https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
No...
Tell me it isn’t so.
“Observable universe” - what’s that, only what we know about?
There is vastly more we DO NOT know, than what we do. The arrogance that somehow Earth is absolutely unique is unfounded by any empirical knowledge we now have.
Sheer distance alone would make the probability of actually knowing if there were any other life forms out there purely conjectural, but that does not mean that some other advanced society may have already solved the twin paradoxes of instantaneous travel between points of the Universe, and the time displacement of achieving that instantaneous transport.
So, maybe the Lord God created the whole Universe just for us?
And yours isn't ???
What do they mean by ”observable universe?”
Well, I for one am relieved. I no longer have to fear ending up on the dinner table of a space alien. This also means that all those habitable planets we find will be ours without a fight, and without a bunch of alien diseases.
Probability of life in the universe, global-warming forecasting, long-term political predictions ...
with all these complicated equations with multiple unknown variables, you can get out whatever result you want depending on how you define the inputs.
You’re basically just guessing.
This is based on the same trust in mathematical simulations as global warming climate models. As much as I love probability and statistics, which have been central to a large portion of my life, I’m honest enough to admit what math cannot do. Math cannot tell us what the numbers in the Drake Equation are any more than it can tell us the coefficients in the climate equations.
Science is supposed to be based on truth, and the truth is that we don’t have any idea what our uncertainty is in any guesses at the Drake coefficients, nor do we have useful estimates for those guesses. We simply don’t know.
Life is the product of a will, not probability.
There is this planet that is run by monkeys.
No....that’s California.
If you assume the absence of a creator (I’m not suggesting it, just throwing it out there), then the chances of life forming have to be non-zero. We’re here, therefore life can exist.
Even if we’ve won the life lotto but the chances are minuscule, the universe is a darned big place. Tiny probabilities factored against the vastness of the universe give pretty significant numbers, at least to our frame of reference. Whether the timing and distance allow us to know of any life-form brethren is a separate question.
But bringing God back in, He gave us quite a bit of guidance, but there’s plenty He left out for us to figure out on our own. Given how difficult we know it would be to contact another civilization, and even now we haven’t made any progress finding one to contact, it wouldn’t seem like God would need to mention we were or weren’t unique in the universe. What difference would it have made either way? “Though thou aren’t alone, don’t bother looking for you thou won’t find anyone else anyway” doesn’t exactly help us live our daily lives.
If we expand our horizon past the visible to the entire universe, we’d find not only is it teeming with life, but there are planets with humanoids, which has president(s) with yellow hair making their planets great again.
So, what are his credentials to pontificate on this subject?
I’m alone in my observable universe, as well, although I’m pretty sure there is some asshole next door.
“extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude … When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial 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 is ridiculous, we have exactly one example of life, us. So how the heck can models be recast and find ‘substantial probability’ of anything?
There are many theoretical solutions to the paradox as far as I can see. They are all just as valid as a theory saying that we are alone simply because we can’t detect anything and haven’t been visited by anyone else so far.
Freegards
It only takes one jerk race to decide that they have to be the only ones to exist in the galaxy. All it takes is set of self-replicating automated probes operating on fairly simple software. They can travel at sublight speed, search for coherent radio signals, and home it on them. When they get a lock they then shove an asteroid to set it on a collision course with the signal source. Then they make more probes from raw material in the ejecta and go out again.
The TV signals for ‘I Love Lucy’ are now 60 light years out. It might only be a matter of time
One of my friends has a doctorate in physics and has lectured at Fermilab. He is by no means a “Sheldon” type. He told me once that every theory should be prefaced by the statement: “At out present level of ignorance we assume that........”
And then God made man....
There was an analysis in a british paper yesterday that was showcasing a group that just reached the exact opposite conclusion.
When it comes to what we know about this universe, we are as ignorant as fish are about snow skiing.