Post by: Star One on 10/05/2017 07:55 pm
Quote
l’ve bet a cup of coffee to any and all that by 2035 we’ll have evidence of E.T. To many of my colleagues, that sounds like a losing proposition. For more than a half-century, a small coterie of scientists has been pursuing the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. And we haven’t found a thing.
I’m optimistic by nature—as a scientist, you have to be. But my hopeful feeling is not wishful thinking; it is firmly grounded in the logic of SETI. Half a century sounds like a long time, but the search is truly in its early days. Given the current state of SETI efforts and abilities, I feel that we’re on the cusp of learning something truly revolutionary.
Most of our experiments so far have used large radio antennas in an effort to eavesdrop on radio signals transmitted by other societies, an approach that was dramatized by Jodie Foster in the 1997 movie Contact. Unlike other alien potboilers, Contact’s portrayal of how we might search for extraterrestrials was reasonably accurate. Nonetheless, that film reinforced the common belief that SETI practitioners paw through cosmic static looking for unusual patterns, such as a string of prime numbers. The truth is simpler: We have been searching for narrow-band signals. “Narrow-band” means that a large fraction of the transmitter power is squeezed into a tiny part of the radio dial, making the transmission easier to find. This is analogous to the way a laser pointer, despite having only a few milliwatts of power, nonetheless looks bright because the energy is concentrated into a narrow wavelength range.
http://m.nautil.us/blog/why-well-have-evidence-of-aliensif-they-existby-2035
Post by: matthewkantar on 10/05/2017 09:21 pm
Matthew
Edited for spelling
Post by: Lar on 10/05/2017 09:37 pm
Post by: TakeOff on 10/05/2017 09:54 pm
Some French guy is said to have eaten an entire bicycle, so we should not underestimate the human digestion system as a way of taking care of problems. Just eat'em!
Post by: vapour_nudge on 10/05/2017 09:55 pm
Post by: Star One on 10/05/2017 10:52 pm
After so long searching fruitlessly looking for something that's not there it would be hard for anyone to admit they're wrong. So, just dig the heels in...
What a ridiculous assumption, for a start how can you say at this stage no one is there? Also we’ve barely searched much of the possible spectrum out their due to a combination of technological and budgetary limitations.
To think we are the only intelligence live in the entirety of the universe always strikes me as one of the most arrogant statements that can be made.
Post by: vapour_nudge on 10/06/2017 01:15 am
I'm a sci-fi fan too but I don't believe the stuff
Post by: spacenut on 10/06/2017 01:21 am
Post by: punder on 10/06/2017 01:25 am
Perhaps a lot of the money sent to SETI and otherwise similar wasteful enterprises could go towards funding more Discovery/New Horizons missions etc
Yes, that vast NASA SETI budget is such a waste! How much is it, again?
And, can you list the other government sources of SETI research, along with the funding figures, and explain how all that money could be redirected to the NASA robotic exploration budget?
Post by: Star One on 10/06/2017 07:40 am
If there are aliens, they may not be using our type of communication, but some other form that we cannot detect.
I’ve wondered if there is the possibility that all biological life is supplanted by machine life as an inevitability and until a similar thing happens here there will not be a detection of other intelligence.
Post by: sanman on 10/06/2017 08:44 am
I’ve wondered if there is the possibility that all biological life is supplanted by machine life as an inevitability and until a similar thing happens here there will not be a detection of other intelligence.
That presupposes that biological life has to be intelligent life that develops artificial machine intelligence.
Ironically, we're most likely to find extraterrestrial life if we deploy our own artificial intelligence to keep relentlessly searching for it.
Post by: Star One on 10/06/2017 09:51 am
I’ve wondered if there is the possibility that all biological life is supplanted by machine life as an inevitability and until a similar thing happens here there will not be a detection of other intelligence.
That presupposes that biological life has to be intelligent life that develops artificial machine intelligence.
Ironically, we're most likely to find extraterrestrial life if we deploy our own artificial intelligence to keep relentlessly searching for it.
I’ve seen it proposed that machine life wouldn’t or couldn’t talk to biological life, hence another reason for AI.
Post by: jgoldader on 10/06/2017 12:20 pm
It could be argued that radio SETI hinges on a few postulates: ETI exists, and they want to talk, and they want to use radio, and they want to use the frequencies we're observing. But radio SETI is fairly low-cost, and it's unimaginably high-payoff if it succeeds, so to me, it's worth doing.
My guess is, if we get evidence of extraterrestrial life, it'll come from spectroscopic observations of extrasolar planets, microfossils from Mars, or perhaps in situ observations from Europa or Enceladus. And it'll be a long time between the detection, and acceptance that it's actually extraterrestrial life ("extraordinary claims" and all that), unless it's something like a picture of some sort of sharktopus in the seas of Enceladus.
Sci-fi is sci-fi, but one could argue that the long history of life on Earth is evidence against the existence of Berserker planet-killing starships (see Fred Saberhagen's novels), and therefore malevolent AI in the universe. If we ever create strong AI, we'll test the Berserker/Skynet hypothesis soon enough.
In the end, the Fermi paradox looms large. IMHO, we're a long way from either getting positive proof, or being able to draw a negative conclusion.
Post by: TakeOff on 10/06/2017 01:32 pm
The combinatorics of biology, even just our own as it is, is much much larger than the visible universe. Two similar things will never occur in spacetime contact of each other.
Post by: M.E.T. on 10/06/2017 01:37 pm
Eventually, it could evolve enough to spread to the next planet, where new evolutionary forces will influence it to adapt even further. Eventually it spreads to the next solar system, and eventually, presumably, to the next galaxy, until the entire Universe is populated by it. Of course, the various evolutionary forms in the various environmental niches across the Universe will ultimately differ drastically from the original species that first spread beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Just like the various species on Earth already differ significantly from one another.
In any case, the point is that life had to start somewhere, and it might as well have been on the Earth 3-4 billion years ago. Looking back from a point 100 billion years in the future, life would be common throughout the Universe. And the point where it originated would be largely irrelevant, much like the exact point of origin of it back in Earth's history is interesting, but far removed from us today.
Post by: su27k on 10/06/2017 02:58 pm
I think there're some opinions that Drake's estimate in the Drake Equation is too optimistic, a more realistic estimate would yield 1 to 2 civilizations per galaxy only.
Post by: savuporo on 10/06/2017 03:14 pm
I skimmed it but missed a compelling argument for why he thinks we will find something. Is it because by 2035 we will have thoroughly explored the LaGrange points and the Moon? I'm dubious of that timeline.
It read as a bit of solid autoetnographic research
Post by: zubenelgenubi on 10/06/2017 04:49 pm
<snip>
Sci-fi is sci-fi, but one could argue that the long history of life on Earth is evidence against the existence of Berserker planet-killing starships (see Fred Saberhagen's novels), and therefore malevolent AI in the universe. If we ever create strong AI, we'll test the Berserker/Skynet hypothesis soon enough.
In the end, the Fermi paradox looms large. IMHO, we're a long way from either getting positive proof, or being able to draw a negative conclusion.
Unless Gregory Benford's hypothesis/story is correct: that a new, technically advanced species starting to broadcast in the RF spectrum catches the attention of the lurking galactic machine AI civilization. (Galactic Center saga, beginning with Into the Ocean of Night)
Why dispatch Berserkers willy-nilly, when the mechanicals can keep a lid on the biological intelligences with force-multipliers like the Snark and the Watchers? And, the strategy answers the Fermi Paradox.
Maybe there's another good reason for a frequent-repeat, deep magnitude all-sky survey program: to observe a Snark as early as possible as it "drops" into the Solar System.
:) Have a nice day! :)
Post by: TakeOff on 10/07/2017 03:50 pm
Post by: Star One on 10/07/2017 06:24 pm
I think that if extraterrestrial intelligence is not discovered by 2035 or so, the interest for looking for it will diminish even more. Seth Shostak is kind of making that worse by making deadlines like that. Bbut of course to improve enthusiasm in the short term, which is a crucial step to the long term. And soon this date will be forgotten anyway. What could he say? It's his job to promote SETI, and I think this crazy guy does a very good job. And it certainly would be a very bad idea to not even try looking.
Are you implying anyone who works in SETI is crazy, because if you are that’s pretty indefensible?
Post by: TakeOff on 10/07/2017 06:42 pm
Are you implying anyone who works in SETI is crazy, because if you are that’s pretty indefensible?Seth Shostak certainly uses the crazy alien hunter as part of his public persona. That's how most people perceive SETI, Seth strikes the right string in the public mind. I think that without him SETI would quickly dwindle. And they haven't found anything, so it is a natural joke to everyone. A project like this has to be handled with a sense of humor.
Post by: Star One on 10/07/2017 09:01 pm
Quote
One of the reasons SETI is hard is that we don’t know exactly what we are looking for, and part of that difficulty is that we still aren’t sure of who we are. It seems counter-intuitive, but in order to be good at looking for aliens, we have to become experts at understanding ourselves.
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/08/17/doing-seti-better/
Post by: TakeOff on 10/08/2017 06:18 am
Here’s a new related SETI article from Jason Wright.That article is itself an example of "cultural myopia"!QuoteOne of the reasons SETI is hard is that we don’t know exactly what we are looking for, and part of that difficulty is that we still aren’t sure of who we are. It seems counter-intuitive, but in order to be good at looking for aliens, we have to become experts at understanding ourselves.
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/08/17/doing-seti-better/ (http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2017/08/17/doing-seti-better/)
The idea of intelligence and civilization is overdone. It is a self-glorifying geocentric perspective. No one has even the faintest idea as to what subjective consciousness is. Science can never even try to start to address the question because consciousness is an immeasurable non-objective existence. Yet our intelligence seems to build upon it, and hence our technology and civilization. We are so intelligent that we have no idea of what intelligence is! So what other non-objective non-measurable phenomena are out there, forming matter and energy like we do??
I do agree that looking for copies of ourselves is a practical approach, but the article totally fails with its claim to get out of this myopic perspective of searching for ourselves out there. Looking at ourselves in the mirrors of the space telescopes. The analogs with historic colonization on Earth can have a meaning for human colonization for space, since we are the same and repeat. But it can have no similarities with what completely different kinds of phenomena are doing. Europeans went to America to grow potatoes and tobacco. What has that got to do with anything else? I think that American history focus has taken over too much of the public thinking about these things.
Post by: RotoSequence on 10/08/2017 10:29 am
I think that American history focus has taken over too much of the public thinking about these things.
Obsessing over "how awful American history is" has effectively become the dominant cultural movement in public universities in America. A myopic view isn't a surprise; the objective study of cultures has basically disappeared in the process.
In any case, it's irrelevant. We can look for optimal structures in nature and reasonably extrapolate that the same laws of physics will produce similar optimal results elsewhere, and the rules of telescope optics care not for culture or philosophy, no matter what planet they're built on.
Post by: marseventually on 10/08/2017 03:11 pm
Post by: Bynaus on 10/09/2017 07:19 am
I skimmed it but missed a compelling argument for why he thinks we will find something. Is it because by 2035 we will have thoroughly explored the LaGrange points and the Moon? I'm dubious of that timeline.
The way I understand it is that if the "10000 to 1 million broadcasting societies in the galaxy" estimates are right, by 2035 we will have surveyed enough near-by stars at sufficient sensitivity to have found the first broadcasting society (with high statistical likelyhood). That seems to be a fair claim.
Of course, these estimates might well be (and are very likely to be, in my opinion) way too high. Then, we won't have found ETIs by 2035, even if they exist (contrary to the claim of the headline of the article).
Post by: QuantumG on 10/09/2017 08:06 am
Post by: Star One on 10/19/2017 08:13 pm
Why haven’t we had alien contact? Blame icy ocean worlds
Quote
Might ET be buried under too much ice to phone Earth? That’s what planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has concluded may be delaying our contact with alien civilizations. Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice, according to a new proposal at this year's American Astronomy Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah. The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations, a conundrum known as the Fermi paradox.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/why-haven-t-we-had-alien-contact-blame-icy-ocean-worlds
Post by: Dao Angkan on 10/19/2017 10:35 pm
Post by: redliox on 10/19/2017 10:57 pm
It would be difficult for technological civilisations to evolve without fire.
Perhaps, but it could depend on the planet. We have insects that build their homes instinctively and there are chemical fires (phosphorous I think) that can burn underwater without oxygen. A planet rich in quartz or other minerals that refract and focus light could spur development of optics and perhaps primitive lasers. The ways technology begins could be a varied as the way live evolves.
Relevant to this thread.
Why haven’t we had alien contact? Blame icy ocean worldsQuoteMight ET be buried under too much ice to phone Earth? That’s what planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has concluded may be delaying our contact with alien civilizations. Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice, according to a new proposal at this year's American Astronomy Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah. The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations, a conundrum known as the Fermi paradox.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/why-haven-t-we-had-alien-contact-blame-icy-ocean-worlds
Another example of how civilization might develop differently from us.
Post by: topo334 on 10/19/2017 11:03 pm
Post by: Phil Stooke on 10/19/2017 11:09 pm
Yikes, nobody picked up on this? What about stealing gold? Escaping persecution? Establishing penal colonies? Converting heathens? There are lots of reasons people went to America and every one of them might find a parallel in alien visits to Earth, though none of them would look very good from our point of view.
And that leads to another suggestion about why we don't detect broadcasts - the aliens are afraid of what might happen if they announce their presence, so they are lurking and listening.
Post by: TakeOff on 10/20/2017 02:23 am
"Europeans went to America to grow potatoes and tobacco. "The natives were of no use. All of them just died from decease. Potatoes and tobacco was what was profitable. And later cotton slavery. If aliens don't smoke tobacco we have no reference as to what motivates them to move around in space. What motivation do virus have to help your immune system against other virus? Do you think that virus are "lurking and listening"? Do you imagine that they care about our existence at all? And most virus DNA is identical with sequences of our DNA. They are our identical twins. Alien life will be far different.
Yikes, nobody picked up on this? What about stealing gold? Escaping persecution? Establishing penal colonies? Converting heathens? There are lots of reasons people went to America and every one of them might find a parallel in alien visits to Earth, though none of them would look very good from our point of view.
And that leads to another suggestion about why we don't detect broadcasts - the aliens are afraid of what might happen if they announce their presence, so they are lurking and listening.
This whole subject suffers from Disneyfication as in talking cute cartoon animals. We can never have any kind of communication or relationship with any non-human being. We never have had even with the genetically almost identical life we have here on Earth, like grass or ants. Alien life is an astrophysical phenomena, not anything we can use our common sense to relate to. Even playing chess with a computer we ourselves have made is hopeless. Even AI cannot be dealt with by common sense. Common sense is only common among us.
Post by: CuddlyRocket on 10/20/2017 04:39 am
It would be difficult for technological civilisations to evolve without fire.
We don't know that. We know how we did it, and we used fire because we had fire. We haven't given much thought to the contra-factual!
Post by: Bynaus on 10/20/2017 06:03 am
Post by: Star One on 10/20/2017 06:40 am
It would be difficult for technological civilisations to evolve without fire.
Perhaps, but it could depend on the planet. We have insects that build their homes instinctively and there are chemical fires (phosphorous I think) that can burn underwater without oxygen. A planet rich in quartz or other minerals that refract and focus light could spur development of optics and perhaps primitive lasers. The ways technology begins could be a varied as the way live evolves.Relevant to this thread.
Why haven’t we had alien contact? Blame icy ocean worldsQuoteMight ET be buried under too much ice to phone Earth? That’s what planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has concluded may be delaying our contact with alien civilizations. Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice, according to a new proposal at this year's American Astronomy Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah. The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations, a conundrum known as the Fermi paradox.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/why-haven-t-we-had-alien-contact-blame-icy-ocean-worlds
Another example of how civilization might develop differently from us.
As a side point I was slightly surprised this came from Alan Stern as I didn’t have him down as someone interested in this area of enquiry.
Post by: KelvinZero on 10/20/2017 12:06 pm
Once you have a civilisation like that you have the scale for scientists. I think they would discover gasses, perhaps from volcanic vents or decaying organic matter. These could provide buoyancy to lift stones great distances. I think once you have competing nations and scientists everything gets figured out eventually.
After that, I think life under ice is a lot closer to becoming a space fairing species than us, if on a low gravity world like europa or Ceres. They could master space industrialisation without even leaving their planet or moon. Vehicles on the surface would allow fast travel. There would also likely be unique resources more available there.
For me, the more significant question is how much energy such an environment could provide, while not being so energetic as to lose all this ice and water to space. I heard somewhere is that Europa is not expected to have the energy to sustain more than very simple life.
Post by: Dao Angkan on 10/20/2017 07:42 pm
I think you could still develop tool using intelligence without fire. Consider the octopus. You could also discover politics, probably a huge driver of intelligence. There would still be reasons to develop, agriculture, fortresses and weapons from materials such as bone.
Once you have a civilisation like that you have the scale for scientists. I think they would discover gasses, perhaps from volcanic vents or decaying organic matter. These could provide buoyancy to lift stones great distances. I think once you have competing nations and scientists everything gets figured out eventually.
After that, I think life under ice is a lot closer to becoming a space fairing species than us, if on a low gravity world like europa or Ceres. They could master space industrialisation without even leaving their planet or moon. Vehicles on the surface would allow fast travel. There would also likely be unique resources more available there.
For me, the more significant question is how much energy such an environment could provide, while not being so energetic as to lose all this ice and water to space. I heard somewhere is that Europa is not expected to have the energy to sustain more than very simple life.
I posted my brief response late last night, and was planning on elaborating after work today, but you've pretty much covered much of what I intended to say, even down to octopuses! Anyway, I'll expand on that a little bit.
The octopus shows us that underwater species can evolve intelligence and dexterity, and indeed evolve to use tools. I could certainly see such a creature evolving to human level intelligence and a neolithic level of technology. The extra difficulty that I see is the leap from a neolithic to a metallurgic civilisation. The human lineage used fire for various evolutionary benefits for over a million years before metallurgy was discovered, presumably as a by-product of the benefits that humans had evolved to control fire (heat treatment of flints). In an environment where fire isn't natural, then I think it's an extra filter of difficulty for evolution to head in that direction ... how would such a species discover metallurgy?
We can imagine various less likely scenarios, and as the universe is so vast, some of those may well have occurred, but it seems to me that it would be far more likelier to occur in an environment where fire occurs naturally.
As for basic microbial life? If it is ubiquitous where we find liquid water, then we can test that in our own solar system, but we can't really detect extra-solar biomarkers in sub-surface oceans, even if they outnumber surface oceans by whatever magnitude you care to choose.
Until we have more evidence, then I can see the appeal in the argument that microbial life may be far more common in sub-surface ocean ice worlds (as they are probably more common than temperate terrestrial worlds), but it doesn't answer the Fermi paradox. As already mentioned, if they are technologically advanced, then boring through a few kms of ice would be trivial, and as also already mentioned, most ice worlds have low gravity, so compared to us, space travel should be trivial too.
The Fermi paradox simply proposes that a single inter-stellar civilisation could populate the entire milky way in only a few million years, so in astronomical timescales they should be here already. Stay at home ice world civilisations doesn't solve the paradox, as Earth-like civilisations should already be here.
Post by: eric z on 10/20/2017 07:46 pm
Post by: Dao Angkan on 10/20/2017 08:08 pm
It would be difficult for technological civilisations to evolve without fire.
Perhaps, but it could depend on the planet. We have insects that build their homes instinctively and there are chemical fires (phosphorous I think) that can burn underwater without oxygen. A planet rich in quartz or other minerals that refract and focus light could spur development of optics and perhaps primitive lasers. The ways technology begins could be a varied as the way live evolves.Relevant to this thread.
Why haven’t we had alien contact? Blame icy ocean worldsQuoteMight ET be buried under too much ice to phone Earth? That’s what planetary scientist Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has concluded may be delaying our contact with alien civilizations. Most extraterrestrial creatures are likely deep inside their home planets, in subsurface oceans crusted over in frozen water ice, according to a new proposal at this year's American Astronomy Society Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah. The hypothesis could explain the lack of signals from other technologically advanced civilizations, a conundrum known as the Fermi paradox.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/why-haven-t-we-had-alien-contact-blame-icy-ocean-worlds
Another example of how civilization might develop differently from us.
As a side point I was slightly surprised this came from Alan Stern as I didn’t have him down as someone interested in this area of enquiry.
His expertise is ice worlds. Sub-surface liquid oceans are potential habitats for life. Ice worlds are probably more common than temperate terrestrial worlds. I don't think his analysis went any further than this.
Still, he has always personally responded to my questions about New Horizons in the past (admittedly quite a few years past), so I'm sure you'd get a response if you politely ask him about his opinion on this.
Post by: Dao Angkan on 10/20/2017 08:41 pm
I would respectfully disagree that politics is a driver of intelligence! :D
I know you say it in jest, but it was a good point ... something I hadn't considered before. Politics could well be a driver of evolution. Intelligence is extremely expensive, a bit like a peacock's feathers. In many species power is the main driver of sexual selection, and we even see that today, where physically old and unfit politicians in positions of power still have sexual relations with young, fit, and healthy members of the opposite sex who are attracted to them solely through power.
That's not a commentary on life, just an analysis on how intelligence could be sexually selected for, and how politics could potentially exaggerate that.
Post by: KelvinZero on 10/20/2017 11:15 pm
It isn't really my idea, just something I keep hearing. "Politics" might not be exactly the right word. I think for a while there was an almost-assumption that the evolution of intelligence was all about tool-making but I think that has gone out of favour.I would respectfully disagree that politics is a driver of intelligence! :D
I know you say it in jest, but it was a good point ... something I hadn't considered before. Politics could well be a driver of evolution. Intelligence is extremely expensive, a bit like a peacock's feathers. In many species power is the main driver of sexual selection, and we even see that today, where physically old and unfit politicians in positions of power still have sexual relations with young, fit, and healthy members of the opposite sex who are attracted to them solely through power.
That's not a commentary on life, just an analysis on how intelligence could be sexually selected for, and how politics could potentially exaggerate that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence#Models
Post by: Dao Angkan on 10/21/2017 12:40 am
It isn't really my idea, just something I keep hearing. "Politics" might not be exactly the right word. I think for a while there was an almost-assumption that the evolution of intelligence was all about tool-making but I think that has gone out of favour.I would respectfully disagree that politics is a driver of intelligence! :D
I know you say it in jest, but it was a good point ... something I hadn't considered before. Politics could well be a driver of evolution. Intelligence is extremely expensive, a bit like a peacock's feathers. In many species power is the main driver of sexual selection, and we even see that today, where physically old and unfit politicians in positions of power still have sexual relations with young, fit, and healthy members of the opposite sex who are attracted to them solely through power.
That's not a commentary on life, just an analysis on how intelligence could be sexually selected for, and how politics could potentially exaggerate that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence#Models
Right, this is how I assume intelligence evolved in humans ... to cope with inter-social relations. What I hadn't previously considered was that evolution would favour those "best" at politics. It actually seems obvious now, any technologically advanced civilisation is likely to be "political", or at least hierarchical, as long as they have sexual selection.
Edit: So it might be wise to consider any E.T.s as being potentially deceptive, at least evolution would suggest that they may well be.
Post by: DarkenedOne on 10/21/2017 02:19 am
1. When they say broadcasting civilizations they do not mean civilizations like our own. I did the calculation once to determine at what distance would we be able to detect a civilization just like our own. Even for the large dishes like those in the Deep Space Network it turns out to be less than one light year. The assumption SETI makes is that advanced civilizations will be broadcasting signals millions of times more powerful than signals we broadcast.
2. The next assumption is that aliens would be using broadcasts for communication in the first place. Broadcasting is an incredibly inefficient method of communication. If you any idea as to where your target is then you will send a directed signal to that target. Our communications system has gotten more and more efficient by sending data in narrower and narrower beams. Narrower beams drives you toward higher frequencies. Higher frequencies also allow you to communicate more data. That is the fundamental reason why you see our communication systems moving up the EM spectrum over time. This leads to the third major assumption.
3. It is highly unlikely that aliens would be using radio waves to communicate at all. They are enormously inefficient at interstellar distances. Given how we have been moving up the EM spectrum to achieve greater efficiency in our communications we can safely assume that more advanced civilizations have already gone through this evolution. They are probably using something like gamma ray lasers to communicate. They might even have something even better based on physics that we do not understand yet.
With that I will leave you with this image.
(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_search.png)
Post by: Star One on 11/02/2017 07:18 pm
Quote
Hollywood films and science fiction literature fuel the belief that aliens are monster-like beings, who are very different to humans. But new research suggests that we could have more in common with our extra-terrestrial neighbours, than initially thought.
In a new study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology scientists from the University of Oxford show for the first time how evolutionary theory can be used to support alien predictions and better understand their behaviour. They show that aliens are potentially shaped by the same processes and mechanisms that shaped humans, such as natural selection.
The theory supports the argument that foreign life forms undergo natural selection, and are like us, evolving to be fitter and stronger over time.
Sam Levin, a researcher in Oxford’s Department of Zoology, said: ‘A fundamental task for astrobiologists (those who study life in the cosmos) is thinking about what extra-terrestrial life might be like. But making predictions about aliens is hard. We only have one example of life - life on Earth -- to extrapolate from. Past approaches in the field of astrobiology have been largely mechanistic, taking what we see on Earth, and what we know about chemistry, geology, and physics to make predictions about aliens.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-31-aliens-may-be-more-us-we-think#
Post by: missinglink on 11/06/2017 02:39 pm
Running a website dedicated to exploration of outer space would not be the worst way to collect intelligence, for evaluation and scheduled reports to send "home". ;)
Post by: QuantumG on 11/07/2017 02:51 am
If an emissary from an extraterrestrial civilization came to Earth and wanted to remain incognito while observing our progress towards the stars, what cover would it choose?
Running a website dedicated to exploration of outer space would not be the worst way to collect intelligence, for evaluation and scheduled reports to send "home". ;)
Well, I'm pretty sure Chris has been to New York, but he didn't overstay his visa waiver... I don't think.
Post by: Star One on 11/08/2017 07:38 pm
As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/what-happens-if-china-makes-first-contact/544131/
Post by: Alpha_Centauri on 11/09/2017 12:16 am
Post by: cosmicvoid on 11/10/2017 11:37 pm
Doesn't matter, all the aliens I've seen speak English.
Except for the ones in Arrival (2106), they speak in circles.
Post by: Lar on 11/11/2017 11:41 am
Not to spoil the plot of that movie if you haven't seen it[1] but I don't think there's a sequel in 2106 :)Doesn't matter, all the aliens I've seen speak English.
Except for the ones in Arrival (2106), they speak in circles.
1 - anyone interested in aliens, language, or diplomacy should see it.
Post by: Star One on 11/11/2017 07:52 pm
Doesn't matter, all the aliens I've seen speak English.
Except for the ones in Arrival (2106), they speak in circles.
Yeah thanks for ruining the film for me with your inconsiderate post.
Post by: Lar on 11/12/2017 12:10 am
Seriously?Doesn't matter, all the aliens I've seen speak English.
Except for the ones in Arrival (2106), they speak in circles.
Yeah thanks for ruining the film for me with your inconsiderate post.
Post by: QuantumG on 11/12/2017 12:17 am
Yeah thanks for ruining the film for me with your inconsiderate post.Seriously?
You're history's greatest monster.
Post by: vapour_nudge on 11/12/2017 12:25 am
Post by: Lar on 11/12/2017 12:48 am
I watched that last week. If someone pays you to watch that movie, you're being ripped off.
We're a bit off topic (and maybe we start a thread for it?) but I have to disagree. I found it very entrancing, well made, thought provoking and a thoroughly great movie. Rotten Tomatoes agrees, as do many critics, some going so far as to say it was 2016's best movie. It's not blasters and explosions, it is very cerebral. But worth your attention. (and I liked Passengers too so ...)
YMMV.
Post by: Star One on 11/12/2017 08:35 am
Yeah thanks for ruining the film for me with your inconsiderate post.Seriously?
You're history's greatest monster.
Just for the sake of clarity not everyone can see a film straightaway as it usually takes a while for a film to get onto terrestrial TV over here in the UK. I do have Netflix but it’s not on the UK schedule and I also have SKY satellite but not the film channels due to cost. But that said it was a bit of a silly comment I suppose by me.
Post by: vapour_nudge on 11/12/2017 08:53 am
Post by: John Santos on 11/12/2017 09:41 am
You probably didn't notice the typo (since trimmed) in the original post. Unless you're a time-travelling alien.Yeah thanks for ruining the film for me with your inconsiderate post.Seriously?
You're history's greatest monster.
Just for the sake of clarity not everyone can see a film straightaway as it usually takes a while for a film to get onto terrestrial TV over here in the UK. I do have Netflix but it’s not on the UK schedule and I also have SKY satellite but not the film channels due to cost. But that said it was a bit of a silly comment I suppose by me.
Post by: Star One on 11/12/2017 10:04 am
You probably didn't notice the typo (since trimmed) in the original post. Unless you're a time-travelling alien.Yeah thanks for ruining the film for me with your inconsiderate post.Seriously?
You're history's greatest monster.
Just for the sake of clarity not everyone can see a film straightaway as it usually takes a while for a film to get onto terrestrial TV over here in the UK. I do have Netflix but it’s not on the UK schedule and I also have SKY satellite but not the film channels due to cost. But that said it was a bit of a silly comment I suppose by me.
I am sticking to blaming my iPhone which seems to have issues with its spell correct.
Post by: Star One on 11/16/2017 07:49 pm
http://rockethics.psu.edu/everyday-ethics/is-it-ethical-to-transmit-powerful-radio-signals-1
Post by: Dao Angkan on 11/16/2017 07:57 pm
Is it ethical to transmit powerful radio signals?
http://rockethics.psu.edu/everyday-ethics/is-it-ethical-to-transmit-powerful-radio-signals-1
I'll answer that, any civilisation capable of being a threat to us should already know that we're here and have already come and sterilised the planet. As for the question of who on Earth should have the responsibility of contacting them, by the time that we get a reply back, then the people (and governments, countries etc) who originally sent the message will be long gone.
Post by: Johnnyhinbos on 11/16/2017 09:05 pm
I don't agree with that sentiment. Any civilization that has made it far enough along it's development to not have wiped itself out of existence is one that has matured enough to have developed a set of mature morality and ethical codes. Therefore I highly doubt it would sterilize another sentient species. Quarantined on the other hand...Is it ethical to transmit powerful radio signals?
http://rockethics.psu.edu/everyday-ethics/is-it-ethical-to-transmit-powerful-radio-signals-1
I'll answer that, any civilisation capable of being a threat to us should already know that we're here and have already come and sterilised the planet. As for the question of who on Earth should have the responsibility of contacting them, by the time that we get a reply back, then the people (and governments, countries etc) who originally sent the message will be long gone.
Post by: Dao Angkan on 11/16/2017 09:25 pm
Edit: I'll note our species eradication of infectious diseases as an example of a species considering it moral and ethical to eradicate potential threats to themselves.
If you're only sterilising cyanobacteria, is it unethical?
Post by: Johnnyhinbos on 11/16/2017 10:59 pm
Recent studies show inverts such as crabs have opioid receptors which strongly suggests sensation of pain. This is as opposed to nociception. Crabs have also amazingly shown the ability to have emotions. (I can quote scientific papers on this subject if desired).
Point being? Even us lowly developed Homo sapien have evolved to learn right from wrong, even when it involves a completely alien species as compared to our own.
Just ask any scientist involved with planetary protection...
Post by: Dalhousie on 11/17/2017 12:06 am
I watched that last week. If someone pays you to watch that movie, you're being ripped off.
What? I thought it was one of the best and most thought provoking SF films for many years.
Post by: Dalhousie on 11/17/2017 12:09 am
What Happens If China Makes First Contact?
As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/what-happens-if-china-makes-first-contact/544131/
See Three Body Problem for an excellent perspective by a Chinese novel about this. Probably the best SF novel I have read in the past 12 months. Perhaps longer.
Post by: Star One on 11/17/2017 07:12 pm
Quote
Last month, scientists and artists beamed a message to GJ 273, a red dwarf also known as Luyten's star that lies 12.36 light-years from Earth, project team members revealed today (Nov. 16). Luyten's star hosts two known planets, one of which, GJ 273b, may be capable of supporting life as we know it.
Though the message was designed to provoke a response from the hypothetical denizens of GJ 273b, the main goal in sending the communication involved laying a foundation for the future, said team member Douglas Vakoch, president of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Aliens]
https://amp.space.com/38803-meti-signal-beamed-habitable-alien-planet.html
Post by: hop on 11/17/2017 09:00 pm
I should reword that as "who might consider us as a threat".Yeah, this has always been my objection to the paranoia about transmitting signals.
It's hard to imagine a civilization that has the technological capability and motivation to come wipe us out but not passively detect the fact that Earth harbors life.
We would have a good chance of detecting biosignatures around nearby stars with current technology if we put serious budget behind it. We are nowhere close to being able to reach other star systems, let alone sterilizing whole planets when we get there.
Any civilization that can send substantial payloads between star systems isn't going to have trouble building, say 100 meter space telescopes.
Post by: Dao Angkan on 11/17/2017 09:07 pm
I’ll bite - as I work around and with aquatic species for a living. We catch live crabs in Boston Harbor as feedstock for exhibit animals. However we aren’t allowed to put these crabs in exhibit to feed to large puffers etc because our Animal Care and Use Committee forbids it. Instead we have to euthanize the crabs in a two phase process that is pain free and humane to the crab. And before people say crabs can’t feel pain or have the brain capacity for complex emotions - wrong (summoning the inner Jim).
Recent studies show inverts such as crabs have opioid receptors which strongly suggests sensation of pain. This is as opposed to nociception. Crabs have also amazingly shown the ability to have emotions. (I can quote scientific papers on this subject if desired).
Point being? Even us lowly developed Homo sapien have evolved to learn right from wrong, even when it involves a completely alien species as compared to our own.
Just ask any scientist involved with planetary protection...
Catching wild animals in order to kill them and feed them to other captured animals which are then displayed as an exhibit for a more intelligent species to observe only shows that what crabs might consider right and wrong is quite a bit different than what people "who work around and with aquatic species for a living" consider right and wrong, especially when they consider their "feedstock" to have emotions.
Post by: missinglink on 11/17/2017 09:34 pm
by the time that we get a reply back, then the people (and governments, countries etc) who originally sent the message will be long gone.The best way to eliminate the wait time for a reply to arrive is to send yourself with your first message. Encode your entire genome and phenome plus your memories up to today. Include instructions for building you from the data. Make persuasive case that you are harmless and could not hurt a fly.
Post by: Dao Angkan on 11/18/2017 10:38 pm
by the time that we get a reply back, then the people (and governments, countries etc) who originally sent the message will be long gone.The best way to eliminate the wait time for a reply to arrive is to send yourself with your first message. Encode your entire genome and phenome plus your memories up to today. Include instructions for building you from the data. Make persuasive case that you are harmless and could not hurt a fly.
It's an interesting proposition, we'd still have to wait for a reply, but the "clone" could converse rather than waiting for a reply from Earth after every correspondence. Maybe an easier way would be to just send an AI? The AI discusses matters that humans are interested in and sends it back to Earth, whilst sharing allowed information with the aliens immediately.
Edit: This could be a basis for inter-stellar trade. The AI could receive data from Earth, such as scientific discoveries, or even something as mundane as the latest soap opera. The AI then trades that data for data that might have value on Earth (scientific discoveries / soaps etc).
Post by: Star One on 12/31/2017 12:01 pm
Quote
Aliens exist, but they are hiding and purposefully trying to avoid contact with humans, says the "Zoo Theory". The thesis is an attempt to explain why humans have yet to meet or interact with intelligent life outside the planet.
The theory, proposed by MIT radio astronomer John A. Ball, says that aliens out there are smarter than humans, but not yet powerful enough to take over the universe, so they monitor human activity from afar. Ball explains that they are curious enough to stop by once in a while, and that is why there are so many sightings of UFOs and alien crafts, reports the Science Examiner (SE).
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/what-zoo-theory-bizarre-thesis-attempts-explain-why-aliens-are-yet-contact-us-1653220 (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/what-zoo-theory-bizarre-thesis-attempts-explain-why-aliens-are-yet-contact-us-1653220)
Here’s the paper itself.
https://www.haystack.mit.edu/hay/staff/jball/etiy.pdf
Post by: redliox on 12/31/2017 03:36 pm
What is 'Zoo Theory'?QuoteAliens exist, but they are hiding and purposefully trying to avoid contact with humans, says the "Zoo Theory". The thesis is an attempt to explain why humans have yet to meet or interact with intelligent life outside the planet.
I think there are 2 possibilities we can look too, with "Zoo Theory" being one of them. The other would be that space (or specifically interstellar) travel is extremely hard. Then again our instruments might be considered "short ranged" but neither are we blind.
Post by: missinglink on 12/31/2017 07:35 pm
Post by: Star One on 12/31/2017 08:21 pm
What is 'Zoo Theory'?QuoteAliens exist, but they are hiding and purposefully trying to avoid contact with humans, says the "Zoo Theory". The thesis is an attempt to explain why humans have yet to meet or interact with intelligent life outside the planet.
I think there are 2 possibilities we can look too, with "Zoo Theory" being one of them. The other would be that space (or specifically interstellar) travel is extremely hard. Then again our instruments might be considered "short ranged" but neither are we blind.
I will put my cards on the deck by saying I believe Zoo Theory is the answer to the seeming galactic silence. That we are observed from afar but deemed far too primitive to communicate with.
Post by: vapour_nudge on 12/31/2017 09:19 pm
Isn’t that just an easy way to explain away the fact that there is no ET? It is like saying that the proof they are out there is that we can’t see them and have had no contact? How could it be justified to look for them if they won’t let us see them?What is 'Zoo Theory'?QuoteAliens exist, but they are hiding and purposefully trying to avoid contact with humans, says the "Zoo Theory". The thesis is an attempt to explain why humans have yet to meet or interact with intelligent life outside the planet.
I think there are 2 possibilities we can look too, with "Zoo Theory" being one of them. The other would be that space (or specifically interstellar) travel is extremely hard. Then again our instruments might be considered "short ranged" but neither are we blind.
I will put my cards on the deck by saying I believe Zoo Theory is the answer to the seeming galactic silence. That we are observed from afar but deemed far too primitive to communicate with.
Post by: Star One on 12/31/2017 10:52 pm
Isn’t that just an easy way to explain away the fact that there is no ET? It is like saying that the proof they are out there is that we can’t see them and have had no contact? How could it be justified to look for them if they won’t let us see them?What is 'Zoo Theory'?QuoteAliens exist, but they are hiding and purposefully trying to avoid contact with humans, says the "Zoo Theory". The thesis is an attempt to explain why humans have yet to meet or interact with intelligent life outside the planet.
I think there are 2 possibilities we can look too, with "Zoo Theory" being one of them. The other would be that space (or specifically interstellar) travel is extremely hard. Then again our instruments might be considered "short ranged" but neither are we blind.
I will put my cards on the deck by saying I believe Zoo Theory is the answer to the seeming galactic silence. That we are observed from afar but deemed far too primitive to communicate with.
Why should we expect an alien intelligence to behave in any way to accommodate us, especially if to them we aren’t worth communicating with?
Post by: vapour_nudge on 12/31/2017 11:12 pm
Don’t you at least see the irony in what this theory is suggesting? Explain away the reason why there are no aliens by saying they are hiding from us. It seems like a means for perpetual funding & justification of the (non) science of SETI
HNY to you nonetheless
Post by: Star One on 01/01/2018 08:21 am
It’s circular.
Don’t you at least see the irony in what this theory is suggesting? Explain away the reason why there are no aliens by saying they are hiding from us. It seems like a means for perpetual funding & justification of the (non) science of SETI
HNY to you nonetheless
Of course it’s circular. Reality is often imperfect.
HNY
Post by: dror on 01/01/2018 03:03 pm
You used the correct term there since supporting such a theory is no different than any other religions beliefe.What is 'Zoo Theory'?QuoteAliens exist, but they are hiding and purposefully trying to avoid contact with humans, says the "Zoo Theory". The thesis is an attempt to explain why humans have yet to meet or interact with intelligent life outside the planet.
I think there are 2 possibilities we can look too, with "Zoo Theory" being one of them. The other would be that space (or specifically interstellar) travel is extremely hard. Then again our instruments might be considered "short ranged" but neither are we blind.
I will put my cards on the deck by saying I believe Zoo Theory is the answer to the seeming galactic silence. That we are observed from afar but deemed far too primitive to communicate with.
The lack of evidence can support whatever crazy idea you can think of. You might as well belive that the aliens are shy or that they are tiny or godlike. Whatever .
Post by: the_other_Doug on 01/01/2018 03:15 pm
It’s circular.
Don’t you at least see the irony in what this theory is suggesting? Explain away the reason why there are no aliens by saying they are hiding from us. It seems like a means for perpetual funding & justification of the (non) science of SETI
HNY to you nonetheless
Of course it’s circular. Reality is often imperfect.
HNY
I'm not sure you understood what he meant. He was saying you are using a circular argument. It goes as follows:
...
#1: "We've looked! We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
...ad infinitum...
THAT is circular logic. By definition, it cannot prove anything. All it can do is attempt the impossible task of proving a negative, which just gets you into a circular argument...
The world being imperfect has nothing to do with applying circular logic. The person applying the circular logic is the imperfect portion of this calculation, I hate to say...
Post by: Star One on 01/01/2018 03:59 pm
It’s circular.
Don’t you at least see the irony in what this theory is suggesting? Explain away the reason why there are no aliens by saying they are hiding from us. It seems like a means for perpetual funding & justification of the (non) science of SETI
HNY to you nonetheless
Of course it’s circular. Reality is often imperfect.
HNY
I'm not sure you understood what he meant. He was saying you are using a circular argument. It goes as follows:
...
#1: "We've looked! We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
#2: "They must be hiding! Look harder!"
#1: "We looked harder. We can't find them!"
...ad infinitum...
THAT is circular logic. By definition, it cannot prove anything. All it can do is attempt the impossible task of proving a negative, which just gets you into a circular argument...
The world being imperfect has nothing to do with applying circular logic. The person applying the circular logic is the imperfect portion of this calculation, I hate to say...
I tell you what rather than sneering at my honesty in at least declaring a position on this. Why don’t some of you be less cowardly and actually declare a position. Shouting from the sidelines has always been a lot easier than actually taking part.
No wonder people from SETI don’t stick their heads above the parapet when the people in the peanut galleries are too busy throwing peanuts.
Post by: RotoSequence on 01/01/2018 07:59 pm
THAT is circular logic. By definition, it cannot prove anything. All it can do is attempt the impossible task of proving a negative, which just gets you into a circular argument...
The world being imperfect has nothing to do with applying circular logic. The person applying the circular logic is the imperfect portion of this calculation, I hate to say...
We don't have a circular logic problem. We have a seemingly reasonable assertion, and missing evidence - much like the dark days of Exoplanetology (the Sun is one of countless stars in the universe, therefor there must be countless planets - but we haven't found any).
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but we still haven't seen any aliens. There are two forks in the road to resolving this conundrum:
One, we're not looking hard enough, because barring exceptionalism, the Earth is one of countless planets in the universe, and it has life on it; therefor, we can't be alone out there.
Two, absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and thus, through logical fallacy, we are clearly alone in the universe.
Post by: mme on 01/01/2018 08:25 pm
It’s circular.My understanding is that SETI is not government funded, Senator Richard Bryan saw to that. In my mind the Zoo Hypothesis presumes too much, but that does not invalidate curiosity about the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe.
Don’t you at least see the irony in what this theory is suggesting? Explain away the reason why there are no aliens by saying they are hiding from us. It seems like a means for perpetual funding & justification of the (non) science of SETI
HNY to you nonetheless
Post by: Star One on 01/01/2018 10:04 pm
THAT is circular logic. By definition, it cannot prove anything. All it can do is attempt the impossible task of proving a negative, which just gets you into a circular argument...
The world being imperfect has nothing to do with applying circular logic. The person applying the circular logic is the imperfect portion of this calculation, I hate to say...
We don't have a circular logic problem. We have a seemingly reasonable assertion, and missing evidence - much like the dark days of Exoplanetology (the Sun is one of countless stars in the universe, therefor there must be countless planets - but we haven't found any).
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but we still haven't seen any aliens. There are two forks in the road to resolving this conundrum:
One, we're not looking hard enough, because barring exceptionalism, the Earth is one of countless planets in the universe, and it has life on it; therefor, we can't be alone out there.
Two, absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and thus, through logical fallacy, we are clearly alone in the universe.
It’s possible that if things like Neutron Star mergers are far more common than theorised that much of the universe has been sterilised of life. And we are just lucky for now.
Post by: the_other_Doug on 01/01/2018 10:21 pm
I tell you what rather than sneering at my honesty in at least declaring a position on this. Why don’t some of you be less cowardly and actually declare a position. Shouting from the sidelines has always been a lot easier than actually taking part.
No wonder people from SETI don’t stick their heads above the parapet when the people in the peanut galleries are too busy throwing peanuts.
I will tell you my position, as I have in the past.
Belief is nothing. Proof is everything.
It sounds to me like you don't believe that is taking a position. If you can't tell what position I am taking, that's your problem, not mine.
Post by: Star One on 01/01/2018 10:55 pm
I tell you what rather than sneering at my honesty in at least declaring a position on this. Why don’t some of you be less cowardly and actually declare a position. Shouting from the sidelines has always been a lot easier than actually taking part.
No wonder people from SETI don’t stick their heads above the parapet when the people in the peanut galleries are too busy throwing peanuts.
I will tell you my position, as I have in the past.
Belief is nothing. Proof is everything.
It sounds to me like you don't believe that is taking a position. If you can't tell what position I am taking, that's your problem, not mine.
Because that position is a facile one of hiding behind a position that makes it sound like a allegory for religious belief, when it’s nothing of the sort. If you’re incapable of seeing why it isn’t that’s not my problem.
Post by: the_other_Doug on 01/02/2018 12:01 am
The fact that you keep claiming the scientific method is "facile" just because it requires proof before acceptance weakens your position incredibly. As much as there is a lot of room for rational discussion in this area, it simply becomes absurd when the scientific method is seen as the wrong way of looking at the issue.
Post by: Star One on 01/02/2018 10:37 am
"Belief is nothing. Proof is everything" That is as succinctly as I could phrase the basis of the scientific method.
The fact that you keep claiming the scientific method is "facile" just because it requires proof before acceptance weakens your position incredibly. As much as there is a lot of room for rational discussion in this area, it simply becomes absurd when the scientific method is seen as the wrong way of looking at the issue.
Where have I said the scientific method is facile. What I am saying is facile is your personal interpretation of zoo theory, and your general understanding of this topic with your ridiculous comparison of SETI to a religion.
Post by: sghill on 01/02/2018 11:57 am
Post by: RotoSequence on 01/02/2018 12:11 pm
It remains inconceivable to many people that humans could be alone in the universe. Our searches, to date, have investigated a tiny fraction of all the possible places to look.
We'll find them, or we won't. In the grand scheme of things, we haven't looked very hard at all yet! :D
Post by: tea monster on 01/02/2018 12:47 pm
As to intelligent life, it could be that they are using a different method of communication to ourselves that we have yet to master. We could be like a South Sea Islander, climbing to the top of his atoll with a conch shell to his ear, listening for signs of life, while radio waves from cities on the other side of the globe course through and around him.
Post by: Star One on 01/05/2018 10:54 pm
Man alive I am terrible at inductive reasoning in the morning :o
It remains inconceivable to many people that humans could be alone in the universe. Our searches, to date, have investigated a tiny fraction of all the possible places to look.
We'll find them, or we won't. In the grand scheme of things, we haven't looked very hard at all yet! :D
Well with two trillion galaxies in the universe there’s a lot of places to look
Post by: Star One on 01/07/2018 08:13 pm
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/07/2018 10:01 pm
Further to the above there’s no need for faith in believing in a reasonable chance for other intelligent life you only have to rely on the maths of probability and the sheer number of galaxies, stars, planets and probably moons out there.
Isn't that just the Drake equation paraphrased without the detail? And since the probabilities of a number of the variables in the Drake equation are frankly unknown to us at this point, it is not that difficult to get a result of "1" intelligent civilization, by just playing with one or two of the numbers.
I happen to believe in a version of the Rare Earth Hypothesis. I think Earth is far more special than the adherents of the mediocrity principle would like to accept. Whether it is rare enough to result in an answer of "1" to the Drake equation, that I can't say. But an answer of 1 per galaxy, or 1 every hundred or thousand or million galaxies, is certainly not impossible.
In which case the closest intelligent civilization might be millions of light years away, in a galaxy far, far away.
Post by: Star One on 01/07/2018 10:11 pm
Further to the above there’s no need for faith in believing in a reasonable chance for other intelligent life you only have to rely on the maths of probability and the sheer number of galaxies, stars, planets and probably moons out there.
Isn't that just the Drake equation paraphrased without the detail? And since the probabilities of a number of the variables in the Drake equation are frankly unknown to us at this point, it is not that difficult to get a result of "1" intelligent civilization, by just playing with one or two of the numbers.
I happen to believe in a version of the Rare Earth Hypothesis. I think Earth is far more special than the adherents of the mediocrity principle would like to accept. Whether it is rare enough to result in an answer of "1" to the Drake equation, that I can't say. But an answer of 1 per galaxy, or 1 every hundred or thousand or million galaxies, is certainly not impossible.
In which case the closest intelligent civilization might be millions of light years away, in a galaxy far, far away.
The problem with rare Earth theory is it assumes that to get intelligent life you have to have a planet like the Earth. I think it says more about the arrogance of our own belief that somehow we are unique than anything useful about the actual reality of the universe. It’s more probable that life occurs in a great variety of different conditions.
The problem with humans is we expect to find things similar to us when there’s no evidence that other intelligent life would be anything at all like us. Using one data point as a basis to extrapolate a way of looking for life is a rubbish way of going about things when you think about it. And probably why we will continue to struggle to find life.
Post by: RotoSequence on 01/07/2018 10:48 pm
Post by: deruch on 01/08/2018 02:25 am
No need to be"anti ET"... Just need to require specific evidenceThe hubris is strong with the anti-ETI crowd again I see.If thinking the universe can do weird, unexpected stuff without aliens is hubris... guilty
In seriousness though, I'm not "anti-ET". I'm firmly in the camp that says we aren't special, they are probably out there and we should keep our eyes and minds open. However, in the history of astronomy a lot more stuff that started out as weird and unexplained turned out to be dust than aliens. Absent specific data pointing to ET, I'll continue to expect most astronomical puzzles to have natural explanations. (edit for emphasis: This doesn't mean we shouldn't look, it just means we shouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be natural)
For this star, I've never seen anything that specifically favors of ET. It's weird and unexplained, sure, but nothing about the weirdness favors an artificial origin. If the light curve matched simple geometric shapes or blinked out prime numbers or something like that it would be different story, but in reality it looks like the kind of chaotic noisy stuff nature does all the time.
IMO the whole perception that it might be aliens mostly stemmed from misunderstanding. Wright's original mega-structure paper that kicked the hype off basically asked "Does this unexplained light curve fit ideas about what advanced aliens could build?" and concluded didn't fit particularly well, though limited data and the flexibility of "aliens" prevents ruling them out. Unfortunately in the press and popular opinion "astronomer examines whether it could be aliens" turned into "astronomers think it could be aliens!"
.
Current ET arguments are "by elimination". They say that since there isn't a simple conclusive natural explanation yet, and if we tailor a sufficiently advanced alien capability around the observation, then we have a credible case for ET.
This kind of logic can be used to "explain" anything in the universe, and can be equally "successful" in arguing for all sorts of gods as well. "It's too complex to have occured naturally".
I personally would want extraordinary evidence for the existence of specific aliens, not just an observation that's hard to explain.
Why would you require extraordinary evidence?
I’d thought you’d need the same level of evidence as any other natural phenomena, unless somehow you don’t think other intelligent life is a natural development in the universe.
You can’t just move around the goalposts to suit yourself.
IMO, 3 reasons to want extraordinary evidence. First, is due to prior plausibility. While I think that the general plausibility for there to be other ETI elsewhere in the Universe is fairly high, the plausibility that it is responsible for any particular new signal/observation is very, very low. This is mostly a function of our general ignorance of the Universe and how everything in it works. For all we have learned, we still just don't know that much. Which means that we are all the time discovering new natural phenomena and as a result, the likelihood that any new observation is a result of a natural phenomenon is quite high. This boils down to, If you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. Which is good advice unless you happen to be on the African Savanna. We know that the dispersion/density of any advanced ET in the universe is not high enough to make their presence trivially obvious in our region of space. So, as far as we can tell, we're not in the Serengeti. Ergo, while still possible, zebras remain a bad first guess.
The second reason is that arguments for ET causing some specific phenomenon are, as meekgee pointed out, by elimination (based on our ignorance) and generally tend to border on being unfalsifiable. Since a sufficiently advanced technology is essentially indistinguishable from magic to us (paraphrasing Clarke), ETs can have "magic" powers to overcome any challenge. It reminds me of discussing radiometric dating with a Christian who claims the world is only 6,000 years old. Their argument eventually reverts to, Well, God has the power to arbitrarily alter the ratios of elements/isotropes in a way that would mislead us or He can arbitrarily change the length of half-lives so that we get the wrong answer. Which, I suppose, is true if there is such a God but I have no reason to believe it to have actually happened regardless of God's existence. In this discussion, ET causes remain possible but why a civilization capable of affecting X, and causing Y phenomenon should only be noticeable by this one mechanism usually relies on special pleading.
Third is that humans are biological chauvanists. We seem to have an innate desire to see ourselves in everything else. We anthropomorphize pretty much everything. We do it in religion. When we study other animals. Heck, even in astronomy. Just look at the discovery of canals on Mars. This tendency's distortive effects has a long history of misleading us in many areas of scientific study. So, when we find something new we can't yet explain, I'm not surprised to find that the idea that it might be caused by ETI is so appealing. But, because of that very fact, I believe we need to be on guard against our natural inclinations. So, requiring extraordinary evidence to support ET involvement is warranted.
Post by: Star One on 01/08/2018 07:31 pm
Are Alien Civilizations Technologically Advanced?
Quote
Based on our own experience, we expect that civilizations much older than ours will be scientifically savvy and hence technologically advanced. But it is also possible that a simpler lifestyle rather than scientific prosperity has dominated the political landscape on other planets, leading to old civilizations that are nevertheless technologically primitive.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/are-alien-civilizations-technologically-advanced/#
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/08/2018 08:35 pm
Now this is an intriguing theory.
Are Alien Civilizations Technologically Advanced?QuoteBased on our own experience, we expect that civilizations much older than ours will be scientifically savvy and hence technologically advanced. But it is also possible that a simpler lifestyle rather than scientific prosperity has dominated the political landscape on other planets, leading to old civilizations that are nevertheless technologically primitive.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/are-alien-civilizations-technologically-advanced/#
From my reading, this suffers from the same flaw that hampers so many attempted answers to the Fermi paradox. Namely that while this theory might apply to some alien civilizations, you only need one civilization that is aggressively expansionist to populate the entire galaxy with Von Neuman probes or some such scenario.
Post by: Star One on 01/08/2018 08:47 pm
Now this is an intriguing theory.
Are Alien Civilizations Technologically Advanced?QuoteBased on our own experience, we expect that civilizations much older than ours will be scientifically savvy and hence technologically advanced. But it is also possible that a simpler lifestyle rather than scientific prosperity has dominated the political landscape on other planets, leading to old civilizations that are nevertheless technologically primitive.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/are-alien-civilizations-technologically-advanced/#
From my reading, this suffers from the same flaw that hampers so many attempted answers to the Fermi paradox. Namely that while this theory might apply to some alien civilizations, you only need one civilization that is aggressively expansionist to populate the entire galaxy with Von Neuman probes or some such scenario.
The latter seems unlikely even for an advanced civilisation due to the vast distances involved.
Post by: Lar on 01/08/2018 11:32 pm
Post by: Donosauro on 01/08/2018 11:46 pm
...[Y]ou only need one civilization that is aggressively expansionist to populate the entire galaxy with Von Neuman probes or some such scenario.
How old is the oldest aggressively expansionist terrestrial civilization? And what is the TRL of our closest approximation to a Von Neuman probe?
Post by: RonM on 01/09/2018 12:02 am
Now with the Big Bang theory as the accepted model, we know the universe has existed for a finite time. So, only a finite number of technological civilizations can have existed in our galaxy over that time.
Given a limited size and limited time, stating that there must at least one civilization that has already spread across the galaxy is an incorrect assumption.
Post by: QuantumG on 01/09/2018 12:14 am
* All numbers rounded up to the nearest billion so I don't have to be annoyingly accurate, okay.
Post by: RonM on 01/09/2018 01:37 am
The universe is about 14 billion years old... the Earth is about 4 billion years old and life started as quickly as it could, and here we are. So you're saying that for 10 billion years there was no other planets forming (wrong), or no life forming on those planets (why?) Just a single Earth-like planet forming 4.1 billion years ago and developing along the same timeline as Earth would give a technological civilization 100 million years to spread across the universe. If it's possible, we should be able to see them. We can't see them - it's a paradox.
* All numbers rounded up to the nearest billion so I don't have to be annoyingly accurate, okay.
Wrong. I'm not talking about planet formation or how common life is in the galaxy. I'm talking about civilizations capable of interstellar travel. If you know anything about evolution, you know there is no predestined goal to intelligent species.
Plug in your favorite numbers into the Drake equation and come up with how many technological civilizations you think have existed in the galaxy. If it is high, say in the millions or billions, then there is a good chance the Fermi paradox is reasonable. However, if you put in pessimistic numbers and get only a handful of technological civilizations, then it isn't reasonable to assume one of the few has spread across the galaxy. Of course, you're just guessing based on your own preconceived ideas.
The Fermi paradox, like the Drake equation, is a great place to start examining possibilities, but it's not a scientific law.
Post by: QuantumG on 01/09/2018 01:48 am
If you know anything about evolution, you know there is no predestined goal to intelligent species.
How do you figure? So far we have one data sample and it made an intelligent species (kinda), so why wouldn't that happen more than once?
Quote from: RonM
The Fermi paradox, like the Drake equation, is a great place to start examining possibilities, but it's not a scientific law.
That's why it's called a paradox. No matter how you slice it the numbers indicate we're probably not the first or the only life in the universe and it shouldn't be too hard to make it known to other life that you're out there... and yet we see nothing. We're missing a part of the puzzle.
Post by: RonM on 01/09/2018 02:15 am
If you know anything about evolution, you know there is no predestined goal to intelligent species.
How do you figure? So far we have one data sample and it made an intelligent species (kinda), so why wouldn't that happen more than once?Quote from: RonMThe Fermi paradox, like the Drake equation, is a great place to start examining possibilities, but it's not a scientific law.
That's why it's called a paradox. No matter how you slice it the numbers indicate we're probably not the first or the only life in the universe and it shouldn't be too hard to make it known to other life that you're out there... and yet we see nothing. We're missing a part of the puzzle.
Of course intelligent can evolve on other worlds. That doesn't mean it will evolve on every world that has life. Natural selection favors the individuals with the best traits at the time. It's not necessarily a march to intelligent beings. So, the big question is how common is intelligent life? As you pointed out, we only have one data point.
OK, I'm fine with saying the Fermi paradox shows we're missing a part of the puzzle. It's just some people use it to dismiss alternate ideas, like the one in previous posts about most intelligent species not developing technology (a possible great filter).
Maybe there is evidence of an ancient interstellar probe in our solar system that we haven't found yet. There's lots of places we haven't looked yet, might not recognize an advanced vehicle, etc.
Post by: hop on 01/09/2018 02:16 am
Back in 1950 when the Fermi Paradox got its start, the Steady State theory of the universe was a popular model and the Fermi Paradox assumption was reasonable given the infinite nature of the Steady State universe.This is not relevant to the original formulation of the Fermi Paradox. The crux of the "paradox" is the observation that one civilization with slow (i.e. far below the speed of light) travel can cover the galaxy on tens of million year timescales.
Post by: mme on 01/09/2018 02:18 am
Earth has had 5 major extinction events and the human race almost went extinct 70,000 years ago. I'd bet money there's lots of life in the universe and that intelligence has no doubt evolved other places and times. But I don't how often it gets to hang around to overlap close enough in space and time to detect one another.If you know anything about evolution, you know there is no predestined goal to intelligent species.
How do you figure? So far we have one data sample and it made an intelligent species (kinda), so why wouldn't that happen more than once?Quote from: RonMThe Fermi paradox, like the Drake equation, is a great place to start examining possibilities, but it's not a scientific law.
That's why it's called a paradox. No matter how you slice it the numbers indicate we're probably not the first or the only life in the universe and it shouldn't be too hard to make it known to other life that you're out there... and yet we see nothing. We're missing a part of the puzzle.
Von Neumann probes are a fun idea but we have no idea if we or any species could get to that level of technology. I agree we are missing a part of the puzzle but my guess is that the existence of a functional technological society on a rock hurtling through space is a rare and ephemeral thing.
If there is other intelligent life in our galaxy. it's probably the Pierson's Puppeteers. That is the best explanation I have for our continued existence.
Post by: Johnnyhinbos on 01/09/2018 02:29 am
The universe is about 14 billion years old... the Earth is about 4 billion years old and life started as quickly as it could, and here we are. So you're saying that for 10 billion years there was no other planets forming (wrong), or no life forming on those planets (why?) Just a single Earth-like planet forming 4.1 billion years ago and developing along the same timeline as Earth would give a technological civilization 100 million years to spread across the universe. If it's possible, we should be able to see them. We can't see them - it's a paradox.This is exactly my thinking as well.
* All numbers rounded up to the nearest billion so I don't have to be annoyingly accurate, okay.
And to add to that, there’s enough time in the history of the universe that civilizations could have risen and fallen over and over again - and so even if they have since fallen, they most likely would have generated some “wavefront” of electromagnetic radiation at some point of their existence that we’d be able to detect - from some point of their own history. I mean, our own civilization is continually reducing radiated signals that escape our planet, we are more and more efficient with narrow beamed transmissions at higher and higher frequencies - but it’s too late, we’ve already sent out our calling card. Hitler at the 1936 Olympics is already out there. A timestamp of our own history. And I’m sure every developing civilization would have a period in their own history where their own wavefront pushed away from their planet.
Sure, if you’re not looking in the right place, at the right time, with the right sensitivity, you’d miss a signal - but we’re talking 14 billion years. That’s a LOT of time. A lot of time to leave these electromagnetic “footprints” throughout our galaxy.
Post by: JH on 01/09/2018 03:06 am
The universe is about 14 billion years old... the Earth is about 4 billion years old and life started as quickly as it could, and here we are. So you're saying that for 10 billion years there was no other planets forming (wrong), or no life forming on those planets (why?) Just a single Earth-like planet forming 4.1 billion years ago and developing along the same timeline as Earth would give a technological civilization 100 million years to spread across the universe. If it's possible, we should be able to see them. We can't see them - it's a paradox.
The problem with this is your assumption of uniform source material for solar system formation throughout the history of the universe. This isn't the case, as heavy element enrichment has progressed steadily over generations of stellar development. As a result, while it seems entirely reasonable—and might in fact be so—that another technological civilization could have developed 100 Ma, we cannot be certain that this is true. We might be at the very beginning of the "viable stage" of the universe's development, either because life has certain prerequisites or because technological civilization cannot develop without ready access to large quantities of elements such as iron, for example.
Don't take this as me dismissing the Fermi paradox entirely, but appreciate that we don't fully understand what physical conditions were needed for us to be here.
Post by: notsorandom on 01/09/2018 03:59 am
Post by: deruch on 01/09/2018 11:35 am
Post by: Star One on 01/09/2018 04:52 pm
Quote
What do a strangely fading faraway star, an oddly shaped interstellar interloper in the solar system and a curious spate of UFO sightings by members of the U.S. military all have in common?
They are all mysterious, for one thing—eye-catchingly weird, yet still just hazy outlines that let the imagination run wild. All have recently generated headlines as possible signs of life and intelligence beyond Earth, of some mind-bogglingly advanced alien culture revealing its existence at last to our relatively primitive and planetbound civilization. Yet their most salient shared trait so far is the certainty they provoke in most scientists, who insist these developments represent nothing so sensational. Ask a savvy astronomer or physicist about any of these oddities, and they will tell you, as they have time and time before: It’s not aliens. In fact, it’s never aliens.
Far from being close-minded killjoys, most scientists in the “never aliens” camp desperately want to be convinced otherwise. Their default skeptical stance is a prophylactic against the wiles of wishful thinking, a dare to true believers to provide extraordinary evidence in support of extraordinary claims. What is really extraordinary, the skeptics say, is not so much the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence but rather the notion that its existence nearby or visitation of Earth could be something easily unnoticed or overlooked. If aliens are out there—or even right here—in abundance, particularly ones wildly advanced beyond our state, why would incontrovertible proof of that reality be so annoyingly elusive?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-never-aliens-until-it-is/
Post by: hop on 01/09/2018 05:11 pm
The problem with this is your assumption of uniform source material for solar system formation throughout the history of the universe. This isn't the case, as heavy element enrichment has progressed steadily over generations of stellar development. As a result, while it seems entirely reasonable—and might in fact be so—that another technological civilization could have developed 100 Ma, we cannot be certain that this is true. We might be at the very beginning of the "viable stage" of the universe's development, either because life has certain prerequisites or because technological civilization cannot develop without ready access to large quantities of elements such as iron, for example.IMHO, this doesn't really work. Metallicity varies locally depending on the history and of the star forming region, and most heavy elements are produced by short lived stars. I don't know what the current estimates are for the earliest Solar metallicity stars is, but it's surely billions of years earlier than our solar system. Wikipedia suggests (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_analog) solar metallicity stars with ages over 10 billion years are known.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 01/09/2018 05:53 pm
If you know anything about evolution, you know there is no predestined goal to intelligent species.
How do you figure? So far we have one data sample and it made an intelligent species (kinda), so why wouldn't that happen more than once?Quote from: RonMThe Fermi paradox, like the Drake equation, is a great place to start examining possibilities, but it's not a scientific law.
That's why it's called a paradox. No matter how you slice it the numbers indicate we're probably not the first or the only life in the universe and it shouldn't be too hard to make it known to other life that you're out there... and yet we see nothing. We're missing a part of the puzzle.
Life is probably extremely prevalent across the universe. I would expect virtually every habitable planet to be host to life forms.
However.
Simple, single-celled life forms were the only life on Earth for 3.5 billion years. We don't know why life jumped from simple, single-celled forms to multiple-celled critters. The Cambrian explosion was sudden and there's not much evidence available that can clue us in to why it happened, though it's an area of intense research. It's entirely possible that a planet could be inhabited by bacteria for tens of billions of years without any more complex life forming, particularly because we don't yet understand how it happened here.
Even if complex life forms, there's no guarantee that intelligence will arise. A whole host of complex environmental factors as well as a lot of evolutionary luck led to us. It's plain luck, for example, that we have both intelligence and dextrous hands able to create and manipulate complex tools.
Consider that Dolphins are very smart, but ... flippers. There could be very intelligent life forms swimming in alien seas, but smelting metals would be an entirely alien concept to them. They would never form a technological civilization.
There's also the material resources. Let's say a star system with a habitable planet formed 1 billion years after the big bang - it could be metal poor, if not enough stars had gone supernova by that point to produce vast quantities of iron, and so on. Intelligent life forms there wouldn't have much of the materials needed to form a technological civilization like we have.
We also have an abundance of calorie-rich food sources, many with seeds that are storable as grains. Farming these food sources allowed us to have much more "leisure time" to create and build technology and civilizations, rather than just hunting and gathering all the time. There's no guarantee that such food sources would be available on an alien world.
There's many more such examples if you think about it for a while.
Post by: jebbo on 01/09/2018 06:12 pm
IMHO, this doesn't really work. Metallicity varies locally depending on the history and of the star forming region, and most heavy elements are produced by short lived stars. I don't know what the current estimates are for the earliest Solar metallicity stars is, but it's surely billions of years earlier than our solar system. Wikipedia suggests (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_analog) solar metallicity stars with ages over 10 billion years are known.
I'd agree you can certainly get Solar metallicity stars much earlier ... I'm not that familiar with the literature in this area, but there's *loads* of studies of the age/metallicity relationship e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.07189 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.07189)
Edit: and this one gives a nice taster of what we can expect from Gaia for the Milky way https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01427 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.01427)
--- Tony
Post by: Dao Angkan on 01/09/2018 08:22 pm
Post by: Dao Angkan on 01/09/2018 08:39 pm
Simple, single-celled life forms were the only life on Earth for 3.5 billion years. We don't know why life jumped from simple, single-celled forms to multiple-celled critters. The Cambrian explosion was sudden and there's not much evidence available that can clue us in to why it happened, though it's an area of intense research. It's entirely possible that a planet could be inhabited by bacteria for tens of billions of years without any more complex life forming, particularly because we don't yet understand how it happened here.
This is really debatable, some argue that cyanobacteria were multicellular 3.5Gya, others differentiate between those and "complex multicellular organisms" (roughly the timescale that you argue for). I think that one thing that most agree on is that "complex life" could not have evolved without prior "basic life" oxygenating the atmosphere over several billions of years.
Post by: QuantumG on 01/09/2018 09:08 pm
Post by: whitelancer64 on 01/09/2018 09:18 pm
Post by: Dao Angkan on 01/09/2018 09:22 pm
It's quite possible that within many of our lifetimes that we will have a census of habitable zone terrestrial planet atmospheres. If we can detect O2 percentages in some atmospheres, then we can at least know that we're not unique (although we won't be able to prove that it was due to biological processes). Alternatively, we could find that no other planets have detectable levels of biomarkers, which would be an equally profound discovery.
Post by: Dao Angkan on 01/09/2018 10:52 pm
Now this is an intriguing theory.
Are Alien Civilizations Technologically Advanced?QuoteBased on our own experience, we expect that civilizations much older than ours will be scientifically savvy and hence technologically advanced. But it is also possible that a simpler lifestyle rather than scientific prosperity has dominated the political landscape on other planets, leading to old civilizations that are nevertheless technologically primitive.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/are-alien-civilizations-technologically-advanced/#
From my reading, this suffers from the same flaw that hampers so many attempted answers to the Fermi paradox. Namely that while this theory might apply to some alien civilizations, you only need one civilization that is aggressively expansionist to populate the entire galaxy with Von Neuman probes or some such scenario.
The latter seems unlikely even for an advanced civilisation due to the vast distances involved.
Astronomically speaking it would take very little time for a space faring civilisation to colonise the whole galaxy. If a civilisation "just" colonises the nearest 100 stars, and only 1% of those does the same, then exponentially the entire Milky Way would be colonised in as little as hundreds of thousands of years, maybe more realistically in tens of millions of years. If we assume that Earth like planets first started to be formed 10Gya, then the galaxy should have been colonised many times over.
We could argue that interstellar travel isn't practicle, but most stars aren't that far from each other, at 10% lightspeed most systems' closest stars should be achievable in current human lifetimes.
It should be noted that the earliest homo sapiens are thought to be 300,000 years old, theoretically we could colonise the entire galaxy in less time than we took to invent the microprocessor.
Post by: Star One on 01/10/2018 07:23 pm
Quote
Another possibility, though remote, is that the FRB is a high-powered signal from an advanced civilization. Hence the interest of Breakthrough Listen, which looks for signs of intelligent life in the universe, funded by $100 million over 10 years from internet investor Yuri Milner.
“Although it’s extremely unlikely that pulses we have detected from FRB 121102 were transmitted by ETs, we would like to test various ET hypotheses for the FRB type transient signals in general,” Gajjar said.
Breakthrough Listen has to date recorded data from a dozen FRBs, including FRB 121102, and plans eventually to sample all 30-some known sources of fast radio bursts.
“We want a complete sample so that we can conduct our standard SETI analysis in search of modulation patterns or narrow-band signals – any kind of information-bearing signal emitted from their direction that we don’t expect from nature,” he said.
http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/01/10/seti-project-homes-in-on-strange-fast-radio-bursts/
Post by: missinglink on 01/11/2018 10:22 pm
but it’s too late, we’ve already sent out our calling card. Hitler at the 1936 Olympics is already out there. A timestamp of our own history.That seems unlikely to me. Signal strength is so low to begin with and diminishes rapidly due to the inverse-square law, the signal becomes lost in noise not long after leaving the solar system.
Of course, the reverse is true as well. From Wikipedia's article on SETI:
Quote
For SERENDIP and most other SETI projects to detect a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, the civilization would have to be beaming a powerful signal directly at us.
The image this calls to mind is that of a soap bubble. You can touch it while it is expanding and moving, but only for a short time, then it pops (similar to EM radiation becoming too weak to detect).
Admittedly, the Intro to CONTACT (the movie starring Jodie Foster) showing successive broadcast signals going out into deep space was very cool 8)
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/12/2018 05:44 am
but it’s too late, we’ve already sent out our calling card. Hitler at the 1936 Olympics is already out there. A timestamp of our own history.That seems unlikely to me. Signal strength is so low to begin with and diminishes rapidly due to the inverse-square law, the signal becomes lost in noise not long after leaving the solar system.
Of course, the reverse is true as well. From Wikipedia's article on SETI:QuoteFor SERENDIP and most other SETI projects to detect a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, the civilization would have to be beaming a powerful signal directly at us.
The image this calls to mind is that of a soap bubble. You can touch it while it is expanding and moving, but only for a short time, then it pops (similar to EM radiation becoming too weak to detect).
Admittedly, the Intro to CONTACT (the movie starring Jodie Foster) showing successive broadcast signals going out into deep space was very cool 8)
That's why I don't see the lack of radio signals as an issue as far as the Fermi Paradox is concerned. It is quite plausible that most general signals originate from too far away too reach us, and that no one feels it is worth the effort to send a high powered beam directly to us, in the hope of hearing back in a few thousand years.
The lack of physical evidence of ET intelligence, such as Von Neuman probes, distant megastructures etc. is what seems like a stronger argument to me. We might receive a signal from another star one day, but I don't see the lack of such a signal as a problem.
Post by: Johnnyhinbos on 01/12/2018 11:14 am
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/01/12/are-aliens-plentiful-but-were-just-missing-them/
Post by: Star One on 01/16/2018 07:19 pm
Quote
What follows is my submission to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine ad hoc Committee on Astrobiology Science Strategy for Life in the Universe, 2018. It is available as a PDF here.
Please also see Jill Tarter’s companion white paper here.
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2018/01/16/seti-is-part-of-astrobiology/
Post by: moreno7798 on 01/16/2018 10:57 pm
The vast majority of the universe may sees us as the extremophiles of the universe. That is because the vast majority of the universe probably lives in in much colder and darker environments where energy is not derived from heat and Photosynthesis is not a thing. Any aliens living in those environments are probably not sending signals to planets close to stars. They could be looking in the space between the stars. The perception of where life in the universe may lie is relative to your perception of what life may be. They probably consider anything that close to a star to be devoid of life. That could be a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Post by: RotoSequence on 01/17/2018 12:12 am
My bet is that to the universe earth is basically a niche extremophile environment. Think about it, a planet living very close to a hot star. So hot that biology becomes liquid. Water may be one of the most dangerous poisonous liquids in the universe but hey we're made of it so that's what we think life is composed of.
The vast majority of the universe may sees us as the extremophiles of the universe. That is because the vast majority of the universe probably lives in in much colder and darker environments where energy is not derived from heat and Photosynthesis is not a thing. Any aliens living in those environments are probably not sending signals to planets close to stars. They could be looking in the space between the stars. The perception of where life in the universe may lie is relative to your perception of what life may be. They probably consider anything that close to a star to be devoid of life. That could be a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox.
It's a fun idea for sci-fi authors, but interesting chemistry with common elements seems to prefer Room Temperature. ;)
Post by: Welsh Dragon on 01/17/2018 07:55 am
<snip>. Water may be one of the most dangerous poisonous liquids in the universe but hey we're made of it so that's what we think life is composed of. </snip>Oxygen is the poison, not water.
Post by: Bynaus on 01/17/2018 08:32 am
Quote
The perception of where life in the universe may lie is relative to your perception of what life may be.
Maybe - but the argument of mediocrity (we are much more likely to be typical, rather than atypical) would suggest that this is a low-probability suggestion.
Post by: RotoSequence on 01/17/2018 08:46 am
QuoteThe perception of where life in the universe may lie is relative to your perception of what life may be.
Maybe - but the argument of mediocrity (we are much more likely to be typical, rather than atypical) would suggest that this is a low-probability suggestion.
The Kepler dataset shows that The Solar System has an uncommon arrangement of planets compared to most stars. The odds may be long, but sometimes you hit the jackpot, and space gives you trillions of chances to try your odds.
Post by: jebbo on 01/17/2018 09:18 am
The Kepler dataset shows that The Solar System has an uncommon arrangement of planets compared to most stars. The odds may be long, but sometimes you hit the jackpot, and space gives you trillions of chances to try your odds.
We're not really that sure of the occurrence rates of systems like ours yet as it is very hard to detect systems with a similar architecture to ours (and not just for Kepler). Yes, they seem to be rarer, but how rare is unknown. Essentially all current detection methods are biased towards larger planets on shorter period orbits. So the catalogues are strongly biased towards compact systems & hot Jupiters ...
However, RV searches have yielded a number of Jupiter analogues - but this requires >10 years of data, so the number of systems is limited.
We'll have a better idea (at least for Jupiter-analogue occurrence rates) in a few years when the Gaia planet catalogue is released as astrometry is biased towards finding planets on wider orbits (from memory, Jupiter distance is about the optimum).
--- Tony
Post by: Bynaus on 01/17/2018 10:00 am
QuoteThe perception of where life in the universe may lie is relative to your perception of what life may be.
Maybe - but the argument of mediocrity (we are much more likely to be typical, rather than atypical) would suggest that this is a low-probability suggestion.
The Kepler dataset shows that The Solar System has an uncommon arrangement of planets compared to most stars. The odds may be long, but sometimes you hit the jackpot, and space gives you trillions of chances to try your odds.
But most of the times, you don't hit the jackpot. So the proposal of having hit it (without knowing) must be characterized as a low-probability proposition. This is all I am saying.
For the Kepler system, as jebbo just mentioned, its not yet fully clear what this means. But on top of that, there might be an anthropic bias involved (of which we are not yet aware), so that compact systems might be less habitable. There is a similar situation with the Sun not being an M-dwarf although the latter being very common: you could explain this by "luck", but perhaps M-dwarfs are just not as habitable as G-dwarfs.
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/17/2018 10:04 am
For example, in our own solar system, we are the only one of eight planets that has intelligent life, most likely the only one out of eight that has any complex life, and as far as we know, the only one with even simple life.
So clearly, we aren't mediocre within the population of our Solar System. We are quite unique.
Next, our Sun, based on some cursory Googling, appears to be of a type (G-type main sequence), that only represents 5% or so of all observable stars in the Universe. So once again, we can't really say that sun-like stars are mediocre, if they only represent one in twenty stars out there.
Obviously this list can go on, for example the relative size and influence of our Moon would appear not to be mediocre at all, etc. etc.
My point being, under what parameters do we feel that our planet should be considered "Mediocre"? Or is it based more on a philosophical principle, rather than any kind of physical evidence?
Post by: Alpha_Centauri on 01/17/2018 10:27 am
Simple probability dictates that it is unlikely by chance to happen to find yourself a member of an extreme group, just as it is unlikely to pick out the one red ball in a bag of 9 other black balls, so the default (though not necessarily correct) assumption is that we are unlikely to be that unusual in the context of other life. This of course is rather negated if we are the first example of sentient life so the bag is low on balls.
This is a separate question to the rarity of the conditions in which we formed. Think of it like this, you have 5 oases in a 1000 sq km desert. The chances that the first oasis you come across hosts very different life to that in the other four is low, but this has no relation to the rarity of the conditions (an oasis in the desert) that allows any of these ecosystems to develop.
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/17/2018 10:31 am
You weren't claiming that the Earth or the Solar System were rare, you were claiming that life such as ours is extreme compared to life elsewhere in the universe. Those are two different arguments.
Simple probability dictates that it is unlikely by chance to happen to find yourself a member of an extreme group, just as it is unlikely to pick out the one red ball in a bag of 9 other black balls, so the default (though not necessarily correct) assumption is that we are unlikely to be that unusual in the context of other life. This of course is rather negated if we are the first example of sentient life so the bag is low on balls.
This is a separate question to the rarity of the conditions in which we formed. Think of it like this, you have 5 oases in a 1000 sq km desert. The chances that the first oasis you come across is hosts radically different life to that in the other four is low, but this has no relation to the rarity of the conditions (an oasis in the desert) that allows any of these ecosystems to develop.
Sorry, I thought the whole point of the Mediocrity Principle is that neither the Earth nor the fact that it has life on it is particularly special.
Post by: jebbo on 01/17/2018 10:32 am
For the Kepler system, as jebbo just mentioned, its not yet fully clear what this means. But on top of that, there might be an anthropic bias involved (of which we are not yet aware), so that compact systems might be less habitable. There is a similar situation with the Sun not being an M-dwarf although the latter being very common: you could explain this by "luck", but perhaps M-dwarfs are just not as habitable as G-dwarfs.
Given their activity when young, I lean towards the view that planets around M-dwarfs are less likely to be habitable due to atmosphere / volatiles being stripped. Some might be habitable, but this depends on formation models and the initial volatile fraction ...
--- Tony
Post by: Bynaus on 01/17/2018 10:55 am
For the Kepler system, as jebbo just mentioned, its not yet fully clear what this means. But on top of that, there might be an anthropic bias involved (of which we are not yet aware), so that compact systems might be less habitable. There is a similar situation with the Sun not being an M-dwarf although the latter being very common: you could explain this by "luck", but perhaps M-dwarfs are just not as habitable as G-dwarfs.
Given their activity when young, I lean towards the view that planets around M-dwarfs are less likely to be habitable due to atmosphere / volatiles being stripped. Some might be habitable, but this depends on formation models and the initial volatile fraction ...
--- Tony
I lean towards agreeing with you. :) Stripping of atmospheres, combined with tidal lock. While I know that some models suggest that tidal lock and backside freezout is not a big problem if the atmosphere is thick enough, it still erases quite a bit of the habitable parameter space (i.e., if the atmosphere is not thick enough). Combine this with atmospheric erosion and the lack of a strong magnetic field due to slow, locked rotation (further helping with that atmospheric erosion) and we end up in a situation where most rocky planets around M-dwarfs would be poor in volatiles. There might be caveats (e.g., the low density of some of the Trappist-1 planets, although within large errors), and perhaps habitability doesn't really need an atmosphere (-> Europa, Enceladus), but at least Earth-like planets will have a hard time to survive long enough to come up with complex life around an M-dwarf.
Post by: jebbo on 01/17/2018 11:08 am
I love these compact systems with near-MMR resonance chains!
Hopefully TESS will find a few more of them (there's a new TESS M-dwarf yield paper on arxiv today: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04949 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04949))
Edit: this does relate to the discussion on "mediocrity" and is not just tangential: if the chances of M-dwarf planets being habitable are substantially less than those for FGK stars, the fact that we orbit a G star becomes less surprising, even though most planets may be around M-dwarfs.
--- Tony
Post by: Alpha_Centauri on 01/17/2018 11:13 am
You weren't claiming that the Earth or the Solar System were rare, you were claiming that life such as ours is extreme compared to life elsewhere in the universe. Those are two different arguments.
Simple probability dictates that it is unlikely by chance to happen to find yourself a member of an extreme group, just as it is unlikely to pick out the one red ball in a bag of 9 other black balls, so the default (though not necessarily correct) assumption is that we are unlikely to be that unusual in the context of other life. This of course is rather negated if we are the first example of sentient life so the bag is low on balls.
This is a separate question to the rarity of the conditions in which we formed. Think of it like this, you have 5 oases in a 1000 sq km desert. The chances that the first oasis you come across is hosts radically different life to that in the other four is low, but this has no relation to the rarity of the conditions (an oasis in the desert) that allows any of these ecosystems to develop.
Sorry, I thought the whole point of the Mediocrity Principle is that neither the Earth nor the fact that it has life on it is particularly special.
If every star system in our galaxy has 8 planets with only one of them being habitable, then is the Earth special for being a one-in-eight occurrence or nothing much to write home about because there would be ~100 Billion earths in our galaxy? You are getting hung-up on the term mediocrity, we are really talking about probabilities. Probabilities are set-dependant. "Special" is relative to the set you are considering.
Post by: Alpha_Centauri on 01/17/2018 11:23 am
Post by: jebbo on 01/17/2018 11:28 am
Quote
NASA’s TESS Mission (Ricker et al. 2014) will furnish the vast majority of small, rocky planets for atmospheric study
:)
--- Tony
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/17/2018 11:36 am
You weren't claiming that the Earth or the Solar System were rare, you were claiming that life such as ours is extreme compared to life elsewhere in the universe. Those are two different arguments.
Simple probability dictates that it is unlikely by chance to happen to find yourself a member of an extreme group, just as it is unlikely to pick out the one red ball in a bag of 9 other black balls, so the default (though not necessarily correct) assumption is that we are unlikely to be that unusual in the context of other life. This of course is rather negated if we are the first example of sentient life so the bag is low on balls.
This is a separate question to the rarity of the conditions in which we formed. Think of it like this, you have 5 oases in a 1000 sq km desert. The chances that the first oasis you come across is hosts radically different life to that in the other four is low, but this has no relation to the rarity of the conditions (an oasis in the desert) that allows any of these ecosystems to develop.
Sorry, I thought the whole point of the Mediocrity Principle is that neither the Earth nor the fact that it has life on it is particularly special.
If every star system in our galaxy has 8 planets with only one of them being habitable, then is the Earth special for being a one-in-eight occurrence or nothing much to write home about because there would be ~100 Billion earths in our galaxy? You are getting hung-up on the term mediocrity, we are really talking about probabilities. Probabilities are set-dependant. "Special" is relative to the set you are considering.
I think that is what I'm trying to get at. Which is that the definition of the "set" is based on a lot of assumptions, and if you add enough conditions that must be met by the set, the population of the set might well drop very low.
For example. You used an example population of 100 billion stars in the galaxy. Then yes, if that is the extent of the criteria that allows for inclusion in the set, there should indeed be many planets like ours.
However, if we narrow it down to sun-like stars, that drops the size of the population to say 20 billion (random number for sake of argument). If only 10% of those have rocky planets in the habitable zone, that drops it down to 2 billion. If only 10% of those are in the right region of the galaxy, that drops it down to 200 million.
If only 10% of those have plate tectonics, then you are down to 20 million. Add the need for a Moon similar to ours, and it may cut that number by a factor of 1000, bringing us down to 20,000.
These are just random criteria with random probabilities added for sake of demonstration. But the point is, if you define the "set" with sufficient criteria (many of whom we may not be aware of yet), it is quite conceivable that we may indeed end up being a typical member of a set containing a grand total of 1 star system or fewer.
I think that is basically the Rare Earth Hypothesis just rephrased in fairly clumsy manner by me.
Post by: Alpha_Centauri on 01/17/2018 11:50 am
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/17/2018 12:03 pm
Yes that is all well and true but, getting back to the original point, we are unlikely to be an extreme member of the set of sentient life. How rare that set is is dependant on a lot of variables. If it is so rare you could count the members on your hand it makes little sense to be talking about extremes in the first place.
OK, maybe I'm arguing about the wrong thing here, then. In my experience the Mediocrity Principle is usually invoked to argue against the idea that life (let's focus on sentient life in this case) is rare in the Universe. I have never seen it used to argue that other sentient life should be fairly similar to us. But I guess it can be applied in that manner too. But sure, that's not the argument I was engaging in.
My focus was on whether there is other sentient life at all.
Post by: Star One on 01/17/2018 04:34 pm
For the Kepler system, as jebbo just mentioned, its not yet fully clear what this means. But on top of that, there might be an anthropic bias involved (of which we are not yet aware), so that compact systems might be less habitable. There is a similar situation with the Sun not being an M-dwarf although the latter being very common: you could explain this by "luck", but perhaps M-dwarfs are just not as habitable as G-dwarfs.
Given their activity when young, I lean towards the view that planets around M-dwarfs are less likely to be habitable due to atmosphere / volatiles being stripped. Some might be habitable, but this depends on formation models and the initial volatile fraction ...
--- Tony
Well being as nature constantly surprises us, plus these models are still being refined almost it seems on a yearly basis I wouldn’t bet your house on the inhospitably of M dwarf class systems. Especially as we know nothing of the atmospheres of the planets in such systems.
Post by: CuddlyRocket on 01/17/2018 07:14 pm
Next, our Sun, based on some cursory Googling, appears to be of a type (G-type main sequence), that only represents 5% or so of all observable stars in the Universe.
'In the Universe' over-estimates the strength of our knowledge of star population distributions. Basically, we can only do surveys within range of our telescopes - which is longer for brighter stars - which we can call our 'solar neighbourhood'. And then we have to add the caveat that our neighbourhood may not be typical - but we can pray in aid the principle of mediocrity there!
So, in the solar neighbourhood, 7.5% of stars are Class G main sequence. Class K are 12% and Class M, 76%. (For completeness, Class F 3%, Class A 0.63%, Class B 0.13% and Class O 0.00003%.) Though Gaia will be doing a more complete survey, so it will be interesting to see if these figures shift significantly.
Post by: Star One on 01/20/2018 08:12 pm
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2018/01/20/seti-is-not-about-getting-attention/
Post by: ikke666 on 01/21/2018 04:47 pm
Post by: Paul451 on 01/29/2018 09:45 pm
if you add enough conditions that must be met by the set, the population of the set might well drop very low.
For example. You used an example population of 100 billion stars in the galaxy. [..]
if we narrow it down to sun-like stars, that drops the size of the population to say 20 billion [..]
If only 10% of those have rocky planets in the habitable zone, that drops it down to 2 billion.
If only 10% of those are in the right region of the galaxy, that drops it down to 200 million.
If only 10% of those have plate tectonics, then you are down to 20 million. [etc]
Congratulations, you've just reinvented the Drake Equation.
Can someone help me to understand some of the parameters of the Mediocrity Principle.
It's just the idea that across measurable traits, 95% of the time we should be within the middle 95% of measured values. 50% of traits we should be in the middle 50%, 25% of traits we should be in the top 25%, another 25% we should be in the bottom 25%. And so on and so on.
It's... well, a pretty mundane principle.
The thing you seem to miss is that the same Principle says that we shouldn't expect to be "average". By chance alone, you've the same probability of being in the top 10% as in the middle 10%. Measure enough traits and we're going to fall in the high or low end, or dead centre, of some of them simply by chance. The Mediocrity Principle just serves as a warning not to read too much into that.
For example, in our own solar system, we are the only one of eight planets that has intelligent life, most likely the only one out of eight that has any complex life, and as far as we know, the only one with even simple life.
1 in 8. 12.5%. Mundane result.
(I'd also say that 100% of planets within the Sun's habitable zone have life, but that's circular reasoning, obviously. Anthropic principle.)
Next, our Sun, based on some cursory Googling, appears to be of a type (G-type main sequence), that only represents 5% or so of all observable stars in the Universe.
Within the middle 95%. Not "average", but still mundane. (5% also leaves you with 10 billion stars to play with in just this galaxy.)
But that's an arbitrary, human made category. Why only G and not G+K? Or F+G+K? Or why all of G, and not just G2V? This is where having a sample size of 1 hurts us. We know that the range of conditions supporting life, intelligence and technological civilisation includes Earth, but how narrowly is it prescribed around Earth? We don't know.
My point being, under what parameters do we feel that our planet should be considered "Mediocre"? Or is it based more on a philosophical principle, rather than any kind of physical evidence?
In a Bayesian probability calculation, it serves as your prior probability. That's all.
For example: Kepler (and other systems for detecting planets) have a bias towards finding larger and closer planets. So when you look at the data, how do you tell what's significant? You assume that all planets are equally likely, then predict (based on Kepler's bias) what that distribution of planets would look like to Kepler, then you look at what Kepler actually found and note the differences.
Result? Sub-Neptune/Super-Earths (which our solar system lacks) appear to be more common than Earths, and much more common that Jupiters/Saturns. Neptunes are slightly more common than Jupiter/Saturns. Earth-likes (Earth/Venus) are not particularly rare. (Sub-Earths (Mars/Mercury) are still too hard to find to draw a meaningful conclusions.) It looks like there's a weird pattern to the size of sub-Jupiters, they tend to congregate around certain values. Most common are around 2-3 Earth-radii, about 20% of stars. A sharp drop off above 3 Earth-radii (Neptune/Uranus are around 4.) But also a weird drop around 1.8. Then an increase to the next most common value, 1.3 or so Earth-radii, about 10-15% of stars. Then another dip around 1.2 E(r). Then 1 Earth-radius, about 6% of stars. So Earths aren't the most likely, but they are common as muck. One of the three most common sizes of planets. Pretty mundane, you might say.
Other results? Every multi-planet system seems to be fairly unique. Some are dominated by large planets, most by small planets, some have a mix. Some have large outers, small inners, some alternate large/small. So you could say that the Solar System is unique. Or that it's mundane. Depending on how you look at it. Absence of a pattern is the pattern. Definitely not what we were expecting.
And planets in multi-planet systems are typically distributed across what we think is the habitable zone. It's rare to find a system orbiting entirely within, or entirely without the habitable zone.
No papers, but some images that popped up easily...
(https://assets.cdn.spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/22121356/press-web19_small_planets_two_sizes.jpg) (https://assets.cdn.spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/22121356/press-web19_small_planets_two_sizes.jpg)
(https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/622585main_kepler_planetary_systems.jpg) (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/622585main_kepler_planetary_systems.jpg)
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/08/04/10/36DD558A00000578-0-A_team_of_astronomers_have_narrowed_down_this_list_to_those_with-a-27_1470303376286.jpg) (http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/08/04/10/36DD558A00000578-0-A_team_of_astronomers_have_narrowed_down_this_list_to_those_with-a-27_1470303376286.jpg)
Post by: Paul451 on 01/29/2018 09:55 pm
In my experience the Mediocrity Principle is usually invoked to argue against the idea that life (let's focus on sentient life in this case) is rare in the Universe. I have never seen it used to argue that other sentient life should be fairly similar to us.
It applies to everything. It's just the baseline assumption behind any traits you are measuring. Any traits. It's not a SETI thing.
I have never seen it used to argue that other sentient life should be fairly similar to us.
They should neither be very like us, nor very unlike us. On a bell curve of key traits, we shouldn't be exactly in the middle, but we certainly shouldn't be out off the end of the curve. OTOH, someone has to be. So measure enough traits and we'll be in the heart of the bell-curve on most of them, on the fringes of a few.
That's all the Mediocrity Principle is saying.
But it means that when someone shouts "Why should They be like Us!" The answer is, "Why shouldn't they?" Because neither has preference.
Post by: ExoExplorer on 02/04/2018 07:35 pm
Given their activity when young, I lean towards the view that planets around M-dwarfs are less likely to be habitable due to atmosphere / volatiles being stripped. Some might be habitable, but this depends on formation models and the initial volatile fraction ...In fact, recent water loss modelings on planets around M-dwarfs found the lost amount during PMS is rather insignificant. Energy-limited formula predicts no more than a few Earth oceans would be lost. The planet mantle also has the potential to store tens of Earth oceans of water and degasses it back to surface at later time.
--- Tony
Earth was assembled from giant impacts during the first 100 Myr. Each impact was strong enough to melt the mantle and form magma ocean lasting for several Myr, so Earth also spent a lot of time in runaway greenhouse state during the first 100 Myr. The young sun emitted strong XUV and stellar wind that were comparable to or even stronger than MS M-dwarfs, but no evidence supports that Earth has lost a large amount of volatile.
I lean towards agreeing with you. :) Stripping of atmospheres, combined with tidal lock. While I know that some models suggest that tidal lock and backside freezout is not a big problem if the atmosphere is thick enough, it still erases quite a bit of the habitable parameter space (i.e., if the atmosphere is not thick enough). Combine this with atmospheric erosion and the lack of a strong magnetic field due to slow, locked rotation (further helping with that atmospheric erosion) and we end up in a situation where most rocky planets around M-dwarfs would be poor in volatiles. There might be caveats (e.g., the low density of some of the Trappist-1 planets, although within large errors), and perhaps habitability doesn't really need an atmosphere (-> Europa, Enceladus), but at least Earth-like planets will have a hard time to survive long enough to come up with complex life around an M-dwarf.N2 is resistant to atmospheric collapse (condensing on the dark side). Earth-like atmosphere or 1 bar of N2 is already enough to avoid condensation in the most part of habitable-zone. Indeed, lack of planetary magnetic field poses a threat to habitable planets around M-dwarfs, but the erosion would take at much longer timescale, so it can be replenished through tectonic and volcanic outgassing. The indication of CO2 atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1b observed by Spitzer, if confirmed, would be the evidence of volcanic outgassing secondary atmosphere.
There are actually a few advantages. Tidal locking can extend the habitable-zone by weakening Coriolis force and increasing dayside albedo, so the planets at much closer distance can still possess moderate surface temperature. Tidal heating can provide extra energy and extend the lifetime of geological cycles. M-dwarf planets are much less susceptible to snowball, glaciation and limit cycle (very unstable climate), because M-dwarfs emit much light at near-IR wavelengths.
The low-density nature of TRAPPIST-1 planets, if confirmed, implies they have volatile mass fractions up to a few to tens percent, equivalent to hundreds of Earth oceans (Earth has only ~0.1%). It is debatable that such volatile-rich planets can be habitable. In fact, a planet with Earth-like volatile is indistinguishable from a pure rock planet based on today's technology and radius-mass chart.
Post by: Dao Angkan on 02/04/2018 10:52 pm
Post by: ExoExplorer on 02/05/2018 12:03 am
Post by: CuddlyRocket on 02/05/2018 07:38 pm
Why would the Coriolis force be significant? Surely in tidally locked planets then the coriolis force would be insignificant.
Tidally locked planets still spin - once per year, in fact! The significance of the Coriolis force for a tidally locked planet therefore depends on the length of its year. For the seven planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system, the year ranges between 1.5 and 18.8 Earth days. For the innermost planet, the Coriolis force would seem to be roughly as significant as it is on Earth (assuming it has an atmosphere that is!).
Post by: jebbo on 02/05/2018 07:56 pm
Earth was assembled from giant impacts during the first 100 Myr. Each impact was strong enough to melt the mantle and form magma ocean lasting for several Myr, so Earth also spent a lot of time in runaway greenhouse state during the first 100 Myr. The young sun emitted strong XUV and stellar wind that were comparable to or even stronger than PMS M-dwarfs, but no evidence supports that Earth has lost a large amount of volatile.
Figure 1 of https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7412 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7412) suggests otherwise, by large factors.
--- Tony
Post by: ExoExplorer on 02/06/2018 12:18 am
Figure 1 of https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7412 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.7412) suggests otherwise, by large factors.My mistake, I meant to say it was comparable to MS m-dwarfs, not PMS.
--- Tony
Post by: Star One on 02/07/2018 07:50 pm
Quote
Analysis of Kepler mission data suggests that the Milky Way includes billions of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of their host star. Current technology enables the detection of technosignatures emitted from a large fraction of the Galaxy. We describe a search for technosignatures that is sensitive to Arecibo-class transmitters located within ~450 ly of Earth and transmitters that are 1000 times more effective than Arecibo within ~14 000 ly of Earth. Our observations focused on 14 planetary systems in the Kepler field and used the L-band receiver (1.15-1.73 GHz) of the 100 m diameter Green Bank Telescope. Each source was observed for a total integration time of 5 minutes. We obtained power spectra at a frequency resolution of 3 Hz and examined narrowband signals with Doppler drift rates between +/-9 Hz s-1. We flagged any detection with a signal-to-noise ratio in excess of 10 as a candidate signal and identified approximately 850 000 candidates. Most (99%) of these candidate signals were automatically classified as human-generated radio-frequency interference (RFI). A large fraction (>99%) of the remaining candidate signals were also flagged as anthropogenic RFI because they have frequencies that overlap those used by global navigation satellite systems, satellite downlinks, or other interferers detected in heavily polluted regions of the spectrum. All 19 remaining candidate signals were scrutinized and none could be attributed to an extraterrestrial source.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.01081
Post by: Star One on 02/09/2018 06:47 am
Quote
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence should be a part of the agency’s Astrobiology mission—but thanks to a 1993 law, it’s not
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/nasa-should-start-funding-seti-again/
Post by: Star One on 02/18/2018 08:41 pm
Quote
Most Americans would probably be thrilled to learn extraterrestrials (intelligent or not) exist. Other nationalities beg to differ
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-humanity-ready-for-the-discovery-of-alien-life/
Post by: RotoSequence on 02/23/2018 07:41 am
Quote
Possible Photometric Signatures of Moderately Advanced Civilizations: The Clarke Exobelt
Hector Socas-Navarro
(Submitted on 21 Feb 2018)
This paper puts forward a possible new indicator for the presence of moderately advanced civilizations on transiting exoplanets. The idea is to examine the region of space around a planet where potential geostationary or geosynchronous satellites would orbit (herafter, the Clarke exobelt). Civilizations with a high density of devices and/or space junk in that region, but otherwise similar to ours in terms of space technology (our working definition of "moderately advanced"), may leave a noticeable imprint on the light curve of the parent star. The main contribution to such signature comes from the exobelt edge, where its opacity is maximum due to geometrical projection. Numerical simulations have been conducted for a variety of possible scenarios. In some cases, a Clarke exobelt with a fractional face-on opacity of ~1E-4 would be easily observable with existing instrumentation. Simulations of Clarke exobelts and natural rings are used to quantify how they can be distinguished by their light curve.
Post by: Star One on 03/15/2018 06:46 am
http://aasnova.org/2018/03/13/can-we-detect-alien-civilizations-from-their-space-junk/
Post by: Star One on 04/04/2018 08:11 pm
Quote
The transit method is presently the most successful planet discovery and characterization tool at our disposal. Other advanced civilizations would surely be aware of this technique and appreciate that their home planet's existence and habitability is essentially broadcast to all stars lying along their ecliptic plane. We suggest that advanced civilizations could cloak their presence, or deliberately broadcast it, through controlled laser emission. Such emission could distort the apparent shape of their transit light curves with relatively little energy, due to the collimated beam and relatively infrequent nature of transits. We estimate that humanity could cloak the Earth from Kepler-like broadband surveys using an optical monochromatic laser array emitting a peak power of about 30 MW for roughly 10 hours per year. A chromatic cloak, effective at all wavelengths, is more challenging requiring a large array of tunable lasers with a total power of approximately 250 MW. Alternatively, a civilization could cloak only the atmospheric signatures associated with biological activity on their world, such as oxygen, which is achievable with a peak laser power of just around 160 kW per transit. Finally, we suggest that the time of transit for optical SETI is analogous to the water-hole in radio SETI, providing a clear window in which observers may expect to communicate. Accordingly, we propose that a civilization may deliberately broadcast their technological capabilities by distorting their transit to an artificial shape, which serves as both a SETI beacon and a medium for data transmission. Such signatures could be readily searched in the archival data of transit surveys.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08928
Post by: Star One on 04/10/2018 08:38 pm
Interstellar communication. X. The colors of optical SETI
Michael Hippke
(Submitted on 4 Apr 2018)
It has recently been argued from a laser engineering point of view that there are only a few magic colors for optical SETI. These are primarily the Nd:YAG line at 1064 nm and its second harmonic 532.1 nm. Next best choices would be the sum frequency and/or second harmonic generation of Nd:YAG and Nd:YLF laser lines, 393.8 nm (near Fraunhofer CaK), 656.5 nm (Hα) and 589.1 nm (NaD2). In this paper, we examine the interstellar extinction, atmospheric transparency and scintillation, as well as noise conditions for these laser lines. For strong signals, we find that optical wavelengths are optimal for distances d≲kpc. Nd:YAG at λ=1,064nm is a similarly good choice, within a factor of two, under most conditions and out to d≲3kpc. For weaker transmitters, where the signal-to-noise ratio with respect to the blended host star is relevant, the optimal wavelength depends on the background source, such as the stellar type. Fraunhofer spectral lines, while providing lower stellar background noise, are irrelevant in most use cases, as they are overpowered by other factors. Laser-pushed spaceflight concepts, such as "Breakthrough Starshot", would produce brighter and tighter beams than ever assumed for OSETI. Such beamers would appear as naked eye stars out to kpc distances. If laser physics has already matured and converged on the most efficient technology, the laser line of choice for a given scenario (e.g., Nd:YAG for strong signals) can be observed with a narrow filter to dramatically reduce background noise, allowing for large field-of-view observations in fast surveys.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01249
Post by: philw1776 on 04/10/2018 08:58 pm
Interstellar communication. X. The colors of optical SETI
Michael Hippke
(Submitted on 4 Apr 2018)
It has recently been argued from a laser engineering point of view that there are only a few magic colors for optical SETI. These are primarily the Nd:YAG line at 1064 nm and its second harmonic 532.1 nm. Next best choices would be the sum frequency and/or second harmonic generation of Nd:YAG and Nd:YLF laser lines, 393.8 nm (near Fraunhofer CaK), 656.5 nm (Hα) and 589.1 nm (NaD2). In this paper, we examine the interstellar extinction, atmospheric transparency and scintillation, as well as noise conditions for these laser lines. For strong signals, we find that optical wavelengths are optimal for distances d≲kpc. Nd:YAG at λ=1,064nm is a similarly good choice, within a factor of two, under most conditions and out to d≲3kpc. For weaker transmitters, where the signal-to-noise ratio with respect to the blended host star is relevant, the optimal wavelength depends on the background source, such as the stellar type. Fraunhofer spectral lines, while providing lower stellar background noise, are irrelevant in most use cases, as they are overpowered by other factors. Laser-pushed spaceflight concepts, such as "Breakthrough Starshot", would produce brighter and tighter beams than ever assumed for OSETI. Such beamers would appear as naked eye stars out to kpc distances. If laser physics has already matured and converged on the most efficient technology, the laser line of choice for a given scenario (e.g., Nd:YAG for strong signals) can be observed with a narrow filter to dramatically reduce background noise, allowing for large field-of-view observations in fast surveys.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01249
Impressive. Any back of the envelope calcs on the beam width at varied distances 1pc to 1kpc?
Post by: Star One on 04/10/2018 10:05 pm
Interstellar communication. X. The colors of optical SETI
Michael Hippke
(Submitted on 4 Apr 2018)
It has recently been argued from a laser engineering point of view that there are only a few magic colors for optical SETI. These are primarily the Nd:YAG line at 1064 nm and its second harmonic 532.1 nm. Next best choices would be the sum frequency and/or second harmonic generation of Nd:YAG and Nd:YLF laser lines, 393.8 nm (near Fraunhofer CaK), 656.5 nm (Hα) and 589.1 nm (NaD2). In this paper, we examine the interstellar extinction, atmospheric transparency and scintillation, as well as noise conditions for these laser lines. For strong signals, we find that optical wavelengths are optimal for distances d≲kpc. Nd:YAG at λ=1,064nm is a similarly good choice, within a factor of two, under most conditions and out to d≲3kpc. For weaker transmitters, where the signal-to-noise ratio with respect to the blended host star is relevant, the optimal wavelength depends on the background source, such as the stellar type. Fraunhofer spectral lines, while providing lower stellar background noise, are irrelevant in most use cases, as they are overpowered by other factors. Laser-pushed spaceflight concepts, such as "Breakthrough Starshot", would produce brighter and tighter beams than ever assumed for OSETI. Such beamers would appear as naked eye stars out to kpc distances. If laser physics has already matured and converged on the most efficient technology, the laser line of choice for a given scenario (e.g., Nd:YAG for strong signals) can be observed with a narrow filter to dramatically reduce background noise, allowing for large field-of-view observations in fast surveys.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01249
Impressive. Any back of the envelope calcs on the beam width at varied distances 1pc to 1kpc?
Actually it was who the author was caught my attention.
Post by: LouScheffer on 04/12/2018 05:41 pm
This is based on Which colors would extraterrestrial civilizations use to transmit signals?: The “magic wavelengths” for optical SETI (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1384107616301993) which in my opinion is a very weak argument. Just because Nd:YAG lasers are the best for us now does not mean they are the best for everyone, for all time. Other civilizations may well have discovered different combinations of compunds that are similarly efficient. Furthermore, there are lots of possible technology developments in metamaterials, quantum waveguides, and so on, that could lead to arbitrary wavelengths. Also, for long term use, it might be better to pick a technology that can be pumped directly by radiation from the sun, where the easy availability of free power might be cheaper for a given power output, even if the efficiency is lower.
Interstellar communication. X. The colors of optical SETI
Michael Hippke
(Submitted on 4 Apr 2018)
It has recently been argued from a laser engineering point of view that there are only a few magic colors for optical SETI. These are primarily the Nd:YAG line at 1064 nm and its second harmonic 532.1 nm. Next best choices would be the sum frequency and/or second harmonic generation of Nd:YAG and Nd:YLF laser lines, 393.8 nm (near Fraunhofer CaK), 656.5 nm (Hα) and 589.1 nm (NaD2). In this paper, we examine the interstellar extinction, atmospheric transparency and scintillation, as well as noise conditions for these laser lines. For strong signals, we find that optical wavelengths are optimal for distances d≲kpc. Nd:YAG at λ=1,064nm is a similarly good choice, within a factor of two, under most conditions and out to d≲3kpc. For weaker transmitters, where the signal-to-noise ratio with respect to the blended host star is relevant, the optimal wavelength depends on the background source, such as the stellar type. Fraunhofer spectral lines, while providing lower stellar background noise, are irrelevant in most use cases, as they are overpowered by other factors. Laser-pushed spaceflight concepts, such as "Breakthrough Starshot", would produce brighter and tighter beams than ever assumed for OSETI. Such beamers would appear as naked eye stars out to kpc distances. If laser physics has already matured and converged on the most efficient technology, the laser line of choice for a given scenario (e.g., Nd:YAG for strong signals) can be observed with a narrow filter to dramatically reduce background noise, allowing for large field-of-view observations in fast surveys.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01249
Overall, I think it's way premature to limit our searches to only the laser lines we would pick now.
Post by: Star One on 04/12/2018 07:56 pm
The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?
Quote
If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1804.03748
Post by: LouScheffer on 04/13/2018 01:31 am
Spot the Doctor Who reference.
The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?QuoteIf an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1804.03748
Some things we do to geology, like cement filled holes of old oil wells, a meter wide and several km long, perpendicular to the rock layers, should survive for geological times and be unambiguously constructed and not natural. Finding even one would show a previous civilization.
Post by: Star One on 04/13/2018 06:38 am
Spot the Doctor Who reference.
The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?QuoteIf an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1804.03748
Some things we do to geology, like cement filled holes of old oil wells, a meter wide and several km long, perpendicular to the rock layers, should survive for geological times and be unambiguously constructed and not natural. Finding even one would show a previous civilization.
No guarantee any previous civilisation would extract oil and nor that such activities would last over geological times especially if only in a limited area(s).
Post by: missinglink on 04/13/2018 08:06 pm
Hard to imagine a technological civilization that would skip over using coal as fuel altogether.
*Think of it as a "shadow out of time", heh heh.
Post by: Star One on 04/13/2018 08:08 pm
Breakthrough Listen is a ten-year initiative to search for signatures of technologies created by extraterrestrial civilizations at radio and optical wavelengths. Here, we detail the digital data recording system deployed for Breakthrough Listen observations at the 64-m aperture CSIRO Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. The recording system currently implements two recording modes: a dual-polarization, 1.125~GHz bandwidth mode for single beam observations, and a 26-input, 308~MHz bandwidth mode for the 21-cm multibeam receiver. The system is also designed to support a 3~GHz single-beam mode for the forthcoming Parkes ultra-wideband feed. In this paper, we present details of the system architecture, provide an overview of hardware and software, and present initial performance results.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.04571
Post by: Star One on 04/13/2018 08:31 pm
Quote
Those at #Discuss2018 may find of interest this language from Sec. 311 of the authorization bill supporting partnerships “to search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions” from any life in the universe.
Post by: tea monster on 04/15/2018 11:35 am
If they used wood, then it would just be attributed to forest fires at the time. Maybe look for deposits of depleted uranium at that point in the fossil record. ;D
* - https://phys.org/news/2005-05-world-age-oil.html
Post by: TakeOff on 04/15/2018 02:34 pm
It looks like there's a weird pattern to the size of sub-Jupiters, they tend to congregate around certain values. Most common are around 2-3 Earth-radii, about 20% of stars. A sharp drop off above 3 Earth-radii (Neptune/Uranus are around 4.) But also a weird drop around 1.8. Then an increase to the next most common value, 1.3 or so Earth-radii, about 10-15% of stars. Then another dip around 1.2 E(r). Then 1 Earth-radius, about 6% of stars. So Earths aren't the most likely, but they are common as muck. One of the three most common sizes of planets. Pretty mundane, you might say.
Erik Petigura has a potential explanation. Basically the stellar wind removes a hydrogen envelope more quickly the more depleted it gets. So there are planets with big envelopes and planets without any envelope, but only briefly do planets have a small envelope. Thus the gap.
https://webcast.stsci.edu/webcast/detail.xhtml?talkid=6131&parent=1
Post by: Star One on 04/18/2018 06:10 pm
Spot the Doctor Who reference.
The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record?QuoteIf an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1804.03748
More from the author of the paper’s authors.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths-only-civilization/557180/
Post by: Star One on 04/23/2018 07:52 pm
Quote
Today, less than 1 percent of Earth’s surface is urbanized, and the chance that any of our great cities would remain over tens of millions of years is vanishingly low, says Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester in England. A metropolis’s ultimate fate, he notes, mostly depends on whether the surrounding surface is subsiding (to be locked in rock) or rising (to be eroded away by rain and wind). “New Orleans is sinking; San Francisco is rising,” he says. The French Quarter, it seems, has much better chances of entering the geologic record than Haight–Ashbury.
Quote
“After a couple of million years,” Frank says, “the chances are that any physical reminder of your civilization has vanished, so you have to search for things like sedimentary anomalies or isotopic ratios that look off.” The shadows of many prehuman civilizations could, in principle, lurk hidden in such subtleties.
Quote
Taking all this into consideration, what remains is a menu of diffuse long-lived tracers including fossil fuel combustion residues (carbon, primarily), evidence of mass extinctions, plastic pollutants, synthetic chemical compounds not found in nature and even transuranic isotopes from nuclear fission. In other words, what we would need to look for in the geologic record are the same distinctive signals that humans are laying down right now.
Quote
“I find it amazing that no one had worked all this out before, and I’m really glad that somebody has taken a closer look at it,” says Pennsylvania State University astronomer Jason Wright, who last year published “a fluffy little paper” exploring the counterintuitive notion that the best place to find evidence of any of Earth’s putative prehuman civilizations may well be off-world. If, for instance, dinosaurs built interplanetary rockets, presumably some remnants of that activity might remain preserved in stable orbits or on the surfaces of more geologically inert celestial bodies such as the moon.
Quote
Wright also acknowledges the potential for this work to be misinterpreted. “Of course, no matter what, this is going to be interpreted as ‘Astronomers Say Silurians Might Have Existed,’ even though the premise of this work is that there is no such evidence,” he says. “Then again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-industrial-prehuman-civilization-have-existed-on-earth-before-ours/
Post by: Star One on 04/24/2018 08:55 pm
Quote
A star enshrouded in a Dyson sphere with high covering fraction may manifest itself as an optically subluminous object with a spectrophotometric distance estimate significantly in excess of its parallax distance. Using this criterion, the Gaia mission will in coming years allow for Dyson-sphere searches that are complementary to searches based on waste-heat signatures at infrared wavelengths. A limited search of this type is also possible at the current time, by combining Gaia parallax distances with spectrophotometric distances from ground-based surveys. Here, we discuss the merits and shortcomings of this technique and carry out a limited search for Dyson-sphere candidates in the sample of stars common to Gaia Data Release 1 and RAVE Data Release 5. We find that a small fraction of stars indeed display distance discrepancies of the type expected for nearly complete Dyson spheres. To shed light on the properties of objects in this outlier population, we present follow-up high-resolution spectroscopy for one of these stars, the late F-type dwarf TYC 6111-1162-1. The spectrophotometric distance of this object is about twice that derived from its Gaia parallax, and there is no detectable infrared excess. While our analysis largely confirms the stellar parameters and the spectrophotometric distance inferred by RAVE, a plausible explanation for the discrepant distance estimates of this object is that the astrometric solution has been compromised by an unseen binary companion, possibly a rather massive white dwarf (≈1 M⊙). This scenario can be further tested through upcoming Gaia data releases.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.08351
Post by: jebbo on 04/26/2018 05:33 pm
Post by: Star One on 04/27/2018 08:14 pm
Quote
Ancient aliens. Devious dinosaurs. Benevolent Atlanteans. Could such legendary civilisations have left any trace behind that would survive the eons? Archaeologists are certain: we have … so why not them?
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/special-features/in-depth/silurian-hypothesis-what-if-humans-were-not-earths-first-civilisation/news-story/8fdb004d4d52b7612acbaec711e280c8
Post by: Star One on 05/09/2018 07:32 pm
Quote
That could soon change. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives recently proposed legislation for nasa’s future that includes some intriguing language. The space agency, the bill recommends, should spend $10 million on the “search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions” in the next two fiscal years.
The House bill—should it survive a vote in the House and passage in the Senate—can only make recommendations for how agencies should use federal funding. But for seti researchers like Tarter, the fact that it even exists is thrilling. It’s the first time congressional lawmakers have proposed using federal cash to fund seti in 25 years.
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/558512/
Post by: Star One on 05/10/2018 07:22 pm
NASA has awarded five-year grants, each approximately $8 million, to three research teams that will study the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
“With NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite on its way to discover new worlds around our nearest stellar neighbors, Cassini’s discovery of the ingredients necessary for life in Enceladus’s plumes, and with Europa Clipper and Mars 2020 on the horizon, these research teams will provide the critical interdisciplinary expertise needed to help interpret data from these missions and future astrobiology-focused missions,” said NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green.
The interdisciplinary teams will become members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), headquartered at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.
The selected teams are:
Evolution of Nanomachines in Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors (ENIGMA)
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey
Led by Professor Paul Falkowski, the ENIGMA team will investigate how proteins evolved to become the catalysts of life on Earth by looking at prebiotic molecules and enzymes that are ancestral and common across many types of microbes.
The Astrobiology Center for Isotopologue Research (ACIR)
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
ACIR, led by Professor Kate Freeman, will address how the features of elements within molecules reveal the origins and history of organic compounds, from compounds that arrived from planetary environments to those that were derived from metabolic systems, using cutting-edge observational and computational tools.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
Pasadena, California
Dr. Rosaly Lopes will lead research at JPL focusing on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, to address what habitable environments may exist on the moon and what potential signatures of life would be expected, using data from the Cassini-Huygens mission. These data cover a wide swath of the moon, from beneath its surface all the way up through its thick atmosphere.
“The intellectual scope of astrobiology is vast, from understanding how our planet became habitable and inhabited, to understanding how life has adapted to Earth’s harshest environments, to exploring other worlds with the most advanced technologies to search for signs of life,” said Mary Voytek, director of the Astrobiology Program at NASA Headquarters. “The new teams will complement our existing teams to cover breadth of astrobiology, and by coming together in the NAI, they will make the connections between disciplines and organizations that stimulate fundamental scientific advances.”
“We are delighted to welcome these three new NAI teams into the Institute family and look forward to the important work that they will accomplish over the time of their awards,” said NAI Director Penelope Boston. “Our existing teams are waiting to explore overlapping interests with the new project teams and the potential for even greater exchange of information, inspiration, and synergy.”
The NAI serves a vital role in advancing the goals of the NASA Astrobiology Program, with a focus on seeking the answers to these fundamental questions: How does life begin and evolve? Is there life beyond Earth and, if so, how can we detect it? What is the future of life on Earth and beyond?
For more information on the NASA Astrobiology Institute, visit:
https://nai.nasa.gov/
Post by: Star One on 05/18/2018 03:28 pm
https://www.livescience.com/62594-octopuses-are-not-aliens-panspermia.html
Post by: Star One on 05/20/2018 08:24 pm
Expanding cosmological civilizations on the back of an envelope
Quote
We present a simplified description of expansionistic life in the standard relativistic cosmology. The resulting model is exactly integrable, yielding a simple set of predictive formulas. This allows one to quickly propose new scenarios for the life appearance rate and the dominant expansion speed and evaluate the observable consequences. These include the expected number and angular size of visible expanding domains, the total eclipsed fraction of the sky, and the life-saturated fraction of the universe. We also propose a simple anthropic bound on observable quantities, as a function of the dominant expansion velocity alone. The goal is to create a simple and intuition-building tool for use in the context of cosmology, extragalactic SETI, and futures studies. We discuss the general predictions of this framework, including conditions giving rise to an "extragalactic Fermi paradox," in which zero civilizations are visible beyond the Milky Way. This can occur even if a substantial fraction of the universe is already saturated with ambitious life.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.06329
Post by: Star One on 06/13/2018 07:41 pm
Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, Toby Ord
Quote
The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference. When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial {\em ex ante} probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it. This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
I like the way they try and find a way to supplant an equation that has a lot of guesses but using a whole other bunch of guesses. Because at the end that’s all any of it is.
Post by: RotoSequence on 06/13/2018 09:38 pm
Quote from: Jason Wright
Wow, PAGB and supergiant stars have *very* Dyson-spherey spectra. Check out this one. @ESAGaia puts it at 370 pc, but it's spectroscopically a supergiant and the GAIA fit is *terrible*. Probably at 3.7kpc.
Post by: Star One on 07/25/2018 08:26 pm
Quote
We estimate the relative likelihood of success in the searches for primitive versus intelligent life on other planets. Taking into account the larger search volume for detectable artificial electromagnetic signals, we conclude that both searches should be performed concurrently, albeit with significantly more funding dedicated to primitive life. Our analysis suggests that the search for technosignatures may potentially merit a minimum funding level of $1 million per year.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.08879
Post by: Star One on 01/29/2019 09:08 pm
Quote
Long an underfunded, fringe field of science, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence may be ready to go mainstream.
Astronomer Jason Wright is determined to see that happen. At a meeting in Seattle of the American Astronomical Society in January, Wright convened “a little ragtag group in a tiny room” to plot a course for putting the scientific field, known as SETI, on NASA’s agenda.
The group is writing a series of papers arguing that scientists should be searching the universe for “technosignatures” — any sign of alien technology, from radio signals to waste heat. The hope is that those papers will go into a report to Congress at the end of 2020 detailing the astronomical community’s priorities. That report, Astro 2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, will determine which telescopes fly and which studies receive federal funding through the next decade.
Post by: Star One on 02/11/2019 08:03 pm
Quote
So, during a summer internship at the Berkeley SETI Research Center, he built an algorithm that could comb through the light that data telescopes captured from Tabby’s Star, and flag images that might be signals of artificial activity. Specifically, his algorithm searches for laser activity, which could be an indicator that there was some type of extraterrestrial activity happening around the star.
Post by: Star One on 02/23/2019 12:29 pm
Quote
The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals — guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively.
Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA.
In a study published on 22 February in Science1, a consortium of researchers led by Steven Benner, founder of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, suggests that an expanded genetic alphabet could, in theory, also support life.
Quote
Still, Benner says that the work shows that life could potentially be supported by DNA bases with different structures from the four that we know, which could be relevant in the search for signatures of life elsewhere in the Universe.
Post by: Star One on 02/26/2019 08:58 pm
As part of our ongoing search for technosignatures, we collected over three terabytes of data in 2017 May with the L-band receiver (1.15–1.73 GHz) of the 100 m diameter Green Bank Telescope. These observations focused primarily on planetary systems in the Kepler field, but also included scans of the recently discovered TRAPPIST-1 and LHS 1140 systems. We present the results of our search for narrowband signals in this data set with techniques that are generally similar to those described by Margot et al. Our improved data processing pipeline classified over 98% of the approximately six million detected signals as anthropogenic radio frequency interference (RFI). Of the remaining candidates, 30 were detected outside of densely populated frequency regions attributable to RFI. These candidates were carefully examined and determined to be of terrestrial origin. We discuss the problems associated with the common practice of ignoring frequency space around candidate detections in radio technosignature detection pipelines. These problems include inaccurate estimates of figures of merit and unreliable upper limits on the prevalence of technosignatures. We present an algorithm that mitigates these problems and improves the efficiency of the search. Specifically, our new algorithm increases the number of candidate detections by a factor of more than four compared to the results of Margot et al.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ab0105/meta
Post by: Star One on 02/26/2019 09:23 pm
Quote
Today, Edward Schwieterman at the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Riverside, California, and a few colleagues have revised the definition of a habitable zone to take account of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels. As a result, they say the habitable zone for complex life must be significantly smaller—about a quarter as wide as the previous definition allows. “Our results have a number of important implications for the search for exoplanet biosignatures and complex life beyond our solar system,” say Schwieterman and co.
Here’s the related paper.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.04720
Post by: alfa015 on 03/01/2019 04:29 pm
I find this number a little bit excessive, so I plugged some of the values of our Solar System into the equation and I obtained a smaller yet more realistic result, in my opinion: 50 civilizations.
Just in case someone is interested, I made a video showing the values I used: youtu.be/j2AIWIcn7Ig (http://youtu.be/j2AIWIcn7Ig)
Do you think 50 is a more realistic number?
Post by: daedalus1 on 03/01/2019 04:31 pm
Post by: ChrisN4BSA on 03/01/2019 04:36 pm
Post by: scienceguy on 03/01/2019 04:41 pm
Post by: daedalus1 on 03/01/2019 04:45 pm
I find it hard to believe that we're alone in the universe. It's hard to say how many, but I just can't find it possible that somehow through luck we were the lucky ones to be 93 million miles away from our home star and be the only one that developed. Will the other civilizations look like us? My guess is probably not, but there has to be other civilizations out there.
The original question refers to just our galaxy. So my reply is regarding just that. Not the whole universe.
Post by: ChrisN4BSA on 03/01/2019 04:55 pm
I find it hard to believe that we're alone in the universe. It's hard to say how many, but I just can't find it possible that somehow through luck we were the lucky ones to be 93 million miles away from our home star and be the only one that developed. Will the other civilizations look like us? My guess is probably not, but there has to be other civilizations out there.
The original question refers to just our galaxy. So my reply is regarding just that. Not the whole universe.
Same opinion. When we have objects that we truly can't see details of, then we can't say "there's no life". There's billions of potential planets out there orbiting in the zones of our miky way that could be habitable for life, but with our current technology we can't see those areas with great details. Until 2015 we had no idea what Pluto really looked like and that's in our solar system. How can we say that we're alone without exploring?
Post by: Orbiter on 03/01/2019 05:03 pm
Post by: RonM on 03/01/2019 05:03 pm
You're basically saying that one third of all stars with planets in the habitable zone have a technological civilization at one point in their history.
Google the Rare Earth Hypothesis and great filters.
Issac Arthur has some good videos on the Fermi Paradox.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g/videos
BTW, I think there are other civilizations in the Milky Way, but we might be the only one capable of radio communications at the moment. Humans have been around at least 200k years, had agriculture for 10k years, but only powerful radio transmitters for less than a century.
Post by: Apollo-phill on 03/01/2019 05:05 pm
Surrounded, currently, by millions of other species even on our own planet ( eg plant, animal,bird insect,aquatic et al) . Over the millennia we have seen thousands ( millions ?) of other species ( eg rock burrowing worms, trilobites, ichthyosaurs,et al ) come and go and be replaced - very quickly - by other species.
As we are discovering, many of our planet species have ( or had) similar traits to ourselves ( eyes,nose, feet, heart etc) and vast majority have " intelligence" .
We know that the Universe has all the right elements that were obviously needed for life to succeed here on Earth ( eg sugars,aminos, light, energy et al).
In my book, life dies exist somewhere else on another planet in another star system within our milky way galaxy ( probably more than one!!)
I now believe that that life will be based on similar chemistry to ourselves - maybe similar DNA- type structure - but more than likely at different evolutionary stage .eg could be like life in early Cambrian era or maybe more advanced in some form of techno-life ( semi robotic) form.
For some years now I've thought that our first real encounter with an intelligent extra terrestrial will be when one of our robotic deep spacecraft encounters one of " their " robotic spacecraft 😀
Oh, well, back to talking to my cat - who does " talk" back and even mimics some of my words ( eg hello, I'm back) just like I mimic her words of " meow" ☺
And its not just my cat.The local feathered birds " talk and chatter" when I put out their daily feed seed !!! You can tell they're telling their friends breakfast is UP !!
Phill
UK
Post by: Khadgars on 03/01/2019 05:35 pm
Assuming your 50 civilizations in the Milky Way is correct (I do not) the probability that they are a)alive and well today is slim b) capable of sending anything we can detect is also slim
We can infer that when conditions are right for life to form, life seemed to evolve quite rapidly. We can also infer that the baseline for life is single celled, as the first 3 billion years of life on earth (Archean through Proterozoic Eons) was just that.
The Cambrian explosion IMO was an anomaly and probably very unlikely event, so if there is life in our solar system, its likely single cell bacteria. Just my humble opinion.
Post by: gdelottle on 03/01/2019 05:52 pm
I do love too thinking about the topic but I believe that while opinions on this topic may be entertaining they are scientifically unsound. There are too many uncertainties at work. So, I do not have an opinion, and although I would be tempted to form one I will resist to a natural tendency to express one until there will be better instrumental data or a better understanding of the chemistry behind life development and evolution. There are too many parameters that maybe involved in the process. As an example, Jupiter, or the Moon, are suspected to play a role. How many other factors may be involved?
Moreover, there maybe unexpected environments still to be discovered that may be even more suitable to the development of life than the crust of a rocky planet. We may theorize the existence of unicorns by putting the pieces together in the wrong way, while completely missing black swans.
0 (other than us), 1, 50 o 4600 for what I read are more or less random numbers with the very same error bar today. SKA, JWST or the E-ELT may be game changer, and maybe not, if they will not detect signs of life (or technically capable forms of life).
Post by: Star One on 03/01/2019 07:20 pm
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43914.msg1732337#msg1732337
Edit/Lar: thanks for the link, that was used to merge these two threads.
Post by: daedalus1 on 03/01/2019 07:30 pm
Post by: jg on 03/01/2019 07:41 pm
My thinking ( above) is based not least on the apparent fact that the cell (the basis of all life on this planet has evolved only once in the 4 billion year life of this planet.
You don't know that.... Early on, there may have been many attempts that fizzled for many reasons; life may have evolved multiple times, and gone extinct. It may literally be "just a matter of time" and lack of hostile environment (e.g. too many large asteroid strikes, as occurred during planetary formation and later at lower rates). Not to mention believing that cells are the only form of life....
And cells as we know them are apparently agglomerations of what came before. (e.g. mitochondria...)
Life seems really good at happening even in places we long thought were exceedingly unlikely.
Post by: daedalus1 on 03/01/2019 07:44 pm
My thinking ( above) is based not least on the apparent fact that the cell (the basis of all life on this planet has evolved only once in the 4 billion year life of this planet.
You don't know that.... Early on, there may have been many attempts that fizzled for many reasons; life may have evolved multiple times, and gone extinct. It may literally be "just a matter of time" and lack of hostile environment (e.g. too many large asteroid strikes, as occurred during planetary formation and later at lower rates). Not to mention believing that cells are the only form of life....
And cells as we know them are apparently agglomerations of what came before. (e.g. mitochondria...)
Life seems really good at happening even in places we long thought were exceedingly unlikely.
I'm going on scientific knowledge. I didn't just assume it.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 03/01/2019 07:49 pm
However.
*edit* Relatively */edit* Simple, single-celled life forms were the only life on Earth for some 3.5 billion years. That is a very long time. We don't know how or why life jumped from simple, single-celled forms to multiple-celled critters. The Cambrian explosion was quite sudden and there's not much evidence available that can clue us in to why it happened, though that is an area of intense research. It's entirely possible that a planet could be inhabited by bacteria for tens of billions of years without any more complex life forming, particularly because we don't yet understand how and why it happened here.
Even if more complex life forms, there's no guarantee that intelligence will arise. A whole host of complex environmental factors as well as a lot of evolutionary luck led to us. It's plain dumb luck, for example, that we have both intelligence and dextrous hands able to create and manipulate complex tools.
Consider that Dolphins are very smart, but ... flippers. There could be very intelligent life forms swimming in alien seas, but smelting metals would be an entirely alien concept to them. I do not see how they could ever form a technological civilization.
There's also the material resources. Let's say a star system with a habitable planet formed 1 billion years after the big bang - it could be very metal poor, if not enough stars had gone supernova nearby at that point to produce useful quantities of iron, and so on. Intelligent life forms on such a planet wouldn't have much of the materials needed to form a technological civilization like we have.
We also have an abundance of calorie-rich food sources, many with seeds that are storable as grains. Farming these food sources allowed us to have much more "leisure time" to create and build technology and civilizations, rather than just hunting and gathering all the time. There's no guarantee that such food sources would be available on an alien world.
There's many more such examples if you think about it for a while.
To conclude, I think this means that while life is almost certainly widespread, there may be only a few other intelligent / technological / communicating civilizations in the galaxy. That would virtually guarantee that we would never find each other unless we (or they) aggressively colonized the galaxy.
Post by: daedalus1 on 03/01/2019 07:59 pm
Post by: whitelancer64 on 03/01/2019 08:05 pm
When people say 'simple' single cell lifeform, it is an easy quick comment that makes life seem easy. But a single cell is in fact an equivalent of a complex machine more akin to a city. It contains 200 trillion atoms (200,000.000,000,000) all working together in a very complex interaction.
I have edited my post. I hope that satisfies your objection.
Post by: daedalus1 on 03/01/2019 08:11 pm
When people say 'simple' single cell lifeform, it is an easy quick comment that makes life seem easy. But a single cell is in fact an equivalent of a complex machine more akin to a city. It contains 200 trillion atoms (200,000.000,000,000) all working together in a very complex interaction.
I have edited my post. I hope that satisfies your objection.
It wasn't an objection. It was just a comment to reinforce my argument that life is rare in our galaxy and that in my opinion we are alone as a technological life form.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 03/01/2019 08:21 pm
When people say 'simple' single cell lifeform, it is an easy quick comment that makes life seem easy. But a single cell is in fact an equivalent of a complex machine more akin to a city. It contains 200 trillion atoms (200,000.000,000,000) all working together in a very complex interaction.
I have edited my post. I hope that satisfies your objection.
It wasn't an objection. It was just a comment to reinforce my argument that life is rare in our galaxy and that in my opinion we are alone as a technological life form.
If the formation of life is rare, then it is odd that we find it everywhere on Earth where there is liquid water and an energy source, even in otherwise extremely inhospitable environments.
Post by: daedalus1 on 03/01/2019 08:26 pm
When people say 'simple' single cell lifeform, it is an easy quick comment that makes life seem easy. But a single cell is in fact an equivalent of a complex machine more akin to a city. It contains 200 trillion atoms (200,000.000,000,000) all working together in a very complex interaction.
I have edited my post. I hope that satisfies your objection.
It wasn't an objection. It was just a comment to reinforce my argument that life is rare in our galaxy and that in my opinion we are alone as a technological life form.
If the formation of life is rare, then it is odd that we find it everywhere on Earth where there is liquid water and an energy source, even in otherwise extremely inhospitable environments.
See my previous point. All the cells on our planet originate from one cell, so once you get a cell it will be very difficult for it to die out. But the fact there is only evidence for this one cell leads me to my conclusion in this article.
Post by: MATTBLAK on 03/01/2019 08:31 pm
Post by: whitelancer64 on 03/01/2019 08:49 pm
I think there are hundreds of civilizations in the Galaxy. However, they are probably so thinly spread that we may never meet them, certainly in our mutual lifetimes.
Even with 6,400 civilizations (as per the OP) in the galaxy, the galaxy is so huge (space is big!) that there's something like 5,000 cubic lightyears between each civilization, assuming they are evenly spread out.
Post by: MATTBLAK on 03/01/2019 09:11 pm
Post by: Torbjorn Larsson, OM on 03/01/2019 10:07 pm
- The Drake equation is an estimate model, but the full model including radio communicating civilizations needs a lot of SETI work to be informative.
- The Fermi Question is different, and Fermi's own answer apply. The most useful alternative of the three he gave was that we don't know that interstellar travel is doable, i.e. already Fermi saw the question as unhelpful at this time.
- Biologist consensus is that life is common since it evolved so early here [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0644-x , https://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol2016116 ]; reversely language capable species are rare (late and few). Notably the local test is if Mars and Enceladus (and Europa) has life, since they now are known to have or had the alkaline hydrothermal vents we seem to have evolved from. The global tests will likely not inform on life frequency as much as on oxygenating life on Earth analogs, which will be rarer.
- The type case Earth has extreme timing, nothing like the delay that we see for complex multicellular or language capable life, so is seen as informative.
- The speculation that life originated from one cell or was early complex is rejected by the general evolutionary process that happens in populations, evolution seems to have progressed fairly undramatically from non-life over half alive to independent cellular life. The current evidence - such as it is (2nd link) - confirms that by observing evolution all the way from our "sister" geosystem, though of course that can change. Alkaline hydrothermal vents were multitudinous, each vent cellular pores as well. And among their Hadean "bioservices" that we can observe happened (2nd link) or have tested, sugar and nucleobase production as well as the hot/cold cycling RNA strand replication that they can do is simple enough [I can give references, but that is some doing, so ask].
I don't think the density of life bearing planets will be the problem with an observational test, as much as that it is so painstaking to gather a sufficient sample given the observation difficulties. It is interesting that the local system sample return and global sky surveys seem to take a similar amount of time, I hear one or two decades minimum for a decent test.
EDIT: Added the half alive observation since it is important and enlightening contrast to the often raised notion of "complex" early cells.
Post by: Rocket Science on 03/01/2019 10:11 pm
A few might be 'clustered' relatively close together - then others might be very widely spread apart - tens of thousands of light years perhaps. Which would be sad for them :(Might be even sadder if the "Engineers" show up...
Post by: Khadgars on 03/01/2019 10:29 pm
When people say 'simple' single cell lifeform, it is an easy quick comment that makes life seem easy. But a single cell is in fact an equivalent of a complex machine more akin to a city. It contains 200 trillion atoms (200,000.000,000,000) all working together in a very complex interaction.
Very excellent point, its simple when compared to multicellular systems, but is not its self simple in the slightest.
In my opinion, I think single cell life has a high probability of being "common" in our galaxy, but I think multicellular is likely exceedingly rare, much less technology advanced organisms.
Post by: raketa on 03/02/2019 12:19 am
Because we could not see any sign to be visited or occupy:
1/We are probably most advance
or
2/Only existing intelligent life in Galaxy
or
3/Every intelligent life destroy itself before start spreading through Galaxy
or
4/Intelligent life will not have desire to spread
Most probable is option 1/ and 2/ because we couldn't see any sign of any intelligent life spreading through galaxy
3/Every intelligent life is getting destroy is low probability, we could imagine to spread through solar system before we destroy our self
4/Life basic force to keep it alive to spread as far as could be, why every intelligent life leaving this basic survival instinct in every instance is low probability
Post by: Phil Stooke on 03/02/2019 12:38 am
No, that's not correct. Life in all those different places does not represent separate formation events. Once it gets going it can spread everywhere. That has nothing to do with the ease or difficulty of forming life in the first place.
I am one of the 'life is hard' camp. Not for me - my life has been easy! But I do believe it is difficult to create life and that it requires some kind of special environment to do so.
I know people today prefer deep sea vents, though my preference had always been tide pools on coastlines. I imagined them as natural laboratories: a little pool of water that could be run through a wide range of physical and chemical changes. Start with formation of complex carbon compounds via lightning, UV etc. and their collection in the sea. Wind gathers them on the coast. Then the rock pool laboratory gets to work. Sun can warm it, a slosh of water as the tide comes in can cool it. The concentration of organics can increase as water evaporates and decrease as the tide comes in or rain falls. Concentrations of other minerals can vary similarly as rock weathers, different rocks all along the coast. Clays can form templates for organics as some have suggested. The pool can dry out and be replenished. Tarry goop can cover drying materials to protect them from UV. And all these things can be endlessly repeated year in, year out on every stretch of coast in the world. A natural laboratory and zillions of opportunities to get that special thing going.
I have not thought through exactly how that would operate around a deep sea vent, but maybe a natural laboratory with countless varations of temperature, salinity and chemistry can work there too. I do feel that a vast number of attempts is likely to be needed before one gets it right, and I suspect that it is not as easy as people used to think - 'life will form everywhere if the conditions are correct'.
PS if we are alone in the galaxy, that's not good news for the galaxy. Might be good for us, lots of scope to expand, but the poor old galaxy is stuck with us. There goes the neighbourhood!
Post by: mme on 03/02/2019 12:58 am
Those are different issues. Once life exists (almost but not perfect self replicators) evolution will push it into every environment possible. Life being everywhere on Earth now is not evidence that abiogenesis was "easy." Current estimates are life appeared around 100 million years after water became common on earth. Happening so quickly could be an argument for it being "easy" for life to form but with a sample of one and not really knowing how it formed I would not bet *my* life on that conclusion. And while the cosmological principle seems true time after time, we are still a sample of one and can't avoid having extreme survivor bias.When people say 'simple' single cell lifeform, it is an easy quick comment that makes life seem easy. But a single cell is in fact an equivalent of a complex machine more akin to a city. It contains 200 trillion atoms (200,000.000,000,000) all working together in a very complex interaction.
I have edited my post. I hope that satisfies your objection.
It wasn't an objection. It was just a comment to reinforce my argument that life is rare in our galaxy and that in my opinion we are alone as a technological life form.
If the formation of life is rare, then it is odd that we find it everywhere on Earth where there is liquid water and an energy source, even in otherwise extremely inhospitable environments.
There are a lot of key turning points that led to the human race and our technological society. While it only took 100 million years for life to form after water was present, it was almost another 2 billion years before the appearance eukaryotic cells and sexual reproduction. Why did that take so long? I'd guess that's a major filter. And then another billion years before multicellular life appears. Again, this step, having taken so long, seems a likely filter. Finally another 300 million years for bilateral symmetry to appear. I am not a biologist, but I think getting to bilateral symmetry is what set us up for the Cambrian Explosion. So life, energetic cells, sexual reproduction and bilateral symmetry all seem likely filters and I don't know the odds of any step nor the likelihood for a conducive environment for each step.
Then skip ahead to us, good ol' homo sapiens. The first anatomical evidence for us is from 300,000 years ago. Think about that. It took us something like 270,000 years to develop agriculture. All that time surviving with big brains, no claws, short teeth, pointy sticks and rock tools.
Sorry for going so long. I don't think we are "special" and I do think we are the result of a long line of natural events and processes. But it would not surprise me if technological societies where rare in space and time.
Semi-related note: When a friend of mine went back to college as an adult and was struggling with Algebra I reminded her that it took us close to 300,000 years to figure out that 0 was a useful number instead of just a place holder.
Post by: mme on 03/02/2019 01:13 am
If there is intelligence life in our Galaxy, it will take just 1 million years to spread through galaxy.3. We have a small number of people that think killing large numbers of people is a good idea. We have around 17,000 nuclear weapons sprinkled around the planet and we seem to have decided to forget the lessons of WWI and WWII. I am a fan of humanity and I think most people are wonderful. But a few bad apples could make things pretty bad. We don't need to go extinct per se. We just have to destroy the world economy and get distracted with basic survival every few generations.
Because we could not see any sign to be visited or occupy:
1/We are probably most advance
or
2/Only existing intelligent life in Galaxy
or
3/Every intelligent life destroy itself before start spreading through Galaxy
or
4/Intelligent life will not have desire to spread
Most probable is option 1/ and 2/ because we couldn't see any sign of any intelligent life spreading through galaxy
3/Every intelligent life is getting destroy is low probability, we could imagine to spread through solar system before we destroy our self
4/Life basic force to keep it alive to spread as far as could be, why every intelligent life leaving this basic survival instinct in every instance is low probability
4. Intelligence changes goals. I'm "weird". I think spreading life into the cosmos is the closest thing there is to a moral imperative. Most people I talk to don't agree and look at me like I'm a loon.
And I'll add a number 5. The bad luck of being near a super nove, a rouge star, black hole, asteroid, etc.
Post by: mme on 03/02/2019 01:38 am
...That does not strike me as a reasonable attempt at calculating the odds of abiogenesis at all.
There have been reasonable attempts to estimate the probability that chemistry randomly produced life. I have a similar viewpoint to this video:
Origin of Life: The Probability of Making a Protein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQoQgTqj3pU\
...
There have been reasonable attempts to estimate the probability that chemistry randomly produced life. I have a similar viewpoint to this video:
Origin of Life: The Probability of Making a Protein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQoQgTqj3pU
...
It strikes me as presupposing the first step in abiogenesis is to have complete enzymes as they function in eukaryotes. That seems a strange "starting place" since it took a couple billion years for eukaryotes to evolve. He also calculates the likely hood of the enzyme being constructed completely randomly as if amino acids could assemble in any old order. I'm fairly sure basic chemistry greatly reduces the possible combinations and, again, this is assuming randomly assembling an enzyme for something that took 2 billion years to evolve *after* the formation of life.
In other words, this is an apologist strawman. It's not much better than the "tornado in a junk yard creates a 747 argument" from apologists.
Post by: FinalFrontier on 03/02/2019 02:57 am
However, our solar system is located in what many would consider to be the outer reaches of this galaxy. We are in the inner rim of the Orion arm but we are 2/3 of the way or more out from the core cluster. And this arm alone is 3500 light years across.
It would be extremely hard for anyone or anything to find us out here geographically speaking we are off the edges of the map. Middle of nowhere.
That is probably for the best. IMHO it's likely that other intelligent life may in some cases the form of AI or something derived from it, ie machine based or non organic based intelligence, and that it would see organic life as a nuisance and this planet as an energy resource.
Post by: RDoc on 03/02/2019 03:04 am
Why would the simulation builders bother?
Post by: raketa on 03/02/2019 03:23 am
I think in 100-200 years we will be multi planetary species and possibility to extinction ourself will disappear....That does not strike me as a reasonable attempt at calculating the odds of abiogenesis at all.
There have been reasonable attempts to estimate the probability that chemistry randomly produced life. I have a similar viewpoint to this video:
Origin of Life: The Probability of Making a Protein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQoQgTqj3pU\
...
There have been reasonable attempts to estimate the probability that chemistry randomly produced life. I have a similar viewpoint to this video:
Origin of Life: The Probability of Making a Protein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQoQgTqj3pU
...
It strikes me as presupposing the first step in abiogenesis is to have complete enzymes as they function in eukaryotes. That seems a strange "starting place" since it took a couple billion years for eukaryotes to evolve. He also calculates the likely hood of the enzyme being constructed completely randomly as if amino acids could assemble in any old order. I'm fairly sure basic chemistry greatly reduces the possible combinations and, again, this is assuming randomly assembling an enzyme for something that took 2 billion years to evolve *after* the formation of life.
In other words, this is an apologist strawman. It's not much better than the "tornado in a junk yard creates a 747 argument" from apologists.
Post by: raketa on 03/02/2019 03:42 am
No. Near absolute certainty there is intelligent life elsewhere in this galaxy. Stastical modeling and probability point to it, it would be far more impossible/unlikely in scientific terms for us to be the only intelligent life.It is better to stick with evidence and its point to not existence of intelligent life in Galaxy.Since if it exist it will expand.And they are some older planet in our galaxy(10-15 milliard years), that have more time for evolution.But we didn't see any sign visiting our solar system and taking over planet Earth.
However, our solar system is located in what many would consider to be the outer reaches of this galaxy. We are in the inner rim of the Orion arm but we are 2/3 of the way or more out from the core cluster. And this arm alone is 3500 light years across.
It would be extremely hard for anyone or anything to find us out here geographically speaking we are off the edges of the map. Middle of nowhere.
That is probably for the best. IMHO it's likely that other intelligent life may in some cases the form of AI or something derived from it, ie machine based or non organic based intelligence, and that it would see organic life as a nuisance and this planet as an energy resource.
In several year we will have telescope able to see atmosphere of planets and my guess we will not see oxygen atmosphere and we will find there is not even life in Galaxy. Non existence of intelligent life point to not existence of life at all.
Fact that we are alone base on current findings is more probable.I am predicting every new finding give more facts to confirm it.
They will be still some small chance that we are not alone, claiming that civilization not expand or we didn't see enough planet to confirm not existence of oxygen planet in our galaxy.
But fact that we were not visited and occupate by aliens point to more probable conclusion there are no aliens in our Galaxy.
Post by: Oberon_Command on 03/02/2019 03:56 am
No. Near absolute certainty there is intelligent life elsewhere in this galaxy. Stastical modeling and probability point to it, it would be far more impossible/unlikely in scientific terms for us to be the only intelligent life.It is better to stick with evidence and its point to not existence of intelligent life in Galaxy.Since if it exist it will expand.
However, our solar system is located in what many would consider to be the outer reaches of this galaxy. We are in the inner rim of the Orion arm but we are 2/3 of the way or more out from the core cluster. And this arm alone is 3500 light years across.
It would be extremely hard for anyone or anything to find us out here geographically speaking we are off the edges of the map. Middle of nowhere.
That is probably for the best. IMHO it's likely that other intelligent life may in some cases the form of AI or something derived from it, ie machine based or non organic based intelligence, and that it would see organic life as a nuisance and this planet as an energy resource.
I don't think there's any evidence that intelligent life will necessarily expand into space. Humanity might not even do it, as much as I would like it to. Humanity may even be unique in its drive to explore space. There are many humans who dismiss space exploration as worthless; surely we can't rule out that there are alien cultures that do, as well?
Post by: BeamRider on 03/02/2019 04:12 am
1. A paradox IS a paradox only because there is something WRONG with our thinking. (This is not my original thought, but I do not remember where I heard it).
2. A paradox is not simply a statement that appears to be mysterious, it is a comparison between TWO apparently true statements that are in conflict with each other, and our wrong thinking can be about EITHER of them, or even BOTH.
Post by: cosmicvoid on 03/02/2019 04:36 am
... It's entirely possible that a planet could be inhabited by bacteria for tens of billions of years without any more complex life forming...
I suppose that would be in a different universe.
Post by: Oli on 03/02/2019 07:00 am
It is better to stick with evidence and its point to not existence of intelligent life in Galaxy.Since if it exist it will expand.I don't think there's any evidence that intelligent life will necessarily expand into space.
Given our current knowledge about physics it's very likely that intelligent life will never expand into space, or only to a nearby star system to escape a dying sun. Robotic interstellar exploration might be a thing, but then again building larger and larger telescopes might be faster and cheaper.
Post by: Star One on 03/02/2019 09:59 am
Post by: RonM on 03/02/2019 05:10 pm
Genuine question but has there ever been a search for different types of life on Earth not based on Carbon but silica for example?
There is talk of a shadow biosphere, possibly RNA-based life or life using different amino acids, but few scientists take the idea seriously.
If you take a sample of seawater you'll find a vast amount of microbe species, most of which you cannot grow in the lab. Could some of those be from a different biosphere? Probably not, but it is an interesting idea.
Silicon-based life, if possible, couldn't exist on Earth. Oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with silicon turns it into silicon dioxide (silica, quartz, sand). Oxygen would be poisonous to silicon-based life.
Post by: Star One on 03/02/2019 07:29 pm
Genuine question but has there ever been a search for different types of life on Earth not based on Carbon but silica for example?
There is talk of a shadow biosphere, possibly RNA-based life or life using different amino acids, but few scientists take the idea seriously.
If you take a sample of seawater you'll find a vast amount of microbe species, most of which you cannot grow in the lab. Could some of those be from a different biosphere? Probably not, but it is an interesting idea.
Silicon-based life, if possible, couldn't exist on Earth. Oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with silicon turns it into silicon dioxide (silica, quartz, sand). Oxygen would be poisonous to silicon-based life.
Well there’s this paper from 2017.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6315/1048
Post by: RonM on 03/02/2019 07:37 pm
Genuine question but has there ever been a search for different types of life on Earth not based on Carbon but silica for example?
There is talk of a shadow biosphere, possibly RNA-based life or life using different amino acids, but few scientists take the idea seriously.
If you take a sample of seawater you'll find a vast amount of microbe species, most of which you cannot grow in the lab. Could some of those be from a different biosphere? Probably not, but it is an interesting idea.
Silicon-based life, if possible, couldn't exist on Earth. Oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with silicon turns it into silicon dioxide (silica, quartz, sand). Oxygen would be poisonous to silicon-based life.
Well there’s this paper from 2017.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6315/1048
Shows a combination carbon-silicon life is possible.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 03/04/2019 02:53 pm
No. Near absolute certainty there is intelligent life elsewhere in this galaxy. Stastical modeling and probability point to it, it would be far more impossible/unlikely in scientific terms for us to be the only intelligent life.
*snip*
I don't think that's true at all. Evolution isn't goal-oriented other than "the survival of the fittest." It doesn't make sense to pre-suppose that intelligence is inevitable, although that makes for wonderful sci-fi stories.
Also, part of my point was that even if there is intelligent life elsewhere, it may not have the capability or resources to form a technological civilization like ours.
Post by: Star One on 04/07/2019 09:18 pm
Quote
The zoo hypothesis has been in the news recently because it also provides justification for an activity known as METI, short for Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Simply stated, METI practitioners transmit radio signals into space with the hope of provoking a response from any aliens who might pick them up. In 2017, a Norwegian antenna was used to beam a message to a star system 12 light-years away.
Earlier this month, this whole enterprise was discussed by researchers at a meeting in Paris. Douglas Vakoch, the president of METI International, a San Francisco-based organization that organized the Norwegian transmission, invoked the zoo hypothesis as a possible justification for broadcasting. After all, if the hypothesis is correct, then it’s understandable why our efforts to find signals from space have been unsuccessful. We’ve been mindlessly pacing our Earthly cage while the extraterrestrials maintain their distance and keep watch.
Post by: KelvinZero on 04/08/2019 12:40 am
'Zoo hypothesis' may explain why we haven't seen any space aliens (https://www.seti.org/zoo-hypothesis-may-explain-why-we-havent-seen-any-space-aliens)
The article goes on to point out some problems with this hypothesis, namely the millions of billion-year-old races coordinating to mask their activity from us.
IMO, if you pursue that hypothesis you end up with "we are living in a simulation" or "a giant planetarium sort of like the Truman Show" being actually more plausible as an implementation.
Post by: DrRobin on 04/08/2019 01:09 am
Why does this assume millions of races coordinating in our Galaxy? If the frequency with which star-crossing races appear is low relative to the time it takes a single race to spread across the galaxy, then the "rules" in a given galaxy may be set by the first such race to appear. If that first race is a "zoo-keeper" (as opposed to an exterminator or an assimilator, etc.), it could let the zoo species out one by one as they are ready, to join the existing established order. For example, if technological intelligence arises on average only on the order of a hundred million years in a galaxy, there might have been only a few dozen cases in our own galaxy, rare and special enough to be worth protecting in a game-preserve until ready to step up.'Zoo hypothesis' may explain why we haven't seen any space aliens (https://www.seti.org/zoo-hypothesis-may-explain-why-we-havent-seen-any-space-aliens)The article goes on to point out some problems with this hypothesis, namely the millions of billion-year-old races coordinating to mask their activity from us.
Post by: KelvinZero on 04/08/2019 08:45 am
I didn't say in this galaxy.Why does this assume millions of races coordinating in our Galaxy?'Zoo hypothesis' may explain why we haven't seen any space aliens (https://www.seti.org/zoo-hypothesis-may-explain-why-we-havent-seen-any-space-aliens)The article goes on to point out some problems with this hypothesis, namely the millions of billion-year-old races coordinating to mask their activity from us.
If there is one race mastering this galaxy then presumably all galaxies have moderate odds of being mastered by a galactic civilisation. All of these have to coordinate to make sure the universe appears untouched from our perspective. No infra-red galaxies, no broadcast communications, no star-lifting, no ejecting or manipulating of supernova to not decimate everything in their vicinity.. just make everything look normal and un-managed to protect our feelings. They also need FTL and time-travel of course to go back in time and erase any of this evidence that was created before we came down from the trees.
Of course you could postulate that the ways of aliens are uniformly strange and disconnected from our baryonic existence and maybe they have some reason not to do any of these things, and (unlike the earth) an inhabited universe looks exactly the same as an uninhabited one.. but in that case you don't need the zoo hypothesis.
But my main point was not to deny the zoo hypothesis, it was to say that it would be far more practical to postulate a planetarium surrounding us or that we were in a simulation of some sort.
Post by: DrRobin on 04/08/2019 01:28 pm
Maybe it's useful to distinguish between a "weak" zoo hypothesis (contact restrictions sufficient to be consistent with the observed fact that we haven't yet seen them _yet_, a la Fermi's question, i.e. no flying saucers on the White House lawn) vs. a "strong" zoo hypothesis (sufficient hiding so that no zoo species could _ever_ detect ET, no matter how advanced their technology.). I take your point that a strong zoo hypothesis requires more ad hoc assumptions than, for example, the simulation hypothesis (or just the Rare Earth hypothesis where intelligence arises so infrequently that any contact is unlikely). However, a weak zoo protocol, e.g. remote observation only wherever complex multicellular life arises, is, I think, compatible with the world we see without positing time travel, etc. I do think it is easier to support under the condition I cite above: That colonizing-level intelligence is rare enough that each galaxy gets "settled" only once (a kind of phase transition), and that first entity sets the rules.I didn't say in this galaxy.Why does this assume millions of races coordinating in our Galaxy?'Zoo hypothesis' may explain why we haven't seen any space aliens (https://www.seti.org/zoo-hypothesis-may-explain-why-we-havent-seen-any-space-aliens)The article goes on to point out some problems with this hypothesis, namely the millions of billion-year-old races coordinating to mask their activity from us.
If there is one race mastering this galaxy then presumably all galaxies have moderate odds of being mastered by a galactic civilisation. All of these have to coordinate to make sure the universe appears untouched from our perspective. No infra-red galaxies, no broadcast communications, no star-lifting, no ejecting or manipulating of supernova to not decimate everything in their vicinity.. just make everything look normal and un-managed to protect our feelings. They also need FTL and time-travel of course to go back in time and erase any of this evidence that was created before we came down from the trees.
Post by: gin455res on 04/23/2019 12:19 am
And, is there any on-orbit experiments to compare single and multilcellular survival rates in organisms exposed to space?
Post by: Star One on 07/29/2019 03:19 pm
Quote
NASA and Congress have repeatedly impeded the search for alien technosignatures. Or at least that’s the gist of a new white paper endorsed by 42 leading researchers in the field and
submitted to the National Academy of Sciences’ 2020 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Astro2020).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2019/07/29/searches-for-alien-technosignatures-remain-hamstrung-by-a-lack-of-federal-funding-says-paper/#160ec1707503
Post by: M.E.T. on 09/02/2019 10:33 am
So this leads to two questions for me:
1. Is he right that he would know - meaning, given his position and resources, is he likely to have access to that kind of information?
and
2. If he does have access, would he be allowed to divulge it in public in the way that he did?
Post by: Hungry4info3 on 09/02/2019 04:20 pm
Not only would Elon Musk be in a position to know, everyone would.
Post by: M.E.T. on 09/02/2019 04:46 pm
Astronomers generally have not been that great at keeping exciting results secret. People knew about the black hole merger months before it was announced. Same with the GW170817 event. Same with some of the more exciting extrasolar planet discoveries. With social media being what it is, and astronomers being rather savvy with twitter these days, news gets around.
Not only would Elon Musk be in a position to know, everyone would.
My sense was that Musk wasn’t talking about astronomical discoveries, but about the US government having recovered alien craft or something similar. He even humorously referenced Area 51 as an example. He was saying he would definitely know if the government had any such knowledge. Which I found interesting.
Post by: Star One on 09/02/2019 05:13 pm
Astronomers generally have not been that great at keeping exciting results secret. People knew about the black hole merger months before it was announced. Same with the GW170817 event. Same with some of the more exciting extrasolar planet discoveries. With social media being what it is, and astronomers being rather savvy with twitter these days, news gets around.
Not only would Elon Musk be in a position to know, everyone would.
My sense was that Musk wasn’t talking about astronomical discoveries, but about the US government having recovered alien craft or something similar. He even humorously referenced Area 51 as an example. He was saying he would definitely know if the government had any such knowledge. Which I found interesting.
We’ll surely he has the highest of security clearances.
Post by: hop on 09/02/2019 10:11 pm
We’ll surely he has the highest of security clearances.There's no reason believe Musk has exceptional access to anything outside "need to know" in his company roles, and good reason to suspect he does not. His public behavior suggests he might have difficulty holding high clearance, and there's virtually no chance he'd have access to SCI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information) unrelated to his specific responsibilities.
He was saying he would definitely know if the government had any such knowledge. Which I found interesting.I'd say you are reading way too much into it, as people so often do with Musk's off the cuff comments. He runs a company that flies stuff in space and works closely with NASA and other spacecraft operators, so obviously he knows first hand that theories which imply a cover-up affecting day to day space operations are nonsense.
More generally, any sensible person who has significant involvement with NASA, professional astronomy and civilian space science knows that they are doing what they say they do, and aren't structured in a way that would enable the large scale deception implied by many UFO theories.
Post by: Star One on 09/03/2019 05:47 am
We’ll surely he has the highest of security clearances.There's no reason believe Musk has exceptional access to anything outside "need to know" in his company roles, and good reason to suspect he does not. His public behavior suggests he might have difficulty holding high clearance, and there's virtually no chance he'd have access to SCI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information) unrelated to his specific responsibilities.He was saying he would definitely know if the government had any such knowledge. Which I found interesting.I'd say you are reading way too much into it, as people so often do with Musk's off the cuff comments. He runs a company that flies stuff in space and works closely with NASA and other spacecraft operators, so obviously he knows first hand that theories which imply a cover-up affecting day to day space operations are nonsense.
More generally, any sensible person who has significant involvement with NASA, professional astronomy and civilian space science knows that they are doing what they say they do, and aren't structured in a way that would enable the large scale deception implied by many UFO theories.
He would need high security clearance because of Space X’s work with the NRO and other related intelligence agencies.
Post by: Star One on 09/30/2019 07:22 pm
Quote
Picture this: A hundred million years ago, an advanced civilization detects strange signatures of life on a blue-green planet not so far away from their home in the Milky Way. They try sending signals, but whatever's marching around on that unknown world isn't responding. So, the curious galactic explorers try something different. They send a robotic probe to a small, quiet space rock orbiting near the life-rich planet, just to keep an eye on things.
If a story like this played out at any moment in Earth's 4.5 billion-year history, it just might have left an archaeological record. At least, that's the hope behind a new proposal to check Earth's so-called co-orbitals for signs of advanced alien technology.
https://www.livescience.com/alien-life-bugged-space-rock-co-orbitals.html
Post by: Paul451 on 10/08/2019 05:29 am
I didn't say in this galaxy.Maybe it's useful to distinguish between a "weak" zoo hypothesis (contact restrictions sufficient to be consistent with the observed fact that we haven't yet seen them _yet_, a la Fermi's question, i.e. no flying saucers on the White House lawn) vs. a "strong" zoo hypothesis (sufficient hiding so that no zoo species could _ever_ detect ET, no matter how advanced their technology.). I take your point that a strong zoo hypothesis requires more ad hoc assumptions than, for example, the simulation hypothesis (or just the Rare Earth hypothesis where intelligence arises so infrequently that any contact is unlikely). However, a weak zoo protocol, e.g. remote observation only wherever complex multicellular life arises, is, I think, compatible with the world we see without positing time travel, etc. I do think it is easier to support under the condition I cite above: That colonizing-level intelligence is rare enough that each galaxy gets "settled" only once (a kind of phase transition), and that first entity sets the rules.
If there is one race mastering this galaxy then presumably all galaxies have moderate odds of being mastered by a galactic civilisation. All of these have to coordinate to make sure the universe appears untouched from our perspective. No infra-red galaxies, no broadcast communications, no star-lifting, no ejecting or manipulating of supernova to not decimate everything in their vicinity.. just make everything look normal and un-managed to protect our feelings. They also need FTL and time-travel of course to go back in time and erase any of this evidence that was created before we came down from the trees.
You might not have realised that the examples KelvinZero gave were things we can detect now, at our current level of technology. A Kardashev 2.nn civilisation will be visible to other galaxies. For the Zoo Hypothesis to work, you have to suppose that every single elder race decided to hide its existence, in every galaxy, in all of history. If a single species in the history of the universe decided to Dyson the stars in their galaxy (for eg), and to hell with the opinions of any observers in other galaxies, then we (at our current level of technology) could see the effects, provided they started the process within our historical light-cone.
It's not enough to suppose that the oldest race in our galaxy made a decision to hide from us, you have to explain why every race in the universe made the same decision.
Post by: RotoSequence on 10/08/2019 05:43 am
It's not enough to suppose that the oldest race in our galaxy made a decision to hide from us, you have to explain why every race in the universe made the same decision.
At Kardashev 2.N scale, pulling a Plato's Cave on us lowly humans and faking the sky, or at least hiding it from us beyond a certain distance, is probably not outside the realm of feasibility.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/08/2019 06:19 am
It's not enough to suppose that the oldest race in our galaxy made a decision to hide from us, you have to explain why every race in the universe made the same decision.At Kardashev 2.N scale, pulling a Plato's Cave on us lowly humans and faking the sky, or at least hiding it from us beyond a certain distance, is probably not outside the realm of feasibility.
As KZ said, once you start looking at the Zoo Hypothesis...
you end up with "we are living in a simulation" or "a giant planetarium sort of like the Truman Show" being actually more plausible as an implementation.
Post by: Star One on 10/08/2019 03:30 pm
It's not enough to suppose that the oldest race in our galaxy made a decision to hide from us, you have to explain why every race in the universe made the same decision.At Kardashev 2.N scale, pulling a Plato's Cave on us lowly humans and faking the sky, or at least hiding it from us beyond a certain distance, is probably not outside the realm of feasibility.
As KZ said, once you start looking at the Zoo Hypothesis...you end up with "we are living in a simulation" or "a giant planetarium sort of like the Truman Show" being actually more plausible as an implementation.
So you’re assuming to know how a level 2 civilisation would act then. Seems more than a little hubristic if that’s the case.
Post by: RotoSequence on 10/08/2019 06:11 pm
So you’re assuming to know how a level 2 civilisation would act then. Seems more than a little hubristic if that’s the case.
He didn't make such an assumption. The only statement there is that one can't assume that it's beyond a 2.N civilization's abilities to construct infrastructure at that scale.
Post by: Star One on 10/08/2019 07:54 pm
So you’re assuming to know how a level 2 civilisation would act then. Seems more than a little hubristic if that’s the case.
He didn't make such an assumption. The only statement there is that one can't assume that it's beyond a 2.N civilization's abilities to construct infrastructure at that scale.
I was referring to their quoting of KelvinZero
Post by: Paul451 on 10/09/2019 12:33 am
So you’re assuming to know how a level 2 civilisation would act then. Seems more than a little hubristic if that’s the case.you end up with "we are living in a simulation" or "a giant planetarium sort of like the Truman Show" being actually more plausible as an implementation.
I was referring to their quoting of KelvinZero
KZ's comment was not advocating for the giant-planetarium idea, he was just saying that it's more plausible than the Zoo Hypothesis, which supposes that every civilisation in the universe, for all of history, makes the same decision to hide all evidence of their existence from younger civilisation. No exceptions, not a single civilisation in history making another choice.(**) The planetarium hypothesis, while still ridiculous, at least only requires a single civilisation to make such a bizarre decision.
** (And using the Zoo Hypothesis to justify METI is even worse. No we have to assume there's a giant universe wide conspiracy, existing for billions of years, without a single exception, all to avoid contaminating younger civilisation, but if we send a "hello" signal to a star 12 light years away, they'll suddenly drop the pretence and make contact?)
Post by: edzieba on 10/09/2019 03:49 pm
Post by: Paul451 on 10/09/2019 10:48 pm
Or more boringly: there is a brief (on civilisation scales) period during development where impacts on the local stellar environment are large enough to be measurable, but before efficiencies of utilisation are high enough to become unobservable (beyond a minimum distance at least) again. e.g. emitting waste blackbody heat in all directions from the outside of your stellar enclosure may just be considered embarrassingly sloppy design, akin to building a modern eco-home that belches smoke and particulates. Or tossing supernova outside your galaxy an ecological hatchetjob vs. pulling your civilised stars away then putting them back again afterwards (similar to replanting forests after major earth0clearing for construction work).
But all of them? Not a single species in a single galaxy in our light-cone has chosen to belch? Or even just take longer. And not a single species has chosen another path that is "efficient" but equally observable? Not a single galaxy-spanning species across billions of galaxies is currently (from our POV) in the middle of reforesting, so only part of their galaxy is undetectable, in a weird and obviously artificial way?
Or tossing supernova outside your galaxy an ecological hatchetjob vs. pulling your civilised stars away then putting them back again afterwards
Given the number of extra-galactic supernova we've seen, I would think that having all of them surrounded by stars pulled out into a tidy ring would be kind of noticeable to people who study galaxies.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 10/09/2019 10:55 pm
Post by: Star One on 10/10/2019 07:44 pm
Quote
A cosmologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics Tuesday has said he is convinced extraterrestrial life exists and that we will likely find evidence of it within 30 years.
https://www.newsweek.com/physicist-aliens-nobel-prize-first-exoplanet-1464433
Post by: Star One on 11/20/2019 07:33 am
Quote
What the VASCO team is doing could well turn out to be a very important #technosignature search. Listen to Beatriz Villarroel explain why:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/wowsignal/Episode_41-levelled.mp3…
#astronomy #SETI
https://mobile.twitter.com/podcastwow/status/1196281525840601089
Post by: Star One on 11/20/2019 07:44 am
Quote
There is ample evidence to answer the question posed by the title in the affirmative. For several years, I have been engaged in study of the NASA-JPL photographs transmitted to Earth from the surface vehicles sent to explore Mars, Curiosity Rover in particular. These photos are available to the public via the internet. In this poster, I present and discuss numerous examples of insect/arthropod-like forms (fossil & living) found in Mars rover photos. Examples include insect-like forms displaying apparent diversity, clearly recognizable insect/arthropod anatomical features, and flight. Evidence of a fossil reptile-like (serpentine) form and reptile-like forms preying on insect-like forms is also presented. Each example is documented. These findings provide a compelling basis for further study and raise many important questions.
https://esa.confex.com/esa/2019/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/147473
From here:
https://m.phys.org/news/2019-11-photos-evidence-life-mars-ohio.html
Post by: Star One on 12/17/2019 07:31 pm
Quote
Avi Loeb doesn’t need to be a muckraker. As the head of the astronomy department at Harvard University, he sits in one of the most comfortable positions in academia. Nevertheless, he has repeatedly placed himself at the center of scientific controversies—most prominently with a series of articles and interviews suggesting that a peculiar space object known as ‘Oumuamua might have been a piece of alien technology.
http://m.nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/if-we-believe-in-dark-matter-why-not-extraterrestrial-life
Post by: Paul451 on 12/18/2019 08:34 am
http://m.nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/if-we-believe-in-dark-matter-why-not-extraterrestrial-life
Taking Loeb's analogy (which handily also appears in the title), dark matter vs ETI, the two "beliefs" are opposite kinds.
In one, we discovered a phenomena that didn't fit and we are trying to figure out what could explain it, and that's even reflected in the name: Dark matter. That name, initially, was the entire extent of our knowledge of the mystery phenomena: it's dark in ways that baryonic matter isn't, but in terms of gravity and momentum it seems to otherwise act like matter. (Just as x-rays were an unknown & invisible (hence "x") phenomena that appeared to be emitted (hence "rays") from some substances and caused film to fog.)
In the other, we have a concept that people believe is various levels of likely, ETI, but which we have no evidence for (and a noticeable lack of evidence in places where we expected some), and we are casting around for novel phenomena we can apply our concept (ETI) to as an explanation. ‘Oumuamua is chosen because it has unusual properties. But unlike dark matter, the explanation came before the thing-that-needed-explaining. It's a god-of-gaps: If you can't explain it, "aliens did it".
Post by: Star One on 12/18/2019 02:00 pm
http://m.nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/if-we-believe-in-dark-matter-why-not-extraterrestrial-life
Taking Loeb's analogy (which handily also appears in the title), dark matter vs ETI, the two "beliefs" are opposite kinds.
In one, we discovered a phenomena that didn't fit and we are trying to figure out what could explain it, and that's even reflected in the name: Dark matter. That name, initially, was the entire extent of our knowledge of the mystery phenomena: it's dark in ways that baryonic matter isn't, but in terms of gravity and momentum it seems to otherwise act like matter. (Just as x-rays were an unknown & invisible (hence "x") phenomena that appeared to be emitted (hence "rays") from some substances and caused film to fog.)
In the other, we have a concept that people believe is various levels of likely, ETI, but which we have no evidence for (and a noticeable lack of evidence in places where we expected some), and we are casting around for novel phenomena we can apply our concept (ETI) to as an explanation. ‘Oumuamua is chosen because it has unusual properties. But unlike dark matter, the explanation came before the thing-that-needed-explaining. It's a god-of-gaps: If you can't explain it, "aliens did it".
We have no direct evidence that either claimed phenomena exists. Only indirect in the case of dark matter, and that’s not enough to say it definitely exists.
Post by: edzieba on 12/18/2019 04:50 pm
On the contrary: for Dark Matter the direct evidence that something exists came first (measurements of its gravitational effect), and Dark Matter was the name coined for what that thing-that-we-now-know-exists is composed of until we figure out what it actually is composed of.http://m.nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/if-we-believe-in-dark-matter-why-not-extraterrestrial-life
Taking Loeb's analogy (which handily also appears in the title), dark matter vs ETI, the two "beliefs" are opposite kinds.
In one, we discovered a phenomena that didn't fit and we are trying to figure out what could explain it, and that's even reflected in the name: Dark matter. That name, initially, was the entire extent of our knowledge of the mystery phenomena: it's dark in ways that baryonic matter isn't, but in terms of gravity and momentum it seems to otherwise act like matter. (Just as x-rays were an unknown & invisible (hence "x") phenomena that appeared to be emitted (hence "rays") from some substances and caused film to fog.)
In the other, we have a concept that people believe is various levels of likely, ETI, but which we have no evidence for (and a noticeable lack of evidence in places where we expected some), and we are casting around for novel phenomena we can apply our concept (ETI) to as an explanation. ‘Oumuamua is chosen because it has unusual properties. But unlike dark matter, the explanation came before the thing-that-needed-explaining. It's a god-of-gaps: If you can't explain it, "aliens did it".
We have no direct evidence that either claimed phenomena exists. Only indirect in the case of dark matter, and that’s not enough to say it definitely exists.
Post by: Paul451 on 12/19/2019 08:08 am
We have no direct evidence that either claimed phenomena exists. Only indirect in the case of dark matter, and that’s not enough to say it definitely exists.On the contrary: for Dark Matter the direct evidence that something exists came first (measurements of its gravitational effect), and Dark Matter was the name coined for what that thing-that-we-now-know-exists is composed of until we figure out what it actually is composed of.
Thanks, that's what I was trying to get across. Dark Matter is the name problem they are trying to solve. ETI is a would-be explanation they are trying to find something, anything, to find support for.
A better analogy for proposing ETI for ‘Oumuamua's oddities would be one specific would-be Dark Matter explanation like MOND or primordial black holes or supersymmetry. If the argument was, "We should be no more skeptical of ETI than we are of MOND," then I'd agree.
Post by: Star One on 12/19/2019 08:50 pm
Post by: Star One on 12/19/2019 08:50 pm
Post by: Paul451 on 12/19/2019 09:06 pm
I admire your faith because that’s what it is, in this mystical particle they call dark matter
You still don't get it.
You trip over something in the dark in a familiar hallway where nothing should be. It requires no faith to "believe" that something is there. But you don't know what it is until you identify it. Could be a mundane thing doing something weird, could be a whole new thing. The tripping over it is not in doubt, its identity is. That's dark matter.
You reach for a light-switch beside a door and your hand gropes around and finds nothing. You believe that a lightswitch should be next to the doorway, because, well, that's how you think lightswitches work. But it's not. But you believe it should be. So you keep looking. That's ETI.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 12/19/2019 10:01 pm
I admire your faith because that’s what it is, in this mystical particle they call dark matter, which strangely in spite of huge amounts of money and numerous experiments defies all discovery. Compare that to the insignificant amount of money that’s been spent on SETI research, which the lack of discovery can be explained partly by the lack of funds given towards it.
It's not faith. "Something" is causing the effects seen (the rotation rate of galaxies, the orbits of bound stars, the formation of galaxy clusters, gravitational lensing, etc. that do not match what they should be if the matter in them that we can see is all there is), we just don't know what it is yet. It's "unknown" aka Dark, matter. While it has defied discovery so far, we know that something is causing these effects.
The opposite is true for SETI. It's pure "faith" that extraterrestrial intelligence is out there. There aren't a whole host of observations that only make sense if they are caused by extraterrestrial intelligence.
Post by: Star One on 12/20/2019 06:52 am
I admire your faith because that’s what it is, in this mystical particle they call dark matter, which strangely in spite of huge amounts of money and numerous experiments defies all discovery. Compare that to the insignificant amount of money that’s been spent on SETI research, which the lack of discovery can be explained partly by the lack of funds given towards it.
It's not faith. "Something" is causing the effects seen (the rotation rate of galaxies, the orbits of bound stars, the formation of galaxy clusters, gravitational lensing, etc. that do not match what they should be if the matter in them that we can see is all there is), we just don't know what it is yet. It's "unknown" aka Dark, matter. While it has defied discovery so far, we know that something is causing these effects.
The opposite is true for SETI. It's pure "faith" that extraterrestrial intelligence is out there. There aren't a whole host of observations that only make sense if they are caused by extraterrestrial intelligence.
It is faith because the effects attributed to Dark Matter may have other explanations. Until and if we discover Dark Matter we are not in a position to rule out other explanations.
Post by: Paul451 on 12/20/2019 09:58 am
It is faith because the effects attributed to Dark Matter may have other explanations.
"Dark matter" is the name of the observed effects, not the name of the explanation. The various proposed explanation for Dark matter generally have other names.
The only "other explanation" for the effects would be if those rotational rates (and CMB effects) were somehow systematically mis-measured... by everyone... for decades, because of a quirk in how we measure rotation rates of galaxies. This seems unlikely, and AFAIK no-one actually has such an "other explanation" for such a systematic mis-measurement.
For eg, "Dark energy" is also not an explanation, but the name of a problem (accelerating expansion) that needs to be explained (via quintessence, brane-collision, etc, etc). But unlike with Dark matter, there is still some doubt about whether the measurements of acceleration of expansion are reliable, because of disagreements between "standard rulers". It's still possible that the acceleration doesn't exist, and therefore there is no issue (no invisible (Dark) effect) that needs to be explained. With Dark matter, there's no debate whether that the effect exists.
Post by: Star One on 12/23/2019 08:10 am
https://youtu.be/aseyBWZa3pY
Post by: Star One on 01/07/2020 07:29 am
Quote
Dr Helen Sharman told the Observer Magazine that extra-terrestrial life is bound to be somewhere in the universe.
"Aliens exist, there's no two ways about it," she said, adding that "there must be all sorts of different forms of life" among the billions of stars.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51003374
Post by: M.E.T. on 01/07/2020 05:47 pm
QuoteDr Helen Sharman told the Observer Magazine that extra-terrestrial life is bound to be somewhere in the universe.
"Aliens exist, there's no two ways about it," she said, adding that "there must be all sorts of different forms of life" among the billions of stars.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51003374
Of course we don’t have the evidence to back that claim. It is entirely plausible that we are the only technological civilization in the observable universe.
Post by: Paul451 on 01/07/2020 11:51 pm
Of course we don’t have the evidence to back that claim. It is entirely plausible that we are the only technological civilization in the observable universe.QuoteDr Helen Sharman told the Observer Magazine that extra-terrestrial life is bound to be somewhere in the universe.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51003374
"Aliens exist, there's no two ways about it," she said, adding that "there must be all sorts of different forms of life" among the billions of stars.
"Extra-terrestrial life", "alien life", "different forms of life" =/= "technological civilisation".
Post by: Paul451 on 01/07/2020 11:57 pm
[the WOW! signal] As for saying we have no SETI evidence we have a candidate, the only reason it’s not considered more than that is because it has never repeated.
No, the only reason is that there's too many other explanations that are more common and more likely, plus its discovery smelled too much like the LGM signal that ushered in the discovery of pulsars.
The fact that it hasn't repeated is why we can't distinguish between those other explanations, but that's not why we don't consider an ETI explanation as very likely. (In fact, the lack of repeat probably rules out a bunch of both new-natural-phenomenon and ETI possibilities. Though it does make "one-time interference" more likely.)
Post by: Star One on 01/08/2020 07:27 am
[the WOW! signal] As for saying we have no SETI evidence we have a candidate, the only reason it’s not considered more than that is because it has never repeated.
No, the only reason is that there's too many other explanations that are more common and more likely, plus its discovery smelled too much like the LGM signal that ushered in the discovery of pulsars.
The fact that it hasn't repeated is why we can't distinguish between those other explanations, but that's not why we don't consider an ETI explanation as very likely. (In fact, the lack of repeat probably rules out a bunch of both new-natural-phenomenon and ETI possibilities. Though it does make "one-time interference" more likely.)
Nothing in your first statement is actually very likely, unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets. A theory that’s been widely derided by astronomers. Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely. And as for saying it’s like the LGM signal that’s just speculation with no basis in fact, especially considering how long it happened ago I would of expected by now a solution to have been discovered or at the very least suggested if that was the case.
Your second paragraph falls down on the fact we can’t know how long any timescale for any kind of repeat is actually based on, it might repeat every five days, every five months, every five years, every five decades etc etc. Plus radio telescopes are busy devices and it’s hardly possibly that patch of sky could be constantly monitored, especially considering what a low priority SETI work has in the radio telescope world, so it is entirely possible any such repeat had been missed.
Post by: Paul451 on 01/08/2020 09:38 am
unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets.
No need to be obnoxious.
Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely.
On the contrary, in the very video you linked to it mentioned that the facility had thousands of similar non-repeating signals that occurred semi-randomly. The Wow! signal was merely the strongest of the bunch. Wow! is therefore only mysterious when taken in isolation without regard for the others. Given that other, vastly larger more sensitive radio telescopes haven't found the same semi-random signals that Big Ear kept seeing, it means it was an issue with that specific telescope, receiver, noise specific to them, the processing of the '70s computer used to catalogue the data, or something else unique to that facility. And if there are thousands of such events due to a error in the equipment, the one which is merely the loudest becomes quite mundane.
Many facilities have had such oddities. There was a radio telescope observatory in Australia that kept picking up a specific transient signal, they'd eliminated all the usual sources of external noise, satellites/probes/planets/cell-phones/planes/etc. Turned out (after a researcher noticed that it seemed more common around lunch time) that it was a unique glitch of the model of microwave they had in facility kitchen. It had been thoroughly tested for interference before being allowed on site. But turns out that while it doesn't produce any RF noise in normal operation, if you open the door while it's running, which turns out to be what half the staff did, the "emergency stop" did cause the magnetron to slam out a burst of noise that exactly matched the mystery transient.
Post by: Star One on 01/08/2020 11:33 am
unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets.
No need to be obnoxious.Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely.
On the contrary, in the very video you linked to it mentioned that the facility had thousands of similar non-repeating signals that occurred semi-randomly. The Wow! signal was merely the strongest of the bunch. Wow! is therefore only mysterious when taken in isolation without regard for the others. Given that other, vastly larger more sensitive radio telescopes haven't found the same semi-random signals that Big Ear kept seeing, it means it was an issue with that specific telescope, receiver, noise specific to them, the processing of the '70s computer used to catalogue the data, or something else unique to that facility. And if there are thousands of such events due to a error in the equipment, the one which is merely the loudest becomes quite mundane.
Many facilities have had such oddities. There was a radio telescope observatory in Australia that kept picking up a specific transient signal, they'd eliminated all the usual sources of external noise, satellites/probes/planets/cell-phones/planes/etc. Turned out (after a researcher noticed that it seemed more common around lunch time) that it was a unique glitch of the model of microwave they had in facility kitchen. It had been thoroughly tested for interference before being allowed on site. But turns out that while it doesn't produce any RF noise in normal operation, if you open the door while it's running, which turns out to be what half the staff did, the "emergency stop" did cause the magnetron to slam out a burst of noise that exactly matched the mystery transient.
It’s not been obnoxious it’s stating a fact, as the person putting forward the comet theory had no proper scientific background to do so. Hence why proper astronomers have decided it.
Post by: edzieba on 01/09/2020 02:32 pm
As you were the bring up that particular theory in the first place, your 'fact' is simply a textbook straw-man fallacy.unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets.
No need to be obnoxious.Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely.
On the contrary, in the very video you linked to it mentioned that the facility had thousands of similar non-repeating signals that occurred semi-randomly. The Wow! signal was merely the strongest of the bunch. Wow! is therefore only mysterious when taken in isolation without regard for the others. Given that other, vastly larger more sensitive radio telescopes haven't found the same semi-random signals that Big Ear kept seeing, it means it was an issue with that specific telescope, receiver, noise specific to them, the processing of the '70s computer used to catalogue the data, or something else unique to that facility. And if there are thousands of such events due to a error in the equipment, the one which is merely the loudest becomes quite mundane.
Many facilities have had such oddities. There was a radio telescope observatory in Australia that kept picking up a specific transient signal, they'd eliminated all the usual sources of external noise, satellites/probes/planets/cell-phones/planes/etc. Turned out (after a researcher noticed that it seemed more common around lunch time) that it was a unique glitch of the model of microwave they had in facility kitchen. It had been thoroughly tested for interference before being allowed on site. But turns out that while it doesn't produce any RF noise in normal operation, if you open the door while it's running, which turns out to be what half the staff did, the "emergency stop" did cause the magnetron to slam out a burst of noise that exactly matched the mystery transient.
It’s not been obnoxious it’s stating a fact, as the person putting forward the comet theory had no proper scientific background to do so. Hence why proper astronomers have decided it.
To clarify:
Paul451 mentioned there are multiple possible explanations that are not ETI. You then specifically chose one of those multiple, declared it a 'crank theory', then dismissed all other non-ETI theories by association.
Post by: Star One on 01/10/2020 03:37 pm
As you were the bring up that particular theory in the first place, your 'fact' is simply a textbook straw-man fallacy.unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets.
No need to be obnoxious.Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely.
On the contrary, in the very video you linked to it mentioned that the facility had thousands of similar non-repeating signals that occurred semi-randomly. The Wow! signal was merely the strongest of the bunch. Wow! is therefore only mysterious when taken in isolation without regard for the others. Given that other, vastly larger more sensitive radio telescopes haven't found the same semi-random signals that Big Ear kept seeing, it means it was an issue with that specific telescope, receiver, noise specific to them, the processing of the '70s computer used to catalogue the data, or something else unique to that facility. And if there are thousands of such events due to a error in the equipment, the one which is merely the loudest becomes quite mundane.
Many facilities have had such oddities. There was a radio telescope observatory in Australia that kept picking up a specific transient signal, they'd eliminated all the usual sources of external noise, satellites/probes/planets/cell-phones/planes/etc. Turned out (after a researcher noticed that it seemed more common around lunch time) that it was a unique glitch of the model of microwave they had in facility kitchen. It had been thoroughly tested for interference before being allowed on site. But turns out that while it doesn't produce any RF noise in normal operation, if you open the door while it's running, which turns out to be what half the staff did, the "emergency stop" did cause the magnetron to slam out a burst of noise that exactly matched the mystery transient.
It’s not been obnoxious it’s stating a fact, as the person putting forward the comet theory had no proper scientific background to do so. Hence why proper astronomers have decided it.
To clarify:
Paul451 mentioned there are multiple possible explanations that are not ETI. You then specifically chose one of those multiple, declared it a 'crank theory', then dismissed all other non-ETI theories by association.
No I didn’t. It’s both a massive extrapolation and assumption on your part to state otherwise.
Your criticism is in fact more applicable to the original poster being as he failed to actual mention any of these alternatives for this particular event, should he have done so it would have been possible to discuss them. Unless he’s automatically expecting me to know what was in his mind at the time, being as you’ve just done the same thing with me perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised you’d think that.
The only reason I even mentioned the comet theory is it’s the most well known alternative theory in recent times for this particular incident, and again because the OP failed to provide any examples of these alternative theories. They did mention the microwave oven example but that’s actually irrelevant to this discussion as that was connected to the discovery of FRBs not anything related to an alternative explanation for the WOW signal. And it’s not a very good example anyway as FRBs do very much exist and it was used to try and prove they weren’t an actual phenomena.
Post by: freddo411 on 01/10/2020 05:55 pm
unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets.
No need to be obnoxious.Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely.
On the contrary, in the very video you linked to it mentioned that the facility had thousands of similar non-repeating signals that occurred semi-randomly. The Wow! signal was merely the strongest of the bunch. Wow! is therefore only mysterious when taken in isolation without regard for the others. Given that other, vastly larger more sensitive radio telescopes haven't found the same semi-random signals that Big Ear kept seeing, it means it was an issue with that specific telescope, receiver, noise specific to them, the processing of the '70s computer used to catalogue the data, or something else unique to that facility. And if there are thousands of such events due to a error in the equipment, the one which is merely the loudest becomes quite mundane.
Many facilities have had such oddities. There was a radio telescope observatory in Australia that kept picking up a specific transient signal, they'd eliminated all the usual sources of external noise, satellites/probes/planets/cell-phones/planes/etc. Turned out (after a researcher noticed that it seemed more common around lunch time) that it was a unique glitch of the model of microwave they had in facility kitchen. It had been thoroughly tested for interference before being allowed on site. But turns out that while it doesn't produce any RF noise in normal operation, if you open the door while it's running, which turns out to be what half the staff did, the "emergency stop" did cause the magnetron to slam out a burst of noise that exactly matched the mystery transient.
This is a fascinating story, and a great example of scientists collecting and working thru the data over a very long time to finally identify the source.
Interesting, the same observatory, generated a DIFFERENT mysterious radio source. After an equally long time of collecting and working thru the data scientists have at least been able to verify that the source was astrophysical (not a microwave oven). So called Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are an active area of study. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst
The WOW signal is simply a tiny piece of data. Not enough data to make any conclusions about whether it is instrumental error, an astrophysical source, or human interference.
Post by: Star One on 01/23/2020 04:12 pm
unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets.
No need to be obnoxious.Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely.
On the contrary, in the very video you linked to it mentioned that the facility had thousands of similar non-repeating signals that occurred semi-randomly. The Wow! signal was merely the strongest of the bunch. Wow! is therefore only mysterious when taken in isolation without regard for the others. Given that other, vastly larger more sensitive radio telescopes haven't found the same semi-random signals that Big Ear kept seeing, it means it was an issue with that specific telescope, receiver, noise specific to them, the processing of the '70s computer used to catalogue the data, or something else unique to that facility. And if there are thousands of such events due to a error in the equipment, the one which is merely the loudest becomes quite mundane.
Many facilities have had such oddities. There was a radio telescope observatory in Australia that kept picking up a specific transient signal, they'd eliminated all the usual sources of external noise, satellites/probes/planets/cell-phones/planes/etc. Turned out (after a researcher noticed that it seemed more common around lunch time) that it was a unique glitch of the model of microwave they had in facility kitchen. It had been thoroughly tested for interference before being allowed on site. But turns out that while it doesn't produce any RF noise in normal operation, if you open the door while it's running, which turns out to be what half the staff did, the "emergency stop" did cause the magnetron to slam out a burst of noise that exactly matched the mystery transient.
This is a fascinating story, and a great example of scientists collecting and working thru the data over a very long time to finally identify the source.
Interesting, the same observatory, generated a DIFFERENT mysterious radio source. After an equally long time of collecting and working thru the data scientists have at least been able to verify that the source was astrophysical (not a microwave). So called Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are an active area of study. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst
The WOW signal is simply a tiny piece of data. Not enough data to make any conclusions about whether it is instrumental error, an astrophysical source, or human interference.
It’s still one more data point than Dark Matter. Yes I know we are interfering its existence from what’s happening to galaxies in their motions. But we don’t actually have a data point of an actual dark matter particle in the lab to study.
Post by: jbenton on 01/23/2020 04:54 pm
...
The WOW signal is simply a tiny piece of data. Not enough data to make any conclusions about whether it is instrumental error, an astrophysical source, or human interference.
It’s still one more data point than Dark Matter. Yes I know we are interfering its existence from what’s happening to galaxies in their motions. But we don’t actually have a data point of an actual dark matter particle in the lab to study.
Just for clarification, when you say "dark matter particle" you mean "non-baryonic weakly interacting massive particle," right?
Post by: RotoSequence on 01/23/2020 06:13 pm
Just for clarification, when you say "dark matter particle" you mean "non-baryonic weakly interacting massive particle," right?
I don't see why it would be limited to that. No one's seen Axionic dark matter, either.
Post by: Star One on 01/23/2020 07:49 pm
Just for clarification, when you say "dark matter particle" you mean "non-baryonic weakly interacting massive particle," right?
I don't see why it would be limited to that. No one's seen Axionic dark matter, either.
Well unless the OP knows something that the rest of the scientific community doesn’t!
Post by: Paul451 on 01/24/2020 11:14 am
It’s still one more data point than Dark Matter. Yes I know we are interfering its existence from what’s happening to galaxies in their motions. But we don’t actually have a data point of an actual dark matter particle in the lab to study.
We don't have access to gravitons either. Gravity is the name of a group of phenomena we observe. We then apply theories to the observations to see what fits. Over time we've gotten better at describing and predicting lots of parts of the observed phenomena in a single theory.
Dark matter is the same. We have lots of data. We are at the point where we can reliably measure the amount of dark matter in different galaxies. That is, we can find galaxies that have little dark matter, as well as clumps of dark matter with little associated baryonic matter. (That alone should give you at least a little respect for the field.) We're still at the early stages of theorisation, but the field is clearly improving in its understanding of the properties of dark matter.
Post by: eeergo on 01/24/2020 02:02 pm
The WOW signal is simply a tiny piece of data. Not enough data to make any conclusions about whether it is instrumental error, an astrophysical source, or human interference.
It’s still one more data point than Dark Matter. Yes I know we are interfering its existence from what’s happening to galaxies in their motions. But we don’t actually have a data point of an actual dark matter particle in the lab to study.
Not really a valid analogy: for DM you have plenty of evidence we're not understanding gravity in cosmological scales (not just galaxy rotations). Rather than trying to change gravitation to account for that, which is also an active research avenue even if considered less likely to be the final answer - the current preferred idea is to search for "invisible" mass that behaves as expected in the current gravitational framework.
Dark matter actually has plenty of laboratory datapoints too: there's at least one experiment (DAMA-LIBRA: https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10486 ) claiming to see a compatible signal (DAMA-LIBRA) for more than a decade, in total >100 datapoints. Of course, we can talk as to whether you believe that's just a poorly compensated systematic error or a smoking gun.
The same is true for the WOW signal, but with just a single datapoint that could harbor a signal, and not supported by any other visible phenomena other than rather anthropocentric statistical beliefs.
Post by: Star One on 01/24/2020 04:03 pm
The WOW signal is simply a tiny piece of data. Not enough data to make any conclusions about whether it is instrumental error, an astrophysical source, or human interference.
It’s still one more data point than Dark Matter. Yes I know we are interfering its existence from what’s happening to galaxies in their motions. But we don’t actually have a data point of an actual dark matter particle in the lab to study.
Not really a valid analogy: for DM you have plenty of evidence we're not understanding gravity in cosmological scales (not just galaxy rotations). Rather than trying to change gravitation to account for that, which is also an active research avenue even if considered less likely to be the final answer - the current preferred idea is to search for "invisible" mass that behaves as expected in the current gravitational framework.
Dark matter actually has plenty of laboratory datapoints too: there's at least one experiment (DAMA-LIBRA: https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10486 ) claiming to see a compatible signal (DAMA-LIBRA) for more than a decade, in total >100 datapoints. Of course, we can talk as to whether you believe that's just a poorly compensated systematic error or a smoking gun.
The same is true for the WOW signal, but with just a single datapoint that could harbor a signal, and not supported by any other visible phenomena other than rather anthropocentric statistical beliefs.
The thing about Dark Matter is it feels like every couple of months someone new comes up with a theory for it, half the time contradicting previous theories in the process. With it appearing like we are no closer to putting a dark matter particle under the microscope than we were 5, 10 or even 20 years ago
Don’t even get me started on Dark Energy.
Post by: eeergo on 01/24/2020 05:06 pm
The WOW signal is simply a tiny piece of data. Not enough data to make any conclusions [...]
It’s still one more data point than Dark Matter. Yes I know we are interfering its existence from what’s happening to galaxies in their motions. But we don’t actually have a data point of an actual dark matter particle in the lab to study.
Not really a valid analogy: for DM you have plenty of evidence we're not understanding gravity in cosmological scales (not just galaxy rotations).
[...]The same is true for the WOW signal, but with just a single datapoint that could harbor a signal, and not supported by any other visible phenomena other than rather anthropocentric statistical beliefs.
The thing about Dark Matter is it feels like every couple of months someone new comes up with a theory for it, half the time contradicting previous theories in the process. With it appearing like we are no closer to putting a dark matter particle under the microscope than we were 5, 10 or even 20 years ago. Don’t even get me started on Dark Energy.
I'd say there's an even larger variety of vastly less constrained yet generally wilder theories out there for SETI signals ;)
If a DM particle exists, yes - we're closer to putting it under the microscope than a few years ago, even than a few months ago, by the simple fact the existing detectors are accruing more data (=possible to observe smaller/rarer phenomena) and there are more sensitive ones coming along nicely, so the places where it can hide are shrinking. Maybe barely so, because it's so far away from the range we're currently sensitive to, or maybe we're on the verge of stumbling upon it.
Something analogous to the Higgs can happen: LEP looked at the "low" mass scale places and found nothing, larger masses also showed nothing, and there was a small mass range that could be seen as "improbable" for it to lie on (and LEP hadn't explored because of mixed politics and bean-counting)... and yet there it was at 125 GeV.
Of course, it can also be no DM particles exist and there's something else at play - but the evidence for DM/something else is overwhelmingly solid, from various uncorelated sources and abundant. Not so for SETI with a single anomalous signal and no other "anthropogenic-less" evidence.
Post by: meekGee on 01/25/2020 12:01 pm
How does this argue anything about the Wow signal?unless you subscribe to the theories of cranks for example that it was caused by comets.
No need to be obnoxious.Most known alternatives have been ruled out by now or are unlikely.
On the contrary, in the very video you linked to it mentioned that the facility had thousands of similar non-repeating signals that occurred semi-randomly. The Wow! signal was merely the strongest of the bunch. Wow! is therefore only mysterious when taken in isolation without regard for the others. Given that other, vastly larger more sensitive radio telescopes haven't found the same semi-random signals that Big Ear kept seeing, it means it was an issue with that specific telescope, receiver, noise specific to them, the processing of the '70s computer used to catalogue the data, or something else unique to that facility. And if there are thousands of such events due to a error in the equipment, the one which is merely the loudest becomes quite mundane.
Many facilities have had such oddities. There was a radio telescope observatory in Australia that kept picking up a specific transient signal, they'd eliminated all the usual sources of external noise, satellites/probes/planets/cell-phones/planes/etc. Turned out (after a researcher noticed that it seemed more common around lunch time) that it was a unique glitch of the model of microwave they had in facility kitchen. It had been thoroughly tested for interference before being allowed on site. But turns out that while it doesn't produce any RF noise in normal operation, if you open the door while it's running, which turns out to be what half the staff did, the "emergency stop" did cause the magnetron to slam out a burst of noise that exactly matched the mystery transient.
This is a fascinating story, and a great example of scientists collecting and working thru the data over a very long time to finally identify the source.
Interesting, the same observatory, generated a DIFFERENT mysterious radio source. After an equally long time of collecting and working thru the data scientists have at least been able to verify that the source was astrophysical (not a microwave). So called Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are an active area of study. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst
The WOW signal is simply a tiny piece of data. Not enough data to make any conclusions about whether it is instrumental error, an astrophysical source, or human interference.
It’s still one more data point than Dark Matter. Yes I know we are interfering its existence from what’s happening to galaxies in their motions. But we don’t actually have a data point of an actual dark matter particle in the lab to study.
One is about interpreting one signal in one facility (with the very enlightening context provided upthread), the other is about developing an understanding for a physical phenomenon that's observed everywhere we look. We don't have an explanation, but can repeat the measurements any time we want.
I mean imagine if DM was only observed once, by a single instrument, and then failed to be observed by similar and better instruments for several decades...
Post by: eeergo on 01/25/2020 01:12 pm
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1220843505624502279
Post by: Star One on 01/25/2020 02:31 pm
https://twitter.com/Astro_Wright/status/1220880604356583424
https://twitter.com/Astro_Wright/status/1220880605245845504
https://twitter.com/Astro_Wright/status/1220880606155956233
Post by: Star One on 02/12/2020 10:29 am
Quote
It's 'almost a racing certainty' there's alien life on Jupiter's moon Europa—and Mars could be hiding primitive microorganisms, too.
That's the view of leading British space scientist Professor Monica Grady, who says the notion of undiscovered life in our galaxy isn't nearly as far-fetched as we might expect.
Professor Grady, a Professor of Planetary and Space Science, says the frigid seas beneath Europa's ice sheets could harbor 'octopus' like creatures.
Meanwhile the deep caverns and caves found on Mars may also hide subterranean life-forms—as they offer shelter from intense solar radiation while also potentially boasting remnants of ice.
Professor Grady was speaking at Liverpool Hope University, where she's just been installed as Chancellor, and revealed: "When it comes to the prospects of life beyond Earth, it's almost a racing certainty that there's life beneath the ice on Europa.
https://m.phys.org/news/2020-02-certainty-life-europa-mars-uk.html
Post by: hop on 02/13/2020 08:03 pm
Quote from: physorg
It's 'almost a racing certainty' there's alien life on Jupiter's moon Europa—and Mars could be hiding primitive microorganisms, too.
That's the view of leading British space scientist Professor Monica Grady, who says the notion of undiscovered life in our galaxy isn't nearly as far-fetched as we might expect.
html
Quote from: Monica Grady
I didn’t say there was a ‘racing certainty .... of life on Mars’. I reckon there is reasonable chance for Mars, but Europa is better bet. I am quoted correctly in article, but not in headlinehttps://twitter.com/MonicaGrady/status/1226081877116755971
Post by: Star One on 02/15/2020 06:38 am
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/feb/15/astronomers-to-sweep-entire-sky-for-signs-of-extraterrestrial-life
Post by: Star One on 02/21/2020 06:50 am
https://youtu.be/D1gTyKcwIP4
Post by: Paul451 on 02/21/2020 07:18 pm
I’ve wondered if the first option offered here is the answer that biological civilisations are inevitably replaced by machine civilisations and therefore the civilisations our there won’t speak to us until this happens.
Doesn't help solve the paradox. It still requires a reason the machines are, in essence, hiding their activities from lesser civilisations. Not just "not speaking / not interested", but also not harvesting energy/resources in way that's visible.
It also still makes the mistake, which everyone seems to make, of requiring that every alien civilisation (machine or otherwise) acts the same. Not only does the replacement process have to be universal, it requires that not a single civilisation can ever produce friendly machine civilisation.
Post by: Star One on 02/22/2020 09:26 am
I’ve wondered if the first option offered here is the answer that biological civilisations are inevitably replaced by machine civilisations and therefore the civilisations our there won’t speak to us until this happens.
Doesn't help solve the paradox. It still requires a reason the machines are, in essence, hiding their activities from lesser civilisations. Not just "not speaking / not interested", but also not harvesting energy/resources in way that's visible.
It also still makes the mistake, which everyone seems to make, of requiring that every alien civilisation (machine or otherwise) acts the same. Not only does the replacement process have to be universal, it requires that not a single civilisation can ever produce friendly machine civilisation.
I reckon there must be also a factor that a lot of advanced civilisations wipe themselves out plus you have the issue of civilisations actually having to exist at the same time out of a great span of time.
Post by: M.E.T. on 02/22/2020 09:33 am
The idea that the mediocrity principle inevitably means there are many other civilizations out there appears (to me at least) to be increasingly questioned.
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.
Post by: Star One on 02/22/2020 10:36 am
I’m enjoying the refreshing increase in voices pointing out that the development of intelligent life (as opposed to simple life like bacteria) might be so rare that its potential probability could quite easily give an answer of less than 1 to the Drake equation.
The idea that the mediocrity principle inevitably means there are many other civilizations out there appears (to me at least) to be increasingly questioned.
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.
That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special. Also it sounds a lot like religious belief, as it’s remarkable similar to what a lot of religions like to tell their followers.
Post by: M.E.T. on 02/22/2020 10:57 am
I’m enjoying the refreshing increase in voices pointing out that the development of intelligent life (as opposed to simple life like bacteria) might be so rare that its potential probability could quite easily give an answer of less than 1 to the Drake equation.
The idea that the mediocrity principle inevitably means there are many other civilizations out there appears (to me at least) to be increasingly questioned.
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.
That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special. Also it sounds a lot like religious belief, as it’s remarkable similar to what a lot of religions like to tell their followers.
In fact, it would be impossible in an infinite universe. But we don’t know whether the universe is infinite or not. And in a finite universe, extrapolating from a sample of one requires as much belief either way.
Based on all the evidence we have, there is no civilization out there that has done anything visible to us thus far. And our theories would expect at least some of them to have engaged in actions with visible effects on a cosmic scale. The fact that we see none, while certainly not definitive, provides more evidence that we are alone, than it does for the opposite viewpoint.
Post by: pochimax on 02/22/2020 11:05 am
I’m enjoying the refreshing increase in voices pointing out that the development of intelligent life (as opposed to simple life like bacteria) might be so rare that its potential probability could quite easily give an answer of less than 1 to the Drake equation.Drake equation is about our galaxy. A result of 1 implies 100.000.000.000 of civilizations un the Universe, at any time.
The idea that the mediocrity principle inevitably means there are many other civilizations out there appears (to me at least) to be increasingly questioned.
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.
Post by: M.E.T. on 02/22/2020 11:13 am
I’m enjoying the refreshing increase in voices pointing out that the development of intelligent life (as opposed to simple life like bacteria) might be so rare that its potential probability could quite easily give an answer of less than 1 to the Drake equation.Drake equation is about our galaxy. A result of 1 implies 100.000.000.000 of civilizations un the Universe, at any time.
The idea that the mediocrity principle inevitably means there are many other civilizations out there appears (to me at least) to be increasingly questioned.
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.
Fair point. However it is simply a matter of statistics. If the answer turns out to be a trillion times lower than one, it gets to one current intelligent civilization in the entire universe. Point is, we don’t know. But the often expressed “certainty” in some quarters that intelligent life must exist elsewhere in the vast universe is unfounded, until we are able to narrow down this probability to a greater degree.
Post by: geza on 02/22/2020 11:34 am
I’m enjoying the refreshing increase in voices pointing out that the development of intelligent life (as opposed to simple life like bacteria) might be so rare that its potential probability could quite easily give an answer of less than 1 to the Drake equation.
The idea that the mediocrity principle inevitably means there are many other civilizations out there appears (to me at least) to be increasingly questioned.
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.
That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special. Also it sounds a lot like religious belief, as it’s remarkable similar to what a lot of religions like to tell their followers.
There is an infinite number of civilisations in an infinite Universe, provided that the probability of its existence in a given solar system is positive. This is trivial. However, the OBSERVABLE universe is finite. Moreover, the more distant a civilisation is, the more difficult to observe. It is easily possible that we are alone in the Milky Way, or alone in the Local Group. A civilisation in a far, far away galaxy is observable only, if it has reached the Kardashev Type III scale. (Note that the very distant galaxies are observed in their early stages.) This has nothing to do with arrogance.
Well, not seeing the infrared Type III techno-galaxies among the so many galaxies out there is concerning. Has anybody analysied seriously our observations from this point of view?
Post by: Paul451 on 02/22/2020 06:23 pm
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.
That's not really an "answer", as such, it's just rephrasing the question. (The "answer" would need to explain why. It's the specific "Great Filters" that are the actual proposed "answers".)
Post by: Paul451 on 02/22/2020 06:36 pm
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special.
What's "likely" is that humans are not special, but are fairly statistically mundane. Life, civilisation, technology, are all easy and obvious. Therefore the likeliest scenario is amongst the first thousand civilisations, billions of years ago, one or more likely many spread out and colonised every useful bit of real-estate around. Including our solar system. Therefore we wouldn't have evolved.
That didn't happen.
So our very existence means we're in a less likely scenario. Perhaps interstellar colonisation is more difficult than even we realise? Even generation ships are impossible. In that unlikely case, the likeliest scenario is that the galaxy is teeming with civilisations, some ancient, some not yet RF emitting, most in the middle. Millions of them over the billions of years since metallicity reached suitable levels. Numbers growing over time. The likeliest scenario is that the most communicative and curious species, the chatty side of the statistical bell-curve, would dominate the communication between species, and hence a culture-of-communication would dominate galaxies. Therefore the most likely scenario, given our simple existence, is that we must be surrounded by civilisations tight-beaming us with invitations to join the galactic network. (Not to mention visually obvious K2 modifications of millions of stars.)
That didn't happen.
Therefore we are not in the very likeliest scenario. Nor the likeliest scenario where we exist. We are in a weird and unlikely one. Therefore calling a suggested solution "unlikely" is redundant, the answer must be unlikely.
Likewise it is not arrogance to suggest that humans are special, given the observable fact that neither the first nor second scenario occurred.
So that leaves us with the unlikely:
a) We are alone, or near enough not to matter. Unlikely, but the answer must be unlikely.
b) Everyone else, universally, historically, consistently, without fail, is so fundamentally different from humanity to make scenarios one and two not happen even if civilisation is common. Ie, we are on the far extreme of the bell-curve, and outlier in the trillions-to-1 realm. Unlikely (by definition), but the answer must be unlikely.
c) Something Dangerous is keeping everyone else silent. Sharks on the reef. Dark Forest. Unlikely, why didn't the Dangerous Thing attack us sooner when there's less risk to the Dangerous Things, but the answer must be unlikely.
d) Something Powerful is enforcing a Prime Directive non-contact policy. Unlikely, since they can't be non-interventionists, non-expansionists and also enforce a galaxy-wide law without fail, but the answer must be unlikely.
e) Simulation Hypothesis. Unlikely, why simulate an empty universe rather than their own alien-rich universe, why simulate everything rather than focus on the interesting bits, but the answer must be unlikely.
That's it. Rank them as you see fit, but the answer must be unlikely.
[edit: fixed a bung quote format. Added some bits.]
Post by: Kryten on 02/22/2020 06:57 pm
That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special. Also it sounds a lot like religious belief, as it’s remarkable similar to what a lot of religions like to tell their followers.So far the only available evidence we have is life emerging just once, nevermind everything that comes after that. There was nothing stopping life emerging on earth multiple times, especially if the emergence of life is as simple as some people seem to think it is-but everything we've found so far can be easily traced back to a single ancestor. Almost all the questions that get brought up here are easily answered by us being a random fluke.
Post by: Oberon_Command on 02/22/2020 07:20 pm
The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special.
What's "likely" is that humans are not special, but are fairly statistically mundane. Life, civilisation, technology, are all easy and obvious. Therefore the likeliest scenario is amongst the first thousand civilisations, billions of years ago, one or more likely many spread out and colonised every useful bit of real-estate around. Including our solar system. Therefore we wouldn't have evolved.
That didn't happen.
I don't think this is likely at all. This assumption seems really common in the space advocate community and frankly it strikes me as a very Euro-American colonialist way of thinking. Probably because most space advocates are Euro-American or have internalized cultural mythologies that enshrine values similar to Euro-American ones. And then on top of that, humans have not yet colonized other worlds, so I'm puzzled by why we should assume that other technological civilizations that we've not yet encountered would feel compelled to attempt it when the desire to do so on our own world is limited to a minuscule percentage of individuals.
What I think is more likely is that alien civilizations exist, but the ones that have any sort of longevity have learned to live without infinite growth and stabilized their numbers on their homeworlds. They may have learned to live in balance with their planet, rather than "othering" it as our civilizations do. Civilizations that don't do this probably fall before they accomplish much of anything; civilizations that do have no compelling reason to leave in the first place other than "because they can." Not exactly motivating to the population on the scale that would be required for interstellar colonization. Civilizations that would be motivated to conquer space may repeatedly rise and fall on any given world, as it has on ours, without even getting to the point of going into space, never mind colonizing it.
So, I think the most likely case is that we are not alone, but everyone is staying home. A colonialist technological civilization that survives long enough to get to other planets in their own system, never mind other stars, is almost certainly the rare case.
Post by: daedalus1 on 02/22/2020 09:30 pm
Quote from: M.E.T.link=topic=43914.msg2049323#msg2049323 date=1582367582The simplest answer to the Fermi Paradox, to the mystery of the “Great Silence”, is that we are alone.That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special.
What's "likely" is that humans are not special, but are fairly statistically mundane. Life, civilisation, technology, are all easy and obvious. Therefore the likeliest scenario is amongst the first thousand civilisations, billions of years ago, one or more likely many spread out and colonised every useful bit of real-estate around. Including our solar system. Therefore we wouldn't have evolved.
That didn't happen.
So, I think the most likely case is that we are not alone, but everyone is staying home. A colonialist technological civilization that survives long enough to get to other planets in their own system, never mind other stars, is almost certainly the rare case.
No not the most likely case but just another hypothesis given the complete lack of evidence available.
Post by: Paul451 on 02/23/2020 03:28 am
Therefore the likeliest scenario is amongst the first thousand civilisations, billions of years ago, one or more likely many spread out and colonised every useful bit of real-estate around. Including our solar system. Therefore we wouldn't have evolved.I don't think this is likely at all. This assumption seems really common in the space advocate community and frankly it strikes me as a very Euro-American colonialist way of thinking. Probably because most space advocates are Euro-American or have internalized cultural mythologies that enshrine values similar to Euro-American ones.
And I didn't say that every species would colonise other worlds. I said, "one or more likely more". Out of thousands.
Star One's argument was about "likeliness", and the claim that it is "arrogant" and "religious" to think that humans might be unusual. Therefore statistically, "likely" is that we are somewhere in the middle 95% of the bell curve of traits of all alien civilisations. That means that, if life and civilisation is common, then it's "likely" that some of them in the last few billion years, in the 200 billion stars in our galaxy, have been colonisers.
It wasn't a political statement. It was a statistical one.
[Edit: Deleted some stuff.]
Post by: edzieba on 02/24/2020 05:12 pm
Well, not seeing the infrared Type III techno-galaxies among the so many galaxies out there is concerning. Has anybody analysied seriously our observations from this point of view?Boring explanation for the lack of observable IR galaxies: If your civilisation is so energy efficiency obsessed that they want to turn an entire galaxy into a Sterling engine, they are probably obsessive enough to chase the fraction of a percent efficiency gain in making sure their 'exhaust' photons are all pointing at as empty space as possible (or rather, that all their radiators are baffled against the handful of photons arriving from any and all surrounding galaxies or stars). That would effectively make that galaxy invisible in IR, or right down to whatever atomic pumped multi-layer shielded reflector a Type III civilisation can construct (as close as you can get to CMB).
Post by: Paul451 on 02/25/2020 01:07 am
Well, not seeing the infrared Type III techno-galaxies among the so many galaxies out there is concerning. Has anybody analysied seriously our observations from this point of view?Boring explanation for the lack of observable IR galaxies: If your civilisation is so energy efficiency obsessed that they want to turn an entire galaxy into a Sterling engine, they are probably obsessive enough to chase the fraction of a percent efficiency gain in making sure their 'exhaust' photons are all pointing at as empty space as possible (or rather, that all their radiators are baffled against the handful of photons arriving from any and all surrounding galaxies or stars). That would effectively make that galaxy invisible in IR, or right down to whatever atomic pumped multi-layer shielded reflector a Type III civilisation can construct (as close as you can get to CMB).
Requires every civilisation within our light-cone to be exactly the same.
Post by: Star One on 02/27/2020 08:59 am
https://youtu.be/_HytJn6uaRk
Post by: geza on 02/27/2020 11:22 am
That’s highly unlikely in an infinite universe. And just smacks of arrogance in thinking humans are anything special. Also it sounds a lot like religious belief, as it’s remarkable similar to what a lot of religions like to tell their followers.So far the only available evidence we have is life emerging just once, nevermind everything that comes after that. There was nothing stopping life emerging on earth multiple times, especially if the emergence of life is as simple as some people seem to think it is-but everything we've found so far can be easily traced back to a single ancestor. Almost all the questions that get brought up here are easily answered by us being a random fluke.
Actually, there were quite a few evolutionary steps that occurred only once during the single evolutionary history we are aware of. This is a far-from exhaustive list of such steps leading to H. sapiens:
(1) Origin of life
(2) Origin of eukaryote cell (cell with a nucleus, order of magnitude more complex than a bacterial cell)
(3) Origin of bilateria (animas with a gut, most animals you know belongs to this category)
(4) Origin of vertebrates
(5) Origin of tetrapods (four-legged animals, i.e. all vertebrates, which is no longer a fish)
(6) Origin of mammals
(7) Origin of an intelligent species.
It is a common misconception about evolution that Darwinian selection provide an internal drive for ever increasing complexity. However, we do NOT see this in evolutionary history. For instance, we see the continuously increasing brain size (probably connected to mental capacity) only in the evolutionary branch leading to H. sapiens. Brain size of other animals remain fairly constant during tens of millions of years. Obviously, emergence of humans required an unprobable coincidence of circumstances. The same is probably true for all steps above. We are out of clue about the order of magnitudes of the probabilities of these steps. Therefore, it is very easy to accept an extremely low probability for emergence of intelligence in a given planet.
Moreover, self-accelerating technological progress started only a quarter of millenium ago after a very long time of much slower pace of development. Probably, the transition to an industrial society is also a low-probability step. Now we are well aware of the fact that we are on an unsustainable path. We should try to transition to a sustainable economy and global society. Stabilisation of human population size is one of the important element of this transition. We cannot sustain an exponentially growing population indefinitely via colonizing other worlds, or Dyson spheres. (Actually, population growth has stopped already in the developed world.) I hope that we will be able to make the sustainability transition. Then, why we will want to colonise other planets, other solar systems? Around ten billion people will be enough to pursue many human goals, as happiness, or science.
Sure, emergence of a species (organic, or robotic) with the internal goal of colonising the universe is a possibility with positive probability. However, this is an additional step of (probably) low probability.
The bottom line is that finding, or not finding, other examples for life, higher animals, technology, or interstellar colonization is the most exciting question we can imagine. Anything is possible and no trivial argument wil provide answers.
Post by: Paul451 on 02/28/2020 04:57 am
It is a common misconception about evolution that Darwinian selection provide an internal drive for ever increasing complexity.
Not selection, randomisation. Drunkard's Walk against a hard lower bound (non-existence, in this case) will always trend over time towards the unbounded higher values.
Which is what we see in the fossil record. While the least complex forms always remain, as the diversity of life on Earth increased between extinction events, the maximum complexity increased. More complex life seems to be more vulnerable to extinction events, so there's been periodic resets, after which complexity begins increasing again. (For example, before the end-Paleozoic P-T extinction event, pseudo-mammals had evolved to at least the complexity and probably intelligence as dinosaurs a hundred million years later. Dinosaurs in the late Mesozoic were more complex and advanced than those in the early Mesozoic. Mammals in the Cenozoic increased in intelligence as they increased in diversity, until the late-Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions.)
Actually, there were quite a few evolutionary steps that occurred only once during the single evolutionary history we are aware of:
(1) Origin of life
(2) Origin of eukaryote cell (cell with a nucleus, order of magnitude more complex than a bacterial cell)
(3) Origin of bilateria (animas with a gut, most animals you know belongs to this category)
(4) Origin of vertebrates
(5) Origin of tetrapods (four-legged animals, i.e. all vertebrates, which is no longer a fish)
(6) Origin of mammals
(7) Origin of an intelligent species.
However, we do NOT see this in evolutionary history. For instance, we see the continuously increasing brain size (probably connected to mental capacity) only in the evolutionary branch leading to H. sapiens. Brain size of other animals remain fairly constant during tens of millions of years. Obviously, emergence of humans required an unprobable coincidence of circumstances. The same is probably true for all steps above. We are out of clue about the order of magnitudes of the probabilities of these steps.
I think we can make some inferences based on the speed of events. Life emerged on Earth pretty much as soon as life could survive on Earth. A good oxygen creator took time, and then it took around a billion years to oxidise the Earth. But once oxygen levels reached 5%, you saw animal life emerge pretty quickly. Once oxygen levels started increasing beyond 5%, you got the Cambrian explosion and much more complex life. Land animals (hence tetrapods) evolved pretty much as soon as complex land plants existed that could support them. And in the last 500 million years, the maximum complexity and intelligence of animals has tended to increase between extinctions.
We can take those as the "easy" steps.
The three big hold-outs seem to be Eukaryotes, good oxygen producers, and going beyond "smart animals" to proto-humans. I'd say the first two are just a matter of chance. But the latter seems to be a genuine barrier, there may be active selection against intelligence greater than this level.
However, once past the gap, the highest hominid intelligence kept increasing over time. I don't think it was fast enough to imply a strong positive selection, just that the Drunkard's Walk was allowed to continued once we got past the barrier.
Once humans reached modern intelligence levels, tribal/chieftain society seems to emerge amongst any large enough group. Agriculture appears to have been repeatedly "invented", as did animal domestication, but didn't occur rapidly. So I think there's a requirement for specific grain and animals to be available to us; we need random chance to do the heavy-lifting to get us a few types of easily domestication plants/animals, to get us close enough to the line that even nomadic hunter/gatherers can see the advantage. Not a "hard" step, but it requires enough time for simple-chance to give us the right ingredients to work from.
After we invent agriculture, cities and city-state power structures developed quickly and repeatedly and kept recurring. I'd say that's another "easy" step. Copper/bronze is another "easy" step, once such states exist. Low-grade steel might be, but high-quality steel isn't and is required for further progress.
Trade, writing, maths, astronomy, religion, philosophy, etc, all arose repeatedly in different civilisations. But the renaissance and the scientific era seems to be a singular event in history, and there are a lot of societies that seemed to be nudging hard up against it, but refusing to take the next step. It seems to be another hard barrier.
Industrialisation seems to have followed naturally from the discoveries of scientific era, so I don't consider our current civilisation to be "unlikely" once you get past that barrier.
So the "easy" steps are:
- life
- animal life
- complex life
- land animals
- "smart" animals
- city states
- metallurgy
- writing, money, maths, astronomy, etc
The "hard" steps that hold up even easy steps beyond them are:
- Eukaryotes
- the first good oxygen producers, like algae and plants
- the intelligence barrier for "smart animals"
- possibly higher metallurgy
- true science
The steps that just require enough time and diversity:
- oxidising a planet enough to allow free oxygen
- periodic improvements in efficiency of oxygen producers (I'm divided, this might actually be a series of hard barriers)
- increasing complexity of life
- increasing intelligence of tool-users, once they are beyond the "smart animal" barrier
- plant and animal domestication, and hence agriculture
- bronze-age technology (maybe up to basic steel)
- technology beyond steam
Five hard barriers. The rest are either easy, or just require time.
(Based on the apparent lack of life elsewhere in the solar system, a sixth (and first) barrier might be "planets that can support life". But we'd need better access to the exoplanets to figure just how close to Earth-like you can get and still not see life emerge.)
Actually, population growth has stopped already in the developed world.
This is such a recent development we don't know precisely why it occurs, we only have "just-so" stories. But it didn't happen even in the west until the development of effective birth control. And that required the existence of a fairly easy and very specific chemical effect in women. Neither surgical nor external birth control seems sufficient to achieve this.
It's also way too early to tell if, once the population of low-reproducers tops out, whether the (currently) small number of persistent high-reproducers within low-reproducer societies will simply out-produce the rest. Similarly, if we achieve significant life-extension without sterilisation, then having a very long-lived population where the average person averages just one kid per generation (which is easy to imagine), you're back to exponential growth until you hit resource constraints.
This is a general problem with drawing any conclusions from our current civilisation. We haven't really had enough time since the renaissance to draw conclusions about trends. Everything has kept changing too quickly to point at one thing, like birth rates, and say, "this is a new barrier or limit". ("Everything keeps changing" is the only trend, and actually suggests we haven't hit a new barrier.)
Getting affordable access to space might be the current barrier. But in hindsight, it feels like an "enough time/diversity" issue, with the space race and Apollo being an anomaly that created the impression of a lack of progress, hiding a slower underlying ("true") rate of progress. Might be easier to tell when looking back in a century or two.
Then, why we will want to colonise other planets, other solar systems?
Because single planet species become extinct single planet species?
Because this planet has a lot of people I don't like who insist on doing things the wrong way, and sometimes moving is easier than putting up with them, vastly easier than changing them, and morally superior to my other choices.
Because if given the option, a portion of any species will wander off from the main population into new areas. (Drunkard's Walk again.)
Sure, emergence of a species (organic, or robotic) with the internal goal of colonising the universe is a possibility with positive probability. However, this is an additional step of (probably) low probability.
Can't see your justification there. Any civilisation that expands off their home-world has the resources of their whole solar system at their disposal. Any species that figures out how to expand beyond their home system has the resources of a galaxy. That seems like a reasonable attraction, once you have the ability.
And it's not just enough to say that "civilisations" won't be motivated. You need to explain why no individuals or groups within that civilisation disagrees with that consensus and just does it.
Within human civilisation, we have people who really want to expand off-Earth, even when they can't really explain why. (They have arguments, but they generally don't stand up to scrutiny, they seem to be post-hoc justifications. They just want to.) If the ability exists to do so, some of them will.
The bottom line is that finding, or not finding, other examples for life, higher animals, technology, or interstellar colonization is the most exciting question we can imagine.
This is something I can't seem to get across to some people about Mars life when the topic of "planetary protection" is brought up, even on this site. Someone invariably says, "We know there can't be complex life, and colonising a whole world is more important than some stupid bugs."
Finding, proving, a second abiogenesis is beyond important.
Post by: Star One on 05/04/2020 02:04 pm
https://youtu.be/Le7Fqbsrrm8
Post by: Star One on 05/13/2020 07:19 pm
https://youtu.be/7v4v3IYdeWo
Post by: RotoSequence on 05/13/2020 08:08 pm
Another debunking video an identified flying bird:
This is the same youtuber who claims that SpaceX reuse is bunk and that SpaceX is kept afloat by deceiving investors, and is otherwise hemorrhaging cash. Having built his brand on skepticism towards everything of public interest, he's given himself a serious credibility problem.
Post by: Star One on 05/13/2020 09:49 pm
Thanks will remove the post in that case.Another debunking video an identified flying bird:
This is the same youtuber who claims that SpaceX reuse is bunk and that SpaceX is kept afloat by deceiving investors, and is otherwise hemorrhaging cash. Having built his brand on skepticism towards everything of public interest, he's given himself a serious credibility problem.
Post by: Star One on 05/15/2020 06:41 pm
Post by: Star One on 05/19/2020 03:20 pm
https://youtu.be/iLbbpRYRW5Y
Paper related to the above Cool Worlds video.
An objective Bayesian analysis of life’s early start and our late arrival
Significance
Does life’s early emergence mean that it would reappear quickly if we were to rerun Earth’s clock? If the timescale for intelligence evolution is very slow, then a quick start to life is actually necessary for our existence—and thus does not necessarily mean it is a generally quick process. Employing objective Bayesianism and a uniform-rate process assumption, we use just the chronology of life’s appearance in the fossil record, that of ourselves, and Earth’s habitability window to infer the true underlying rates accounting for this subtle selection effect. Our results find betting odds of >3:1 that abiogenesis is indeed a rapid process versus a slow and rare scenario, but 3:2 odds that intelligence may be rare.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/05/12/1921655117
Post by: Paul451 on 05/19/2020 06:56 pm
Another debunking video an identified flying bird:This is the same youtuber who claims that SpaceX reuse is bunk and that SpaceX is kept afloat by deceiving investors, and is otherwise hemorrhaging cash. Having built his brand on skepticism towards everything of public interest, he's given himself a serious credibility problem.
His dislike of Musk (mostly Hyperloop) is irrelevant to the subject. For example, his analysis of COVID-19 has been spot-on, while Musk has been re-tweeting conspiracy theories.
Much of his analysis of the UFO videos is just trig and common sense.
"Go Fast":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs
"FLIR":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3viYcYPRdu4
He hasn't done the third yet.
Post by: Star One on 05/25/2020 04:38 pm
Abstract
In the vigorous academic debate over the risks of the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and active Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (ETI) (METI), a significant factor has been largely overlooked. Specifically, the risk of merely detecting an alien signal from passive SETI activity is usually considered to be negligible. The history of international relations viewed through the lens of the realpolitik tradition of realist political thought suggests, however, that there is a measurable risk of conflict over the perceived benefit of monopoly access to ETI communication channels. This possibility needs to be considered when analyzing the potential risks and benefits of contact with ETI.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0265964620300199?via%3Dihub
Post by: Star One on 06/15/2020 09:02 pm
Abstract
We present a cosmic perspective on the search for life and examine the likely number of Communicating Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent (CETI) civilizations in our Galaxy by utilizing the latest astrophysical information. Our calculation involves Galactic star formation histories, metallicity distributions, and the likelihood of stars hosting Earth-like planets in their habitable zones, under specific assumptions which we describe as the Astrobiological Copernican Weak and Strong conditions. These assumptions are based on the one situation in which intelligent, communicative life is known to exist—on our own planet. This type of life has developed in a metal-rich environment and has taken roughly 5 Gyr to do so. We investigate the possible number of CETI civilizations based on different scenarios. At one extreme is the Weak Astrobiological Copernican scenario—such that a planet forms intelligent life sometime after 5 Gyr, but not earlier. The other is the Strong Astrobiological Copernican scenario in which life must form between 4.5 and 5.5 Gyr, as on Earth. In the Strong scenario (under the strictest set of assumptions), we find there should be at least ${36}_{-32}^{+175}$ civilizations within our Galaxy: this is a lower limit, based on the assumption that the average lifetime, L, of a communicating civilization is 100 yr (since we know that our own civilization has had radio communications for this time). If spread uniformly throughout the Galaxy this would imply that the nearest CETI is at most ${17,000}_{-10,000}^{+33,600}$ lt-yr away and most likely hosted by a low-mass M-dwarf star, likely far surpassing our ability to detect it for the foreseeable future, and making interstellar communication impossible. Furthermore, the likelihood that the host stars for this life are solar-type stars is extremely small and most would have to be M dwarfs, which may not be stable enough to host life over long timescales. We furthermore explore other scenarios and explain the likely number of CETI there are within the Galaxy based on variations of our assumptions.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab8225
Post by: Star One on 06/19/2020 02:17 pm
Abstract
Interstellar signals might be intermittent for many reasons, such as targeted sequential transmissions, isotropic broadcasts that are not 'on' continuously or many other reasons. The time interval between such signals would be important, because searchers would need to observe for long enough to achieve an initial detection and possibly determine a period. This article suggests that: (1) the power requirements of interstellar transmissions could be reduced by orders of magnitude by strategies that would result in intermittent signals, (2) planetary rotation might constrain some transmissions to be intermittent and in some cases to have the period of the source planet, and (3) signals constrained by planetary rotation might often have a cadence in the range of 10–25 h, if the majority of planets in our Solar system are taken as a guide. Extended observations might be needed to detect intermittent signals and are rarely used in SETI but are feasible, and seem appropriate when observing large concentrations of stars or following up on good candidate signals.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/intermittent-signals-and-planetary-days-in-seti/C82E96F87F60F2833576357CEE32FDFB#
Post by: Star One on 07/16/2020 08:19 pm
https://youtu.be/aB6kQwZZm5k
Post by: Star One on 07/16/2020 08:41 pm
https://youtu.be/lh0skjMpJHo
Post by: Star One on 07/24/2020 03:52 pm
Quote
While retired officials involved with the effort — including Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader — hope the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds, its main focus is on discovering whether another nation, especially any potential adversary, is using breakout aviation technology that could threaten the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-harry-reid-navy.html
Post by: RotoSequence on 08/16/2020 12:08 am
https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2314065/establishment-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force/
(Text reproduced in its entirety as a government work)
Quote from: Establishment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force
On Aug. 4, 2020, Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force (UAPTF). The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the UAPTF.
The Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.
As DOD has stated previously, the safety of our personnel and the security of our operations are of paramount concern. The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report. This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.
Post by: Star One on 08/17/2020 02:28 pm
It’s not impossible that ‘alien junk’ may have crashed on Earth and been picked up by the authorities. After all we now know that interstellar comets and asteroids pass through our Solsr System, so why not ET’s rubbish.
Quote
THE PENTAGON ON FRIDAY confirmed the creation of an agency designed to track potential UFOs.
Known formally as the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, or UAPTF, the office established Aug. 4 will operate within the purview of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security.
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-08-14/pentagon-confirms-existence-of-ufo-office-to-track-unidentified-aerial-phenomena
Here’s the related government press release.
https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2314065/establishment-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force/
Post by: Star One on 10/14/2020 02:00 pm
Quote
So what, exactly, was Trump getting at in this interview? One interpretation is that Trump riffed on the possible threat of aliens to talk about how much he had done for the U.S. military. Indeed, the president has spent approximately $2.5 trillion on defense, though there’s been no real increase in America’s overall military strength and number of weapons.
The other possibility? This was Trump directly threatening aliens—or, more likely, the foreign governments behind the UAPs that the Pentagon is investigating—with military action.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a34361453/trump-acknowledges-ufos-and-threatens-aliens/
Post by: Star One on 11/20/2020 10:49 am
Quote
So Caballero repeated the search, looking for Sun-like stars among the thousands that have been identified by Gaia in this region of the sky. By Sun-like, he means stars that share the same temperature, radius and luminosity.
The search returned just one candidate. “The only potential Sun-like star in all the WOW! Signal region appears to be 2MASS 19281982-2640123,” says Caballero. This star sits in the constellation of Sagittarius at a distance of 1800 light-years. It is an identical twin to our Sun, with the same temperature, radius, and luminosity.
Of course, Caballero’s work does not mean that 2MASS 19281982-2640123 must have been the source. He points out that there are many stars in that region of the sky that are too dim to be included in the catalog. One of these could be the source.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/sun-like-star-identified-as-the-potential-source-of-the-wow-signal
An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal
In this paper it is analysed which of the thousands of stars in the WOW! Signal region could have the highest chance of being the real source of the signal, providing that it came from a star system similar to ours. A total of 66 G and K-type stars are sampled, but only one of them is identified as a potential Sun-like star considering the available information in the Gaia Archive. This candidate source, which is named 2MASS 19281982-2640123, therefore becomes an ideal target to conduct observations in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets. Another 14 potential Sun-like stars (with estimated temperatures between 5,730 and 5,830 K) are also found in the region, but information about their luminosity and radius is unknown.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090
Post by: Robert Hags on 11/27/2020 01:22 pm
Post by: freddo411 on 11/27/2020 06:41 pm
Cross-posting this from the Gaia thread.QuoteSo Caballero repeated the search, looking for Sun-like stars among the thousands that have been identified by Gaia in this region of the sky. By Sun-like, he means stars that share the same temperature, radius and luminosity.
The search returned just one candidate. “The only potential Sun-like star in all the WOW! Signal region appears to be 2MASS 19281982-2640123,” says Caballero. This star sits in the constellation of Sagittarius at a distance of 1800 light-years. It is an identical twin to our Sun, with the same temperature, radius, and luminosity.
Of course, Caballero’s work does not mean that 2MASS 19281982-2640123 must have been the source. He points out that there are many stars in that region of the sky that are too dim to be included in the catalog. One of these could be the source.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/sun-like-star-identified-as-the-potential-source-of-the-wow-signal
An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal
In this paper it is analysed which of the thousands of stars in the WOW! Signal region could have the highest chance of being the real source of the signal, providing that it came from a star system similar to ours. A total of 66 G and K-type stars are sampled, but only one of them is identified as a potential Sun-like star considering the available information in the Gaia Archive. This candidate source, which is named 2MASS 19281982-2640123, therefore becomes an ideal target to conduct observations in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets. Another 14 potential Sun-like stars (with estimated temperatures between 5,730 and 5,830 K) are also found in the region, but information about their luminosity and radius is unknown.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090
I must take issue with the assumption that Sun-like stars are inherently likely to be the home of intelligence.
Other than our solar system, there is exactly zero evidence justifying this assumption.
It's just as likely that assumptions like this will hurt the cause of finding intelligence.
Post by: RotoSequence on 11/27/2020 07:03 pm
I must take issue with the assumption that Sun-like stars are inherently likely to be the home of intelligence.
Other than our solar system, there is exactly zero evidence justifying this assumption.
It's just as likely that assumptions like this will hurt the cause of finding intelligence.
Stellar dynamics give excellent reasons why G and K type stars should be the focus of such searches. The habitable zones of red dwarfs are prone to outbursts of high energy radiation, while larger, more luminous stars than our own are short-lived, providing very short windows for the emergence of life before they exit the main sequence and become giants.
Post by: leovinus on 11/27/2020 07:20 pm
One way or another, soon we will not know for sure whether it was a deliberate signal from an intelligent civilization, or a random outburst on a star. I doubt very much astronomers in this century will give an answer to questions about the signal "Wow". Nevertheless, I am most likely inclined towards the second option. If these were artificial radio waves, we would receive them very often.
To refresh our memory, here a link to the 2017 article that tested and verified the hypothesis that the WOW signal was hydrogen from an unknown comet. They actually checked whether they could measure a similar signal via other known comets and that worked. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html
Per Occam’s razor, simplest solution is most likely.
Post by: freddo411 on 11/27/2020 08:37 pm
I must take issue with the assumption that Sun-like stars are inherently likely to be the home of intelligence.
Other than our solar system, there is exactly zero evidence justifying this assumption.
It's just as likely that assumptions like this will hurt the cause of finding intelligence.
Stellar dynamics give excellent reasons why G and K type stars should be the focus of such searches. The habitable zones of red dwarfs are prone to outbursts of high energy radiation, while larger, more luminous stars than our own are short-lived, providing very short windows for the emergence of life before they exit the main sequence and become giants.
There's very little evidence that a planet in high energy radiation system is or is not correlated with development and prospering of life. Life in Ice planets or those with strong magnetic fields might not care at all. Also, intelligence might also decide to reside around high luminosity stars, or in cold interstellar space, or on brown dwarves.
Assumptions are just wild guesses. In this case, it can be thought of as Earth/Sun chauvinism as the root of all these arguments trace back to "that's how it is on Earth and with our lifeforms". (Well, not exactly all our lifeforms, as the extremophiles might be happier on hotter/colder places).
Post by: RotoSequence on 11/27/2020 09:04 pm
There's very little evidence that a planet in high energy radiation system is or is not correlated with development and prospering of life. Life in Ice planets or those with strong magnetic fields might not care at all. Also, intelligence might also decide to reside around high luminosity stars, or in cold interstellar space, or on brown dwarves.
Assumptions are just wild guesses. In this case, it can be thought of as Earth/Sun chauvinism as the root of all these arguments trace back to "that's how it is on Earth and with our lifeforms". (Well, not exactly all our lifeforms, as the extremophiles might be happier on hotter/colder places).
There are certain unavoidable assumptions with a sample size of one, but the universe is far from swimming in evidence for life, while we are swimming in evidence for Earth-sized planets orbiting red dwarfs in their habitable zones.
Post by: Star One on 11/28/2020 10:34 am
One way or another, soon we will not know for sure whether it was a deliberate signal from an intelligent civilization, or a random outburst on a star. I doubt very much astronomers in this century will give an answer to questions about the signal "Wow". Nevertheless, I am most likely inclined towards the second option. If these were artificial radio waves, we would receive them very often.
To refresh our memory, here a link to the 2017 article that tested and verified the hypothesis that the WOW signal was hydrogen from an unknown comet. They actually checked whether they could measure a similar signal via other known comets and that worked. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-wow-mystery-space.html
Per Occam’s razor, simplest solution is most likely.
That’s now more or less being been dismissed as an explanation.
https://www.livescience.com/59442-astronomers-skeptical-about-wow-signal.html
There’s also this post by a radio astronomer dismantling the comet paper.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Andromeda321/comments/6gal8v/no_the_wow_signal_was_probably_not_caused_by/
Edited to add it’s now fully discredited as an explanation.
Quote
Discredited hypothesesEdit
In 2017, Antonio Paris, a teacher from Florida, proposed that the hydrogen cloud surrounding two comets, 266P/Christensen and 335P/Gibbs, now known to have been in the same region of the sky, could have been the source of the Wow! signal.[21][22][23] This hypothesis was dismissed by astronomers, including members of the original Big Ear research team, as the cited comets were not in the beam at the correct time. Furthermore, comets do not emit strongly at the frequencies involved, and there is no explanation for why a comet would be observed in one beam but not in the other.[24][25]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal
Source: http://naapo.org/WOWCometRebuttal.html
Post by: Bubbinski on 12/04/2020 10:44 pm
Post by: russianhalo117 on 12/04/2020 11:53 pm
Be interesting to do an exoplanet search focused on 2MASS 19281982-2640123. It’s said that it’s a sunlike star. IF an exoplanet is found in the habitable zone and it’s earth sized, and the WOW signal is pinpointed to be from that system I guarantee you there would be much discussion about “ET”.SETI data collecting and work unit processing on primary projects went offline at the beginning of the year along with completed front-end processing for the current dataset. Backend processing is underway via Atlas Super computer, et al along with Nebula. Only the SETI AstroPulse project is currently collecting data at all sites now minus Arecibo.
For dataset backend processing and for future notices on resumption of data collection: https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
Post by: Bubbinski on 12/05/2020 01:35 am
Edited: I saw a notice explaining this, they were at a point of diminishing returns
Post by: russianhalo117 on 12/05/2020 03:27 am
Why did the SETI at Home go into hibernation? Was it due to lack of data from Arecibo?Simplistic answer with government and other funding at stake is they needed to show the results of their work which they are doing now. SETI were also planning to use the multiyear downtime to perform 21st century hardware and software upgrades at all sites. They had shifted all operations to other sites well before the first cable failure. The new equipment will cover spectrum not previously recorded and terahertz is a future plan.
Edited: I saw a notice explaining this, they were at a point of diminishing returns
Disclaimer I cannot speak for them but did front end processing through BOINC. If you go back a few years in the blog section to the first Atlas and Nebula runs it explains all in full detail.
Post by: Star One on 12/05/2020 07:49 am
https://youtu.be/MkuVGE8Zcjw
Post by: Star One on 12/08/2020 07:12 am
https://m.jpost.com/omg/former-israeli-space-security-chief-says-aliens-exist-humanity-not-ready-651405/amp
Post by: RotoSequence on 12/08/2020 08:25 am
I can’t imagine this will do much for his reputation. Perhaps better if he’d said nothing.
https://m.jpost.com/omg/former-israeli-space-security-chief-says-aliens-exist-humanity-not-ready-651405/amp
He's a rather old man; maybe he's just looking for a last laugh.
Post by: Star One on 12/09/2020 09:22 am
https://thedebrief.org/leaked-photo-surfaces-of-purported-unidentified-aerial-phenomena/
Post by: Frogstar_Robot on 12/09/2020 09:26 am
I thought the silly season was in the summer not December following that other story I posted yesterday. In spite of what it says in the article it still looks like semi-deflated balloon to me.
https://thedebrief.org/leaked-photo-surfaces-of-purported-unidentified-aerial-phenomena/
When it comes to "UFOs", it is always silly season.
Post by: Star One on 12/18/2020 09:28 am
Quote
Astronomers behind the most extensive search yet for alien life are investigating an intriguing radio wave emission that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun.
The narrow beam of radio waves was picked up during 30 hours of observations by the Parkes telescope in Australia in April and May last year, the Guardian understands. Analysis of the beam has been under way for some time and scientists have yet to identify a terrestrial culprit such as ground-based equipment or a passing satellite.
It is usual for astronomers on the $100m (£70m) Breakthrough Listen project to spot strange blasts of radio waves with the Parkes telescope or the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, but all so far have been attributed to human-made interference or natural sources.
https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/18/scientists-looking-for-aliens-investigate-radio-beam-from-nearby-star
Post by: Star One on 12/18/2020 11:04 am
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37134/emails-show-navys-ufo-patents-went-through-significant-internal-review-resulted-in-a-demo
Post by: Johnnyhinbos on 12/18/2020 04:01 pm
Jason Wright isn’t very pleased about The Guardian publishing this article...QuoteAstronomers behind the most extensive search yet for alien life are investigating an intriguing radio wave emission that appears to have come from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the sun.
The narrow beam of radio waves was picked up during 30 hours of observations by the Parkes telescope in Australia in April and May last year, the Guardian understands. Analysis of the beam has been under way for some time and scientists have yet to identify a terrestrial culprit such as ground-based equipment or a passing satellite.
It is usual for astronomers on the $100m (£70m) Breakthrough Listen project to spot strange blasts of radio waves with the Parkes telescope or the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, but all so far have been attributed to human-made interference or natural sources.
https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2020/dec/18/scientists-looking-for-aliens-investigate-radio-beam-from-nearby-star
https://twitter.com/astro_wright/status/1339966008279351296
Post by: faramund on 12/18/2020 07:48 pm
https://www.seti.org/protocols-eti-signal-detection (https://www.seti.org/protocols-eti-signal-detection).
The protocols say that a signal doesn't have to be notified while it is being verified, but that it should be announced if it is.
It doesn't seem to say much about what to do with a signal that seems interesting, but not conclusive. So leaking doesn't seem to be covered.
OTOH, If we assume Breakthrough is following the protocols, that presumably means the signal hasn't been verified, otherwise they should have made a public announcement.
Post by: Star One on 12/19/2020 09:55 am
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-hunters-discover-mysterious-signal-from-proxima-centauri/
Post by: Star One on 12/19/2020 11:12 am
I'm not sure how leaking this is against the protocols, i.e. see
https://www.seti.org/protocols-eti-signal-detection (https://www.seti.org/protocols-eti-signal-detection).
The protocols say that a signal doesn't have to be notified while it is being verified, but that it should be announced if it is.
It doesn't seem to say much about what to do with a signal that seems interesting, but not conclusive. So leaking doesn't seem to be covered.
OTOH, If we assume Breakthrough is following the protocols, that presumably means the signal hasn't been verified, otherwise they should have made a public announcement.
Also he’s been tweeting out various articles about this news.
Post by: Star One on 12/19/2020 11:17 am
https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/science/2020/12/alien-hunters-detect-mysterious-radio-signal-from-nearby-star?__twitter_impression=true
Post by: Star One on 12/20/2020 08:13 pm
https://youtu.be/IuMlJC5mMTc
Post by: Star One on 12/21/2020 10:09 am
https://youtu.be/lU7h-Mgzk7c
In the above video he mentions why would aliens use our type of MHz/KHz, the thing is if they are so close to us they would be picking up our signals all the time and could have made a beacon that would match our kind of radio frequencies I would have though.
Post by: Bogeyman on 12/21/2020 09:15 pm
https://www.livescience.com/proxima-centauri-mystery-radio-beam.html
Post by: Starchild Musgrime on 12/21/2020 09:47 pm
982.002 MHz unmodulated. Hmm. A quick online frequency to wavelength calculation in U.S. units ends up with an answer shockingly close to 1 foot. 1.001 foot (IIRC). I don't even know whether that's calculated at vacuum light speed or air light speed or what the assumptions are, I'm just throwing out ballparkness here. And even if I was more precise doppler shift would probably put uncertainty into the calculation. So what could possibly be magical about 1 imperial foot? It seems to me if I was someone in the radio astronomy world with access to a radio telescope with transmitting capability and I wanted to bounce a signal off something that was years down the road and not knowing if I'd ever get time on the radio telescope to observe the bounce I'd send a frequency that would tell any of my colleagues to ignore it if they stumbled upon it 9 years after my transmission. I'd probably have chosen the frequency based primarily on RF physics but once I'd determined the ballpark I was operating in it might have become obvious that some mild tuning of the ideal frequency would end up at a 1 foot wavelength to "encode" my message that its not a foreign signal.
So my questions are;
1) If it was transmitted from earth by a large dish 9 years ago and passively bounced off of a planet near or the star Proxima Centauri itself would the returned signal strength be observable or so vastly dilute that it kills my hairbrained theory?
2) Would 982 MHz be a frequency that anyone here would choose to send to bounce off of Proxima Centauri for some science purpose? Is it anywhere near a frequency that would be likely to "bounce"?
3) How many dishes are there that could have transmitted such a signal?
4) Do the few sites on earth that have such focused long distance transmitting capability have the habit of logging what signals they sent where and when they did it? No? Why not?
5) Why did my theoretical transmitter person not stick up his / her hand (or did they die in the intervening years)
Unrelated:
I recall reading in the Guinnes record book back in the 1970s something that wasn't a world record but rather something listed because it was odd and interesting and possibly alien. They told of a TV signal that was received with normal household antennas in ?London? a period of time after it was broadcast (days? weeks? years? I don't recall). That was unprecedented. Now there are numerous commonplace ways that that could have happened.
edit: added two questions
Post by: sdsds on 12/21/2020 10:04 pm
A 982 MHz carrier might be the kind of signal a sentient life form in Proxima Centauri would use to send the message, "We understand your culture pretty well." It would mean they understand the importance (to us) of the unit we call "a second" since the frequency is an integer multiple thereof, and that they understand the importance we place on the distance measure we call "a foot" since its wavelength is essentially a foot long. A unit of time and a unit of distance: just the thing to send "across time and space."
Maybe they learned everything about us from watching re-runs of "I Love Lucy?" I hope so.... ;-)
Post by: RotoSequence on 12/21/2020 10:37 pm
Just playing devil's advocate:
A 982 MHz carrier might be the kind of signal a sentient life form in Proxima Centauri would use to send the message, "We understand your culture pretty well." It would mean they understand the importance (to us) of the unit we call "a second" since the frequency is an integer multiple thereof, and that they understand the importance we place on the distance measure we call "a foot" since its wavelength is essentially a foot long. A unit of time and a unit of distance: just the thing to send "across time and space."
Maybe they learned everything about us from watching re-runs of "I Love Lucy?" I hope so.... ;-)
I'm finding myself very curious if the signal was red or blue shifted, and if so, by how much.
Post by: Johnnyhinbos on 12/21/2020 10:41 pm
It’s frequency shifted the opposite from it should be, meaning decreasing as source is approached (so opposite Doppler shift).Just playing devil's advocate:
A 982 MHz carrier might be the kind of signal a sentient life form in Proxima Centauri would use to send the message, "We understand your culture pretty well." It would mean they understand the importance (to us) of the unit we call "a second" since the frequency is an integer multiple thereof, and that they understand the importance we place on the distance measure we call "a foot" since its wavelength is essentially a foot long. A unit of time and a unit of distance: just the thing to send "across time and space."
Maybe they learned everything about us from watching re-runs of "I Love Lucy?" I hope so.... ;-)
I'm finding myself very curious if the signal was red or blue shifted, and if so, by how much.
https://youtu.be/lU7h-Mgzk7c
Post by: Starchild Musgrime on 12/21/2020 10:42 pm
I'm finding myself very curious if the signal was red or blue shifted, and if so, by how much.
Please please not here, take that over to a politics forum.
Post by: Star One on 12/21/2020 11:00 pm
Meaning it’s in orbit either here or there as a planet in the system would not produce that kind of shift.It’s frequency shifted the opposite from it should be, meaning decreasing as source is approached (so opposite Doppler shift).Just playing devil's advocate:
A 982 MHz carrier might be the kind of signal a sentient life form in Proxima Centauri would use to send the message, "We understand your culture pretty well." It would mean they understand the importance (to us) of the unit we call "a second" since the frequency is an integer multiple thereof, and that they understand the importance we place on the distance measure we call "a foot" since its wavelength is essentially a foot long. A unit of time and a unit of distance: just the thing to send "across time and space."
Maybe they learned everything about us from watching re-runs of "I Love Lucy?" I hope so.... ;-)
I'm finding myself very curious if the signal was red or blue shifted, and if so, by how much.
https://youtu.be/lU7h-Mgzk7c
Post by: Star One on 12/22/2020 04:12 pm
Post by: LouScheffer on 12/22/2020 04:55 pm
This has happened before: the WOW signal, a signal the SET institute found, leaked to the New York Times within days, that ended up being an uncatalogued deep space probe (https://archive.org/details/confessionsofali00shos/page/17/mode/2up), one from the RATAN-600 (https://www.sfgate.com/local-donotuse/article/Leaked-space-signal-report-has-SETI-groups-9191169.php), and now this one.
Post by: Star One on 12/22/2020 08:14 pm
https://youtu.be/-OO7JZ14sZM
Post by: Star One on 12/22/2020 08:40 pm
Post by: Paul451 on 12/23/2020 07:40 am
Re: 982MHz
You're both overthinking it. It's a UHF frequency used in telecommunications.
[edit: It's in the unlicenced 900MHz UHF band, so it's free for anyone to use. The reason it's unrestricted is that it's in the range where UHF-TV channels create natural harmonics (in this case UHF ch17), so wasn't useful until modern electronics/filtering.]
Hence:
Highest probability: It's from a satellite.
Lowest positive probability: Aliens picked up various channels from our broadcasts and used a reasonably quiet but obviously artificial channel in order to attract our attention.
Zero probability: Aliens learnt about us in detail, including our obscure units of measurement, and wanted to encode one second and one foot together in a pointlessly obscure way.
Also zero probability: An Earth scientist chose that frequency because it encoded one second and one foot in a pointlessly obscure way and believed that would a more suitable sign of it being man-made than just using a more obvious frequency, such as a UHF call channel, or the X-band. Or just a rounded off decimal frequency, such as exactly 1000MHz/1GHz.
If it was transmitted from earth by a large dish 9 years ago and passively bounced off of a planet near or the star Proxima Centauri itself would the returned signal strength be observable or so vastly dilute(d) that it kills my hairbrained theory?[Emphasis and correction mine.]
That one. A perfectly reflective flat plate at Proxima, perfectly aligned with Earth, would return a signal a quarter of the strength as arrived at Proxima. A perfect spherical reflector would reduce that down to virtually nothing, around a trillionth as much as reached Proxima. A natural object, such as a planet, both a sphere and an imperfect reflector, would reduce it to a small fraction of even that.
I recall reading in the Guinnes record book back in the 1970s something that wasn't a world record but rather something listed because it was odd and interesting and possibly alien. They told of a TV signal that was received with normal household antennas in ?London? a period of time after it was broadcast (days? weeks? years? I don't recall).
Not really something that Guinness did. Sounds more like one of the "Greatest Unsolved Mysteries" or "TimeLife Mysteries of the Unknown" type series. I read those as a kid, they are the reason I'm skeptical about every category of thing they wrote about, from aliens to ghosts to bigfoot. They "had form". They were very careful to not only not include realistic alternative explanations, but they are suspiciously careful to avoid mentioning details that would throw up red flags to any reasonable person.
Post by: Star One on 12/23/2020 09:14 am
Starchild Musgrime & sdsdsJason Wright says in the video above that as far as he’s aware, and he empathises he’s not an expert in radio communications, that it isn’t used in telecommunications.
Re: 982MHz
You're both overthinking it. It's a UHF frequency used in telecommunications. Hence:
Highest probability: It's from a satellite.
Lowest positive probability: Aliens picked up various channels from our broadcasts and used a reasonably quiet but obviously artificial channel in order to attract our attention.
Zero probability: Aliens learnt about us in detail, including our obscure units of measurement, and wanted to encode one second and one foot together in a pointlessly obscure way.
Also zero probability: An Earth scientist chose that frequency because it encoded one second and one foot in a pointlessly obscure way and believed that would a more suitable sign of it being man-made than just using a more obvious frequency, such as a UHF call channel, or the X-band. Or just a rounded off decimal frequency, such as exactly 1000MHz/1GHz.If it was transmitted from earth by a large dish 9 years ago and passively bounced off of a planet near or the star Proxima Centauri itself would the returned signal strength be observable or so vastly dilute(d) that it kills my hairbrained theory?[Emphasis and correction mine.]
That one. A perfectly reflective flat plate at Proxima, perfectly aligned with Earth, would return a signal a quarter of the strength as arrived at Proxima. A perfect spherical reflector would reduce that down to virtually nothing, around a trillionth as much as reached Proxima. A natural object, such as a planet, both a sphere and an imperfect reflector, would reduce it to a small fraction of even that.I recall reading in the Guinnes record book back in the 1970s something that wasn't a world record but rather something listed because it was odd and interesting and possibly alien. They told of a TV signal that was received with normal household antennas in ?London? a period of time after it was broadcast (days? weeks? years? I don't recall).
Not really something that Guinness did. Sounds more like one of the "Greatest Unsolved Mysteries" or "TimeLife Mysteries of the Unknown" type series. I read those as a kid, they are the reason I'm skeptical about every category of thing they wrote about, from aliens to ghosts to bigfoot. They "had form". They were very careful to not only not include realistic alternative explanations, but they are suspiciously careful to avoid mentioning details that would throw up red flags to any reasonable person.
By the way it isn’t actually 982MHz it is in fact 982.002MHz.
Post by: Star One on 12/24/2020 09:41 am
Quote
The second thing is that this is a transient, meaning it’s short-lived, and it hasn’t repeated. That gets us into tricky territory, for the SETI effort has detected numerous transients over the years, and the lack of repetition has made confirmation of their origin difficult if not impossible. The most famous is the Wow! signal detected at Ohio State in 1977, a signal that continues to inspire research, as we’re about to see in a new paper that considers some of its more unusual aspects. But more on that within a few weeks.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2020/12/21/a-transient-at-proxima-centauri/
Post by: Star One on 12/24/2020 09:45 am
Quote
BLC-1 signal recently discovered at 982.000MHz: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-hunters-discover-mysterious-signal-from-proxima-centauri/
That's also the wavelength (982MHz) of the Intel Stratix 10 FPGA: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/programmable/us/en/pdfs/literature/sg/product-catalog.pdf as well as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB GDDR6 with ROG Boost (Base: 982 MHz) and Fermi DVFS (982 MHz at 0.981V): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864816300736
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25477713
Post by: Star One on 12/28/2020 03:35 pm
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1343376749598425088
Quote
The suspected zombie Molniya activity is growing more interesting as the data rolls in:
- Three suspected spacecraft,
- Doppler rate is not following natural expectation,
- The s/c seem to be switching on/off their beacons before and after apogee much like modern Meridian. 1/2
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1343376751687204864
Quote
I'm resorting to identify the s/c from their timings and this may take a few days to gather enough data to narrow this down to something definitive. Thus far a wide range of Molniya 1-xx are suspects. Shortlisted are [7780, 1975-036A], [9880, 1977-021A] & [18946, 1988-018A]. 2/2
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1343383383733202944
Quote
All of these emitters are bound to the sidereal rate.
Post by: Star One on 12/28/2020 03:40 pm
Quote
Something that really strikes me is the spacing of these emissions. If this was a random zombie satellite activity from old missions the chances of it being this symmetrical is just too much to accept...
Post by: Star One on 12/28/2020 03:49 pm
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1343039796222967808
Quote
It's clear to me that until humankind quantifies what it is emitting by radio and other means that SETI is a folly. We as a species need to focus on understanding our own emissions as the first true step in interpreting anything we may feel we detect from elsewhere... 1/3
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1343039797036679169
Quote
As many of the SETI suspect emissions could come from satellites or other human space borne emissions than amateurs could have a significant role to play here. Sensors spread around the Earth listening and reporting in real time are what's needed. 2/3
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1343039797938409472
Quote
Until we reach that goal, brief emission detections will always be meaningless and suspect. Our goal should be to understanding how the international (universal) park of the radio spectrum is used. Then we will potentially notice things that truly warrant study... 3/3
Post by: Frogstar_Robot on 12/28/2020 04:14 pm
Any accidental emission of RF would be likely to be low power and therefore only detectable at very close range, and indistinguishable from noise.
An advanced civ would probably not use RF anyway, I think the only reason we are looking for RF is because that is about all we can do with our current level of tech. The chances are that another civ is either millions of years behind, in which case there are no signals to detect, or millions of years ahead, in which case their presence would be obvious - if they want it to be.
Post by: Star One on 12/28/2020 04:27 pm
IMO, any directed alien message would be so fricking obvious we would not need to debate it. If aliens have built multi GW transmitters to broadcast to other civs, they are not going to waste it with cryptic messages.I don’t think we can know a thing about races that advanced as they would appear as literal gods to us.
Any accidental emission of RF would be likely to be low power and therefore only detectable at very close range, and indistinguishable from noise.
An advanced civ would probably not use RF anyway, I think the only reason we are looking for RF is because that is about all we can do with our current level of tech. The chances are that another civ is either millions of years behind, in which case there are no signals to detect, or millions of years ahead, in which case their presence would be obvious - if they want it to be.
Post by: RonM on 12/28/2020 05:44 pm
IMO, any directed alien message would be so fricking obvious we would not need to debate it. If aliens have built multi GW transmitters to broadcast to other civs, they are not going to waste it with cryptic messages.I don’t think we can know a thing about races that advanced as they would appear as literal gods to us.
Any accidental emission of RF would be likely to be low power and therefore only detectable at very close range, and indistinguishable from noise.
An advanced civ would probably not use RF anyway, I think the only reason we are looking for RF is because that is about all we can do with our current level of tech. The chances are that another civ is either millions of years behind, in which case there are no signals to detect, or millions of years ahead, in which case their presence would be obvious - if they want it to be.
Once you make that assumption logic based discussion becomes impossible.
Post by: punder on 12/28/2020 05:53 pm
Which, unfortunately, does not invalidate the assumption.I don’t think we can know a thing about races that advanced as they would appear as literal gods to us.
Once you make that assumption logic based discussion becomes impossible.
Post by: punder on 12/28/2020 05:59 pm
An advanced civ would probably not use RF anyway, I think the only reason we are looking for RF is because that is about all we can do with our current level of tech. The chances are that another civ is either millions of years behind, in which case there are no signals to detect, or millions of years ahead, in which case their presence would be obvious - if they want it to be.Do you email your cat? :D
IF a godlike civilization wanted to communicate with a less advanced one, it’s conceivable they might choose a method of communication appropriate for the situation.
Post by: Phil Stooke on 12/28/2020 05:59 pm
Post by: Frogstar_Robot on 12/28/2020 06:16 pm
An advanced civ would probably not use RF anyway, I think the only reason we are looking for RF is because that is about all we can do with our current level of tech. The chances are that another civ is either millions of years behind, in which case there are no signals to detect, or millions of years ahead, in which case their presence would be obvious - if they want it to be.Do you email your cat? :D
IF a godlike civilization wanted to communicate with a less advanced one, it’s conceivable they might choose a method of communication appropriate for the situation.
So if your cat meows at you, do you attempt to engage it in conversation? :)
It's not hard to think what an advanced civ would do, several people have. They are governed by the same laws of physics we are. They might plant "markers" on habitable planets (2001), or send messages with instructions (Contact). When a civ is smart enough to decode and interpret the message, then they are ready to contact.
I would send out self-replicating robots to search for and monitor habitable planets, which I would have to do anyway.
Actually I am not so worried about the mechanics of contact. I am more worried about the intent of the contact. The nature of science is that an advanced civ are likely to have highly dangerous weapons, as a result of harnessing high energies. I don't think there is any equivalent projection from the social "sciences" whether an advanced civ would be benevolent or belligerent - or maybe just casually destructive like humans. We should really hope they are not like humans!
Post by: matthewkantar on 12/29/2020 03:44 am
So if your cat meows at you, do you attempt to engage it in conversation? :)
I for one always attempt to engage my cats in conversation when they meow at me.
Post by: Star One on 12/29/2020 08:29 am
You’d hope that sufficiently advanced race would have moved past violent actions.An advanced civ would probably not use RF anyway, I think the only reason we are looking for RF is because that is about all we can do with our current level of tech. The chances are that another civ is either millions of years behind, in which case there are no signals to detect, or millions of years ahead, in which case their presence would be obvious - if they want it to be.Do you email your cat? :D
IF a godlike civilization wanted to communicate with a less advanced one, it’s conceivable they might choose a method of communication appropriate for the situation.
So if your cat meows at you, do you attempt to engage it in conversation? :)
It's not hard to think what an advanced civ would do, several people have. They are governed by the same laws of physics we are. They might plant "markers" on habitable planets (2001), or send messages with instructions (Contact). When a civ is smart enough to decode and interpret the message, then they are ready to contact.
I would send out self-replicating robots to search for and monitor habitable planets, which I would have to do anyway.
Actually I am not so worried about the mechanics of contact. I am more worried about the intent of the contact. The nature of science is that an advanced civ are likely to have highly dangerous weapons, as a result of harnessing high energies. I don't think there is any equivalent projection from the social "sciences" whether an advanced civ would be benevolent or belligerent - or maybe just casually destructive like humans. We should really hope they are not like humans!
Thing is that no matter how advanced you are there is probably someone more advanced than you out there. Excession by the late Iain M Banks is a very good examination of that idea.
Post by: punder on 12/29/2020 09:14 pm
Yes. Cats and humans communicate with each other all the time!
So if your cat meows at you, do you attempt to engage it in conversation? :)
I for one always attempt to engage my cats in conversation when they meow at me.
Post by: Star One on 12/30/2020 07:21 am
Cats evolved meowing specifically for humans I am sure I read.Yes. Cats and humans communicate with each other all the time!
So if your cat meows at you, do you attempt to engage it in conversation? :)
I for one always attempt to engage my cats in conversation when they meow at me.
Post by: Welsh Dragon on 12/30/2020 08:49 am
Meowing is a kitten behaviour, adult cats meowing is a domestication thing.Cats evolved meowing specifically for humans I am sure I read.Yes. Cats and humans communicate with each other all the time!
So if your cat meows at you, do you attempt to engage it in conversation? :)
I for one always attempt to engage my cats in conversation when they meow at me.
Post by: russianhalo117 on 01/08/2021 02:52 am
https://oirlab.ucsd.edu/PANOSETI.html
https://news.berkeley.edu/story_jump/new-telescope-to-look-for-laser-pulses-from-life-around-other-planets/
Post by: Star One on 01/13/2021 06:54 am
https://youtu.be/3KeTyKVw6OU
Another new video about BLC1:
https://youtu.be/g1nYYjA7Fno
Post by: Star One on 01/16/2021 07:12 am
Quote
According to Greenewald, around 10,000 Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) reports were required to obtain the PDFs and the process was an excruciatingly long one. He scanned the documents by hand.
“Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,” Greenewald said in an email to Motherboard. “It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.”
According to a blog announcing the archive, the CIA created a CD-ROM containing previously released records as well as those the Black Vault was attempting to unseal. To ensure the Black Vault has as complete a record of CIA documents as possible available, it purchased this CD-ROM in mid-2020.
The Black Vault blog notes that the CIA claims that this represents all its documents on the file, but there may be no way to verify that and other documents may be out there.
“Researchers and curious minds alike prefer simplicity and accessibility when they look at data dumps such as these,” Greenewald said. “The CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqjy/you-can-now-easily-download-all-cia-ufo-documents-to-date
Post by: matthewkantar on 01/16/2021 07:42 pm
What interested me about this wasn’t the UFO nonsense but this section of the article.QuoteAccording to Greenewald, around 10,000 Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) reports were required to obtain the PDFs and the process was an excruciatingly long one. He scanned the documents by hand.
“Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,” Greenewald said in an email to Motherboard. “It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.”
According to a blog announcing the archive, the CIA created a CD-ROM containing previously released records as well as those the Black Vault was attempting to unseal. To ensure the Black Vault has as complete a record of CIA documents as possible available, it purchased this CD-ROM in mid-2020.
The Black Vault blog notes that the CIA claims that this represents all its documents on the file, but there may be no way to verify that and other documents may be out there.
“Researchers and curious minds alike prefer simplicity and accessibility when they look at data dumps such as these,” Greenewald said. “The CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqjy/you-can-now-easily-download-all-cia-ufo-documents-to-date
Incompetence is a much more compelling explanation for this than malice.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 01/16/2021 07:59 pm
What interested me about this wasn’t the UFO nonsense but this section of the article.QuoteAccording to Greenewald, around 10,000 Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) reports were required to obtain the PDFs and the process was an excruciatingly long one. He scanned the documents by hand.
“Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,” Greenewald said in an email to Motherboard. “It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.”
According to a blog announcing the archive, the CIA created a CD-ROM containing previously released records as well as those the Black Vault was attempting to unseal. To ensure the Black Vault has as complete a record of CIA documents as possible available, it purchased this CD-ROM in mid-2020.
The Black Vault blog notes that the CIA claims that this represents all its documents on the file, but there may be no way to verify that and other documents may be out there.
“Researchers and curious minds alike prefer simplicity and accessibility when they look at data dumps such as these,” Greenewald said. “The CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqjy/you-can-now-easily-download-all-cia-ufo-documents-to-date
Incompetence is a much more compelling explanation for this than malice.
Or they have ancient computers that simply can't produce documents in better formats.
Post by: Star One on 01/17/2021 10:38 am
You’d think the CIA would have the newest in computing.What interested me about this wasn’t the UFO nonsense but this section of the article.QuoteAccording to Greenewald, around 10,000 Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) reports were required to obtain the PDFs and the process was an excruciatingly long one. He scanned the documents by hand.
“Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,” Greenewald said in an email to Motherboard. “It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.”
According to a blog announcing the archive, the CIA created a CD-ROM containing previously released records as well as those the Black Vault was attempting to unseal. To ensure the Black Vault has as complete a record of CIA documents as possible available, it purchased this CD-ROM in mid-2020.
The Black Vault blog notes that the CIA claims that this represents all its documents on the file, but there may be no way to verify that and other documents may be out there.
“Researchers and curious minds alike prefer simplicity and accessibility when they look at data dumps such as these,” Greenewald said. “The CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqjy/you-can-now-easily-download-all-cia-ufo-documents-to-date
Incompetence is a much more compelling explanation for this than malice.
Or they have ancient computers that simply can't produce documents in better formats.
Post by: Star One on 01/18/2021 08:32 am
https://youtu.be/qX_Bj7064Ms
Post by: edzieba on 01/18/2021 11:10 am
I don't think anyone who's ever come vaguely close to a government computer system would ever think that. It's a surprise whenever the storage system in use when a classification system is decommissioned is not the one it was built on when it was implemented however many decades ago.You’d think the CIA would have the newest in computing.What interested me about this wasn’t the UFO nonsense but this section of the article.QuoteAccording to Greenewald, around 10,000 Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) reports were required to obtain the PDFs and the process was an excruciatingly long one. He scanned the documents by hand.
“Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,” Greenewald said in an email to Motherboard. “It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.”
According to a blog announcing the archive, the CIA created a CD-ROM containing previously released records as well as those the Black Vault was attempting to unseal. To ensure the Black Vault has as complete a record of CIA documents as possible available, it purchased this CD-ROM in mid-2020.
The Black Vault blog notes that the CIA claims that this represents all its documents on the file, but there may be no way to verify that and other documents may be out there.
“Researchers and curious minds alike prefer simplicity and accessibility when they look at data dumps such as these,” Greenewald said. “The CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqjy/you-can-now-easily-download-all-cia-ufo-documents-to-date
Incompetence is a much more compelling explanation for this than malice.
Or they have ancient computers that simply can't produce documents in better formats.
Multipage .tif and dodgy OCR sounds like the raw output of an 'electronic records system' built in the very early 90s and in use ever since (because if it's not broke, good luck getting budget to fix it!), and only ever intended as a "well technically we have these documents archived now, so we can shred the paper copies and sell of that warehouse, and we never expect to have to actually read this junk again anyway" solution. Ignore the text files, convert the tifs to PDFs with modern OCR, and you have an archive far more usable than if the CIA had just given you a login to their own system.
Post by: Frogstar_Robot on 01/18/2021 11:55 am
You’d think the CIA would have the newest in computing.
A lot of people's opinions seem to be shaped by Hollywood. The reality is more Brazil (1985) than Minority Report.
Post by: Star One on 02/25/2021 08:51 am
Quote
We are, as a matter of fact, taking the hypothesis of extraterrestrial life, even intelligent extraterrestrial life, more seriously now than ever before, and this is true not just among the general public but also within the community of working scientists. But I don’t see Avi Loeb saying anything that discounts that work. What I do see him saying in Extraterrestrial is that in the case of ‘Oumuamua, scientists are reluctant to consider a hypothesis of extraterrestrial technology even though it stands up to scrutiny — as a hypothesis — and offers as good an explanation as others I’ve seen. Well actually, better, because as Loeb says, it checks off more of the needed boxes.
Invariably, critics quote Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Loeb is not overly impressed with the formulation, saying “evidence is evidence, no?” And he goes on: “I do believe that extraordinary conservatism keeps us extraordinarily ignorant. Put differently, the field doesn’t need more cautious detectives.” Fighting words, those. A solid rhetorical strategy, perhaps, but then caution is also baked into the scientific method, as well it should be. So let’s talk about caution and ‘Oumuamua.
Quote
Can we discuss this alien artifact hypothesis in a rational way? Loeb is not sure we can, at least in some venues, given the assumptions and accumulated inertia he sees plaguing the academic community. He describes pressure on young postdocs to choose career paths that will fit into accepted ideas. He asks whether what we might call the science ‘establishment’ is simply top-heavy, a victim of its own inertia, so that the safer course for new students is not to challenge older models.
Quote
Now we’re at the heart of the book, for as we’ve seen, Extraterrestrial is less about ‘Oumuamua itself and more about how we do science, and what the author sees as a too conservative approach that is fed by the demands of making a career. He’s compelled to ask: Shouldn’t the possibility of ‘Oumuamua being an extraterrestrial artifact, a technological object, be a bit less controversial than it appears to be, given the growth in our knowledge in recent decades?
Quote
Isn’t communicating ideas part of the job description of anyone employed to do scientific research? So much of that research is funded by the public through their tax dollars, after all. If Loeb’s prickly book is forcing some scientists to take the time to explain why they think his hypothesis is unlikely, I cannot see that as a bad thing. Good for Avi Loeb, I’d say.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2021/02/23/extraterrestrial-on-oumuamua-as-artifact/
Post by: LouScheffer on 02/25/2021 11:30 pm
They likely do, and they use their new computers to compile intelligence on foreign countries. They use their really ancient computers to compile UFO reports. A Bayesian allocation of resources....You’d think the CIA would have the newest in computing.Or they have ancient computers that simply can't produce documents in better formats.Incompetence is a much more compelling explanation for this than malice.QuoteThe CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqjy/you-can-now-easily-download-all-cia-ufo-documents-to-date
Post by: Star One on 02/26/2021 08:12 am
Why on earth would you keep to probably barely compatible computer systems in use that just seems a waste of resources.They likely do, and they use their new computers to compile intelligence on foreign countries. They use their really ancient computers to compile UFO reports. A Bayesian allocation of resources....You’d think the CIA would have the newest in computing.Or they have ancient computers that simply can't produce documents in better formats.Incompetence is a much more compelling explanation for this than malice.QuoteThe CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a “search” tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqjy/you-can-now-easily-download-all-cia-ufo-documents-to-date
Post by: Star One on 03/03/2021 06:44 pm
https://youtu.be/TpTJbtMFKAU
Post by: Star One on 04/15/2021 06:55 am
https://youtu.be/qpewt9qEYXw
Post by: RotoSequence on 04/15/2021 07:40 am
BLC1 was RFI. This link take should take you directly to the relevant section of the talk by Breakthrough as otherwise this is a 5 hour video.
No timestamp in the link :-\
Post by: tea monster on 04/15/2021 08:00 am
Why on earth would you keep to probably barely compatible computer systems in use that just seems a waste of resources.Installing new computer systems often means disposing of a certain amount of backwards compatibility. Writing new software and developing new systems to run on the new hardware takes a large amount of budget and time to bring to fruition. A lot of companies just don't want to spend the money if what they have works.
I can well imagine that in the surveillance community, they want to keep IT systems on hand that can read old and outdated hardware. Suppose that for whatever reason they suddenly need to be able to read data from a 1950's tape drive? Are they going to pay someone to develop a system to read those tapes with a certain probability that it won't work, or are they going to keep an old mainframe in mothballs in the basement that they know for certain will do the job?
Post by: Star One on 04/15/2021 09:31 am
On my end when I tried it, it was 4:34:41. Hope that helps.BLC1 was RFI. This link take should take you directly to the relevant section of the talk by Breakthrough as otherwise this is a 5 hour video.
No timestamp in the link :-\
Post by: Star One on 04/15/2021 09:33 am
I guessing you’re talking about something like it was mentioned on another thread that an intelligence satellite was still seemingly being used many, many years after it was launched.Why on earth would you keep to probably barely compatible computer systems in use that just seems a waste of resources.Installing new computer systems often means disposing of a certain amount of backwards compatibility. Writing new software and developing new systems to run on the new hardware takes a large amount of budget and time to bring to fruition. A lot of companies just don't want to spend the money if what they have works.
I can well imagine that in the surveillance community, they want to keep IT systems on hand that can read old and outdated hardware. Suppose that for whatever reason they suddenly need to be able to read data from a 1950's tape drive? Are they going to pay someone to develop a system to read those tapes with a certain probability that it won't work, or are they going to keep an old mainframe in mothballs in the basement that they know for certain will do the job?
Post by: Star One on 05/06/2021 04:04 pm
Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images
Abstract and Figures
Fungi thrive in radiation intense environments. Sequential photos document that fungus-like Martian specimens emerge from the soil and increase in size, including those resembling puffballs (Basidiomycota). After obliteration of spherical specimens by the rover wheels, new sphericals-some with stalks-appeared atop the crests of old tracks. Sequences document that thousands of black arctic "araneiforms" grow up to 300 meters in the Spring and disappear by Winter; a pattern repeated each Spring and which may represent massive colonies of black fungi, mould, lichens, algae, methanogens and sulfur reducing species. Black fungi-bacteria-like specimens also appeared atop the rovers. In a series of photographs over three days (Sols) white amorphous specimens within a crevice changed shape and location then disappeared. White protoplasmic-mycelium-like-tendrils with fruiting-body-like appendages form networks upon and above the surface; or increase in mass as documented by sequential photographs. Hundreds of dimpled donut-shaped "mushroom-like" formations approximately 1mm in size are adjacent or attached to these mycelium-like complexes. Additional sequences document that white amorphous masses beneath rock-shelters increase in mass, number, or disappear and that similar white-fungus-like specimens appeared inside an open rover compartment. Comparative statistical analysis of a sample of 9 spherical specimens believed to be fungal "puffballs" photographed on Sol 1145 and 12 specimens that emerged from beneath the soil on Sol 1148 confirmed the nine grew significantly closer together as their diameters expanded and some showed evidence of movement. Cluster analysis and a paired sample 't' test indicates a statistically significant size increase in the average size ratio over all comparisons between and within groups (P = 0.011). Statistical comparisons indicates that arctic "araneiforms" significantly increased in length in parallel following an initial growth spurt. Although similarities in morphology are not proof of life, growth, movement, and changes in shape and location constitute behavior and support the hypothesis there is life on Mars.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351252619_Fungi_on_Mars_Evidence_of_Growth_and_Behavior_From_Sequential_Images
Post by: tpw2 on 05/06/2021 04:48 pm
I suppose it’s not often you get scientists sticking their necks out like this. No doubt it will get shredded on peer review.
I think it has been accepted to Advances in Microbiology already. Mind you, the journal is published by a rather notorious predatory open access publisher. Not much of a review there...
Post by: Star One on 05/06/2021 07:15 pm
So a low bar to get over then.I suppose it’s not often you get scientists sticking their necks out like this. No doubt it will get shredded on peer review.
I think it has been accepted to Advances in Microbiology already. Mind you, the journal is published by a rather notorious predatory open access publisher. Not much of a review there...
Post by: Paul451 on 05/06/2021 08:28 pm
Post by: russianhalo117 on 05/07/2021 07:04 am
Reobservation and drifting RFI
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85733&postid=2074147#2074147
Post by: Frogstar_Robot on 05/07/2021 11:51 am
And at least one of the authors is a raving crackpot who sees signs of Arctic life in every NASA image, and writes pseudoscience faff where "quantum" just replaces "magic".
You prompted me to do some research.
Lead author Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, Ph.D. has a website cosmology.com, which at first glance looks a lot like a crackpot website (I have seen many). One question that springs to mind is how did something like this get overlooked by NASA, assuming they would have made a big announcement about it? Rhawn Gabriel Joseph provides the following:
Quote from: http://cosmology.com/LifeOnMars.html
As will be detailed in a forthcoming article by this scientist, NASA and its "sister" organization, DARPA, have elected to keep this evidence secret, due to concerns that an informed public will be naturally concerned about contagion and Martain plagues if these organisms escape from NASA and DARPA laboratories after they are transported to Earth. Therefore, that there is life on Mars is considered "Above Topic Secret" due to concerns that an informed public will object to and prevent NASA and DARPA from achieving their objectives: the retrieval and transport of Martian organisms to Earth for the purposes of genetic engineering, and the transfer of Martian genes into Earthly life forms . Thus, NASA informed the public that there is no life on Mars, so as to prevent opposition to these plans, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as presented here.
A sure sign of a crackpot is when they reach for conspiracy theory to explain anything.
I suppose it’s not often you get scientists sticking their necks out like this. No doubt it will get shredded on peer review.
Not often, but out of a population of millions of scientists, it should not be surprising that a few "stick their necks out". I suspect it is more than you think, as most of them are never heard of in the mainstream. A few examples off the top of my head, Rupert Sheldrake Phd with his theory of morphic resonance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake), Lynn Margulis, AIDS "denier", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis, Judy Mikovits with false claims about Covid-19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Mikovits (and several other scientists saying Covid-19 is a hoax, bioweapon etc). And of course Ari Loeb mentioned up thread. Just about every conspiracy theory has one or two scientists as adherents.
I'll bet the majority of scientists are aware of a "crackpot" in their field. Possibly I am more exposed to crackpottery (including "UFOlogy"), since I like to poke around in the Fortean fringes of science, but to me it actually seems quite often that a scientist (with various degrees of fame), goes off the rails and starts making absurd claims.
Post by: Star One on 05/07/2021 03:59 pm
And at least one of the authors is a raving crackpot who sees signs of Arctic life in every NASA image, and writes pseudoscience faff where "quantum" just replaces "magic".I wasn’t aware of that so thanks for flagging it up.
Post by: punder on 05/16/2021 06:13 pm
Or have I missed all the heated exchanges?
Just askin. :D
By the way I’m perfectly prepared for all the “that sort of talk doesn’t belong here” responses. Actually I sympathize a bit with that viewpoint.
Post by: Star One on 05/16/2021 08:14 pm
So... is anybody here up to discussing the recent Navy videos, the US government’s acknowledgment that the videos are real (regardless of what the images might show), and next month’s unclassified report?They are discussed very briefly earlier on in this thread.
Or have I missed all the heated exchanges?
Just askin. :D
By the way I’m perfectly prepared for all the “that sort of talk doesn’t belong here” responses. Actually I sympathize a bit with that viewpoint.
Post by: Paul451 on 05/17/2021 07:59 am
So... is anybody here up to discussing the recent Navy videos, the US government’s acknowledgment that the videos are real (regardless of what the images might show), and next month’s unclassified report?
They're trivially explained. Nothing interesting.
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2021 08:32 am
So... is anybody here up to discussing the recent Navy videos, the US government’s acknowledgment that the videos are real (regardless of what the images might show), and next month’s unclassified report?
They're trivially explained. Nothing interesting.
This is most likely a US military operation of some type. Similarly with reports of unidentified drones around the fleet, they are most likely operated by another branch of the military to test fleet readiness.
Post by: RotoSequence on 05/17/2021 08:49 am
So... is anybody here up to discussing the recent Navy videos, the US government’s acknowledgment that the videos are real (regardless of what the images might show), and next month’s unclassified report?
They're trivially explained. Nothing interesting.
This is most likely a US military operation of some type. Similarly with reports of unidentified drones around the fleet, they are most likely operated by another branch of the military to test fleet readiness.
A bunch of drones, that outmaneuver any quadcopter (or arbitrary rotor count) drone ever made, with far more flight endurance than any such platform yet seen, with rock steady flight characteristics in strong winds? Seems legit. ;)
Post by: Star One on 05/17/2021 09:13 am
Two different stories. The unidentified drones story is a completely different one to this one. I probably should have clarified sorry.So... is anybody here up to discussing the recent Navy videos, the US government’s acknowledgment that the videos are real (regardless of what the images might show), and next month’s unclassified report?
They're trivially explained. Nothing interesting.
This is most likely a US military operation of some type. Similarly with reports of unidentified drones around the fleet, they are most likely operated by another branch of the military to test fleet readiness.
A bunch of drones, that outmaneuver any quadcopter (or arbitrary rotor count) drone ever made, with far more flight endurance than any such platform yet seen, with rock steady flight characteristics in strong winds? Seems legit. ;)
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39913/multiple-destroyers-were-swarmed-by-mysterious-drones-off-california-over-numerous-nights
Post by: Paul451 on 05/17/2021 11:09 am
This is most likely a US military operation of some type. Similarly with reports of unidentified drones around the fleet, they are most likely operated by another branch of the military to test fleet readiness.So... is anybody here up to discussing the recent Navy videos, the US government’s acknowledgment that the videos are real (regardless of what the images might show), and next month’s unclassified report?They're trivially explained. Nothing interesting.
Nope. Just mundane things misidentified.
Post by: punder on 05/17/2021 03:14 pm
Nope. Just mundane things misidentified.Cool. Now stop teasing me with Jim-like one-liners, and tell me what you think they are. ???
:D
Post by: jbenton on 05/17/2021 06:26 pm
Nope. Just mundane things misidentified.Cool. Now stop teasing me with Jim-like one-liners, and tell me what you think they are. ???
:D
According to the videos that Paul451 and Star One posted on page 17 of this thread, the three videos can be accounted as follows:
"Go Fast" is a small weather balloon or a large bird (like a Goose or a Pelican). The apparent rapid movement is from the fighters own speed (~Mach 0.6) and altitude. The excited chatter is because tracking such a small object at that altitude difference with an infrared camera from that range and speed is difficult, not because the object itself is at all interesting.
I might have the other two mixed up, but they are:
"FLIR" is a commercial airliner viewed from very far away
"Gimbal" is another fighter-jet viewed from behind.
Each video is over 20 minutes long. Some of the confusion comes from camera-shake and the inherent limitations of the infrared camera technology.
Post by: Paul451 on 05/18/2021 07:34 am
"Go Fast" is a small weather balloon or a large bird (like a Goose or a Pelican).Nope. Just mundane things misidentified.Cool. Now stop teasing me with Jim-like one-liners, and tell me what you think they are.
I might have the other two mixed up, but they are:
"FLIR" is a commercial airliner viewed from very far away
"Gimbal" is another fighter-jet viewed from behind.
And Fravor's unfilmed encounter was an honest to god weather balloon. (The 20ft semi-white latex ones that are released by the thousand every day. 1600/day in just one program.) He assumed it was the size of his own plane, about double the size of the balloon (an easy mistake on a featureless object, given that his recent time had been spent doing BFM missions against "enemy" aircraft the same size of his own plane,) therefore also overestimated the distance. So as he circled the nearly stationary balloon, believing it was twice as far away as it was, it therefore seemed to be circling opposite him. When he turned directly towards it, it seemed to suddenly zip towards him, then vanish behind him (possibly his wash ruptured the balloon, or maybe he just lost sight of it.)
All of which was resulted from heightened fears caused by radar glitches by a recently upgraded Aegis radar, with hundreds of seeming (but non-existent) unknown contacts supposedly streaming down from space, resulting in everyone jumping at shadows. After the manufacturer updated the software, the glitches stopped and so did the aerial encounters.
Post by: punder on 05/18/2021 04:51 pm
And Fravor's unfilmed encounter was an honest to god weather balloon. (The 20ft semi-white latex ones that are released by the thousand every day. 1600/day in just one program.) He assumed it was the size of his own plane, about double the size of the balloon (an easy mistake on a featureless object, given that his recent time had been spent doing BFM missions against "enemy" aircraft the same size of his own plane,) therefore also overestimated the distance. So as he circled the nearly stationary balloon, believing it was twice as far away as it was, it therefore seemed to be circling opposite him. When he turned directly towards it, it seemed to suddenly zip towards him, then vanish behind him (possibly his wash ruptured the balloon, or maybe he just lost sight of it.)Thanks, that sounds very reasonable. Although it does bring up troubling thoughts about our zillion-dollar fighter pilots and the bazillion-dollar tech they depend on. Multiple pilots and RIOs confused by weather balloons? Doesn’t sound good.
All of which was resulted from heightened fears caused by radar glitches by a recently upgraded Aegis radar, with hundreds of seeming (but non-existent) unknown contacts supposedly streaming down from space, resulting in everyone jumping at shadows. After the manufacturer updated the software, the glitches stopped and so did the aerial encounters.
Post by: WBailey on 05/18/2021 06:11 pm
And Fravor's unfilmed encounter was an honest to god weather balloon. (The 20ft semi-white latex ones that are released by the thousand every day. 1600/day in just one program.) He assumed it was the size of his own plane, about double the size of the balloon (an easy mistake on a featureless object, given that his recent time had been spent doing BFM missions against "enemy" aircraft the same size of his own plane,) therefore also overestimated the distance. So as he circled the nearly stationary balloon, believing it was twice as far away as it was, it therefore seemed to be circling opposite him. When he turned directly towards it, it seemed to suddenly zip towards him, then vanish behind him (possibly his wash ruptured the balloon, or maybe he just lost sight of it.)Thanks, that sounds very reasonable. Although it does bring up troubling thoughts about our zillion-dollar fighter pilots and the bazillion-dollar tech they depend on. Multiple pilots and RIOs confused by weather balloons? Doesn’t sound good.
All of which was resulted from heightened fears caused by radar glitches by a recently upgraded Aegis radar, with hundreds of seeming (but non-existent) unknown contacts supposedly streaming down from space, resulting in everyone jumping at shadows. After the manufacturer updated the software, the glitches stopped and so did the aerial encounters.
As long as people expect to defend against attacks that in modern warfare could appear suddenly and be over in minutes, false alarms will happen. They might even contribute to starting a war, or possibly already have (see the second Gulf of Tonkin incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#Second_alleged_attack), the 1983 soviet nuclear false alarm, the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident, and a whole host of others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls))
When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one, and as weapons and defense technology constantly get more complex (and engagement times decrease) the risk of malfunctions and the difficulty in identifying them only increases.
Post by: Johnnyhinbos on 05/18/2021 07:22 pm
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-military-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-05-16/
Post by: Paul451 on 05/19/2021 03:32 am
As long as people expect to defend against attacks that in modern warfare could appear suddenly and be over in minutes, false alarms will happen. [...]
When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one, and as weapons and defense technology constantly get more complex (and engagement times decrease) the risk of malfunctions and the difficulty in identifying them only increases.
In the case of the period with most of the UFO/UAP incidents (one of the videos is from much earlier, "FLIR"?) all the crew knew there were weird incidents. The radar operators on the ships of the carrier taskforce and pilots flying multiple alerts per day (in addition to normal high-stress combat training flights in preparation for deployment) believed there were unknown aircraft threatening the carrier group. I'm sure some pilots and sailors had written it off as false alarms/equipment problems/etc, but others would have taken it deadly seriously... which is their job.
I don't blame them for getting it wrong. The only time it bothers me is when they buy into the, "I'm a profession trained observer, I can't have made a mistake" mentality, which (judging from his comments) Fravor has. That attitude gets people killed. There's way too many accident reports where a major factor was a senior pilot or ATC shut down juniors trying to point out their mistakes.
When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one
This applies to our very evolution. It's better to see a tiger in the bushes when there's nothing there than not see a tiger in bushes when it is. That's a very strong selection pressure constantly applied for hundreds of millions of years, across all our ancestor species. It's weird that people think it'd be any different.
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/19/2021 04:53 am
As long as people expect to defend against attacks that in modern warfare could appear suddenly and be over in minutes, false alarms will happen. [...]
When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one, and as weapons and defense technology constantly get more complex (and engagement times decrease) the risk of malfunctions and the difficulty in identifying them only increases.
In the case of the period with most of the UFO/UAP incidents (one of the videos is from much earlier, "FLIR"?) all the crew knew there were weird incidents. The radar operators on the ships of the carrier taskforce and pilots flying multiple alerts per day (in addition to normal high-stress combat training flights in preparation for deployment) believed there were unknown aircraft threatening the carrier group. I'm sure some pilots and sailors had written it off as false alarms/equipment problems/etc, but others would have taken it deadly seriously... which is their job.
I don't blame them for getting it wrong. The only time it bothers me is when they buy into the, "I'm a profession trained observer, I can't have made a mistake" mentality, which (judging from his comments) Fravor has. That attitude gets people killed. There's way too many accident reports where a major factor was a senior pilot or ATC shut down juniors trying to point out their mistakes.When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one
This applies to our very evolution. It's better to see a tiger in the bushes when there's nothing there than not see a tiger in bushes when it is. That's a very strong selection pressure constantly applied for hundreds of millions of years, across all our ancestor species. It's weird that people think it'd be any different.
The arrogance of the skeptics on display again.
We don’t know what these things were, but Fravor has personally commented on the debunking claims of skeptics like Mick West and said outright that the guy doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Post by: russianhalo117 on 05/19/2021 06:47 am
The most interesting part of the 60 Minutes piece on UAPs was the interview with the two Navy pilots who witnessed them...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-military-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-05-16/
As long as people expect to defend against attacks that in modern warfare could appear suddenly and be over in minutes, false alarms will happen. [...]
When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one, and as weapons and defense technology constantly get more complex (and engagement times decrease) the risk of malfunctions and the difficulty in identifying them only increases.
In the case of the period with most of the UFO/UAP incidents (one of the videos is from much earlier, "FLIR"?) all the crew knew there were weird incidents. The radar operators on the ships of the carrier taskforce and pilots flying multiple alerts per day (in addition to normal high-stress combat training flights in preparation for deployment) believed there were unknown aircraft threatening the carrier group. I'm sure some pilots and sailors had written it off as false alarms/equipment problems/etc, but others would have taken it deadly seriously... which is their job.
I don't blame them for getting it wrong. The only time it bothers me is when they buy into the, "I'm a profession trained observer, I can't have made a mistake" mentality, which (judging from his comments) Fravor has. That attitude gets people killed. There's way too many accident reports where a major factor was a senior pilot or ATC shut down juniors trying to point out their mistakes.When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one
This applies to our very evolution. It's better to see a tiger in the bushes when there's nothing there than not see a tiger in bushes when it is. That's a very strong selection pressure constantly applied for hundreds of millions of years, across all our ancestor species. It's weird that people think it'd be any different.
As long as people expect to defend against attacks that in modern warfare could appear suddenly and be over in minutes, false alarms will happen. [...]
When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one, and as weapons and defense technology constantly get more complex (and engagement times decrease) the risk of malfunctions and the difficulty in identifying them only increases.
In the case of the period with most of the UFO/UAP incidents (one of the videos is from much earlier, "FLIR"?) all the crew knew there were weird incidents. The radar operators on the ships of the carrier taskforce and pilots flying multiple alerts per day (in addition to normal high-stress combat training flights in preparation for deployment) believed there were unknown aircraft threatening the carrier group. I'm sure some pilots and sailors had written it off as false alarms/equipment problems/etc, but others would have taken it deadly seriously... which is their job.
I don't blame them for getting it wrong. The only time it bothers me is when they buy into the, "I'm a profession trained observer, I can't have made a mistake" mentality, which (judging from his comments) Fravor has. That attitude gets people killed. There's way too many accident reports where a major factor was a senior pilot or ATC shut down juniors trying to point out their mistakes.When your life and many more are on the line it is harder to dismiss possibly spurious warnings considering what would happen if you ignore a real one
This applies to our very evolution. It's better to see a tiger in the bushes when there's nothing there than not see a tiger in bushes when it is. That's a very strong selection pressure constantly applied for hundreds of millions of years, across all our ancestor species. It's weird that people think it'd be any different.
The arrogance of the skeptics on display again.
We don’t know what these things were, but Fravor has personally commented on the debunking claims of skeptics like Mick West and said outright that the guy doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Please use this nonsense UAP/UFO thread for your non SETI discussions:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=53897.0
Now back to our regular scheduled data review and follow-up observation programming mentioned in my previous post.
Post by: Paul451 on 05/19/2021 08:52 am
Fravor has personally commented on the debunking claims of skeptics like Mick West and said outright that the guy doesn’t know what he is talking about.
What else would he say?
(I've seen Fravor's comments about Mick West, and I've seen West's analyses, and it's clear that Fravor hasn't personally seen it, he's only responding to how other people (fellow believers) have described it.)
Post by: jbenton on 05/19/2021 08:35 pm
Please use this nonsense UAP/UFO thread for your non SETI discussions:
Re: Upcoming (May 2021) Pentagon Report on UAP/UFO Sightings (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=53897.0)
Now back to our regular scheduled data review and follow-up observation programming mentioned in my previous post.
Non-sensical or not, if it's off topic, I think this meteor research by a SETI team could get us back on track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeVX4JcOjlc
No Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence here, but the organization SETI was involved
Post by: Star One on 07/08/2021 09:17 am
As he says with trying to fit an alien explanation you’re always going to run in the issue of “aliens of the gaps”.
https://youtu.be/OgZtPIo-hKE
Post by: Star One on 07/27/2021 11:51 am
https://youtu.be/WSAOTXYeUlw
Post by: Star One on 08/05/2021 10:54 am
https://youtu.be/imQGqnNtr0A
Post by: Paul451 on 08/05/2021 01:15 pm
The Immortal Alien Civilisation Paradox:
In his introduction, JMG, like a lot of people, ignores solar gravitational lens telescopes. He uses a "telescope the size of a major city" as a standard of unreasonable, when you can have one larger than a star which is only slightly beyond our own current technology.
Using optical/near-optical gravitational lens telescopes (in lieu of interstellar probes), they could target a short-list of worlds with the potential for complex life. GLTs let them map those worlds, oceans, continents, detailed surface and atmospheric spectra, and over time watch the changes in the biosphere. Radio GLTs can detect any technological civilisations on those worlds. And radio GLTs work just as well as transmitters, allowing a relatively low powered signal to be detected by mundane (non-GLT) radio telescopes at the target civilisation, even over tens of thousands of lightyears. And once you convince them to build their own radio GLT, you can drastically increase the bandwidth for the same power output.
GLTs are more expensive than mundane ones, because unless you have drastically better propulsion, you need one dedicated telescope for each target. It's better to think of them a bit like an interstellar probe, but vastly, vastly quicker and less demanding, and probably more useful. And it stays quicker/easier than interstellar probes at any level of technology. But to limit the cost, you can use more mundane telescopes to create a list of candidate worlds. Only potentially life-bearing worlds (plus anything else you are interested in) get GLTs to observe in more detail.
We are already detecting exo-planets out to over a thousand lightyears with a 90cm space telescope. A network of JWST-class telescopes, optimised for such, should be able to detect exoplanets out of tens of thousand of lightyears, and directly spectrograph within a couple of thousand lightyears. Over the course of one orbit of their parent-star around the galaxy, a few tens of millions of years, an eyeblink in galactic history, they'd be able to find every candidate planet in the galaxy capable of supporting life. Plus metric craptons of data about planets, allowing a deep theoretical understanding of planets.
That minimises the number of GLTs they need, and the actual GLT telescopes themselves don't need to be much more advanced than their previous mundane telescopes. Just better propulsion, better power generation, better on-board processing, etc, but nothing super-advanced.
Even if intelligent life was fairly rare, and interstellar travel was harder than we think it should be, over time every technological civilisation should become aware of every other actual and potential civilisation in their home galaxy, and to a lesser degree, in nearby galaxies. And given that, thanks to GLTs, the cost of continuously broadcasting to potentially interesting worlds is small, we should have picked up a "hello newbie" message from at least one civilisation as soon as we looked. We don't need to "continuously scan every star" for cellphone-level signals, it should be obvious. They would have already done the heavily lifting for us.
Since that didn't happen, it strongly suggests intelligent life doesn't exist in the Milky Way galaxy. Additionally, it either that it doesn't exist within our information lightcone, or else that large scale colonisation of galaxies is impossible.
Re: The main topic: Civilisations that achieve immortality being timid and hiding.
Hiding is a poor strategy for safety. You are better off controlling the conversation rather than letting every other civilisation speculate about you behind your back. After all, if you practice non-expansion/non-interference/non-communication, then by definition you have no means to ensure anyone else does too. And it only takes two younger civilisations to get chatty to change the whole "culture" of the galaxy.
[edit: Not sure why I had a question mark on one of those sentences.]
Re: Immortality itself.
JMG creates a duality between biological immortality and technological immortality. If you can replace every neuron with a computational equivalent, then you can replace it with a biological equivalent. In which case, you can move between biological and technological existence at will, and thus you should have no fear of accidents.
That also means you have no reason to stay on your home-world. And the safety of your species is enhanced by spreading out. Even the safety of individuals is enhanced by having backup servers at multiple locations.
Post by: Star One on 08/07/2021 04:33 pm
Quote
Co-author Matthew Sullivan, professor of microbiology at Ohio State, said that the method Mr Zhong used to “decontaminate the cores” to study the microbes and viruses could help them search for similar genetic sequences in “other extreme icy environments”, and places including “Mars, the moon, or closer to home in Earth’s Atacama Desert.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/virus-science-findings-tibetan-glacier-b1896304.html
Post by: Vultur on 08/13/2021 01:19 am
Since that didn't happen, it strongly suggests intelligent life doesn't exist in the Milky Way galaxy
I'm not sure I'd use the word "strongly" here, at least for "intelligent life" in general.
It does strongly suggest the lack of intelligent life that has both a technological level above ours and a desire to communicate with other civilizations.
However, that could just as easily mean that the development of science/technology - rather than intelligence - is incredibly rare (maybe most intelligent species live on ocean-worlds and can't use even fire, or most stop at the hunter-gatherer stage, or...)
Or perhaps we are exceptional, not in being intelligent or technological, but in wanting to communicate with other civilizations.
Post by: RoadWithoutEnd on 08/13/2021 01:46 am
Will the Galileo project solve the Fermi paradox?
The answer to the Fermi Paradox is that there is no Fermi Paradox. SETI to date has examined a trivial span of information, and we have a trivial context to judge it by.
We have no basis to judge what portion of the data we see is natural vs. artificial. We are forced to assume that everything we see is natural, and come up with reasons to justify the assumption. And we end up with only partially useful results, exactly as would happen if we observed a human city and could only characterize it physically rather than by more abstract themes.
The other answer to the Fermi Paradox is that it's nonsense. We are just part of the universe, so if we are alive, how could anything in it fail to be also alive? The main purpose of SETI is not to find ETI in the crass sense (although that will eventually happen), but simply to define it well enough to prove it obvious before the fact.
Post by: dfp21 on 08/13/2021 02:52 am
I have evidence my house is not on fire. My house is not on fire.
SETI was useful. It showed there has never been intelligent life beyond our world. We refuse to accept the implications because our brains are far more primitive than we admit. We want to think our brains are capable of observing all of reality. We refuse to accept our limitations. But that's OK. We're only animals.
Post by: russianhalo117 on 08/13/2021 03:11 am
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85745&postid=2077681#2077681
SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 12 July 2021:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85756&postid=2079759#2079759
SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 04 August 2021:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85761&postid=2081556#2081556
Post by: Star One on 08/13/2021 08:54 am
https://youtu.be/yLpy-ZFQSf8
Here’s the related paper to the above:
Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950
Abstract
Nine point sources appeared within half an hour on a region within ∼
∼
10 arcmin of a red-sensitive photographic plate taken in April 1950 as part of the historic Palomar Sky Survey. All nine sources are absent on both previous and later photographic images, and absent in modern surveys with CCD detectors which go several magnitudes deeper. We present deep CCD images with the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias, reaching brightness ∼26
r
∼
26
mag, that reveal possible optical counterparts, although these counterparts could equally well be just chance projections. The incidence of transients in the investigated photographic plate is far higher than expected from known detection rates of optical counterparts to e.g. flaring dwarf stars, Fast Radio Bursts, Gamma Ray Bursts or microlensing events. One possible explanation is that the plates have been subjected to an unknown type of contamination producing mainly point sources with of varying intensities along with some mechanism of concentration within a radius of ∼
∼
10 arcmin on the plate. If contamination as an explanation can be fully excluded, another possibility is fast (t <0.5
<
0.5
s) solar reflections from objects near geosynchronous orbits. An alternative route to confirm the latter scenario is by looking for images from the First Palomar Sky Survey where multiple transients follow a line.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92162-7
Post by: Paul451 on 08/13/2021 05:34 pm
Since that didn't happen, it strongly suggests intelligent life doesn't exist in the Milky Way galaxyI'm not sure I'd use the word "strongly" here, at least for "intelligent life" in general.
It does strongly suggest the lack of intelligent life that has both a technological level above ours and a desire to communicate with other civilizations.
Yes, I was using "intelligent life" as lazy short-hand for technological civilisations.
However, that could just as easily mean that the development of science/technology - rather than intelligence - is incredibly rare (maybe most intelligent species live on ocean-worlds and can't use even fire, or most stop at the hunter-gatherer stage, or...
On Earth, there seems to be a limit in the evolution of intelligence, where you get to the level of higher apes, dolphins, corvids, parrots, wolves, etc, repeatedly, across multiple biological classes, but no further except hominins. That limit might be a major or even Great Filter.
Or perhaps we are exceptional, not in being intelligent or technological, but in wanting to communicate with other civilizations.
It'd be hard to imagine a species curious enough about their world to develop the understanding necessary to become a technological, possibly space-faring civilisation, but for that entire species to lack curiosity about alien intelligence. Or more importantly, that such very, very specific lack of curiosity is nearly universal, enough to explain the Great Silence.
(And not just a lack of curiosity about other civilisations, but also never development to the point where their activities are visible in our light-cone.)
Post by: Vultur on 08/19/2021 05:52 am
Yes, I was using "intelligent life" as lazy short-hand for technological civilisations.
Ah, ok.
Quote
On Earth, there seems to be a limit in the evolution of intelligence, where you get to the level of higher apes, dolphins, corvids, parrots, wolves, etc, repeatedly, across multiple biological classes, but no further except hominins.
Maybe... otoh, it could also be a "one intelligent species per planet" thing - we occupied all habitable continents within maybe 40,000 years of 'behavioral modernity', which isn't much evolutionary time.
Quote
It'd be hard to imagine a species curious enough about their world to develop the understanding necessary to become a technological, possibly space-faring civilisation, but for that entire species to lack curiosity about alien intelligence.
It seems that way from our human perspective, yeah, but I am not sure us being unique in that specific aspect is necessarily less likely than us being unique in terms of being the only technological species.
Quote
Or more importantly, that such very, very specific lack of curiosity is nearly universal, enough to explain the Great Silence.
It wouldn't necessarily have to be a lack of curiosity about intelligent life (in general). It could also be a case where we don't fit the "search parameters", e.g., maybe all the really advanced civilizations are non-planet-centered (living in Oort clouds or something maybe - if you have fusion, you probably don't need to be close to a sun) and so are not beaming messages to habitable planets.
Or maybe it is a lack of curiosity, because most intelligent species are more 'rational' (risk/benefit oriented) than we are about things like this, and interstellar communication is kind of pointless, as the time lag is much too long for it to be of any use.
Or maybe the really advanced civilizations know what to look for to detect another advanced civilization, and haven't contacted us because we're not one, yet.
Post by: Paul451 on 08/19/2021 08:19 am
I don't really think the Fermi Paradox is particularly paradoxical. We are probably not yet visible at significant interstellar distances (except for a very few specifically beamed signals). And we don't know how our technology will evolve in the future - the things we've thought of looking for (e.g. Dyson swarms) might not end up making sense to do if/when we gain the ability to do them.
Fermi's paradox was based around the understanding that even slower-than-light travel would allow a civilisation to colonise the galaxy within a few tens of millions of years, combined with the observation that Earth has been perfectly good real-estate for several billion years. And it only takes one to do so, or even one faction from that one. So "where are they?" is more "why are we here instead of them?"
But it also applies to radio, if interstellar travel is unexpectedly difficult, then interstellar communication is all they have to learn about each other.
On Earth, there seems to be a limit in the evolution of intelligence, where you get to the level of higher apes, dolphins, corvids, parrots, wolves, etc, repeatedly, across multiple biological classes, but no further except hominins.Maybe... otoh, it could also be a "one intelligent species per planet" thing - we occupied all habitable continents within maybe 40,000 years of 'behavioral modernity', which isn't much evolutionary time.
But there was a long time, hundreds of millions of years, during which many species evolved up to the apparent intelligence limit. Since it took humans only a short time from reaching that limit to getting to where we are now, what stopped any other previous or current smart animal from evolving as far into intelligence before we did? Why is the limit a limit? Again, "why are we here, instead of them?"
(Aside: There are explanations for why there's a limit. Intelligence has a cost. For social animals, there might be a benefit up to a point, but you get diminished returns beyond that point, while the energy cost increases linearly. We benefited from a weird (and rare) combination of flukes, and perhaps unusually specific sexual selection (development of intelligence is easily damaged by childhood starvation, disease, inbreeding, etc, so makes a good indicator of health. Intelligence might be a peacock's tail, worthless... until it suddenly wasn't.) So it might be that the intelligence limit is a universal law of biology, and it represents a true Great Filter.)
Or more importantly, that such very, very specific lack of curiosity is nearly universal, enough to explain the Great Silence.Or maybe it is a lack of curiosity, because most intelligent species are more 'rational' (risk/benefit oriented) than we are about things like this, and interstellar communication is kind of pointless, as the time lag is much too long for it to be of any use.
A lot of our development, technology, etc, seems to have come because of people ignoring risk/benefit. Much of early science and almost all of art, a metric butt-ton of exploration. They didn't do it because of a high expectation of profit, but because of intellectual curiosity. And to the extent that people understand that blue-sky-research can have unpredictable payoffs, so it's better to cast a wide net, that brings us back to curiosity about other civilisations.
Or maybe the really advanced civilizations know what to look for to detect another advanced civilization, and haven't contacted us because we're not one, yet.
Meh. This explanation never made sense to me. It only takes one civilisation to be interested in contacting a younger civilisation. IMO, it fails the universality requirement.
At the very least, even a cynical, purely risk/benefit species would understand the advantage in controlling the conversation, rather than let the young civilisation be contacted by an actual or potential rival first. Even if just to better assess whether the young species represents a future threat, while they are too new to avoid your response to said threat.
Same reason I doubt that the Dark Forest theory is the actual explanation. If everyone, universally, shoots first, it doesn't make sense to wait for a civilisation to arise on a life-bearing world before acting. RKVs are relatively cheap for even a basic K-1 civilisation. (That said, still doesn't mean METI makes any sense. There is, after all, silence. If you think civilisation is common enough to be close enough to message within your lifetime (as METI advocates do) then there's no reason they'd not be pinging us since we first discovered fire. And if they are being silent... well, why try to talk to them if you're going to ignore the message they are already sending?)
Post by: Vultur on 08/24/2021 04:04 am
Fermi's paradox was based around the understanding that even slower-than-light travel would allow a civilisation to colonise the galaxy within a few tens of millions of years,
It's possible in theory, sure. I question whether it's practical for any civilization to actually do so, however. There's no reason IMO to think exponential growth continues endlessly... today, technological advancement on Earth tends to be strongly correlated with low birthrates...
And that's leaving out the possibility that advanced technology tends to lead to civilizations following a radically different path, which we might not even recognize if we saw it. If the Oort cloud - or even Saturn's rings - was full of intelligent nanite swarms or something, would we know?
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combined with the observation that Earth has been perfectly good real-estate for several billion years.
I don't think it has, though. A civilization that is capable of interstellar travel will probably not want to live on habitable planets. They have storms, earthquakes, etc. Once you have really reliable life support systems, O'Neill cylinders are safer than planets.
The main value of a habitable planet would be scientific - which would mean you'd want to change the environment as little as possible.
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But there was a long time, hundreds of millions of years, during which many species evolved up to the apparent intelligence limit.
Did any animals get to ape/parrot/dolphin level brain sizes before the Cenozoic? I thought even the "large brained" dinosaurs like troodontids were at the lower end of modern birds...
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At the very least, even a cynical, purely risk/benefit species would understand the advantage in controlling the conversation, rather than let the young civilisation be contacted by an actual or potential rival first. Even if just to better assess whether the young species represents a future threat, while they are too new to avoid your response to said threat.
I doubt anyone at that level of technology is thinking in those terms. Assuming the light-speed barrier really is fundamental, the stars are too far apart for interstellar conflict to ever make sense, IMO.
Post by: Paul451 on 08/24/2021 06:00 am
Fermi's paradox was based around the understanding that even slower-than-light travel would allow a civilisation to colonise the galaxy within a few tens of millions of years,It's possible in theory, sure. I question whether it's practical for any civilization to actually do so, however. There's no reason IMO to think exponential growth continues endlessly... today, technological advancement on Earth tends to be strongly correlated with low birthrates...
It only takes one species, or one faction within one species. Even amongst western civilisations, there are subgroups that encourage high birth-rates. (Also, we don't know how much the lowering birthrate is due to something fundamental about technology, about women's rights, or about the kind of anti-social work-culture that exists in our economies, due to legacy of the industrial age transformation of the agrarian culture.)
combined with the observation that Earth has been perfectly good real-estate for several billion years.I don't think it has, though. A civilization that is capable of interstellar travel will probably not want to live on habitable planets. They have storms, earthquakes, etc. Once you have really reliable life support systems, O'Neill cylinders are safer than planets.
There aren't many of those in the solar system either.
But there was a long time, hundreds of millions of years, during which many species evolved up to the apparent intelligence limit.Did any animals get to ape/parrot/dolphin level brain sizes before the Cenozoic? I thought even the "large brained" dinosaurs like troodontids were at the lower end of modern birds...
AIUI, it was believed that dinosaurs, like large reptiles, encase their brains in a protective sheath, taking up half the brain-case volume or more. More recent findings of dino skulls with intact fossilised brains showed that they didn't. Like birds (quelle surprise!) their brains occupy the majority of their brain-cases. So most of the EQ measurements for dinos will be wrong. Big dinosaurs are definitely stupid, but the little ones might be bird-smart.
(Also, fossilised brains!)
Post by: Star One on 09/16/2021 09:29 am
https://youtu.be/vXOYbzQ4jDA
Post by: RotoSequence on 09/17/2021 09:42 am
KIC 8462852 has started to dim seemingly exactly on schedule for a 1574 day periodicity of transits. If these dips do pan out they would seemingly confirm this orbit as they would repeat for the third time the ‘transits’, with three repeats being the standard for confirmation. The video isn’t too bad but annoyingly gets sidetracked about half way through onto Project Galileo.
So, we're looking at a 1574 day periodicity, corresponding to a very near 3 AU orbit, which is towards the edge but inside of the star's calculated habitable zone, that is kicking out a cloud of micron sized occluding dust that must be continuously replenished to not be blown away by solar radiation pressure. Interesting!
Post by: russianhalo117 on 10/10/2021 02:58 am
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85783
Post by: Vultur on 10/13/2021 03:12 am
I assume if they were fusion powered and in the far outer solar system, they could be seen by IR (something in the Kuiper belt or Oort cloud shouldn't be at say liquid-water temperature) but could current IR telescopes resolve a few km or few tens of km object at say 300K around a nearby star?
What about habitats relying on solar energy in the inner solar system / asteroid belt region? How would they be distinguished from natural objects? (I mean, if you could see the surface was - say - stainless steel... but compositions of exo-asteroids is waaay beyond current astronomical technology...)
(The assumption being that the energy intercepted or used by the habitats is tiny compared to the star's total output, I know something like a Dyson swarm would have a dramatic IR signature.)
Post by: Paul451 on 10/13/2021 06:49 am
[constraints on detection]
Not an answer (and I'm curious about the answer too), just an observation that astronomers have, for example, estimated the size of the dust causing the dimming of Boyajian's Star.
Hence, "The thing they did" must be "something they can do."
Post by: Vultur on 10/13/2021 06:58 am
[constraints on detection]
Not an answer (and I'm curious about the answer too), just an observation that astronomers have, for example, estimated the size of the dust causing the dimming of Boyajian's Star.
Hence, "The thing they did" must be "something they can do."
Yeah, I know about that, but unless I misunderstand (which is quite possible) that is a dimming of the total light of the star (received at Earth).
But if you replace a certain number of asteroids in an asteroid belt with Stanford toruses or O'Neill colonies, without meaningfully changing how much of the star's radiation is intercepted by matter in the asteroid belt, I don't think there'd be a light-curve signal like that.
Once you start talking about Dyson swarms or something, sure there will be, but what if one assumes that technological civilizations just don't expand exponentially?
Post by: M.E.T. on 10/13/2021 12:17 pm
[constraints on detection]
Not an answer (and I'm curious about the answer too), just an observation that astronomers have, for example, estimated the size of the dust causing the dimming of Boyajian's Star.
Hence, "The thing they did" must be "something they can do."
Yeah, I know about that, but unless I misunderstand (which is quite possible) that is a dimming of the total light of the star (received at Earth).
But if you replace a certain number of asteroids in an asteroid belt with Stanford toruses or O'Neill colonies, without meaningfully changing how much of the star's radiation is intercepted by matter in the asteroid belt, I don't think there'd be a light-curve signal like that.
Once you start talking about Dyson swarms or something, sure there will be, but what if one assumes that technological civilizations just don't expand exponentially?
Yes, there could hypothetically be millions of civilizations who have expanded to their asteroid belts but remain at a small enough scale to be undetected by our current technology levels. Let’s say these are civilizations at a level about 1,000-5,000 years ahead of us.
The strength of the Fermi paradox is, however, contained in the question of why there would be millions of civilizations 1,000-5,000 years ahead of us, but no similar number that are 100 thousand, 1 million or 100 million years older than us. Civilizations that would have expanded to such a scale that even just one of them would be visible across the galaxy, and in fact across intergalactic space.
What makes the last 5,000 years so special?
Post by: Vultur on 10/14/2021 02:10 am
But...
The strength of the Fermi paradox is, however, contained in the question of why there would be millions of civilizations 1,000-5,000 years ahead of us, but no similar number that are 100 thousand, 1 million or 100 million years older than us. Civilizations that would have expanded to such a scale that even just one of them would be visible across the galaxy, and in fact across intergalactic space.
What makes the last 5,000 years so special?
See, this is why I don't find it terribly paradoxical - the assumption that time implies scale, that technological civilizations would or "should" continue to expand indefinitely over time.
We don't seem to be on that path. Nearly all of the most developed nations have below-replacement birth rates, and presumably if we do move into space in a major way (say, starting with Elon Musk's Mars colony plans, maybe some of the things Jeff Bezos has said about moving industry into orbit...) most of those people will be from those backgrounds... so space itself shouldn't necessarily reverse that trend.
--
Another thought is that there might be a "time window" issue (i.e for some reason planets much older than Earth didn't develop life, or something about their conditions made the early life -> complex life -> intelligence -> technology jumps not happen). If we are at the very beginning of the universe's "window" for technological life then looking for civilizations which are not super-advanced becomes more important.
Post by: M.E.T. on 10/14/2021 04:02 am
Well, this was basically a question about detection capabilities, not the Fermi paradox per se... i.e. if such civilizations exist what advancements on current astronomical tech would we need to find them?
But...The strength of the Fermi paradox is, however, contained in the question of why there would be millions of civilizations 1,000-5,000 years ahead of us, but no similar number that are 100 thousand, 1 million or 100 million years older than us. Civilizations that would have expanded to such a scale that even just one of them would be visible across the galaxy, and in fact across intergalactic space.
What makes the last 5,000 years so special?
See, this is why I don't find it terribly paradoxical - the assumption that time implies scale, that technological civilizations would or "should" continue to expand indefinitely over time.
We don't seem to be on that path. Nearly all of the most developed nations have below-replacement birth rates, and presumably if we do move into space in a major way (say, starting with Elon Musk's Mars colony plans, maybe some of the things Jeff Bezos has said about moving industry into orbit...) most of those people will be from those backgrounds... so space itself shouldn't necessarily reverse that trend.
--
Another thought is that there might be a "time window" issue (i.e for some reason planets much older than Earth didn't develop life, or something about their conditions made the early life -> complex life -> intelligence -> technology jumps not happen). If we are at the very beginning of the universe's "window" for technological life then looking for civilizations which are not super-advanced becomes more important.
Understood about the detection focused question.
With regard to the Fermi paradox perspective, even if the universe has been inhospitable to intelligent life for 99% of its existence, that would still mean intelligent life has been around for over 100 million years. In that context we would be a very early civilization while still having civilizations that are up to 100 million years older than us around.
There is really no plausible natural explanation why independently evolved civilizations would all be emerging within a few thousand years of one another across the galaxy.
As for the “lack of ongoing growth over time” argument, that has the problem that it has to hold true for ALL civilizations. If even one continues to follow an expansive growth trajectory over tens of thousands of years, (nevermind millions of years), it would be readily visible to us at galactic distances.
Therefore, since there should be tens of thousands of ancient civilizations in the galaxy, and since it is implausible that ALL of them without exception stopped expanding to the point that they would be visible to us, it follows that there are likely very few, if any, other civilisations out there.
Post by: RonM on 10/14/2021 04:57 am
Well, this was basically a question about detection capabilities, not the Fermi paradox per se... i.e. if such civilizations exist what advancements on current astronomical tech would we need to find them?
But...The strength of the Fermi paradox is, however, contained in the question of why there would be millions of civilizations 1,000-5,000 years ahead of us, but no similar number that are 100 thousand, 1 million or 100 million years older than us. Civilizations that would have expanded to such a scale that even just one of them would be visible across the galaxy, and in fact across intergalactic space.
What makes the last 5,000 years so special?
See, this is why I don't find it terribly paradoxical - the assumption that time implies scale, that technological civilizations would or "should" continue to expand indefinitely over time.
We don't seem to be on that path. Nearly all of the most developed nations have below-replacement birth rates, and presumably if we do move into space in a major way (say, starting with Elon Musk's Mars colony plans, maybe some of the things Jeff Bezos has said about moving industry into orbit...) most of those people will be from those backgrounds... so space itself shouldn't necessarily reverse that trend.
--
Another thought is that there might be a "time window" issue (i.e for some reason planets much older than Earth didn't develop life, or something about their conditions made the early life -> complex life -> intelligence -> technology jumps not happen). If we are at the very beginning of the universe's "window" for technological life then looking for civilizations which are not super-advanced becomes more important.
Understood about the detection focused question.
With regard to the Fermi paradox perspective, even if the universe has been inhospitable to intelligent life for 99% of its existence, that would still mean intelligent life has been around for over 100 million years. In that context we would be a very early civilization while still having civilizations that are up to 100 million years older than us around.
There is really no plausible natural explanation why independently evolved civilizations would all be emerging within a few thousand years of one another across the galaxy.
As for the “lack of ongoing growth over time” argument, that has the problem that it has to hold true for ALL civilizations. If even one continues to follow an expansive growth trajectory over tens of thousands of years, (nevermind millions of years), it would be readily visible to us at galactic distances.
Therefore, since there should be tens of thousands of ancient civilizations in the galaxy, and since it is implausible that ALL of them without exception stopped expanding to the point that they would be visible to us, it follows that there are likely very few, if any, other civilisations out there.
What if we take lower numbers? Only one civilization at a time, millions of years between civilizations, and they only survive thousands of years? Then it's unreasonable to expect them to colonize the galaxy.
It's all about the initial assumptions. Sure, it's a fun discussion, but with only one data point, there isn't a correct answer. It's all wild speculation.
Maybe the Fermi Paradox is not valid because the premise is flawed.
Getting back to detection limits, we have a hard time imaging planets directly. With the exception of large Dyson swarms, an artificial structure would need be to be planetary scale to be detected. Swarm or a single object has to either block enough light from the star, or reemit as IR, or reflect enough light with an unusual spectrum to be noticed.
Post by: M.E.T. on 10/14/2021 05:46 am
Well, this was basically a question about detection capabilities, not the Fermi paradox per se... i.e. if such civilizations exist what advancements on current astronomical tech would we need to find them?
But...The strength of the Fermi paradox is, however, contained in the question of why there would be millions of civilizations 1,000-5,000 years ahead of us, but no similar number that are 100 thousand, 1 million or 100 million years older than us. Civilizations that would have expanded to such a scale that even just one of them would be visible across the galaxy, and in fact across intergalactic space.
What makes the last 5,000 years so special?
See, this is why I don't find it terribly paradoxical - the assumption that time implies scale, that technological civilizations would or "should" continue to expand indefinitely over time.
We don't seem to be on that path. Nearly all of the most developed nations have below-replacement birth rates, and presumably if we do move into space in a major way (say, starting with Elon Musk's Mars colony plans, maybe some of the things Jeff Bezos has said about moving industry into orbit...) most of those people will be from those backgrounds... so space itself shouldn't necessarily reverse that trend.
--
Another thought is that there might be a "time window" issue (i.e for some reason planets much older than Earth didn't develop life, or something about their conditions made the early life -> complex life -> intelligence -> technology jumps not happen). If we are at the very beginning of the universe's "window" for technological life then looking for civilizations which are not super-advanced becomes more important.
Understood about the detection focused question.
With regard to the Fermi paradox perspective, even if the universe has been inhospitable to intelligent life for 99% of its existence, that would still mean intelligent life has been around for over 100 million years. In that context we would be a very early civilization while still having civilizations that are up to 100 million years older than us around.
There is really no plausible natural explanation why independently evolved civilizations would all be emerging within a few thousand years of one another across the galaxy.
As for the “lack of ongoing growth over time” argument, that has the problem that it has to hold true for ALL civilizations. If even one continues to follow an expansive growth trajectory over tens of thousands of years, (nevermind millions of years), it would be readily visible to us at galactic distances.
Therefore, since there should be tens of thousands of ancient civilizations in the galaxy, and since it is implausible that ALL of them without exception stopped expanding to the point that they would be visible to us, it follows that there are likely very few, if any, other civilisations out there.
What if we take lower numbers? Only one civilization at a time, millions of years between civilizations, and they only survive thousands of years? Then it's unreasonable to expect them to colonize the galaxy.
It's all about the initial assumptions. Sure, it's a fun discussion, but with only one data point, there isn't a correct answer. It's all wild speculation.
Maybe the Fermi Paradox is not valid because the premise is flawed.
That would provide the same answer though, which is that we are currently alone in the galaxy.
Post by: Vultur on 10/14/2021 05:59 am
Well, this was basically a question about detection capabilities, not the Fermi paradox per se... i.e. if such civilizations exist what advancements on current astronomical tech would we need to find them?
But...The strength of the Fermi paradox is, however, contained in the question of why there would be millions of civilizations 1,000-5,000 years ahead of us, but no similar number that are 100 thousand, 1 million or 100 million years older than us. Civilizations that would have expanded to such a scale that even just one of them would be visible across the galaxy, and in fact across intergalactic space.
What makes the last 5,000 years so special?
See, this is why I don't find it terribly paradoxical - the assumption that time implies scale, that technological civilizations would or "should" continue to expand indefinitely over time.
We don't seem to be on that path. Nearly all of the most developed nations have below-replacement birth rates, and presumably if we do move into space in a major way (say, starting with Elon Musk's Mars colony plans, maybe some of the things Jeff Bezos has said about moving industry into orbit...) most of those people will be from those backgrounds... so space itself shouldn't necessarily reverse that trend.
--
Another thought is that there might be a "time window" issue (i.e for some reason planets much older than Earth didn't develop life, or something about their conditions made the early life -> complex life -> intelligence -> technology jumps not happen). If we are at the very beginning of the universe's "window" for technological life then looking for civilizations which are not super-advanced becomes more important.
Understood about the detection focused question.
With regard to the Fermi paradox perspective, even if the universe has been inhospitable to intelligent life for 99% of its existence, that would still mean intelligent life has been around for over 100 million years. In that context we would be a very early civilization while still having civilizations that are up to 100 million years older than us around.
There is really no plausible natural explanation why independently evolved civilizations would all be emerging within a few thousand years of one another across the galaxy.
As for the “lack of ongoing growth over time” argument, that has the problem that it has to hold true for ALL civilizations. If even one continues to follow an expansive growth trajectory over tens of thousands of years, (nevermind millions of years), it would be readily visible to us at galactic distances.
Therefore, since there should be tens of thousands of ancient civilizations in the galaxy, and since it is implausible that ALL of them without exception stopped expanding to the point that they would be visible to us, it follows that there are likely very few, if any, other civilisations out there.
What if we take lower numbers? Only one civilization at a time, millions of years between civilizations, and they only survive thousands of years? Then it's unreasonable to expect them to colonize the galaxy.
It's all about the initial assumptions. Sure, it's a fun discussion, but with only one data point, there isn't a correct answer. It's all wild speculation.
Maybe the Fermi Paradox is not valid because the premise is flawed.
That would provide the same answer though, which is that we are currently alone in the galaxy.
True, but that doesn't necessarily mean alone in the universe. (Although, if the tendency to spread exponentially indefinitely is super rare, there could be other civilizations in our galaxy but the nearest exponential one could be tens or hundreds of millions of light-years away).
That was actually sort of where I was thinking with the "maybe intelligent life is fairly new" thing - if the distance to the nearest radically-altered solar system is 60 million light-years but it was only altered in the last 50 million, we couldn't see it yet.
Post by: Vultur on 10/14/2021 06:04 am
Getting back to detection limits, we have a hard time imaging planets directly. With the exception of large Dyson swarms, an artificial structure would need be to be planetary scale to be detected. Swarm or a single object has to either block enough light from the star, or reemit as IR, or reflect enough light with an unusual spectrum to be noticed.
Thank you, that's what I was asking. So you couldn't really tell a natural asteroid belt from a belt of 90% asteroids 10% O'Neill cylinders?
Post by: notsorandom on 10/14/2021 02:44 pm
The sensitivity of telescopes is not good enough to detect asteroid transits. Even if we could there is no way to tell the difference between an asteroid and an O'Neill cylinder. Perhaps the hypothetical aliens would space them out or group them in a way that wasn't naturally stable over the long term. We might be able to notice something odd then by looking at the transit timing. The cylinders would be warmer than asteroids but unless there were enough for them to start getting into Dyson swarm numbers there wouldn't be enough extra IR to be noticed.Getting back to detection limits, we have a hard time imaging planets directly. With the exception of large Dyson swarms, an artificial structure would need be to be planetary scale to be detected. Swarm or a single object has to either block enough light from the star, or reemit as IR, or reflect enough light with an unusual spectrum to be noticed.
Thank you, that's what I was asking. So you couldn't really tell a natural asteroid belt from a belt of 90% asteroids 10% O'Neill cylinders?
The most detectable thing about your scenario might be the communications between the cylinders. I think it would be reasonable that they would be talking to each other by pointing directional radio beams or lasers at each other. One could imagine a geometry where Earth ends up in line with two of them. Still though our telescopes are not sensitive enough to detect this yet. To notice aliens with the equipment we have right now aliens would have to either be doing something on an extremely large scale or actively trying to communicate with us using a pretty good amount of energy.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/14/2021 03:26 pm
this is why I don't find it terribly paradoxical - the assumption [...] that technological civilizations would or "should" continue to expand indefinitely over time.
We don't seem to be on that path. Nearly all of the most developed nations have below-replacement birth rates
The answer to the initial objection is what I highlighted in the latter part. It's that "nearly all" part.
It doesn't take a universal requirement to expand, just the lack of universal requirement to not expand.
Hence the burden is still on the "solution" to show why the solution applies universally to all possible civilisation, and all groups within those civilisation, including all descendants of those civilisations. Not just most of them.
If we are at the very beginning of the universe's "window" for technological life then looking for civilizations which are not super-advanced becomes more important.
That's something that's been addressed before. The "window" argument doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. There are plenty of sun-like stars, with similar or even higher metallicity, which are a billion years or more older than the sun. (Similarly the time when other proposed early-galaxy filters reached their modern values is in the multi-billion year range.)
We aren't at the beginning of the window. So it's not a matter of a few thousands years. Not even a few million. It's billion-plus, just in our galaxy.
Such an explanation therefore still requires intelligence/civilisation to be so incredibly rare that "metallicity window" is just a rounding off error to "incredibly rare" alone. It doesn't add anything.
and they only survive thousands of years?
Why?
A civilisation might only last a thousand or few thousand years. But why would a whole species capable of civilisation permanently lose that capability a few thousand years after reaching space? Sure, we aren't a direct continuation of the Indus Valley civilisation, or Sumer, or even ancient Greece and Rome -- those civilisations ended, yes -- but we belong to the same species and each new wave of civilisation exceeded the capabilities of the last. Stone, Bronze, Iron, Steel, Machine/Steam...
Nothing short of an extinction event should prevent a pocket of a declining civilisation from re-emerging, regaining and exceeding the capabilities of its forebears.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/14/2021 03:44 pm
One could imagine a geometry where Earth ends up in line with two of them.
If 10% of objects in their equivalent of the asteroid belt were O'Neill cylinders, it would be hard to imaging geometries where there wouldn't be some lining up with Earth at any given time.
(Not just cylinder-to-cylinder, but also transport ships between them, ship-to-ship, cylinder-to-ship, plus cylinders to their home-world and various outlander settlements around resource hubs (such as gas giants.) Plus radar/collision-avoidance systems, guidance and navigation systems, etc etc.)
Of course, this is just one such civilisation at one star. Would they not be able to detect each other? Would they not be communicating around the galaxy? If so, wouldn't that become the default "culture" of the galaxy, as newer civilisations emerge and join the network?
Still though our telescopes are not sensitive enough to detect this yet. To notice aliens with the equipment we have right now aliens would have to either be doing something on an extremely large scale or actively trying to communicate with us using a pretty good amount of energy.
We'd have trouble understanding them, ie, being able to pick signal from noise, but we would detect variations in that cumulative noise in fairly narrow RF ranges (compared to natural phenomena) as different clusters of habitats orbited around their sun. It'd be a weird thing. And astronomers like weird things.
Post by: Vultur on 10/14/2021 05:11 pm
The answer to the initial objection is what I highlighted in the latter part. It's that "nearly all" part.
It doesn't take a universal requirement to expand, just the lack of universal requirement to not expand.
Hence the burden is still on the "solution" to show why the solution applies universally to all possible civilisation, and all groups within those civilisation, including all descendants of those civilisations. Not just most of them.
1) My main point all along is that I'm not claiming that this is 'the "solution"' - I am in fact claiming there doesn't have to be such a thing, one defining factor, a "Great Filter" or "solution" to the Fermi Paradox. Every step in the process (an "Earthlike" planet becoming genuinely Earthlike rather than Venuslike, origin of life, intelligence, technology, expansion to the point of being detectable) may be rare.
2) I said "nearly all" not "all" to avoid arguments about exactly why nation X doesn't count as "one of the most developed" - especially among nations now rapidly developing. I'm not sure there are any clear counterexamples to the idea that it might really be a general rule, at least for humans. Especially as technology is very new for us - if there are strong pressures for technological civilizations to not grow exponentially, sub-groups that don't work that way may not retain their distinct, exponential-growth-favoring traits for the time scale needed to get Dyson Swarm level things.
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That's something that's been addressed before. The "window" argument doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. There are plenty of sun-like stars, with similar or even higher metallicity, which are a billion years or more older than the sun.
Oh, I wasn't thinking of metallicity. More that there might be something else, to do with the galactic habitable zone or something, not yet identified. I don't think we know enough about the conditions for planetary habitability.
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Nothing short of an extinction event should prevent a pocket of a declining civilisation from re-emerging, regaining and exceeding the capabilities of its forebears.
I can see several other things that could do it. Return to the original planet (loss of off-planet infrastructure) and sufficient depletion of on-planet resources to no longer allow rebuilding. Genetic engineering into a less innovation-capable form (possibly by dictators or monarchs, to create more compliant subjects). Maybe also a monopoly of technology by a ruling group to create a situation where they can't be overthrown, and also don't allow anyone else to develop it... I would tend to think that such a society would "drift" eventually, but with no examples, there's no way to know. (And we can't assume human psychology, anyway.)
EDIT: fixed allow/no longer allow
Post by: Vultur on 10/14/2021 05:23 pm
Would they not be communicating around the galaxy? If so, wouldn't that become the default "culture" of the galaxy, as newer civilisations emerge and join the network?
I am really skeptical of the point of interstellar communication, and therefore whether it's likely to be a "default" rather than vanishingly rare. The communications time lag is just way too long unless you know of another civilization at a genuinely nearby star (like us to Tau Ceti or something). A conversation with 2,000 year lags each way just doesn't make sense IMO.
Now, "we exist" style messages, for non-practical reasons (like Earth has sent out a few of), sure... but an ongoing exchange of messages, much less anything that could create a common culture, I really think the time lags are too long.
In fact, I'd argue that there can be no interstellar culture as long as the speed of light limit is fundamental - there can be interstellar species, but distance/time lag will mean cultural divergence is universal.
That's actually why I was talking about astronomical detection - it doesn't require any intent to communicate.
EDIT: fixed quote tag
Post by: Paul451 on 10/14/2021 08:06 pm
[...]
Just wanted to say that I think rareness of civilisations is the answer to Fermi's paradox.
Rare Earth + rare life + rare intelligence + rare civilisation + rare sci/tech + rare space-faring. In some combination. So rare that even we shouldn't be here. We are either bizarrely special or extremely lucky, or a bunch of both. And that's it. That's the answer. It's just not a very satisfying answer. And it goes against the Copernican Principle, which has been a very useful guide for us. And goes against that the more we are capable of seeing the galaxy, and galaxies beyond, the more un-special we seem. But, annoyingly, it's the answer.
However, (and the reason I'm such a broken record about this stuff) I don't think the many explanations that have been made in addition to "rare" add anything to "rare". For example, hard-to-detect only works if civilisations are already extremely rare, and as such, it adds nothing. "Extremely rare" is already in your answer.
Same with the idea of a galactic habitability window. Every variant I've seen suggested so far, even in combination, doesn't narrow the window sufficiently. The current conditions in this and nearby galaxies have been stable for long enough for civilisations 1 to 3 billion years older than us to exist. Sure, it might explain why civilisations weren't common 10 billion years ago, but doesn't explain why they weren't common 1 billion years ago, and therefore has no useful explanatory power.
There might be something unknown out there that does the job, sure. Alien Space Bats. But when you think about how exacting it has to be to limit everyone to the same, for eg, 100,000 year window (an eye-blink in galactic history), it merely brings us back to Fermi's original question. "Why are we here?" Why didn't the magic civilisation eater also eat us?
If you've seen ideas from SF for the magic civilisation eater, it shows how precisely targeted it has to be to do the required job. It can't just be a natural phenomenon that kills civilisations as a side-effect, that's either not good enough or too good. It has to be designed for the specific task of killing-all-civilisations-but-not-us. Unrealistically specific. Universal and infallible, but also, somehow, not universal. It only works in fiction.
And none of the proposed explanations that try to have reasonably common civilisation make any sense with their required lack of detectability. Every one lacks the required universality. Fermi solutions don't just need to say, "Maybe not every civilisation is like us", they have to say, "This specific reason forces every civilisation to be unlike us in this exact narrow way, or to be like one aspect of us but without the exceptions that we already have."
Without that universality, they don't work. Reducing the number of civilisations by merely an order of magnitude, or two, or three, isn't enough to make the expansionist or chatty ones "rare" enough for expansion or communication to be common and detectable. Hence, you need the first 7-8 orders of magnitude of rareness already in place, and hence, again, these extra explanations aren't adding anything useful to that.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/14/2021 08:20 pm
A conversation with 2,000 year lags each way just doesn't make sense IMO.
There are researchers who study every scrape of information they can get about civilisations much older than that. Every pottery shard, cattle-sale tablet, or graffiti. Hard to imagine people not wanting to know about an alien civilisation.
Aside:
By "communication", I just meant exchanging cultural, scientific, historical, biological information. I'm not talking about "conversations".
["Hi!" 2000 years later. "Oh, 'sup." 2000 years later. "Just chillin'. 'Sup you?"...]
Similarly, when I said communication would be the galactic "culture", that's the only aspect of interstellar "culture" I meant would be shared. In that, over say 1 to 3 billion years, every new civilisation that is contacted by another (or by many) will assume that contacting new civilisations is normal, acceptable, good. Over time that assumption will be normal across the galaxy. So over time, that contact will happen earlier and earlier, by more and more civilisations who came into existence in that "culture". (Several from different directions, precisely because it takes time for information to spread around the network. If the newbie is anywhere near you, it's quicker to contact them directly than wait for someone else to do it.)
Civilisations that don't communicate, don't influence those that do. Civilisations that do communicate, are reinforcing the idea of communication in that very act.
By now, it should be normal. That we haven't been contacted suggests civilisation must be extremely rare. And 2000 LY apart is not sufficiently rare, not by orders of magnitude.
Post by: M.E.T. on 10/14/2021 11:58 pm
That in itself is a big deal, as it does not align with the Copernican principle. But then, the Copernican principle is not a law of nature - it is more of a philosophical position, which seems to have been proven wrong by our very existence.
Post by: Vultur on 10/15/2021 06:47 am
Just wanted to say that I think rareness of civilisations is the answer to Fermi's paradox.
I essentially agree - at least technological civilization (I still am not sure we can rule out the "you have one chance to make technology work before running out of nonrenewable resources, and nearly everyone fails it" - or everyone, we aren't past that hurdle yet - hypothesis).
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Hence, you need the first 7-8 orders of magnitude of rareness already in place, and hence, again, these extra explanations aren't adding anything useful to that.
Hmmm - ok - perhaps we are talking past each other then, and don't actually disagree.
To me, "rare" isn't an explanation by itself because the idea of a "Paradox" in the first place implies that we have some reason to think that life or intelligence are basically fairly common, otherwise there's nothing paradoxical anyway. So why are they rare? That's what I was talking about - is there one critical step, or are all steps fairly rare?
That in itself is a big deal, as it does not align with the Copernican principle. But then, the Copernican principle is not a law of nature - it is more of a philosophical position
Yeah, pretty much. And perhaps that is what makes it a "Paradox", rather than any actual evidence that life or intelligence "should" be common? The basically philosophical expectation that we should be "more or less average"?
By now, it should be normal. That we haven't been contacted suggests civilisation must be extremely rare. And 2000 LY apart is not sufficiently rare, not by orders of magnitude.
However, this I don't agree with... because we aren't detectable yet. I thought you were talking about us accidentally intercepting beams aimed at somebody else. Even if our radio signals were detectable at interstellar distances (and they're probably not) anybody farther than say 120-130 LY would find a world with oxygen but no electronic signature - no evidence of anyone there to listen.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/15/2021 04:44 pm
...
Just to repeat, I'm not arguing against the validity of the question you asked earlier about our ability to detect a modest O'Neill civilisation (K1.n) at the distance of Boyajian's Star. It's an interesting question.
I'm just responding to the Fermi bits that keep coming up.
I also apologise for hopping subjects semi-randomly. My comment about our ability to detect random RF signals from your proposed O'Neill civilisation's internal communications/radar/etc was separate from my comments about the willingness of older civilisations to contact younger ones. (In essence: "Treating that example as a unique case, then X. However, because X, you can't treat them as a unique case and it brings up Y.")
That's what I was talking about - is there one critical step, or are all steps fairly rare?
I realise that. My point was that the if a proposed step requires pre-existing extreme rareness, then it the new proposal doesn't add a useful additional step to that existing rareness.
The explanations that could make up the required steps are rare-Earth, rare-life, rare-intelligence, rare-civilisation, rare-tech, rare-space. If you have those, you don't need other explanations. If you don't have those, at least enough to make advanced civilisations insanely rare, then the other explanations still fail.
(For example, in the Sagan Network scenario that I've been going on (and on and on) about, we already have to assume that interstellar travel is harder than we think, and that no civilisation (or any faction within any civilisations, or any descendent of any civilisation) is expansionist, even when talking about expansions over a timescale of millions of years (which is not that "expansionist".) So we've already rigged the odds ridiculously low in order to both limit them to one-star civilisations and exclude Dyson swarms, and it's still not enough to add a useful step to solving the paradox.)
because we aren't detectable yet.
Incorrect. Only our RF is undetectable beyond the radio bubble. Our planet's habitability has been detectable across the whole galaxy (over time.)
Using Earth-level observational technology plus the ability to get to the gravitational lens point, you could map the history of Earth over the last couple of billion years during which space-faring civilisations should be common. (*) Given a couple of billion years experience, by thousands of civilisations (**), at watching new civilisations emerge on life-bearing planets, they'd know the stage of life Earth is at. The same position as the observatory allows a relatively low powered signal to be sent across that same distance, focused by the gravity of their central star...
...Indeed, their own signal from their observatory back to their inner solar system, would produce precisely such a detectable signal thanks to the gravitational lens, and it's directed continuously towards us.
Neat, huh?
They don't need to wait for us to become a radio-civilisation, they don't need to wait to detect our RF bubble, they just need to be curious about life-worlds and the problem of us-detecting-them solves itself.
* (If they are rare, it doesn't matter what they could or couldn't detect. They aren't there. Which appears to be the case.)
** (See below.)
**
If Boyajian's Star (approx 1500LY) is an indication of the typical distance between civilisations, there's around 5-6000 civilisations currently in the galaxy. Even if only 10% of the galaxy is "habitable", that's still around 500-600 civilisations, but also with a correspondingly smaller area around themselves to monitor for new civilisations, so I consider it a wash.
In order for the numbers to drop further, then it becomes less and less likely that a civilisation would be as close as Boyajian's Star. But the rarer they are, the more interesting other alien civilisations will seem to them, the more likely any given civilisation is to cross the threshold of curiosity required for the Sagan Network scenario, the more effort they'll put in. OTOH, the more common they are, the less interesting aliens are, but the smaller percentage need to be that curious in order for the Sagan Network scenario to work, and the less effort each of them has to put in. Again, I think it's a wash.
Post by: Vultur on 10/15/2021 08:43 pm
My point was that the if a proposed step requires pre-existing extreme rareness, then it the new proposal doesn't add a useful additional step to that existing rareness.
Right, sure. I was just sort of seeing "rareness" as something which itself needs explanation. If not, then there is no paradox.
And I think high-tech civilizations probably are really rare.
But ...
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If you don't have those, at least enough to make advanced civilisations insanely rare, then the other explanations still fail.
...I don't think we know enough to say that yet, since we don't have that level of technology yet. The factor discouraging large-scale expansion really could be universal.
We really don't know enough to make any predictions at all about how civilizations way more technologically advanced would act. I think it's almost a philosophical question, insufficiently constrained to be testable, except in a few very specific scenarios like Dyson swarms (which don't strike me as likely anyway).
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Incorrect. Only our RF is undetectable beyond the radio bubble. Our planet's habitability has been detectable across the whole galaxy (over time.)
Well, sure, that we have free oxygen etc. is detectable, but that doesn't mean intelligent life. (We've had free oxygen for 2+ billion years.)
And one could just as easily assume that they don't want to contact a planet that isn't advanced enough to detect *them* yet, since that would "contaminate" their observations of a new species 'in its natural environment'. The possibilities are just too unconstrained, IMO.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/16/2021 01:19 pm
[I've split it over a few posts to hopefully make it easier to digest. Or ignore. ]
My point was that the if a proposed step requires pre-existing extreme rareness, then it the new proposal doesn't add a useful additional step to that existing rareness.I was just sort of seeing "rareness" as something which itself needs explanation.
Yes, but the things I listed seem to be the only places to explain rareness that don't invoke a just-so requirement. General principle explanations for rareness can be rare-Earths, rare-life, rare-intelligence, rare-civilisation, rare-technological/scientific-civilisation, and as part of the last, rare-space-faring. The exact mix and proportion is still unknown because of the sample-size-of-one issue, but there doesn't seem to be much room outside of that list.
Previous "rareness" filters, like the rareness of planets, or the stability of certain stars, don't seem as much of an issue as previously thought. The "galactic" scale filters (metallicity, supernova, GRBs, active nucleus, etc), even when combined, don't seem to be sufficient except for multiple-billion-years-ago, they can't explain a lack of advanced civs over the last couple of billion years without also killing off Earth/humans.
Ideas like "everyone joins the Matrix/VR/etc", "Zoo hypothesis", "AI apocalypse", "everyone nukes (or grey-goos) themselves to extinction", "everyone stops breeding", "boredom/lack-of-curiosity", etc etc, don't pass the universality test. If even amongst humans, there's sufficient variation for some people to not go down that path, then it is not reasonable to expect every single group/nation/faction/planet of every single species to be sufficiently far enough to one side of human variation for enough of them to make the same choices. Hence, those explanations only work if civilisations are already insanely rare, and if they are are already rare, these explanations aren't required.
In order for anything not on the list to work as a major cause of rareness (even to just contribute significantly), but that the same cause somehow not have interfered with our 4-5 billion year history, it needs to be so precisely crafted, so "just so", that it doesn't pass the sniff test.
After all, the more precisely fitted the explanations, the less likely they are.
I mentioned a couple of comments ago about SF writers trying to create such scenarios, where some external factor reliably kills off other civilisations (or keeps them to within a reasonable range of our level of development), but not so reliable that it kills off humans or prior Earth life. For eg, Jack McDevitt's Engines of God, David Brin's Existence, Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers. They show just how perfectly bespoke they need to be. And even then, IMO, in the real
Post by: Star One on 10/16/2021 02:15 pm
https://youtu.be/pwTYfI9JUl8
Post by: Paul451 on 10/16/2021 02:23 pm
If you don't have those, at least enough to make advanced civilisations insanely rare, then the other explanations still fail....I don't think we know enough to say that yet, since we don't have that level of technology yet. The factor discouraging large-scale expansion really could be universal.
The Sagan Network scenario already assumes that they don't or can't expand. Both via interstellar colonisation, and via Dyson swarms in their own system.
That's the reason I brought it up, lack of expansion isn't enough to answer Fermi. Lack of expansion plus lack of detectability isn't enough.
It also assumes a fairly beefy pre-existing rareness, limiting civilisations to a thousand per hundred billion stars, but still works down to, say, hundred per trillion stars. That's what I meant about rareness needing to be "insane" in order for it not to work. You have to get below single digit number of civilisations in our galaxy and absolute universal lack of expansion across all galaxies within a couple of billion lightyears.
Incorrect. Only our RF is undetectable beyond the radio bubble. Our planet's habitability has been detectable across the whole galaxy (over time.)Well, sure, that we have free oxygen etc. is detectable, but that doesn't mean intelligent life. (We've had free oxygen for 2+ billion years.)
We can pretty much detect that now on nearby exoplanets. Current observation tech (but better power/propulsion/reliability) out at the GL point would allow us to map exo-planets in vastly great detail. Oceans, forests, extinction events, changes in biospheres. Right now, a civilisation 2000 LY away would be picking up things like the pollution from bronze-age smelting and especially Roman lead production. In IR, even the increase in unnatural fires might be detectable.
That's with JWST level technology, powered by improved fission reactors, propelled by minimally improved NEP thrusters that are already on the drawing board (or laser-driven solar sails, or any number of more exotic tech that we can already think up.) It doesn't require them to be super advanced. (Although more helps.)
One of the European explorers that sailed up the coast of Nth America before disease had wiped out most native life, talked about how the whole coast was thick with smoke from camp-fires, and it was implied that Europe was the same or worse. That kind of pollution affects the atmosphere. Intelligent life, in sufficient numbers, has a detectable effect. It's not just RF emissions.
And as I said before: The same observatory, when sending a signal back to its inner solar system, will also be sending a tightly focused, amplified signal to its target (us). With no additional effort or energy, they would already be detectable to us. They don't need to add a specific signal that we can decode, but at that point it costs them nothing to do so. And, by this point in galactic history (or even a billion years earlier), it would have been how they were first contacted.
Star One,
Nice timing.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/16/2021 02:26 pm
And one could just as easily assume that they don't want to contact a planet that isn't advanced enough to detect *them* yet, since that would "contaminate" their observations of a new species 'in its natural environment'.
[aka The Zoo hypothesis]
But who is "they"? A single civilisation, a percentage of them? Is there any reason to think that "they" is every group/faction/nation/colony in every civilisation in the galaxy, and remains so for their whole existence and for all who came before them?
What is the enforcement mechanism?
For any variant of the Zoo Hypothesis to work, you already need civilisation to be so rare that you're down to individual quirks in each. In which case, the Zoo Hypothesis isn't really your explanation, it's "rareness".
For the Zoo Hypothesis to work, you need an enforcer. An immortal civilisation (or group) that has sufficiently advanced technology to allow them to easily police the entire galaxy (and either other galaxies or for the same situation to always arise in other galaxies) and also has an absolute rule against allowing themselves or anyone else to expand, to visibly alter their home system, or to contact (deliberately or to leak mundane internal communications/radar/etc to) any younger civilisation.
As an explanation, it then works in theory. But what are the odds of it happening? Remember, it now requires both easy interstellar travel and also absolute blocking of expansion/alternation. But also requires exactly that limit and nothing further (no killing off intelligent life because it's easier to enforce.) What are the odds of it being maintained in exactly the right balance, over billions of years that would be necessary?
Post by: redliox on 10/16/2021 02:51 pm
1) There's no radio chatter because the advanced aliens no longer use it.
2) Primitive civilizations might be the norm (10,000+ years of human history v.s. ~140 years of electrical power), and we could be one of an extreme few past the iron age due to circumstance.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/16/2021 03:17 pm
In regards to SETI and the awkward silence, my personal thoughts are these:
1) There's no radio chatter because the advanced aliens no longer use it.
We haven't really stopped using our prior methods. In spite of the discovery and use of radio and lasers, we still talk to each other using wobbly fleshy things in our throat making vibrations in air. And much of our technology makes even more vibrations in air just as a side-effect of operation. The invention of radio didn't silence us. Why would the invention of beyond-radio silence radio?
2) Primitive civilizations might be the norm (10,000+ years of human history v.s. ~140 years of electrical power), and we could be one of an extreme few past the iron age due to circumstance.
I called that "rare-tech" or "rare-science/tech". The scientific method might be just plain weird. Improbably rare. Requiring a coincident of too many factors to come together at the same time that were unique to renaissance Europe and also required the unique politics and economics of the period after.
There might also be a step between anatomically modern humans and intellectually modern humans that created agriculture and cities. (The first 100,000 years vs the last 10,000.) (Which I called rare-civilisation.)
There might also be a specific intelligence limit between smart animals and human-level. Where it's easy for diverse animals to get to wolf, monkey, dolphin, parrot, corvid level of intelligence, but hard to get far beyond it. (Tens or even hundreds of millions of years, vs 100,000.) (Rare human-level intelligence.)
There might be a limit between simple and complex life. (Several billions years, vs a few hundred million.)
And of course, life itself might be rare. (Earth, vs apparently the rest of the solar system; even though life seems to thrive on Earth on/in/under places that are more hostile than some other places in the solar system. Maybe it spreads everywhere once it exists, but the formation takes a narrow set of conditions that only existed on early Earth. That might not even exist on current Earth.) (AKA, rare-life and/or rare-Earth.)
Post by: redliox on 10/16/2021 10:57 pm
Why would the invention of beyond-radio silence radio?
Ask VHS and cassettes their opinion of laser discs, or the pony express.
Post by: Vultur on 10/18/2021 06:37 am
The Sagan Network scenario already assumes that they don't or can't expand. Both via interstellar colonisation, and via Dyson swarms in their own system.
That's the reason I brought it up, lack of expansion isn't enough to answer Fermi. Lack of expansion plus lack of detectability isn't enough.
Eh, but it still implies a significant level of interest in the outside. Not physical expansion, but desire to communicate with the alien. "Advanced technology essentially inevitably leads to complacency" would rule out that too, IMO.
--
I mean, I still think "technological intelligence at or above our current level is genuinely super rare" is the most plausible explanation. I just don't think we know enough to make solid statements that X must happen or can't happen. There could genuinely be parallel developments that, to someone who has a certain technology, are so economically obvious that they happen everywhere without any kind of common coordination.
EDIT: I think I see the disconnect. It's here:
If even amongst humans, there's sufficient variation for some people to not go down that path, then it is not reasonable to expect every single group/nation/faction/planet of every single species to be sufficiently far enough to one side of human variation for enough of them to make the same choices. Hence, those explanations only work if civilisations are already insanely rare, and if they are are already rare, these explanations aren't required.
...unless the nature of advanced technology is a really strong forcing function. And I am not at all sure the level of cultural/behavioral variation we see today on Earth will or can be sustained in the long-term, with easy communication and travel. There hasn't really been time yet for the cultural effects of that to show; we've only had the Internet for one generation.
Post by: Paul451 on 10/19/2021 03:22 am
Eh, but it still implies a significant level of interest in the outside. Not physical expansion, but desire to communicate with the alien. "Advanced technology essentially inevitably leads to complacency" would rule out that too, IMO.
I see nothing in human development that says advances in technology leads to less curiosity about the world/universe/"others". Quite the contrary, as we advanced, our interests broadened. Therefore, there seems to be zero reason to assume "advanced technology" would break that trend. Sure some might hide themselves within perfect VR, or the brain-uploaded equivalent. But it doesn't pass the universality test, not even close.
(Social media may often seem myopic and divorced from reality, but it is social media. Driven by the desire to connect to others, combined with FOMO.)
And, speaking of FOMO, if civilisations are not insanely rare, then every civilisation has an obvious survival interest in keeping track of the other advanced civilisations. And since non-advanced civilisations that are becoming more advanced are the future's advanced civilisations, combined with speed-of-light lag, it pays a long-lived civilisation to keep track of them too. It doesn't require them to be interested (in the sense of curiosity) to have an interest (in the other sense.) And similarly, the easiest way to influence developing civilisations is to induct them into the greater family of interstellar civilisations. (Indeed, the only way, short of an RKV.)
And, as noted, it only has to have a few starting the process 1-3 billion years ago for it to now be considered normal by every subsequent civilisations, since they were all contacted early and often.
Post by: Star One on 10/27/2021 07:24 am
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The first observation at issue was potentially the most distant supernova ever observed. The paper describing it observed a flash in the near-infrared that coincided with the location of one of the Universe's first galaxies. If the flash originated there, the red shift caused by the intervening distance would mean that the original burst was in the UV range, suggesting it was the product of a supernova. That would mean we had observed the death of one of the first stars formed in the Universe, a potentially significant finding.
But since then, other papers have suggested that, giving the timing and source of the observations, the location would also have coincided with the position of a defunct Russian booster. And the odds of having watched a bit of space junk are considerably higher than the odds of us happening to be watching when a star that distant exploded. So, the papers argued that we probably haven't actually seen a supernova.
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The researchers then checked the telescope's archives and found 15 blc1-like signals there as well, including one four days prior to their own observations. At least one of these 15 was clearly a local source, since it persisted even as the telescope was pointed at different targets. Finally, when the researchers searched archives of a recent project called turboSETI, they came up with another 111 blc1-like signals. Most of these signals had also been rejected as likely to be radio interference because they also showed up regardless of where the telescope was pointed.
While the researchers can't conclusively identify the source, they were able to determine that it was produced by interactions between two individual devices. In other words, the signal is likely to just be a technological accident, and in this case, at least one of the components happened to be switched on and off in a way that lined up with when the telescope was pointed at Proxima Centauri.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/human-signals-are-messing-with-astronomers/
Analysis of the Breakthrough Listen signal of interest blc1 with a technosignature verification framework
Abstract
The aim of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is to find technologically capable life beyond Earth through their technosignatures. On 2019 April 29, the Breakthrough Listen SETI project observed Proxima Centauri with the Parkes ‘Murriyang’ radio telescope. These data contained a narrowband signal with characteristics broadly consistent with a technosignature near 982 MHz (‘blc1’). Here we present a procedure for the analysis of potential technosignatures, in the context of the ubiquity of human-generated radio interference, which we apply to blc1. Using this procedure, we find that blc1 is not an extraterrestrial technosignature, but rather an electronically drifting intermodulation product of local, time-varying interferers aligned with the observing cadence. We find dozens of instances of radio interference with similar morphologies to blc1 at frequencies harmonically related to common clock oscillators. These complex intermodulation products highlight the necessity for detailed follow-up of any signal of interest using a procedure such as the one outlined in this work.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01508-8
A radio technosignature search towards Proxima Centauri resulting in a signal of interest
Abstract
The detection of life beyond Earth is an ongoing scientific pursuit, with profound implications. One approach, known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), seeks to find engineered signals (‘technosignatures’) that indicate the existence of technologically capable life beyond Earth. Here, we report on the detection of a narrowband signal of interest at ~982 MHz, recorded during observations towards Proxima Centauri with the Parkes Murriyang radio telescope. This signal, BLC1, has characteristics broadly consistent with hypothesized technosignatures and is one of the most compelling candidates to date. Analysis of BLC1—which we ultimately attribute to being an unusual but locally generated form of interference—is provided in a companion paper. Nevertheless, our observations of Proxima Centauri are a particularly sensitive search for radio technosignatures towards a stellar target.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01479-w
Post by: missinglink on 10/27/2021 07:56 am
The lightspeed limit is insurmountable. Assume that
> technological civilization entails curiosity, giving motivation to explore, in addition to the desire to evade extinction events
> aliens have finite lifespans broadly similar to ours
> generation starships do not work for psychological/sociological reasons
> seed starships are not seen as desirable because they fracture a civilization
then perhaps ET decides to increase its lifespan through genetic engineering and/or becoming a hybrid bio/machine entity. But how to overcome the crushing, deadly boredom of millenniae of travel from one habitable system to the next? One way to do that is to alter the perception of time in parallel with the extension of lifespan. Then a thousand Earth years is merely the blink of an eye to ET. They may use radio to communicate amongst themselves, but they may also travel back and forth between their star systems, to maintain continuity of civilization. They would take no notice of attempts we make to contact them, as our existence is so very short-lived from their perspective. And we might not detect their activities that unfold at a glacial pace as perceived by us.
Post by: russianhalo117 on 11/24/2021 03:28 am
SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 28 September 2021:SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 21 November 2021:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85783
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85810
Post by: su27k on 12/28/2021 03:07 am
Quote from: thetimes.co.uk
As space agencies launch new telescopes, rovers and probes to look for habitable planets and alien life beyond Earth, a British priest has been helping Nasa to understand how the discovery of extraterrestrials would change the way we see the universe.
The Rev Dr Andrew Davison, a priest and theologian at the University of Cambridge with a doctorate in biochemistry from Oxford, is among 24 theologians to have taken part in a Nasa-sponsored programme at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton in the US to assess how the world’s major religions would react to news that life exists on worlds beyond our own.
Post by: Star One on 02/07/2022 06:47 am
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/05/ufos-america-aliens-government-report
Post by: Star One on 02/11/2022 07:08 pm
https://youtu.be/DK9LBK3FABs
Post by: Star One on 03/23/2022 08:41 am
Quote
Should we transmit another message to possible extraterrestrial intelligences in the Milky Way galaxy? Yes, say a team of scientists led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles, who have developed a binary-coded message that contains images of humans, our cosmic address and a request to RSVP.
If it’s transmitted, this so-called “Beacon in the Galaxy” will follow a tradition begun in 1974 when scientists sent a message containing basic information about us and our planet into space using the now-defunct Arecibo radio telescope.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2022/03/22/are-we-alone-nasa-should-send-this-new-message-to-extraterrestrials-with-an-rsvp-and-our-cosmic-coordinates-say-scientists/
Post by: deadman1204 on 03/23/2022 02:00 pm
Radio can be used across an area because the wavelength is large enough to avoid interacting with alot of stuff in the environment (rain, dust, air, tree branches, birds, ect). Common non-metal materials are transparent to radio light. This transparency is due to atomic structure, so assuming the most likely elemental composition (carbon based) the environment will most likely be composed of things transparent to radio.
Higher wavelengths are less useful for open communication (not a beam to a targeted source), because they are more likely to get blocked. Radio is simply a very useful wavelength to broadcast info to either multiple targets, or a target of unknown location (all the radio receivers in the broadcast area). WIFI is radio, as is satellite internet/starlink.
Optical communication simply doesn't work to transmit to everything in an area, because it requires direct line of sight (a physical issue, not a technological limitation).
I don't think its a give that a civilization would abandon radio. Heck, our future is to become less wired in (wifi, starlink, ect) which means more radio wave usage.
Post by: edzieba on 03/23/2022 02:10 pm
With lower power levels comes shorter effective detection range with the same sensitivity equipment.
Post by: Star One on 03/24/2022 06:34 pm
https://youtu.be/L3lSjixIL5w
Post by: russianhalo117 on 04/09/2022 06:27 am
The SETI Era is coming to an end at the UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory as SETI's computer and science hardware was moved to the UC System's surplus and dispositions campus. SETI continues its legacy programme wind down in preparations to move off UCB property.SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 28 September 2021:SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 21 November 2021:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85783
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85810
Another bittersweet milestone.We're cleaning out our lab at Space Sciences, and saying goodbye to a lot of history. (https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85870&postid=2096776#2096776)
Post by: Star One on 05/30/2022 01:39 pm
An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal
Abstract
In this paper it is analysed which of the thousands of stars in the WOW! Signal region could have the highest chance of being the real source of the signal, providing that it came from a star system similar to ours. A total of 66 G and K-type stars are sampled, but only one of them is identified as a potential Sun-like star considering the available information in the Gaia Archive. This candidate source, which is named 2MASS 19281982-2640123, therefore becomes an ideal target to conduct observations in the search for techno-signatures. Another two candidate stars have a luminosity error interval that includes the luminosity of the Sun, and 14 candidates more are also identified as potential Sun-like stars, but the estimations on their luminosity were unknown.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/an-approximation-to-determine-the-source-of-the-wow-signal/
Interview with the paper’s author Alberto Caballero:
https://youtu.be/KLWnSAHylpU
Post by: Star One on 06/15/2022 06:54 pm
https://www.newsweek.com/china-radio-signal-alien-intelligent-civilizations-1716026
Post by: Star One on 06/16/2022 07:12 am
https://futurism.com/fast-signal-not-aliens-scientist
Post by: Star One on 06/16/2022 10:49 am
Post by: tea monster on 06/16/2022 11:48 am
We've only been properly looking for signals for a relatively short time. We ourselves haven't travelled past our own satellite. To use an analogy, we've opened the kitchen window on a quiet Sunday morning and listened for the sound of a car. After five minutes of hearing nothing, we conclude that we are the only people alive on Earth.
Interstellar travel is possible. It probably isn't ever going to be easy, but with technology we have within sight now, we could send a probe to a nearby star system in about 50 years. Generation ships are technology we could attain if we wanted to. Achieving the ability to do this doesn't require breaking the laws of physics. If an alien race decides that they really need to travel to other stars, it's an option that can be pursued with determination.
Post by: edzieba on 06/16/2022 12:16 pm
Post by: deadman1204 on 06/16/2022 04:07 pm
It goes the same in the other direction. All those older signals earth sent out a few decades ago? They are WAY below the noise threshold and thus impossible to detect.
Post by: Star One on 06/18/2022 08:16 pm
https://youtu.be/r6rPNPVQp0Y
Post by: Star One on 08/09/2022 08:31 am
The Dark Forest Theory:
https://youtu.be/xAUJYP8tnRE
Post by: deadman1204 on 08/09/2022 01:53 pm
I only came across this theory of why the universe seems silent after seeing a review of a now out of print sci-fi book The Killer Star. Stephen Hawking apparently was a believer in this theory.
The Dark Forest Theory:
https://youtu.be/xAUJYP8tnRE
I think its a silly idea. Civilizations would be/ARE the rarest thing in the galaxy. Space, resources, land, materials? On a galactic scale, all of that is super cheap and plentiful. Its literally laying around. Theres no shortage of other planets/systems to go to. You gain nothing by destroying another race, but stand to gain incredible things by communicating with them.
War requires the 2 sides to be in conflict over something. Its ALWAYS over resources (it might be dressed up as some moral/religious bs, but its ALWAYS about resources). Even Russia's war in Ukraine is (its land, sea access, gas fields, ect). When you travel the galaxy, none of this is scarce. You can get as many planets as you want, cause almost all of them are empty. Killing another race means they lose out on everything they could gain by trade/commerce/communication. As well, they gain nothing, because there never was a threat.
Evil monster aliens make great mindless villains, but anyone capable of practical galactic travel would know the actual rare resources when they see them.
Post by: Star One on 08/09/2022 05:58 pm
You say that but it’s credible explanation of why we see in reality a silent universe.I only came across this theory of why the universe seems silent after seeing a review of a now out of print sci-fi book The Killer Star. Stephen Hawking apparently was a believer in this theory.
The Dark Forest Theory:
https://youtu.be/xAUJYP8tnRE
I think its a silly idea. Civilizations would be/ARE the rarest thing in the galaxy. Space, resources, land, materials? On a galactic scale, all of that is super cheap and plentiful. Its literally laying around. Theres no shortage of other planets/systems to go to. You gain nothing by destroying another race, but stand to gain incredible things by communicating with them.
War requires the 2 sides to be in conflict over something. Its ALWAYS over resources (it might be dressed up as some moral/religious bs, but its ALWAYS about resources). Even Russia's war in Ukraine is (its land, sea access, gas fields, ect). When you travel the galaxy, none of this is scarce. You can get as many planets as you want, cause almost all of them are empty. Killing another race means they lose out on everything they could gain by trade/commerce/communication. As well, they gain nothing, because there never was a threat.
Evil monster aliens make great mindless villains, but anyone capable of practical galactic travel would know the actual rare resources when they see them.
Post by: deadman1204 on 08/09/2022 08:40 pm
Giant frogs poisoning every civilization with farts until they die is also a "credible explanation".You say that but it’s credible explanation of why we see in reality a silent universe.I only came across this theory of why the universe seems silent after seeing a review of a now out of print sci-fi book The Killer Star. Stephen Hawking apparently was a believer in this theory.
The Dark Forest Theory:
https://youtu.be/xAUJYP8tnRE
I think its a silly idea. Civilizations would be/ARE the rarest thing in the galaxy. Space, resources, land, materials? On a galactic scale, all of that is super cheap and plentiful. Its literally laying around. Theres no shortage of other planets/systems to go to. You gain nothing by destroying another race, but stand to gain incredible things by communicating with them.
War requires the 2 sides to be in conflict over something. Its ALWAYS over resources (it might be dressed up as some moral/religious bs, but its ALWAYS about resources). Even Russia's war in Ukraine is (its land, sea access, gas fields, ect). When you travel the galaxy, none of this is scarce. You can get as many planets as you want, cause almost all of them are empty. Killing another race means they lose out on everything they could gain by trade/commerce/communication. As well, they gain nothing, because there never was a threat.
Evil monster aliens make great mindless villains, but anyone capable of practical galactic travel would know the actual rare resources when they see them.
Post by: VSECOTSPE on 08/09/2022 09:17 pm
The Dark Forest Theory
I think its a silly idea. Civilizations would be/ARE the rarest thing in the galaxy. Space, resources, land, materials? On a galactic scale, all of that is super cheap and plentiful. Its literally laying around. Theres no shortage of other planets/systems to go to. You gain nothing by destroying another race, but stand to gain incredible things by communicating with them.
This assumes an extraterrestrial civilization shares the values of our modern, human civilization that have really only existed for a century or two — that they place a high value on societies and cultures that are not like their own. Thousands of years of human history shows those values to be the very narrow exception, not the norm. Historically, contact between different human civilizations results in extinction, enslavement, displacement, etc., not respect, appreciation, and preservation. Given our history, it’s arguably not unwise to assume contact with extraterrestrial entities would be about as good for humanity as contact with Europe was for indigenous America (or Rome was for Celtic Europe, etc.).
It also assumes that an extraterrestrial civilization would even recognize humanity as a civilization. Given the huge disparity between the youth of humanity (~1 million years) and the ages of the stars and the universe (billions of years), an extraterrestrial civilization is likely to be as removed from us as we are from an ant hill or a yeast colony. This is premise at the core of the absurdist humor in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — alien contact won’t be with a delegation from the United Nations of the Galaxy or with the Evil Army of the Grand Stellar Empire — it will be with a lowly contractor working overtime who doesn’t give a whit about humanity one way or the other because they’re being paid to put in an interstellar highway and Earth is in the way.
Biology on Earth always finds a way until humanity and technology decide otherwise. The only places we find sterile, bug-free, or weed-free conditions on Earth is where people want them and applied an herbicide or called in an exterminator or erected a clean room. Unless the Great Filter lies before the emergence of complex life or before the emergence of long-lived intelligent life, I suspect something very ancient, powerful, and incomprehensible out there is snuffing out the ant hills and yeast colonies like us because it’s easier for it to avoid infection or future competition that way or is just plain indifferent to our existence as it goes about pursuing its unfathomable goals.
FWIW...
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/10/2022 01:03 am
I only came across this theory of why the universe seems silent after seeing a review of a now out of print sci-fi book The Killer Star. Stephen Hawking apparently was a believer in this theory.
The Dark Forest Theory:
https://youtu.be/xAUJYP8tnRE
I think its a silly idea. Civilizations would be/ARE the rarest thing in the galaxy. Space, resources, land, materials? On a galactic scale, all of that is super cheap and plentiful. Its literally laying around. Theres no shortage of other planets/systems to go to. You gain nothing by destroying another race, but stand to gain incredible things by communicating with them.
War requires the 2 sides to be in conflict over something. Its ALWAYS over resources (it might be dressed up as some moral/religious bs, but its ALWAYS about resources). Even Russia's war in Ukraine is (its land, sea access, gas fields, ect). When you travel the galaxy, none of this is scarce. You can get as many planets as you want, cause almost all of them are empty. Killing another race means they lose out on everything they could gain by trade/commerce/communication. As well, they gain nothing, because there never was a threat.
Evil monster aliens make great mindless villains, but anyone capable of practical galactic travel would know the actual rare resources when they see them.
You’re not thinking long term. Eventually, every accessible resource in the universe will be consumed, if a civilization survives long enough. A logical machine intelligence - or a biological one that thinks in similar fashion, will coldly calculate the course of action that maximises its longevity.
And you also assume that all civilizations think the same way. You can have a million civilizations that embrace others, and just one ancient super advanced predator civilization, and the predator will dominate through natural selection while the others are wiped out.
So in principle the theory is entirely sound. What I am not convinced by is the assertion that it will explain the Great Silence across our entire light cone.
We can see galaxies as they were billions of years ago, billions of light years away. Even if there is a Dark Forest, surely we should catch glimpses of some civilizations BEFORE the Predator species wiped them out. It’s not like they can wipe out the historical evidence of the presence of all of their victims. And this evidence will spread across the universe at the speed of light long after the unfortunate victims have been wiped out.
But maybe I’m missing part of the theory. If they manage to wipe out all civilizations BEFORE they become technological, that would explain the Great Silence. But clearly we still exist to disprove that.
So what am I missing?
Post by: VSECOTSPE on 08/10/2022 03:18 am
But maybe I’m missing part of the theory. If they manage to wipe out all civilizations BEFORE they become technological, that would explain the Great Silence. But clearly we still exist to disprove that.
So what am I missing?
If technological singularities are a thing — like general artificial intelligences that can recursively improve their programming/hardware at a runaway rate — then that’s what the ancient dominating civilization would seek to snuff out before it starts. They won’t want other god-like intelligences competing with their own.
Humanity is nowhere close to instigating such a singularity. As a result, humanity remains ignored or just completely off the radar of the ancient dominating civilization (or its agents) until we begin to demonstrate whatever the signs of an impending technological singularity are.
The ancient dominating civilization remains unseen to humanity because we can’t fathom its existence like ants can’t fathom a kid with a magnifying glass and sneakers. And our fellow ant-level civilizations in their anthills are getting burnt and stomped out of existence as soon as their technology advances far enough, so we don’t see any evidence of them, either.
Occam’s Razor says we’re alone because complex life and/or long-lived intelligent life is an extremely rare thing. But if Occam is wrong, then a Great Filter that involves biological competition between species/technological competition between civilizations is a possible explanation given the enormous disparities that will exist between species and civilizations that have millions or billions of years difference in development/existence.
FWIW...
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/10/2022 06:10 am
But maybe I’m missing part of the theory. If they manage to wipe out all civilizations BEFORE they become technological, that would explain the Great Silence. But clearly we still exist to disprove that.
So what am I missing?
If technological singularities are a thing — like general artificial intelligences that can recursively improve their programming/hardware at a runaway rate — then that’s what the ancient dominating civilization would seek to snuff out before it starts. They won’t want other god-like intelligences competing with their own.
Humanity is nowhere close to instigating such a singularity. As a result, humanity remains ignored or just completely off the radar of the ancient dominating civilization (or its agents) until we begin to demonstrate whatever the signs of an impending technological singularity are.
The ancient dominating civilization remains unseen to humanity because we can’t fathom its existence like ants can’t fathom a kid with a magnifying glass and sneakers. And our fellow ant-level civilizations in their anthills are getting burnt and stomped out of existence as soon as their technology advances far enough, so we don’t see any evidence of them, either.
Occam’s Razor says we’re alone because complex life and/or long-lived intelligent life is an extremely rare thing. But if Occam is wrong, then a Great Filter that involves biological competition between species/technological competition between civilizations is a possible explanation given the enormous disparities that will exist between species and civilizations that have millions or billions of years difference in development/existence.
FWIW...
Yep. My personal belief is that we’re alone. But in the alternative scenario, with millions of civilizations out there, all waiting to be wiped out by a hidden master race just before they reach singularity level, why aren’t we seeing evidence of all of these millions of civilizations up to the point where they are wiped out? Including the millions that have already been wiped out, but were still around to release distant electromagnetic emissions which are only reaching us now, long after they are extinct.
Post by: Star One on 08/10/2022 08:00 am
Considering the vastness of even our Galaxy alone the idea that we are alone has always seemed slightly off to me even allowing for the difficulties of intelligence life arising and allowing for the vastness of deep time as to whether two intelligent races will exist at the same time.But maybe I’m missing part of the theory. If they manage to wipe out all civilizations BEFORE they become technological, that would explain the Great Silence. But clearly we still exist to disprove that.
So what am I missing?
If technological singularities are a thing — like general artificial intelligences that can recursively improve their programming/hardware at a runaway rate — then that’s what the ancient dominating civilization would seek to snuff out before it starts. They won’t want other god-like intelligences competing with their own.
Humanity is nowhere close to instigating such a singularity. As a result, humanity remains ignored or just completely off the radar of the ancient dominating civilization (or its agents) until we begin to demonstrate whatever the signs of an impending technological singularity are.
The ancient dominating civilization remains unseen to humanity because we can’t fathom its existence like ants can’t fathom a kid with a magnifying glass and sneakers. And our fellow ant-level civilizations in their anthills are getting burnt and stomped out of existence as soon as their technology advances far enough, so we don’t see any evidence of them, either.
Occam’s Razor says we’re alone because complex life and/or long-lived intelligent life is an extremely rare thing. But if Occam is wrong, then a Great Filter that involves biological competition between species/technological competition between civilizations is a possible explanation given the enormous disparities that will exist between species and civilizations that have millions or billions of years difference in development/existence.
FWIW...
Yep. My personal belief is that we’re alone. But in the alternative scenario, with millions of civilizations out there, all waiting to be wiped out by a hidden master race just before they reach singularity level, why aren’t we seeing evidence of all of these millions of civilizations up to the point where they are wiped out? Including the millions that have already been wiped out, but were still around to release distant electromagnetic emissions which are only reaching us now, long after they are extinct.
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/10/2022 09:43 am
Considering the vastness of even our Galaxy alone the idea that we are alone has always seemed slightly off to me even allowing for the difficulties of intelligence life arising and allowing for the vastness of deep time as to whether two intelligent races will exist at the same time.But maybe I’m missing part of the theory. If they manage to wipe out all civilizations BEFORE they become technological, that would explain the Great Silence. But clearly we still exist to disprove that.
So what am I missing?
If technological singularities are a thing — like general artificial intelligences that can recursively improve their programming/hardware at a runaway rate — then that’s what the ancient dominating civilization would seek to snuff out before it starts. They won’t want other god-like intelligences competing with their own.
Humanity is nowhere close to instigating such a singularity. As a result, humanity remains ignored or just completely off the radar of the ancient dominating civilization (or its agents) until we begin to demonstrate whatever the signs of an impending technological singularity are.
The ancient dominating civilization remains unseen to humanity because we can’t fathom its existence like ants can’t fathom a kid with a magnifying glass and sneakers. And our fellow ant-level civilizations in their anthills are getting burnt and stomped out of existence as soon as their technology advances far enough, so we don’t see any evidence of them, either.
Occam’s Razor says we’re alone because complex life and/or long-lived intelligent life is an extremely rare thing. But if Occam is wrong, then a Great Filter that involves biological competition between species/technological competition between civilizations is a possible explanation given the enormous disparities that will exist between species and civilizations that have millions or billions of years difference in development/existence.
FWIW...
Yep. My personal belief is that we’re alone. But in the alternative scenario, with millions of civilizations out there, all waiting to be wiped out by a hidden master race just before they reach singularity level, why aren’t we seeing evidence of all of these millions of civilizations up to the point where they are wiped out? Including the millions that have already been wiped out, but were still around to release distant electromagnetic emissions which are only reaching us now, long after they are extinct.
Yes, but the Fermi paradox is extremely compelling. And the simplest solution is that we are alone.
Post by: John-H on 08/10/2022 03:30 pm
Every social group on Earth that has reached a modern level of technology has a birthrate that is less than the replacement rate. Once people have all of the toys, they lose interest in having kids. The only populations on earth that are still growing are the ones that haven't got the technology - yet. When they have it, we will slowly die out.
John
Post by: whitelancer64 on 08/10/2022 04:28 pm
But maybe I’m missing part of the theory. If they manage to wipe out all civilizations BEFORE they become technological, that would explain the Great Silence. But clearly we still exist to disprove that.
So what am I missing?
If technological singularities are a thing — like general artificial intelligences that can recursively improve their programming/hardware at a runaway rate — then that’s what the ancient dominating civilization would seek to snuff out before it starts. They won’t want other god-like intelligences competing with their own.
Humanity is nowhere close to instigating such a singularity. As a result, humanity remains ignored or just completely off the radar of the ancient dominating civilization (or its agents) until we begin to demonstrate whatever the signs of an impending technological singularity are.
The ancient dominating civilization remains unseen to humanity because we can’t fathom its existence like ants can’t fathom a kid with a magnifying glass and sneakers. And our fellow ant-level civilizations in their anthills are getting burnt and stomped out of existence as soon as their technology advances far enough, so we don’t see any evidence of them, either.
Occam’s Razor says we’re alone because complex life and/or long-lived intelligent life is an extremely rare thing. But if Occam is wrong, then a Great Filter that involves biological competition between species/technological competition between civilizations is a possible explanation given the enormous disparities that will exist between species and civilizations that have millions or billions of years difference in development/existence.
FWIW...
Yep. My personal belief is that we’re alone. But in the alternative scenario, with millions of civilizations out there, all waiting to be wiped out by a hidden master race just before they reach singularity level, why aren’t we seeing evidence of all of these millions of civilizations up to the point where they are wiped out? Including the millions that have already been wiped out, but were still around to release distant electromagnetic emissions which are only reaching us now, long after they are extinct.
We almost certainly are not "alone." That remains a possibility, but IMO, a very remote one. My personal thought is that the galaxy is probably teeming with life on many, if not most, planets with liquid water. Also, I expect that in the near future, JWST data on exoplanet atmospheres will make a convincing argument that some form of life exists on at least some planets.
Now, that's just "life," not necessarily civilizations. The galaxy is probably full of planets with simple, bacteria-like life, but, and I've said this before, more complex life may be rare. Complex life that is intelligent may be, and IMO likely is, very rare. Intelligent life that has the capability and resources to build technological civilizations may be even more rare.
When I plug my assumptions into the Drake equation it comes out with the possibility there are just a handful of technological civilizations in our galaxy, not millions.
Post by: redliox on 08/10/2022 05:29 pm
1) There's a good 1/4 of the galaxy blocked by the core and literally invisible to us. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out the other handful of spacefaring civilizations are literally on the other side of the galaxy.
2) Life probably common, and just behind that primitive civilizations (Bronze Age and Medieval types) likewise frequent, but hard to notice from a telescope. We might be the only ones using radios plus microwaves instead of camp fires.
Post by: edzieba on 08/10/2022 05:34 pm
Post by: DanClemmensen on 08/10/2022 05:45 pm
Remember that we ourselves have produced a brief pulse of distant detectable EM: weak output as we discovered RF emitters, a peak as we increased power to gain range, and then now back to a low as we use power power levels, beamforming, and local transmitters for greater efficiency. All within a century or two, with maybe a few decades of really good RF blasted out into space. If we make the not unreasonable assumption that other civilisations pursue efficient communications too, then detection is not just a matter of proximity, but of intersecting thin shells of emissions spreading out from each civilisation. Our brief squawk of noise needs to pass over another civilisation during a period of time where they are both able to look, willing to look (and not busy with other matters like more interesting RF sources for their powerful radio telescopes),and willing to respond, and vice versa. Combined with the inverse-square law, you not only need a high spatial civilisation density for a reasonable probability of detection (let alone response!), you also need temporal density of civilisations in the same location occurring at the right time.An inimical long term galactic civilization would be able to detect anthropogenic changes to planetary environments, not just RF signals. It's a lot harder to hide the effects of agriculture than it is to hide RF signals. We can't do it with today's technology, but we aren't yet an inimical long term galactic civilization. The galactic pest control authority would just implement a once-a-century scan of all planets and check for changes every century to identify any new infestations.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 08/10/2022 05:54 pm
Remember that we ourselves have produced a brief pulse of distant detectable EM: weak output as we discovered RF emitters, a peak as we increased power to gain range, and then now back to a low as we use power power levels, beamforming, and local transmitters for greater efficiency. All within a century or two, with maybe a few decades of really good RF blasted out into space. If we make the not unreasonable assumption that other civilisations pursue efficient communications too, then detection is not just a matter of proximity, but of intersecting thin shells of emissions spreading out from each civilisation. Our brief squawk of noise needs to pass over another civilisation during a period of time where they are both able to look, willing to look (and not busy with other matters like more interesting RF sources for their powerful radio telescopes),and willing to respond, and vice versa. Combined with the inverse-square law, you not only need a high spatial civilisation density for a reasonable probability of detection (let alone response!), you also need temporal density of civilisations in the same location occurring at the right time.
I think it's very unlikely we will hear radio signals from another civilization unless it's a signal intentionally broadcast (a shout into the void) or one specifically directed towards us.
Where we can, and with JWST, very likely soon will, detect alien life is from atmospheric spectrography data. JWST is just starting, soon we'll have data from the atmospheres of thousands of planets to compare and see what's "normal" and what's "hey, that's weird." If we're very lucky, we might spot indications of industry or even artificial compounds. I wouldn't bet on that though.
Post by: VSECOTSPE on 08/10/2022 08:29 pm
Including the millions that have already been wiped out, but were still around to release distant electromagnetic emissions which are only reaching us now, long after they are extinct.
Inverse square law. Leaked omnidirectional radio transmissions fade below the cosmic background noise the fastest. Even a megawatt omnidirectional transmission is swamped by the cosmic background noise around 6-7 AU. Narrowband radio transmissions fade more slowly. But again, even a narrowband megawatt transmission starts to get swamped by the cosmic background noise beyond about 200AU. The Voyager spacecraft are about 120 to 150 AU away and working with the 400kW Deep Space Network. Proxima Centauri is over 250,000 AU away.
Radio SETI searches rely heavily on the assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations will undertake mega engineering projects to send really high power transmissions in our direction over a long period of time. The likelihood that any given technological civilization would do so is probably really small. And if extraterrestrial civilizations are rare because of a Great Filter before or after technological civilization is achieved, then the probability that there’s a civilization that purposefully blasted radio transmissions in the direction where we’d be however many millennia later is likely vanishingly small.
Put another way, just because an ant hill has radio technology doesn’t mean that those ants will build and operate a radio transmitter powerful enough to reach other ant hills before a kid comes along with a magnifying glass and sneakers. And if kids are systematically destroying ant hills, then the chance that any ant hill will build a transmitter capable of reaching other ant hills before destruction goes way down.
Another issue may be that civilizations go radio quiet relatively quickly just due to technological change. We’re seeing this ourselves with our advances in fiber optic and free space optical technologies.
Post by: LouScheffer on 08/11/2022 01:18 pm
Radio SETI searches rely heavily on the assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations will undertake mega engineering projects to send really high power transmissions in our direction over a long period of time. The likelihood that any given technological civilization would do so is probably really small.I have a more depressing take on this. It does not take much money (<< $1 billion) to set up a transmitter easily visible to a single target. So suppose scientists find a planet that possibly has life. The government may not want to send a signal, but they are not (if Earth is typical) the only actors. Venture capitalists might want to be the first to make contact, to grab the good ideas. Religious groups might want to spread their doctrines. Eccentric billionaires might want to spread their conspiracy theories. Advertisers might want to establish new markets. All of these have more than enough money and fewer qualms about contact than the government, and could easily build/hire the relevant technology (for this job, even currently available Earth level technology suffices, and it will only get easier).
So if we ever do hear something, I suggest we treat it with extreme skepticism.
Post by: edzieba on 08/11/2022 02:06 pm
Just as long as we don't also discover that "what we expect signs of life to look like" and "very common abiogenic IR spectra of planets" are the same thing.Remember that we ourselves have produced a brief pulse of distant detectable EM: weak output as we discovered RF emitters, a peak as we increased power to gain range, and then now back to a low as we use power power levels, beamforming, and local transmitters for greater efficiency. All within a century or two, with maybe a few decades of really good RF blasted out into space. If we make the not unreasonable assumption that other civilisations pursue efficient communications too, then detection is not just a matter of proximity, but of intersecting thin shells of emissions spreading out from each civilisation. Our brief squawk of noise needs to pass over another civilisation during a period of time where they are both able to look, willing to look (and not busy with other matters like more interesting RF sources for their powerful radio telescopes),and willing to respond, and vice versa. Combined with the inverse-square law, you not only need a high spatial civilisation density for a reasonable probability of detection (let alone response!), you also need temporal density of civilisations in the same location occurring at the right time.
I think it's very unlikely we will hear radio signals from another civilization unless it's a signal intentionally broadcast (a shout into the void) or one specifically directed towards us.
Where we can, and with JWST, very likely soon will, detect alien life is from atmospheric spectrography data. JWST is just starting, soon we'll have data from the atmospheres of thousands of planets to compare and see what's "normal" and what's "hey, that's weird." If we're very lucky, we might spot indications of industry or even artificial compounds. I wouldn't bet on that though.
Reminds me of a Dresdan Codak comic (https://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/).Radio SETI searches rely heavily on the assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations will undertake mega engineering projects to send really high power transmissions in our direction over a long period of time. The likelihood that any given technological civilization would do so is probably really small.I have a more depressing take on this. It does not take much money (<< $1 billion) to set up a transmitter easily visible to a single target. So suppose scientists find a planet that possibly has life. The government may not want to send a signal, but they are not (if Earth is typical) the only actors. Venture capitalists might want to be the first to make contact, to grab the good ideas. Religious groups might want to spread their doctrines. Eccentric billionaires might want to spread their conspiracy theories. Advertisers might want to establish new markets. All of these have more than enough money and fewer qualms about contact than the government, and could easily build/hire the relevant technology (for this job, even currently available Earth level technology suffices, and it will only get easier).
So if we ever do hear something, I suggest we treat it with extreme skepticism.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 08/11/2022 03:23 pm
Just as long as we don't also discover that "what we expect signs of life to look like" and "very common abiogenic IR spectra of planets" are the same thing.Remember that we ourselves have produced a brief pulse of distant detectable EM: weak output as we discovered RF emitters, a peak as we increased power to gain range, and then now back to a low as we use power power levels, beamforming, and local transmitters for greater efficiency. All within a century or two, with maybe a few decades of really good RF blasted out into space. If we make the not unreasonable assumption that other civilisations pursue efficient communications too, then detection is not just a matter of proximity, but of intersecting thin shells of emissions spreading out from each civilisation. Our brief squawk of noise needs to pass over another civilisation during a period of time where they are both able to look, willing to look (and not busy with other matters like more interesting RF sources for their powerful radio telescopes),and willing to respond, and vice versa. Combined with the inverse-square law, you not only need a high spatial civilisation density for a reasonable probability of detection (let alone response!), you also need temporal density of civilisations in the same location occurring at the right time.
I think it's very unlikely we will hear radio signals from another civilization unless it's a signal intentionally broadcast (a shout into the void) or one specifically directed towards us.
Where we can, and with JWST, very likely soon will, detect alien life is from atmospheric spectrography data. JWST is just starting, soon we'll have data from the atmospheres of thousands of planets to compare and see what's "normal" and what's "hey, that's weird." If we're very lucky, we might spot indications of industry or even artificial compounds. I wouldn't bet on that though.Reminds me of a Dresdan Codak comic (https://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/).Radio SETI searches rely heavily on the assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations will undertake mega engineering projects to send really high power transmissions in our direction over a long period of time. The likelihood that any given technological civilization would do so is probably really small.I have a more depressing take on this. It does not take much money (<< $1 billion) to set up a transmitter easily visible to a single target. So suppose scientists find a planet that possibly has life. The government may not want to send a signal, but they are not (if Earth is typical) the only actors. Venture capitalists might want to be the first to make contact, to grab the good ideas. Religious groups might want to spread their doctrines. Eccentric billionaires might want to spread their conspiracy theories. Advertisers might want to establish new markets. All of these have more than enough money and fewer qualms about contact than the government, and could easily build/hire the relevant technology (for this job, even currently available Earth level technology suffices, and it will only get easier).
So if we ever do hear something, I suggest we treat it with extreme skepticism.
Which is why we need the spectra from thousands of planets to make a really good comparative database. We should be able to rapidly figure out if "life" is everywhere, super rare, or somewhere in between. We'll finally have some solid numbers to put to the fl term in the Drake Equation.
We have already sent a few targeted high power broadcasts to specific star systems, but they are really just shouts into the void. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interstellar_radio_messages
So I agree with you, if we do see any signs of life, we are very likely to send some radio messages to those star systems.
That is a hilarious comic
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/11/2022 03:48 pm
Just as long as we don't also discover that "what we expect signs of life to look like" and "very common abiogenic IR spectra of planets" are the same thing.Remember that we ourselves have produced a brief pulse of distant detectable EM: weak output as we discovered RF emitters, a peak as we increased power to gain range, and then now back to a low as we use power power levels, beamforming, and local transmitters for greater efficiency. All within a century or two, with maybe a few decades of really good RF blasted out into space. If we make the not unreasonable assumption that other civilisations pursue efficient communications too, then detection is not just a matter of proximity, but of intersecting thin shells of emissions spreading out from each civilisation. Our brief squawk of noise needs to pass over another civilisation during a period of time where they are both able to look, willing to look (and not busy with other matters like more interesting RF sources for their powerful radio telescopes),and willing to respond, and vice versa. Combined with the inverse-square law, you not only need a high spatial civilisation density for a reasonable probability of detection (let alone response!), you also need temporal density of civilisations in the same location occurring at the right time.
I think it's very unlikely we will hear radio signals from another civilization unless it's a signal intentionally broadcast (a shout into the void) or one specifically directed towards us.
Where we can, and with JWST, very likely soon will, detect alien life is from atmospheric spectrography data. JWST is just starting, soon we'll have data from the atmospheres of thousands of planets to compare and see what's "normal" and what's "hey, that's weird." If we're very lucky, we might spot indications of industry or even artificial compounds. I wouldn't bet on that though.Reminds me of a Dresdan Codak comic (https://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/).Radio SETI searches rely heavily on the assumption that extraterrestrial civilizations will undertake mega engineering projects to send really high power transmissions in our direction over a long period of time. The likelihood that any given technological civilization would do so is probably really small.I have a more depressing take on this. It does not take much money (<< $1 billion) to set up a transmitter easily visible to a single target. So suppose scientists find a planet that possibly has life. The government may not want to send a signal, but they are not (if Earth is typical) the only actors. Venture capitalists might want to be the first to make contact, to grab the good ideas. Religious groups might want to spread their doctrines. Eccentric billionaires might want to spread their conspiracy theories. Advertisers might want to establish new markets. All of these have more than enough money and fewer qualms about contact than the government, and could easily build/hire the relevant technology (for this job, even currently available Earth level technology suffices, and it will only get easier).
So if we ever do hear something, I suggest we treat it with extreme skepticism.
Which is why we need the spectra from thousands of planets to make a really good comparative database. We should be able to rapidly figure out if "life" is everywhere, super rare, or somewhere in between. We'll finally have some solid numbers to put to the fl term in the Drake Equation.
We have already sent a few targeted high power broadcasts to specific star systems, but they are really just shouts into the void. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interstellar_radio_messages
So I agree with you, if we do see any signs of life, we are very likely to send some radio messages to those star systems.
That is a hilarious comic
How does that work, anyway?
If you want to send a signal to a star system 100 lightyears away, do you aim it at the point in space where the planet will be 100 years from now, taking into account that it has already travelled away from where we currently see it for the last 100 years, so really that means you are aiming for the spot where it will be 200 years later than where it currently appears to be?
And is it enough to just aim at the star, or do you have to aim your signal at a target planet orbiting that star?
Seems quite a complicated endeavour, overall.
Post by: ttle2 on 08/11/2022 04:48 pm
How does that work, anyway?
If you want to send a signal to a star system 100 lightyears away, do you aim it at the point in space where the planet will be 100 years from now, taking into account that it has already travelled away from where we currently see it for the last 100 years, so really that means you are aiming for the spot where it will be 200 years later than where it currently appears to be?
And is it enough to just aim at the star, or do you have to aim your signal at a target planet orbiting that star?
Seems quite a complicated endeavour, overall.
Proper motions of stars 100 lightyears away are less than 1 arcsec, so in 200 years they move at most a couple of arcmin. At radio frequencies your beam is going to be wider than that even with the largest available telescopes.
Post by: philw1776 on 08/19/2022 04:37 pm
How does that work, anyway?
If you want to send a signal to a star system 100 lightyears away, do you aim it at the point in space where the planet will be 100 years from now, taking into account that it has already travelled away from where we currently see it for the last 100 years, so really that means you are aiming for the spot where it will be 200 years later than where it currently appears to be?
And is it enough to just aim at the star, or do you have to aim your signal at a target planet orbiting that star?
Seems quite a complicated endeavour, overall.
Proper motions of stars 100 lightyears away are less than 1 arcsec, so in 200 years they move at most a couple of arcmin. At radio frequencies your beam is going to be wider than that even with the largest available telescopes.
It's also a non-issue because GAIA gave us the proper motion of all such star systems. So even a magic narrow beam laser would know where to aim.
Post by: Robotbeat on 08/19/2022 05:12 pm
Still, the uncertainties in the Gaia data are about 0.2 milli-arc-seconds per year (worse for some objects), so for something 10 light years away (which also means 10 years of drift), your uncertainty is around 0.03 AU or 700 Earth radii or 5 million kilometers. Which, it turns out, is essentially identical to the diameter of a 500nm light beam (at 10 light years distant) sent from a 10m aperture from our solar system.How does that work, anyway?
If you want to send a signal to a star system 100 lightyears away, do you aim it at the point in space where the planet will be 100 years from now, taking into account that it has already travelled away from where we currently see it for the last 100 years, so really that means you are aiming for the spot where it will be 200 years later than where it currently appears to be?
And is it enough to just aim at the star, or do you have to aim your signal at a target planet orbiting that star?
Seems quite a complicated endeavour, overall.
Proper motions of stars 100 lightyears away are less than 1 arcsec, so in 200 years they move at most a couple of arcmin. At radio frequencies your beam is going to be wider than that even with the largest available telescopes.
It's also a non-issue because GAIA gave us the proper motion of all such star systems. So even a magic narrow beam laser would know where to aim.
Of course, we could probably make a larger aperture if we really wanted. But then again, we could (and likely will) make a better Gaia (or do a more careful study of exactly what star system we’re sending our signal to).
0.03AU is about how far the habitable zone is for TRAPPIST-1 (which is 40 light years away). So for dwarf stars, you can just aim at the star. For brighter stars with a habitable zone further out, you need to aim for where the planet is (going to be).
Post by: Star One on 09/02/2022 10:50 am
What Do We Do If They Are Already Here? With Avi Loeb
https://youtu.be/6dlytdDIkBQ
Post by: ttle2 on 09/03/2022 06:28 am
Frank Drake (of the famous Drake equation) has died: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/frank-drake-astronomer-famed-for-contributions-to-seti-has-died/
Post by: libra on 09/03/2022 07:48 am
Post by: Star One on 10/29/2022 09:36 am
Quote
To be clear, Loeb isn’t claiming there are quintillions of alien craft zooming around our corner of the Milky Way. After all, he’s never said that ‘Oumuamua is definitely a robotic probe or crewed craft—just that we should be open to the possibility.
So what Loeb and Ezell calculated isn’t the population of alien craft. It’s the population of possible alien craft or other possible artificial objects. Leftover ET rocket parts. Unexplainable fragments of alien technology beyond our understanding. That kind of thing.
Quote
They actually came up with two numbers. One for all interstellar objects, including those that are zipping randomly around and across the solar system and aren’t likely to pass within view of our instruments. That’s a staggering 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 40 decillion).
The lower number, 4 quintillion, is for objects that seem to be directed toward the “habitable zone” of the solar system, close to the sun. That’s where Earth orbits, and where astronomers have some chance of spotting a passing object.
Quote
Loeb also highlighted the Vera C. Rubin Observatory that’s under construction in Chile. Set to open in 2023, the observatory with its 3.2-billion-pixel camera should be able to survey the entire southern sky every four days. “A high-resolution image could reveal bolts and screws on the surface of an artificial object and distinguish it from a nitrogen iceberg, a hydrogen iceberg or a dust bunny,” Loeb said.
‘Oumuamua was a missed opportunity. Sure, Loeb is open to the idea it’s an alien probe, but most astronomers aren’t. If we can get a closer look at the next ‘Oumuamua, maybe more scientists will come around to the idea it might be an alien craft.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/harvard-astronomer-avi-loeb-says-there-might-be-4-quintillion-alien-spacecraft-in-our-solar-system?ref=scroll
Here’s the paper itself.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.11262.pdf
Post by: Star One on 11/05/2022 08:15 pm
https://youtu.be/7TAOMvW5LaQ
Post by: deadman1204 on 11/07/2022 03:13 pm
Cool Worlds - Is Messaging Aliens a Bad Idea:No, its not. There is no super light speed army of militant aliens who will come and probe us while stealing our water.
https://youtu.be/7TAOMvW5LaQ
Another intelligent race close enough to communicate with would be the most precious and rare resource in the galaxy - someone totally different to exchange ideas with.
Any action "against them" would be destroying your precious one time resource.
Post by: Robotbeat on 11/07/2022 03:15 pm
unless they’re afraid we’ll eventually attack them so they send relativistic impactors at us the moment they hear from us. Dark Forest hypothesis.Cool Worlds - Is Messaging Aliens a Bad Idea:No, its not. There is no super light speed army of militant aliens who will come and probe us while stealing our water.
https://youtu.be/7TAOMvW5LaQ
Another intelligent race close enough to communicate with would be the most precious and rare resource in the galaxy - someone totally different to exchange ideas with.
Any action "against them" would be destroying your precious one time resource.
Post by: deadman1204 on 11/07/2022 03:34 pm
It all makes great scary stories, which is why its perpetual youtube fodder.unless they’re afraid we’ll eventually attack them so they send relativistic impactors at us the moment they hear from us. Dark Forest hypothesis.
No, its not. There is no super light speed army of militant aliens who will come and probe us while stealing our water.
Another intelligent race close enough to communicate with would be the most precious and rare resource in the galaxy - someone totally different to exchange ideas with.
Any action "against them" would be destroying your precious one time resource.
Rational arguments don't get clicks at the same rate, and are ignored because they are "boring". Which of course totally ignores the fact that we CANNOT hide that we exist. Anyone much more technologically advanced that is also close enough to communicate could TOTALLY detect us anyways. We're only a decade or two from being able to detect ourselves orbiting nearby star systems ourselves.
This has nothing to do with targeted messages, but things like spectral prints of our atmosphere. Any advanced civilization nearby already knows this planet has life.
Post by: Robotbeat on 11/07/2022 03:46 pm
Post by: Robotbeat on 11/07/2022 04:16 pm
Pick your own terse name for it. I wasn’t trying to insult. But your post clearly was sort of insulting and unnecessarily aggressive.The Dark Forest Hypothesis is at least as rational as the kumbaya hypothesis.Please explain instead of simply name calling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
It is one possible resolution to the so-called Fermi Paradox.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 11/07/2022 04:31 pm
Pick your own terse name for it. I wasn’t trying to insult. But your post clearly was sort of insulting and unnecessarily aggressive.The Dark Forest Hypothesis is at least as rational as the kumbaya hypothesis.Please explain instead of simply name calling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
It is one possible resolution to the so-called Fermi Paradox.
The Dark Forest hypothesis is one of many possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
It posits that alien civilizations may exist, but they are radio-silent and extremely paranoid, so they immediately attack to obliterate any alien life they detect, in order to prevent that alien life from becoming a possible hostile force in the future.
Keeping in mind, there would only need to be one sufficiently advanced species with this mindset, as they expand through a galaxy they'd eventually obliterate every other life-bearing planet out there.
The flaw inherent in this hypothesis is why we haven't already been destroyed if it's true.
Post by: Star One on 11/07/2022 04:40 pm
You do know that channel is run by a well respected scientist not some individual in a tinfoil hat. So your attempt to lump it in with the large amount of dross on You Tube is somewhat off base.It all makes great scary stories, which is why its perpetual youtube fodder.unless they’re afraid we’ll eventually attack them so they send relativistic impactors at us the moment they hear from us. Dark Forest hypothesis.
No, its not. There is no super light speed army of militant aliens who will come and probe us while stealing our water.
Another intelligent race close enough to communicate with would be the most precious and rare resource in the galaxy - someone totally different to exchange ideas with.
Any action "against them" would be destroying your precious one time resource.
Rational arguments don't get clicks at the same rate, and are ignored because they are "boring". Which of course totally ignores the fact that we CANNOT hide that we exist. Anyone much more technologically advanced that is also close enough to communicate could TOTALLY detect us anyways. We're only a decade or two from being able to detect ourselves orbiting nearby star systems ourselves.
This has nothing to do with targeted messages, but things like spectral prints of our atmosphere. Any advanced civilization nearby already knows this planet has life.
Post by: stormhelm on 11/07/2022 04:41 pm
Post by: deadman1204 on 11/07/2022 06:05 pm
Oh apologies. I miss-understood your post. I didn't realize there was an official kumbaya hypothesis.Pick your own terse name for it. I wasn’t trying to insult. But your post clearly was sort of insulting and unnecessarily aggressive.The Dark Forest Hypothesis is at least as rational as the kumbaya hypothesis.Please explain instead of simply name calling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
It is one possible resolution to the so-called Fermi Paradox.
Post by: deadman1204 on 11/07/2022 06:08 pm
Being someone good at your job doesn't mean all their ideas are equally good. There is no such thing as a real expert in alienology or what have you. Its all 100% pure conjecture. Thus, logic is the only rational way to do this.You do know that channel is run by a well respected scientist not some individual in a tinfoil hat. So your attempt to lump it in with the large amount of dross on You Tube is somewhat off base.It all makes great scary stories, which is why its perpetual youtube fodder.unless they’re afraid we’ll eventually attack them so they send relativistic impactors at us the moment they hear from us. Dark Forest hypothesis.
No, its not. There is no super light speed army of militant aliens who will come and probe us while stealing our water.
Another intelligent race close enough to communicate with would be the most precious and rare resource in the galaxy - someone totally different to exchange ideas with.
Any action "against them" would be destroying your precious one time resource.
Rational arguments don't get clicks at the same rate, and are ignored because they are "boring". Which of course totally ignores the fact that we CANNOT hide that we exist. Anyone much more technologically advanced that is also close enough to communicate could TOTALLY detect us anyways. We're only a decade or two from being able to detect ourselves orbiting nearby star systems ourselves.
This has nothing to do with targeted messages, but things like spectral prints of our atmosphere. Any advanced civilization nearby already knows this planet has life.
I bring up click bait because there is serious selection bias. There might be hundreds of people out there saying all the invasion stuff is hokey. However those don't get clicks on youtube, and thus are not promoted by the algorithm - resulting in no one seeing the videos. ALL content creators game the promotion algorithms. Those who don't fail because no one hears of them.
Post by: Star One on 02/07/2023 08:14 pm
https://youtu.be/4vtzYTk0AxQ
Related paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01872-z
There were five stars in the collection so two were from same stars but at different frequencies. They were narrowband, but haven't been picked up on repeat observation.
Post by: russianhalo117 on 03/05/2023 12:13 am
NOTE:The SETI Era is coming to an end at the UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory as SETI's computer and science hardware was moved to the UC System's surplus and dispositions campus. SETI continues its legacy programme wind down in preparations to move off UCB property.SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 28 September 2021:SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 21 November 2021:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85783
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85810
Another bittersweet milestone.We're cleaning out our lab at Space Sciences, and saying goodbye to a lot of history. (https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85870&postid=2096776#2096776)
The SETI and SETI@HOME data ranking and processing project's final research processing update for the Nebula final backend processing project and for Arecibo based data is below with the ongoing follow up observations phase having since moved to the ultramodern FAST Observatory after the collapse of the project's previous main observatory. Two stalled research papers with the findings await publication pending the results of the FAST follow-up observations. SETI has since moved on to its successor project called PanoSETI.
SETI Nebula processing progress report dated 03 March 2023:
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=85996
Post by: Star One on 03/26/2023 07:02 pm
Quote
A prominent Harvard physicist is planning a Pacific expedition to find what he thinks might be an alien artefact that smashed into the ocean.
Avi Loeb announced that he is organizing a $1.5m ocean expedition to Papua New Guinea to look for fragments of an object that crashed off the coast of its Manus Island in 2014.
Loeb noticed the object in 2019 and identified it as the first interstellar meteor ever discovered – meaning it originated outside our solar system. According to Loeb, the meteor’s interstellar origin was confirmed to Nasa in April 2022 by the Department of Defense’s space command.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/24/harvard-physicist-pacific-expedition-first-interstellar-meteor
Post by: deadman1204 on 03/27/2023 05:04 pm
Man Avi Loeb loves the attention of saying such wild thingsQuoteA prominent Harvard physicist is planning a Pacific expedition to find what he thinks might be an alien artefact that smashed into the ocean.
Avi Loeb announced that he is organizing a $1.5m ocean expedition to Papua New Guinea to look for fragments of an object that crashed off the coast of its Manus Island in 2014.
Loeb noticed the object in 2019 and identified it as the first interstellar meteor ever discovered – meaning it originated outside our solar system. According to Loeb, the meteor’s interstellar origin was confirmed to Nasa in April 2022 by the Department of Defense’s space command.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/24/harvard-physicist-pacific-expedition-first-interstellar-meteor
Post by: matthewkantar on 03/27/2023 07:03 pm
Post by: Star One on 03/28/2023 06:52 am
Detracts from Harvard’s reputation for me. The National Inquirer of Ivy League schools.
So you’re judging an entire academic institution by the actions of one person then.
Post by: jstrotha0975 on 03/28/2023 02:28 pm
Post by: hoku on 05/23/2023 01:55 pm
Tomorrow (Wed) at 21:00 CEST ExoMars TGO is going to send a simulated "1st contact" message to Earth. More details can be found at https://www.seti.org/event/sign-space-simulating-first-contact (https://www.seti.org/event/sign-space-simulating-first-contact) and https://asignin.space/decode-the-message/ (https://asignin.space/decode-the-message/)
Happy decoding!
Post by: Star One on 09/14/2023 04:18 pm
https://www.youtube.com/live/CwU6V5GFaQA?si=G1IyTuCbMjQiLnIq
Post by: Star One on 09/14/2023 09:08 pm
Nasa's UFO report: What we learned from UAP study https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66812332
Post by: catdlr on 09/14/2023 09:48 pm
RELEASE 23-106
UPDATE: NASA Shares UAP Independent Study Report; Names Director
Editor’s note: This release was updated on Sept. 14, 2023, to include details about the UAP research director.
In response to a recommendation by an independent study team for NASA to play a more prominent role in understanding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), the agency announced Thursday it is appointing a director of UAP research.
The study team’s full report, which includes a foreword from NASA noting the new role, is available on the agency’s website:
https://go.nasa.gov/3PED0qv
NASA commissioned the independent study to better understand how the agency can contribute to ongoing government efforts to further the study observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as balloons, aircraft, or as known natural phenomena from a scientific perspective.
“At NASA, it's in our DNA to explore – and to ask why things are the way they are. I want to thank the Independent Study Team for providing insight on how NASA can better study and analyze UAP in the future,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “NASA’s new Director of UAP Research will develop and oversee the implementation of NASA’s scientific vision for UAP research, including using NASA’s expertise to work with other agencies to analyze UAP and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to search the skies for anomalies. NASA will do this work transparently for the benefit of humanity.”
The report contains the external study team’s findings and recommendations which aim to inform NASA on what possible data is available to be collected and how the agency can help shed light on the origin and nature of future UAP. The report is not a review or assessment of previous UAP incidents.
While NASA still is evaluating the report and assessing the independent study team’s findings and recommendations, the agency is committed to contributing to the federal government’s unified UAP effort by appointing Mark McInerney director of UAP research.
McInerney previously served as NASA’s liaison to the Department of Defense covering limited UAP activities for the agency. In the director role, he will centralize communications, resources, and data analytical capabilities to establish a robust database for the evaluation of future UAP. He also will leverage NASA’s expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and space-based observation tools to support and enhance the broader government initiative on UAP. Since 1996, he has served various positions at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the National Hurricane Center.
The independent study team’s overall recommendation for NASA from its report is that the agency can play a prominent role in the government’s effort to understand UAP by furthering the study and data collection of UAP. The external study recommends that NASA use its open-source resources, extensive technological expertise, data analysis techniques, federal and commercial partnerships, and Earth-observing assets to curate a better and robust dataset for understanding future UAP.
NASA also will advance citizen reporting by engaging with the public and commercial pilots to build a broader, more reliable UAP dataset to use to identify future UAP incidents as well as destigmatize the study of UAP.
“Data is the critical lifeblood needed to advance scientific exploration, and we thank the independent study team members for lending NASA their expertise towards identifying what available data is possible to understand the nature and origin of future UAP,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The director of UAP Research is a pivotal addition to NASA’s team and will provide leadership, guidance and operational coordination for the agency and the federal government to use as a pipeline to help identify the seemingly unidentifiable.”
The independent study team, set up outside of NASA, used unclassified data from civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources to inform their findings and recommendations in the report. There are currently a limited number of high-quality observations of UAP, which currently make it impossible to draw firm scientific conclusions about their nature.
“Using unclassified data was essential for our team’s fact-finding, open-communication collaboration, and for upholding scientific rigor to produce this report for NASA,” said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation and chair of the UAP independent study team. “The team wrote the report in conjunction with NASA’s pillars of transparency, openness and scientific integrity to help the agency shed light on the nature of future UAP incidents. We found that NASA can help the whole-of-government UAP effort through systematic data calibration, multiple measurements and ensuring thorough sensor metadata to create a data set that is both reliable and extensive for future UAP study.”
The UAP independent study team is a counsel of 16 community experts across diverse areas on matters relevant to potential methods of study for unidentified anomalous phenomena. NASA commissioned the study to examine UAP from a scientific perspective and create a roadmap for how to use data and the tools of science to move our understanding of UAP forward.
For more information about NASA’s UAP work:
https://science.nasa.gov/uap/
-end-
Post by: deadman1204 on 09/18/2023 07:44 pm
Post by: Paul451 on 09/19/2023 05:55 am
What a total waste of nasa money and time. Sensors are complex, and there are alot of missunderstood and confusing readings. The fact that a sensor glitch = aliens shows how stupid this entire thing is.
If they want a civilian agency involved, the FAA would make more sense, given the safety issues of airspace clutter and potential pilot confusion.
It seems like they're roping in NASA explicitly because aliens=space.
NASA does have aeronautics as part of their mission, but nothing related to this.
[Unless the DoD really does have a giant alien space-ship hidden under a building somewhere (as Grusch claims), then I'd want NASA all over it.]
Post by: Star One on 09/19/2023 10:04 am
I’m not sure how it could be any other agency other than NASA, the FAA is completely inappropriate here. Plus as you say they are an aeronautical agency as well.What a total waste of nasa money and time. Sensors are complex, and there are alot of missunderstood and confusing readings. The fact that a sensor glitch = aliens shows how stupid this entire thing is.
If they want a civilian agency involved, the FAA would make more sense, given the safety issues of airspace clutter and potential pilot confusion.
It seems like they're roping in NASA explicitly because aliens=space.
NASA does have aeronautics as part of their mission, but nothing related to this.
[Unless the DoD really does have a giant alien space-ship hidden under a building somewhere (as Grusch claims), then I'd want NASA all over it.]
Post by: Paul451 on 09/19/2023 11:08 am
I’m not sure how it could be any other agency other than NASA
Because you are thinking aliens, therefore space, therefore NASA.
Once you think balloons/drones, congested airspace, and pilot misidentification, you start thinking civilian air safety, therefore FAA.
Post by: deadman1204 on 09/19/2023 02:20 pm
Post by: Paul451 on 09/19/2023 03:39 pm
The issue is bad and missunderstood readings on military hardware. No civilian agency should be involved. There is nothing civilian here to begin with.
Incorrect. Commercial pilots are also misidentifying objects/lights and dealing with increased aerial clutter.
Post by: whitelancer64 on 09/19/2023 03:44 pm
I’m not sure how it could be any other agency other than NASA
Because you are thinking aliens, therefore space, therefore NASA.
Once you think balloons/drones, congested airspace, and pilot misidentification, you start thinking civilian air safety, therefore FAA.
Literally the first item in the NASA charter is:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
So NASA is exactly the right place to go for things happening in the atmosphere that are not understood. It is not because "space = aliens"
Post by: Star One on 09/21/2023 08:55 am
Space does not automatically equal aliens.I’m not sure how it could be any other agency other than NASA
Because you are thinking aliens, therefore space, therefore NASA.
Once you think balloons/drones, congested airspace, and pilot misidentification, you start thinking civilian air safety, therefore FAA.
Post by: sanman on 01/03/2024 01:30 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYnEYCN2kR0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvi6XHioYp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMSW9Zmp3-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4inPLpfe6T0
What should we say to them?
If communication can be carried out successfully, then should we follow a "prime directive" constraining how we communicate with them?
Post by: Phil Stooke on 01/03/2024 06:51 am
Post by: Paul451 on 01/03/2024 07:11 pm
should we follow a "prime directive" constraining how we communicate with them?
"Non-interference"? I think that ship has sailed.
Post by: sanman on 01/04/2024 03:43 am
As our communication with them informs us more about their existence, their perspectives, etc, then how do we adjust to that?
Post by: whitelancer64 on 01/04/2024 04:51 am
SETI has carried out an experiment in communication with humpback whales as part of learning how to communicate with alien species:
*Yeet videos*
What should we say to them?
If communication can be carried out successfully, then should we follow a "prime directive" constraining how we communicate with them?
No, because no such thing as a "prime directive" exists in actuality. Much like the "three laws of robotics" it's a sci-fi tv show trope with limited practicality and it generally causes more issues than it helps in virtually every episode it's featured in.
If they have significant intelligence, then couldn't our communication with them significantly alter the course of their existence?Yes, it undoubtedly would.
Quote
As our communication with them informs us more about their existence, their perspectives, etc, then how do we adjust to that?
Probably the same way that humans have always reacted and adjusted to being more informed about the existence of others. In other words: Not well.
Post by: Star One on 01/04/2024 04:34 pm
SETI has carried out an experiment in communication with humpback whales as part of learning how to communicate with alien species:That was featured on episode one of the Royal Institution lectures this year broadcast over the festive period on the BBC. On the episode it was stated that very early results show it’s possible they have vowels in their songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYnEYCN2kR0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvi6XHioYp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMSW9Zmp3-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4inPLpfe6T0
What should we say to them?
If communication can be carried out successfully, then should we follow a "prime directive" constraining how we communicate with them?