https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
We have huge antennas. We have very low noice front ends. We have very narrowband filters. We know how to track and integrate signals from space over time.
And what have we detected?
Nothing. Nada. Rein. Niente.
We’re spending a lot looking for them to no avail. Are they looking for us? I Love Lucy has been heading their way at light speed for over 60 years, and radio a lot longer, still no response.
We’re a really long way from light speed travel, and that ain’t gonna make it work. Lots and lots to think about here. Maybe in a few thousand years one of them will hear Rush and head on over.
Of the trillions of planets out there, this is all you need to know that we are alone in the universe, but we are not alone with God. We are quite favored in his eyes. No ET, just JC!
Yah, I posted this to FR a number of years ago. Planets are not formed by the accretion of a disk of rubble surrounding a sun. They are electrically ejected from the hearts of stars and are not that common in the size and distances from their sun as old uncle Carl Sagan would have us believe. The philosophical implications of this hypothesis are staggering.
If you think about the number of things that had to go just right at just the right time it is remarkable that we are here. Our moon alone is a billion to one, and that is only one thing that had to happen.
No OTHER intelligent life out there?
Hell. I'd be happy if we found intelligent life HERE.
The drake equation is pseudo-scientific garbage. Too many of the variables are completely unknown for it to be of any use whatsoever to anyone who’s not smoking lots of weed.
Just cause you can’t see them,
Doesn’t mean they can’t see you!
Find water worlds.
It seems to be a well-reasoned scientific paper. I find the scenario that we are alone (as intelligent life) in the universe to be an optimistic one. There are so many ways that things could turn out badly for the human race if we encounter other intelligent species, and those many bad possibilities far outweigh the benign possibilities.
For example, those other species might wipe us out for any number of reasons, either intentionally or inadvertently. Or they could restrict us or enslave us or quarantine us. They could be as technologically advanced over us as we are over insects. They could be so mentally superior to us that we’d have no way of competing or controlling our own destiny.
Or they could be peaceful, benevolent, and helpful to us. But if there are many different intelligent species out there, we’d still have to worry about the hostile ones even if they constituted only a tiny percentage. Anyway you slice it, there’s a lot of risk involved in meeting other intelligent species, with a potential downside which includes our extermination.
Intuitively, the question always comes back to the “likelihood” that we are not alone, given the trillions of stars and (probable) planets out there. Why would earth be singled out to have intelligent life, and nowhere else? But this is just an example of “survivorship bias.” If only one planet in the universe happened to develop intelligent life, the members of that species would (by definition) be the only ones around to be asking that question.
Bottom line: I’m somewhat hopeful that we’re alone, but somewhat fearful that we are not.
Yes and the earth is flat./s
Not one single person in Earth can explain the very tangible reality of their own soul-slash-mind-slash-consciousness. Explain to me how a consciousness is “produced” from a concoction of chemicals mixing around in physical matter. I doubt anyone that reads this will even consider trying to explain that. It’s too difficult. It’s too difficult because your soul is of the spiritual world, made by a supernatural being that is totally beyond human comprehension and requires a person to leap beyond the idea of the physical world as being the “only world”. The reality of man is a meeting between the spiritual world and the physical world.
A person of pure logic as a physicist and/or an atheist can only believe what can be proven logically in the physical world. Yet they cannot explain the logical existence of their very own mind that is busy contemplating a multitude of ideas. Most people of the atheist persuasion will ignore the challenge to logically explain their own mind. Which is ironic. Funny how someone that can’t even put their finger on how to even begin to explain their own mind offers to explain the origin of the universe with a “big bang theory”.
I would say to all scientists and physicists and atheists, explain your own invisible but very tangible soul first, after you figure that out then work on the universe. There’s a lot to explain right here at home. In your own head.
I’m so lonely I could cry...