exthrower wrote:
Hawking's mind is weaker than his legs...
Nice display of ignorance.
exthrower wrote:
Hawking's mind is weaker than his legs...
Nice display of ignorance.
Good, maybe they can save us from ourselves.
The universe is MASSIVE. Beyond all reasonable comprehension.
To me, the probabaility of their being other life out there somewhere is 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999% (add as many 9s as you wish).
The probability of us making contact is commensurately small.
We might as well forget about it for now and concentrate on not destroying our selves before we have a shot at making contact with them.
I know, sometimes I look up, ponder, and its simply overwhelming.
I hope for their sake (or ours) that contact is never made.
Pretty much all species that have made contact with us have ended up not being too happy about it. I was at the grocery store on. Saturday and there was a whole row of animals that came in contact with us. All carefully wrapped. Some of them were ground to a pulp... You would think that if the species in question was hiding in the sea, they would be ok. However, even if I live a few thousand miles from any ocean, there was another row where I could see various dead fish, ready for human consumption.
Bacteria don't fare any better around us. Yesterday, I saw a commercial for a soap that has the side benefit of killing 99.99% of bacteria. It's a consumer good, advertised on TV. How would you feel if you were a bacteria.
You would think that humans limit themselves killing other species.
However, we also have the ability to sub segment even more. I was visiting a neighbourhood the other day and somehow felt that my life was in jeopardy just because of the colour of my skin. Skin colour is often enough to trigger human aggression.
Anyway, if these ETs are half as aggressive as us, we are dead.
If they are less than half aggressive as us and they happen to taste good or we feel that they are too thirsty for our liking, then they are dead...
I think that it's better that we are alone in a planet far far away from any cluster of life.
Yeah their are freaking Aliens have you ever seen the movie the 4th kind scary sh** real footage. Nome Alaska is one place I would never ever go lot's of people just vanish from that town :(
"proof", huh?
Hawking cannot rule out possibility of aliens but can rule out possibility of God.
Intelligence is a trait. Wisdom is a virtue.
Why would aliens come to earth? Seriously why? If they have patience we'll destroy ourselves. Earth girls aren't easy. And humans are not challenging prey for the predators.
Hawking needs to get out and exercise more. Go for a wheel or something. And maybe turn the scifi channel off
And no they are not already here scouting.
Of course we have not been contacted or seen them, there is something called the prime directive you noob
They have been here, seen Donald Trump, and very hastily left.
Tell Stephen they've been here for millennia. Simply ingest some magic mushrooms and you'll be in touch with them pronto.
Don't be shy about it either, 5 grams or more does the trick.
Typical runner or sockpuppet wrote:
Actually, it should have happened over a billion years ago.
The most likely explanation for terrestrial life is that there are no aliens.
Nope. The most likely explanation is that it's impossible to travel at the speed of light. Without that, the universe is just too big to reach anything. If an exact Earth replica was 1 light year away... Those people would never ever reach us.
Fermi paradox:
sbeefyk1 wrote:
Typical runner or sockpuppet wrote:Actually, it should have happened over a billion years ago.
The most likely explanation for terrestrial life is that there are no aliens.
Nope. The most likely explanation is that it's impossible to travel at the speed of light. Without that, the universe is just too big to reach anything. If an exact Earth replica was 1 light year away... Those people would never ever reach us.
The milky way is 13 billion years old and 100,000 light years across. Figure that it would take about a billion years for life to emerge on a planet that orbits a star in the inner core, and that gives 12 billion years to travel 100,000 light years. That works out to travelling at 0.00000833333. Piece of cake.
And don't forget that their radio waves would travel at the speed of light and we haven't gotten any.
We're alone. Life happened one time and one time only.
The reality is that no ones knows whether life, much less intelligent life exists, or likely will know in the foreseeable future (our respective lifetimes). However, not too many years ago, there were no known planets orbiting stars outside of our own solar system. We now know they exist, with the probability of a sizable number, given the dimensions of the expanding universe. How many are in the habitable zone is another question, and there have been some found, however they don't appear to have the right "chemistry" to support life. That's not to suggest that there isn't a sizable number in the habitable zone of stars out there. Even if 1% of these in the habitable zone had the ability so support life, and another 1% of those did, the number would still be pretty huge. Its really a matter of what you believe, based on what's been discovered to date, with our short time on this planet, rudimentary science and knowledge of physics. Personally, as an amateur astronomer I fully believe there is life, and intelligent life out there. More intelligent than us, which is perhaps why, if they do know we exist, have not made contact. Given the size of the universe its pretty much a crap shoot as to whether or not we will ever find life, or other life will find us. All you have to do is look at some of the Hubble photographs to realize that the probable existence of other life, and life forms is likely quite high given the immensity of the universe.
As depicted in the beginning of the movie ‘Contact’, the earth has an expanding ‘bubble’ of man-made radio signals expanding outward at the speed of light. The first of these early radio transmissions were short range experiments that used simple clicks and interrupts to show transmission of information in the 1890s. In 1900, Reginald Fessenden made the first — though incredibly weak — voice transmission over the airwaves. The next year saw a step up in power as Guglielmo Marconi made the first ever transatlantic radio broadcast.
This means that at 110 light-years away from earth — the edge of a radio ‘sphere’ which contains many star systems — our very first radio broadcasts are beginning to arrive. At 74 light-years away, television signals are being introduced. Star systems at a distance of 50 light-years are now entering the ‘Twilight Zone’.
WILL ANY EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE WITHIN THAT RADIO SPHERE DETECT US?
While it’s interesting to imagine how far our radio signals have traveled into space, it’s extremely unlikely that an alien civilization will be able to catch the latest episode of ‘I Love Lucy’. This is thanks to the inverse square law. In Layman’s term, it’s a form of signal degradation.
As radio signals leave earth, they propagate out in a wave form. Just like dropping a stone in a lake, the waves diffuse or “spread out†over distance thanks to the exponentially larger area they must encompass. The area can be calculated by multiplying length times width which is why we measure it in square units – square centimeters, square miles, etc. This means that the further away from the source, the more square units of area a signal has to ‘illuminate’.
Another way to think of it, is that the strength of a radio signal will be only 1/4 as great once you are twice the distance from the source. At ten times the distance, the strength of the signal would only be one hundredth as great.
Because of this inverse square law, all of our terrestrial radio signals become indistinguishable from background noise at around a few light-years from earth. For a civilization only a couple hundred light-years away, trying to listen to our broadcasts would be like trying to detect the small ripple from a pebble dropped in the pacific ocean off the coast of California – from Japan.
SO WHY DOES SETI BOTHER TO LISTEN TO RADIO SIGNALS IN SPACE?
Our Radio Bubble In The Milky Way
While no alien civilization is likely to pick up our television or radio broadcasts unless they’re within a few light-years, radio signals can be focused and amplified. Most of our broadcasts were not intended for detection in space. Radio signals can be aimed, focused and amplified to mitigate signal degradation for interstellar communication. These signals would also eventually degrade but are able to travel much, much further before degradation occurs. Hundreds of light-years or more depending on how much power is used.
It’s now becoming possible to detect the atmospheric composition of extrasolar planets. This breakthrough has allowed researchers to narrow down our hunt for earth-like worlds. It’s quite possible that an advanced alien culture can also do this, and detected an abundance of water in our atmosphere. If they have, they may have sent a focused radio message in our direction. If we’re not listening though, we may just miss it.
OLD SMTC SOB wrote:
The reality is that no ones knows whether life, much less intelligent life exists, or likely will know in the foreseeable future (our respective lifetimes). However, not too many years ago, there were no known planets orbiting stars outside of our own solar system. We now know they exist, with the probability of a sizable number, given the dimensions of the expanding universe. How many are in the habitable zone is another question, and there have been some found, however they don't appear to have the right "chemistry" to support life. That's not to suggest that there isn't a sizable number in the habitable zone of stars out there. Even if 1% of these in the habitable zone had the ability so support life, and another 1% of those did, the number would still be pretty huge. Its really a matter of what you believe, based on what's been discovered to date, with our short time on this planet, rudimentary science and knowledge of physics. Personally, as an amateur astronomer I fully believe there is life, and intelligent life out there. More intelligent than us, which is perhaps why, if they do know we exist, have not made contact. Given the size of the universe its pretty much a crap shoot as to whether or not we will ever find life, or other life will find us. All you have to do is look at some of the Hubble photographs to realize that the probable existence of other life, and life forms is likely quite high given the immensity of the universe.
Not really.
All of the "there must be life out there" crowd pull numbers out of their asses (if only 1%...). But 1% (10^-2) is just a number pulled out of someone's ass. What if the probability is more like 10^(-200)? Then the numbers don't look so rosy.
With our current state of knowledge we really have no idea what are reasonable assumptions. As a result conclusions like "the probable existence of other life, and life forms is likely quite high" are purely baseless opinions masquerading as something solid.
Casio wrote:
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/286707/hawking-nomadic-aliens-could-wipe-us-out
The Father Almighty, maker of heaven and Earth, and all galaxies to infinity would not allow this to happen.
to all the doubters:
if God created Earth, then it was he who created the other planets and systems, why did he create them if not to host life?
if the Big Bang caused the universe in its immensity why would anyone start from an assumption that the Earth is unique in its ability to foster and support life?
life exists outside of Earth but does it really matter?
Like I said.............regarding the data and the probabilities its more of a belief system than a scientific calculation one can or cannot make, as the truth is no ones knows, or will likely know in this lifetime. I, for one, do believe that there is life out there, and more intelligent life than ours. I can't prove it, nor can anyone disprove it. Its about the closest thing to "faith" as I'll ever have :)