So it looks like Science now studies that we might be the only so-called intelligent life out there, in observable universe

We haven't gone to our nearest planet in this solar system, and now we are concluding that there is no intelligent life in the observable universe. Yeah sure lol.

foo wrote:

full frontal wrote:

Would somebody on another planet in another galaxy be able to receive radio waves and other such signs of life on Earth if they were trying to find life somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy?

We’ve been broadcasting radio waves for about 100 years. That means the farthest our footprint has traveled is 100 light years. There are only 511 stars within 100 light years of earth and of those 511 it is estimated that only 28 have planets.

So, no, it is quite unlikely that any exoplanets have knowledge of our existence.

+1

Doesn't matter that the observable universe is really big, we're still the only intelligent life because the odds of it coming about are so low. Fact!

I thought the whole "uni"verse was out-dated, and we all part of the multiverse somehow?

The odds of us being the ONLY intelligent life as apposed to the ONLY life is very very very very small.

So either we are the ONLY life form or there are a lot of intelligent life forms out there. And if there were (which their should be if there really is life out there), we would see them.

But since we dont see them, and the odds of us being the ONLY intelligent life form out there, means we are the ONLY life form.

Why are we the only life form is the better question than if we are the only life form imo.

Look at us mommy wrote:

The odds of us being the ONLY intelligent life as apposed to the ONLY life is very very very very small.

So either we are the ONLY life form or there are a lot of intelligent life forms out there. And if there were (which their should be if there really is life out there), we would see them.

But since we dont see them, and the odds of us being the ONLY intelligent life form out there, means we are the ONLY life form.

Why are we the only life form is the better question than if we are the only life form imo.

Why do you say that? I don't understand your reasoning. Usually it's assumed that life might itself be common but intelligent life extremely rare. It took billions of years for us to go from microbes to intelligent life. Large life forms were around for hundreds of millions of years (think of the dinosaurs) with no sign that intelligence was evolving. If it wasn't for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs it's likely they would still be lumbering around dominating the planet. Life got started very quickly on Earth, almost as soon as conditions allowed, yet it remained at a cellular level for aons, and then at dumb animal life for milliions and millions of years. Until around 70,000 years ago, a blink of an eye, we were still essentially animals leading animal lives. We've come close to destroying ourselves several times already since we developed nuclear weapons only one generation ago. And that 's just states with rational governments. It's an inevitable trend that weapons and weapons of mass destruction will become smaller and more widely distributed until the point where nearly every human will the power to wipe out humanity. We can't stop school shootings now but in a 100 or 500 years troubled teens and terrorists will be able to download and 3D print mini nukes or weapons far more powerful than we can even imagine now. It's near impossible that humanity will survive for more than a thousand years. And this is even without considering A.I. and the potential horrors arising from that.

It's looking increasingly likely that there will be at least microbial life elsewhere in our own solar system, yet obviously there is no other intelligent life than us.

Also seems that the authors of the paper expressed their conclusions rather unclearly and the articles reporting on it don't even understand it.

For a start, they are talking about the Milky Way galaxy, not the 'observable universe'. There are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It's possible that we might be the only intelligent life in our galaxy. Maybe intelligent life only gets going a limited number of times in each galaxy, and maybe it's somewhat unusual that we live in a galaxy where we might be alone, but most or nearly all of the 100 billion galaxies contain advanced intelligent civilizations. We have almost no possible way of detecting such civilizations in other galaxies, no matter how advanced they are, and even if we continue as a civiliation for a billion years and control the whole Milky Way, it's still unlikely we will ever colonize other galaxies. Even the nearest galaxies, which are really part of the same system of galaxies as ours, are hundreds of thousands of light years away. Galaxies outside our small cluster are millions or billions of light years away.

*Life arose on Earth less than 1 billion years after the Earth formed. Life existed for 2 billion years before even multi-cellular life evolved. Animal life existed for hundreds of millions of years with no sign of intelligence evolving. This suggests Life itself is common, but that animal life might be very rare, and intelligent life incredibly rare.

Coevett wrote:

Also seems that the authors of the paper expressed their conclusions rather unclearly and the articles reporting on it don't even understand it.

For a start, they are talking about the Milky Way galaxy, not the 'observable universe'. ...

Here's what they say:

Our main result is to show that proper treatment of scientific uncertainties dissolves the Fermi paradox by showing that it is not at all unlikely ex ante for us to be alone in the Milky Way, or in the observable universe. Our second result is to show that, taking account of observational bounds on the prevalence of other civilizations, our updated probabilities suggest that there is a substantial probability that we are alone. Our third result is that pessimism for the survival of humanity based on the Fermi paradox is unfounded.

In Section 2, they give probabilities for both being "alone" in MWG and observable universe. Similarly, Figure 1 has both guesses.

kibitzer wrote:

Regardless of whether there's other intelligent life (which I actually consider likely--given that there are more stars in the known universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth), the odds are extraordinarily slim that the species H. sapiens sapiens will ever encounter it.

The speed of light is a pretty daunting speed limit. Other stars are really, really far away.

light(speed) is the speed limit for pure energy. Given that we have mass, we'll never get close to light speed travel (with current physics). The resultant forces on our bodies of travel anywhere near that speed (really the acceleration to reach that speed) would tear us apart.

what a joke wrote:

We haven't gone to our nearest planet in this solar system, and now we are concluding that there is no intelligent life in the observable universe. Yeah sure lol.

Given the costs involved and the lack of interest in science of almost half of our population (more outside of the US), we'd need a really compelling reason to travel to Mars to pick up a few rocks or study a volcano that went extinct millions of years ago.

Look at us mommy wrote:

The odds of us being the ONLY intelligent life as apposed to the ONLY life is very very very very small.

So either we are the ONLY life form or there are a lot of intelligent life forms out there. And if there were (which their should be if there really is life out there), we would see them.

But since we dont see them, and the odds of us being the ONLY intelligent life form out there, means we are the ONLY life form.

Why are we the only life form is the better question than if we are the only life form imo.

Your premises are flawed. The observable universe is v. tiny compared to the universe at large, but (the obv. universe) growing as technology increases.

As to not seeing them, the observable universe compared to the observed universe is very, very large. That will still be the case when we die (most likely). Due to this, there can still be quite a few intelligent life containing worlds out there without us having seen a single one. It may be in several hundred years when we observe most of the observable universe, we'll have found evidence of several advanced species (or maybe not). Our technology is not to the point where we can even say what is on the exoplanets we observe. Most exoplanets are found by observing star movement, not direct observation of the exoplanets and even for those we can see, we don't have the technology to see what is on their surface.

I don't think we can question why we are the only life form in the observable universe until we can both increase the size of the observable universe and say with higher certainty that this is the case. But to me, what would matter if at that point, we find your premise true, would be the question what does this mean? Would it be that everything we observe is "ours" should we be able to reach it?

I get what you are saying, but that is my whole point. To think that Humans are the ONLY species that has intelligent life out of the trillions of opportunity is redonkulous to me.

The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. The milky way is 13.5 billion. The universe is about 13. 7 billion. So there has been BILLIONS of years for at least ONE of the trillions of planets to have intelligent life capable of colonizing the galaxy. And NOTHING yet?!!? Come on....

And even though you might think humans will destroy ourselves, I don't. I think we are worse than cockroaches and will survive a long time. Even if you don't think we will, I think we only need to survive another 1000-10,000 to reach the point in which we will be able to colonize anywhere we want, including other galaxies in my opinion. And even though we have done crazy things in the past, it is getting better everyday. This is the longest without a world war EVER!

Space travel might seem impossible now, but so did flying or harnessing electricity only a couple of hundred years ago. Imagine what humans will do with AI and a few THOUSAND years. Everything will be possible I think. And you have to really think AI will push us soooo much further and faster than we already have. And we went from riding horses to going to mars in 100 years.

So back to what I said earlier, to think that humans are the ONLY ones in the vast Milky way or even the universe to be able to space travel by NOW, is really silly imo. And if we don't see them, then I don't think they exist. Cause we are NOT that special imo. There should be hundreds of aliens running around, if they existed, which I dont think they do.

interstellar travel would take a new understanding of physics which would represent a greater leap in science than at any point in human history. Not saying we won't get there, but you might be low balling the time estimate.

I understand what you are saying and it "could" be just a matter of having better tech to see them. But our tech isn't so bad where we couldn't see SOMETHING that is not naturally made. Just like when they observed the structure that "might" be alien cause it had a pattern different than a typical star.

So out of the trillions of patterns we see even in our galaxy, not ONE alien made? We are not that techy yet, but we are not that blind either.

I do believe we will know the answer this century, and might even know when we explore Europa, but as of right now, the fact that not ONE alien colony is visible even tough they have had BILLIONS of years head start on us, says to me, that we are the ONLY LIFE out there. imo.

Again, if we made it this far, and we are only 4.5 billion years old and really only need a couple of thousand more to find / colonize just about anything / anywhere we want in the galaxy, and NOONE in the whole galaxy, universe has yet, and they have a 10 bilion year head start, then there be nothing out there imo.

Hardloper wrote:

Doesn't matter that the observable universe is really big, we're still the only intelligent life because the odds of it coming about are so low.

To the contrary, the chances of intelligent life's having arisen are (demonstrably) 100%.

I actually think you are low balling how much we will know in a few thousand years. AI is going to be sooo powerful (if it doesn't destroy us), that we will figure out things like space travel very quickly imo.

EVEN if it takes a million years, the rest of the galaxy has BILLIONS of years head start. And NOT one thing out there yet....

Not to say it is just because we dont have the tech to see it, maybe that is it, although i doubt it, but if we dont see jack yet, then there isn't anything there imo.

Look at us mommy wrote:

I actually think you are low balling how much we will know in a few thousand years. AI is going to be sooo powerful (if it doesn't destroy us), that we will figure out things like space travel very quickly imo.

EVEN if it takes a million years, the rest of the galaxy has BILLIONS of years head start. And NOT one thing out there yet....

Not to say it is just because we dont have the tech to see it, maybe that is it, although i doubt it, but if we dont see jack yet, then there isn't anything there imo.

Consider this: We can't even reliably count galaxies in the observable universe. In the mid 1990s with Hubble Deep Field, it was estimated 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Quite a bit. But in 2016 with other Deep Field images, this number has been revised to 2 trillion!

So if we are having trouble counting galaxies that might contain 1 trillion stars each, then I don't want to hear non-sense about why we can't find intelligent life out there. We don't have the know how right now.

These sorts of papers are the modern equivalent to creationism stories of all the various religions. We don't know why, but we'll go ahead and answer it anyway!

The two most often given reasons to explain the Fermi paradox are firstly that advanced civilizations have a short life expectancy and annihilate themselves through nuclear war, over population, global warming etc. Lets face it, our own planet is rolling the dice on all three. So the time period when they have the technology to send communications such as radio waves through space is relatively short. So rather than constantly transmitting signals they are just a blip in the enormity of time.

The second is there are signals from other worlds but we cannot discern them. We are looking for signals based on our knowledge of technology. If we don't have the technology we will miss the signals. Consider this, if I had a time machine and took a radio transmitter back to Boston in 1775 Paul Revere need never have carried out his famous ride. I could have just broadcast the message instead.

My point is we know a lot less than we think we know. I believe at some point we will discover signals of other intelligent life and at that point say, "So that's why we never saw this before."

I think your point helps prove my point. The fact that we can even count trillions of anything says we have the tech to see at least ONE thing in our own galaxy much less the universe. Just ONE!

If humans keep going the way we are now, we will have the ability to colonize the whole milky way in one billion years easy. The Fermi paradox explains this.

So if stupid azz humans can do that, then why not at least 4 or 5 of the trillions of other possible planets in the milky way galaxy that could do it. And remember, they have had BILLIONS of years head start on us?

Do you really believe that we are that special that humans will be the first to do it? And if you believe that, then that is exactly my point. The odds of humans being the first to do that is almost nothing, that it is much more likely that we are the only things out there than there are other things out there.

If humans were not soo close to doing some incredible things (within the next few thousand years, which is nothing in the course of time), then why hasn't even a hand full of other alien planets. Because we are the only ones out there imo.