Intelligent Civilizations Rarer than One in a Million

Scientific Computing ^ | Tue, 02/12/2013 - 7:13am

[null and void]

Better late than never...

[KC_Lion]

I wonder why?

Could it be...

REAPERS!?!?!

Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign.

Reaper? A label created by the Protheans to give voice to their destruction. In the end, what they chose to call us is irrelevant. We simply... are.

Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything.

Confidence born of ignorance. The cycle cannot be broken. The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They mere found them - the legacy of my kind. Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your civilization develops along the paths we desire.

We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it. My kind transcends your very understanding.

We are each a nation - independent, free of all weakness. You cannot grasp the nature of our existence. We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure.

We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the sky of every world. You cannot escape your doom.

[cripplecreek]

As always, we don’t need life we can talk to. We need life we can eat.

[Westbrook]

It’s been my observation that intelligent humans are rarer than one in a million.

[silverleaf]

so, that’s why I haven’t found one yet

[DManA]

“This work illustrates the power of leveraging our latest understanding of exoplanets in SETI searches,”

This sentence illustrates what a bunch of frauds these SETI guys are.

[DManA]

IT’S A COOKBOOK!!!!

[Opinionated Blowhard]

“We didn’t find ET, but we were able to use this statistical sample to, for the first time, put rather explicit limits on the presence of intelligent civilizations transmitting in the radio band where we searched,”

In some of the radio bands, they found evidence of alien NPR and "Morning Zoo" radio shows but that didn't provide the evidence they were looking for.

[RoosterRedux]

As always, we don’t need life we can talk to. We need life we can eat.

That's what the alien invaders said...and that's why they like Earth and humans.

[no-to-illegals]

Who are these scientists? Have they never visited the UT?

oops, broke me promise, but this could not be left unaddressed.

[FewsOrange]

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

“They’re made out of meat.”

[InterceptPoint]

the researchers calculate that fewer than one in a million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy have planetary civilizations advanced enough to transmit beacons we could detect.

Color me skeptical.

If you count the number of known civilizations that have been identified in our Milky Way you find there is only one and it's ours. I would like to know how you extrapolate one point to one in a million.

They are guessing. It could be one billion just as easy. Or one in a thousand. Or just one.

[Gadsden1st]

I know of one “Intelligent” organism that finds it more pratical to raise cows, pigs, and chickens, than to travel light years away for an exotic snack.

[RoosterRedux]

Perhaps they are just bending the space time continuum and are like some humans...explorers. And like armies of old, they eat off the land.

[plain talk]

Ping

[Noamie]

There is probably life on other planets, but I imagine that intelligent life is very rare. I imagine that “advanced intelligent” life being out there is probably 1 in 90 billion trillion.

There are so many independent variables involved for a being to progress to the point of space exploration - it’s mind boggling. And at any point in the line they could eradicate themselves through war, famine, disease, etc.

We could have even been visited before like some of those drawings infer from the Indian scripts, but those guys probably nuked themselves out of existence some 4,000 years ago and never came back.

We’re pretty much alone.

[SampleMan]

Counting on radio waves is problematic.

We had intelligent life on this planet for tens of thousands of years, we’ve had radio for just over 100 years.

Further, the presumption that we will forever onward continue to communicate with broadcast radio waves of sufficient power to reach another solar system may be a false one. It may turn out that there is a very small technological window when high powered radio waves are common to a developing civilization.

Given that there is no reason to assume that alien intelligent life would be restricted by our moral codes, why do we want to force contact? What we really want to find is a planet full of unintelligent life, that we can colonize.

[Maceman]

Pray that there's intelligent life
somewhere out in space, 'cause there's
bugger all down here on Earth.

[Daveinyork]

And that’s just on the earth.

[SampleMan]

Before we colonize space, we must first advance to the point that we no longer have socialists. Otherwise we are infecting the entire galaxy, like small pox in the New World.

I hate to think that the first thing humans would do upon arriving at an alien world is sign up for welfare.