
So many things had to happen to Earth to allow for abiogenesis, life to evolve, and intelligent life to rise. For example, without Jupiter and Saturn, Earth would be bombarded by asteroids and Earth would be essentially hostile to life. Earth's iron and nickel core create a dynamo that generates a magnetic field that blocks charged particles, making biological life on Earth possible. Of course, Earth is in the Goldilocks zone in its distance from the Sun. But Earth is also in the Goldilocks zone of the galaxy where we are far enough away from the center of the galaxy to not get hit by radiation from the galactic core. And our galaxy is also shaped better than 98% of galaxies for ordered orbits that prevent our solar system from entering the galactic danger zone. Also, water seems to be bizarrely necessary for life for so many different reasons, e.g., ice forms at the top of bodies of water providing a protected ecosystem underneath and the huge amount of water on Earth helps to keep air temperatures relatively stable. And honestly, the list goes on and on and on about the crazy things that have happened here to make life possible (electromagnetic spectrum and how it interacts with sea water and photosynthesis, Earth's relatively large moon and how it stabilizes Earth's wobble which stabilizes the climate, and so on).
Also, the x-factor really is the probability of abiogenesis. For all we know, life forming out of non-life is fairly common (once in 1 million planets, which means the universe is almost certainly teeming with civilizations) or its probability is infinitesimal (once in a universe, which means we're alone). We have absolutely no idea so no one can really say that "rare Earth" is a smart bet or a stupid bet. Finally, a quick Google search indicates there have been ~10 million species in Earth history; generously lumping in all hominids (homo sapiens, homo neanderthalinsis, homo erectus, etc.) in the last 1 million years as a single species (for the sake of this analysis and since they are part of the same evolutionary branch) and 1 species in 10 million became self-aware and can look to the stars and wonder. Go back ~1 million years (nothing in geological time) and Earth is dead--there is essentially no one thinking (0 out of ~9.5 million).
The statistical evidence suggests to me that outside of extremophiles, meaningful (multicellular) life in the universe is probably rare and intelligent life is so rare that even if it's out there humans are essentially alone because of the impossible distances. To caveat this, if we were to find any kind of life on Mars or, say, under Europa's ice or anywhere in our solar system that would pretty much point to a universe teeming with intelligent life.
Agree with all this. Also, gotta consider the time spans. If you consider the current estimate for the age of the universe, 13.6 billion years, that is an unreal amount of time.
Even if the odds of intelligent life are small at any given time, over the course of billions of years, anything could happen. 1 billion years ago, a star wars style intergalactic republic could have ruled the milky way, then just fizzled out for any number of reasons, and hundreds of millions of years of nothingness could have erased their history.
Totally agree. Also, I think it's funny when people say that there is a high probability of alien life out there in the universe.....how would you be able to calculate that based on a single observation?
Just a side thought to the OP. I always find it funny that aliens are taboo in certain circles. However, often in other circles aliens are real and surely exist but God cannot. Always found those two thoughts a little funny together.
Did you see the official statement the catholic church released regarding aliens. They basically said that if alien life is ever found they would try and baptize them and turn them into christians since all creatures all children of God
Fermi paradox
You know how you hear about how no matter what the answer to the Fermi Paradox is, either result is scary? Well, I think that the notion that we are alone doesn't get enough attention. I'm going to lose a lot of you on this one, but try and keep up:
The part that gets me in all of this are the impossible distances. The fastest things that humans have ever created are the Voyager probes. I once sat down and did the math and it would take those probes millions and millions of years to reach the North Star. It goes into the tens/hundreds of millions when you realize that Voyager would fit on your kitchen table; a probe large enough to transport a human would be a very, very long time. That blew my mind. Something that all of us on Earth can see, something that has been used for centuries for navigation, is still completely out of our reach to send a probe? There just has to be a reason for that, there has to be a reason why an impossible distance is, well, impossible. It was made to be that way.
The universe is proof that we are alone and that God exists.
why would God need to test your faith? how is your faith even valuable at all? there've been so much killing done in the name of God, so many wars, so much suffering. women in Islam countries are still treated like animals due to religion. even modern Christians in developed countries are sometimes very nasty people who bring suffering to others for no reason.
how is having millions of galaxies with millions of planets on them is a proof that we are alone. if anything it is a proof that statistically it's a guarantee that we're not alone, but due to human species only developing recently in the universe history and the size of the universe, we obviously haven't met another life and will probably never will.
God exists? how do you think he looks? where do you think he is? what do you think he's doing? do you think it's a dude that sits in the sky and judges us all day? :) God exists but God is the laws of physics. laws of physics created us.
Your statements are exactly why the Fermi Paradox exists. If we aren't alone then where is everybody? Even if intelligent life only happened on 0.0000001 of the planets out there (and as you rightly point out, there's a lot of them), we should be living in a real-life Star Wars-esque universe right now, right?
Again, my posit is that the distances are impossible to reach (even impossible to comprehend in some cases) because they were designed to be that way. We aren't intended to visit other stars, galaxies, whatever, because we are alone here and the stars above are just something that God gave us to admire & entertain us at night, nothing more.
You're right. Atheists have a much better track record. See basically any communist atrocity in the past century.
That’s all the work of man.
I agree with [Memberberries] that a lot of what you mention is done by us.
One of the best ways I strengthened my faith in God (and I freely admit that one time in life my level of faith was really low) was coming to the realization that there is a plan for me. This happened to me during a really low time in life (divorce) while I was in church waiting for service to start. I felt like God spoke to me and all he said was "There is a plan".
Everything happens for a reason and things usually turn out the way they're supposed to. Now, I know, I know, that sounds like a cheap Hallmark condolence card. But here's where the faith comes in - there is a plan but no one is promising you a good plan or a fun plan or a fast plan. That is where the faith comes in. You have to trust that everything that is happening to you, whether good or bad, has some purpose behind it. There is some greater plan that God has for you and sometimes you just have to let things play out. There's reasons why you blew that interview, there's reasons why a person stole from you or there's reasons why X happened - it's all part of a greater plan.
This is not a good argument
I’m not sure if “God exists” and “we are alone” must necessarily be simultaneously true.
I think we are more likely to invent time travel than to find alien intelligent life.
Katy Perry has entered the chat.
100% aliens somewhere out there, Memberberries did a good job of showing the hoops a solar system, planet, and even species has to jump through just to get there. The thing is though the life out there is probably plants, fish, or dinosaur. Then there is the vastness of space or time that I don't think a lot of people grasp.
Im going to skip to the end because I could go on for a while with this but there are something like 100 billion planets in the Milky way at this time. At some point each of them may have some chance of supporting life depending on where their star is in their life cycle and planet guts blah blah. There are 100 million more galaxies doing the same thing in our very very tiny Supercluster. There are millions more super clusters out there. To drive the point further home no way is the observable universe everything 13.4 billion lightyears in any direction. There is a theory that maybe the volume of the observable universe is less than 1% the total volume of the universe. Yeah there's aliens, yeah probably space wars out there somewhere. Will we find them/have we? Probably not because too much space or time that separates us.
100% lol ok nice confidence there buddy
I love this topic.
Everyone should watch this 60 minutes segment:
Have you seen DeGrasse Tyson's reply to this? It's quite an interesting take and he completely deconstructs this. I usually don't like the guy - I think he's a weirdo - but even I was impressed on how he created doubt in this one.
Of course, that's even assuming that it's extraterrestrial. There's still a school of thought that this could be a spy/weapon of some kind (ours or foreign).
If you are talking about the Rogan podcast, the only "deconstruction" I remember him saying was "dont take sensor readings as a source of truth" or something like that. I dont find his explanation to be convincing at all since sensor readings on the craft were picked up over the course of 2 weeks by many different sensor readings and confirmations:
Not to mention very similar events happening on other military ships, plus the many other incidents reported by other credible officials along with sensor readings. I definitely wouldn't jump to aliens but its pretty clear to me (and the gov.) that there is something weird happening here that we clearly cannot explain.
I'm a huge science fiction fan and a sucker for media about alien civilizations (Mass Effect is probably my favorite video game series). My perspective is that the universe is just too big not to have other intelligent life, but it's a serious stretch to go from there to 'we have been visited by extraterrestrial life.' I'm of the camp that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which we really don't have yet. I feel like I'm in the majority of college educated people with those statements, but not sure
Regarding Bob Lazar, I don't think he's been able to produce much actual evidence (not that I'd expect he would be able to even if he were honest, assuming security was strict), and given the general nature of secrecy at Area 51 and that he's trying to whistleblow I would expect the government to deny he ever worked there, even if he were just a janitor
Regarding Oumuamua, I don't know that the claims of being a natural asteroid require mental gymnastics. First, I honestly don't understand enough about astrophysics to have a perspective on the plausibility of the hypotheses regarding how it got some propulsion -- I think that it's hard to reject those hypotheses without a good understanding of the underlying ideas. Second, only one of the hypotheses has to be true for it to not be an alien spacecraft -- and there's no reason to assume it is an alien spacecraft even if we don't understand how it moved
Regarding no aliens near earth = hostile universe, it is alternatively possible that it is physically or functionally impossible to traverse beyond certain distances, or to do so in a way that is comprehensive (i.e. even if they visited other planets far from their home maybe they don't even know to come to earth)
On the point of civilizations rising and falling, while I don't have any idea on how long an advanced civilization would last for (and I don't think we can make a reasonable assumption since we wouldn't know anything about their social structures), I think it'd be fascinating and immensely frightening to discover the ruins of an ancient spacefaring civilization
I'm not a fan of Bob Lazar either. I remember one time during an interview he was asked about why he didn't have pictures. He gave a story about one incident where he used his phone to snap a few but was quickly shoo'ed out of the room by the scientists working there.
Well, if you have any experience working with the government in high security situations (I do . . . that's all I have to say about that) then you would know that you would never be allowed to carry a phone in there in the first place. The security protocols wouldn't allow for many personal items much less a phone with a camera on it. But Lazar describes it like he's some tourist walking through Disneyland. There's no way that incident happened.
I can make an educated guess based on certain key assumptions, but assuming a "spacefaring" civilisation that:
- Cannot harness power beyond that of a small planet (eg no Dyson spheres)
- Has a post-industrialisation economy (obviously)
- Has highly sophisticated automation in many industries
- Other peer or near-peer civilisations within a proximity that allows for hard power projection
- Is constrained to travelling at the speed of light
- Requires water and nutrients to survive
Now with those key assumptions, keep in mind that the average lifespan of a civilisation in our history is more or less 250 years. However, if we take takeovers where most of the old empire's infrastructure and territories are intact (Chinese dynasties, Rome -> Byzantine, Thirteen Colonies -> United States), then the average lifespan increases considerably.
With a base "lifespan" of 400 years on a single planet, a spacefaring alien civilisation both has a higher bar to clear (control over at least a single planet, technology to travel at near-FTL, sufficient power projection to defend colonial interests across multiple planets), we can say that such a regionally dominant civilisation must be less suspectible to falling apart compared to lesser civilisations. If we average out the lifespan of a few random great powers throughout history (British Empire at ~370 years, Rome + Byzantine at ~2000 years, Han Dynasty at ~450 years, Spanish Monarchy at ~480 years), we can see that a multiplier of 3.3 for longevity can be added to "great powers".
Now using basic logic, we can safely say that the logistics, infrastructure, political capital and raw resources needed to govern and hold multiple planets that are dozens of years of travel apart is much more straining and intensive than an equivalent intercontinental empire on a single planet. Even if you fed everyone on a colonial planet, a peer state could merely mobilise rapidly and blitzkrieg a colonial planet, with only your local garrison to fend them off. Given that reinforcing that planet would take dozens of years, that war would essentially be a decisive victory already. Add in the slow nature of geopolitical shifts in such a vast landscape and most threats can only come from internal sources (think Chinese dynasties-style, where they were rarey threatened by foreign civilisation).
However, if you consider how capital and resource intensive spacefaring infrastructure is, even a "small" civil war or medium-scale border skirmishes could bankrupt a civilisation to the point that they can no longer maintain vehicles, colonies or industries that are dependent on rare resources and free trade/travel between planets.
With all of that in mind, I would predict a bimodial distribution in the lifespan of spacefaring civilisations. The first, taller peak would consist of civilisations that went bankrupt fighting wars, or lost all of their colonies by rapidly mobilised peer states and were unable to reinforce colonial holdings dozens of light years away. The second, much shorter peak would be longlasting civilisations that eventually fell to another great power with a similar lifespan or internal civil strife.
By randomly approximating numbers, I'd guess that the first peak would be roughly 3,000 years and the second peak would be 40,000 years.
Thank you for sharing, and in particular for highlighting some interesting examples of human history regarding how long different civilizations have lasted and the types of problems that disrupt long term health. I respectfully disagree though:
Edit: To clarify what I mean by point #1, you can read this fun short shorty "They're Made out of Meat"
can confirm my quant is an alien
Use name checks out
Reading about this topic has been a fun thought experiment on what actually is possible. I love reading people's theories.
E.g.
The only alien I care about is myself (international student vibes)
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