Posted on 02/08/2013 8:37:47 AM PST by PJ-Comix
Most people seem to assume that the universe is chock full of intelligent life. But what if we ARE alone in the Universe? So far all SETI searches have shown no evidence of other civilizations out there. If you have devoted your life to searching for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, you are probably wasting your time.
The more I study about the formation of the earth, the more convinced I am that the earth is pretty much a freak occurrence whose conditions for life or intelligent life exits nowhere else. So what are the theological implications of this? I would be most interested in reading your input.
I’ve reached the conclusion that we really don’t want to find intelligent life.
What we need to find is life we can eat rather than life that can eat us.
Earth has intelligent life? Who knew?
Given that Obama was re-elected, it’s possible there is no intelligent life here either.
Who says there is intelligent life on earth ?
BTW, I am convinced that the reason why so many people believe the universe is chock full of other intelligent life is because of the media. It makes for interesting books, movies, and TV shows. But the "cruel" fact is that we are probably ALONE in the universe. I find that to me actually more fascinating than there being a universe full of intelligent civilizations although that premise would make for a rather boring Star Trek series.
The only intelligent biological life, yes. But the spirit world is overflowing. The mischievous ones even like to create illusions of UFOs and aliens.
My Martian friend Skippy is highly offended by all this. Yeah, he only got an 18 on his ACT, but he has high emotional intelligence. He can really brown nose.
Every few years excited headlines break out about how life might have been discovered on Mars only to later find out it was just a bunch of chemical reactions. Nothing more.
I also have long thought that we are it. What the theological implications are, I don’t know.
I’ve pondered this question and asked, “Would God have created a dead universe?” Almost everywhere we look on earth, in the earth and above the earth, there is life of some sort.
Good chance we are alone, but maybe not the first.
Using our own planet, it seems that it was perfect for life yet took 1 billion years to develope life. Further, the dinosaurs had 300 million years to develope technology and they did not.
Further, it took humans 50,000 years to develope radio technology.
So it looks like there is a good chance for life in the universe but no so good for life that has radio technology.
The other problem is that we are about to “go dark”. That is we used to blast our analog radio and tv transmissions spherically outward to anyone who gets them. With digital tv and soon digital radio, we will transmit directionally with lower power.
So we broadcast for maybe 100 years and go dark. Are there other civilizations that have already gone dark ?
Finally, how long do technological civilizations last ?
Will we still be around 1 million years from now ?
Maybe someone else reached our level but has since perished.
The chemistry of a self-replicating "thing" is pretty complex, involving the "thing" that replicates, as well as a protective shell. The simplest "thing," a virus, can't replicate without harnessing some other living thing's energy factory.
Even though the universe is immense, it's possible to estimate the number of atoms, starts, planets, etc. ... ends up being a big number, I think the number of atoms is estimated to be 10 to the 50th power or something like that. Then, do the probability of the chemistry of self-replicating (not intelligent, or even self-aware) thing. That's a very small number, but, in light of us being here, not zero.
I see God's hand.
In the grand scheme of things we have more pressing things to worry about.
If they are out there and more advanced and able to get here, we are giving them directions, to wit we more than likely will be enslaved/eradicated.
If not out there, or they are and less advanced we will never meet or exchange information anyway, so it is a waste of time and money. Any signal sent to another system once received will not return until hundreds of generations have past so it will have a shelf life anyway. It would be like basing your stock buys on a 1900 NY Times.
I worry more about the government and/or its spawn fulfilling their agenda and enslaving me if I am still here and/or my children.
Keep in mind SETI is only searching a portion of the carrier wave band width, and our own carrier waves have only hit a very small portion of our galaxy, forget the universe.
The only real negative implication if we are alone is that makes habitable planets more rare. We need to find habitable planets for the long term survival of the species, eventually this place will no longer be able to sustain us, known natural processes will lead to that. If we don’t have self sustaining chunks of our self elsewhere by then nothing else that we’ve done means anything. The positive implication is no competition.
I was sitting on top of a mountain at night looking up at all the stars in the sky. It filled me with wonder.
“Are we really all alone?” I yelled.
“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens!” Came the reply. It was a coyote.
Got that right.
I’m just not interested in intelligent life in space. I want planets we can utilize for our own expansion.
Robert L Forward had some interesting ideas on intelligent life. In his book Saturn Rukh, intelligent life was discovered flying in the atmosphere of Saturn but its intelligence was limited to its own experience and of virtually no use to us.
In fact it was determined that the intelligent life was the very reason we wouldn’t return. They had gone to Saturn to study the feasibility of mining Saturn for Helium but the intelligent life would be determined to be an impediment to industrial use.
I haven’t given it much thought before, but I suppose the existence of life elsewhere in the universe with an intelligence comparable to that of humans would make the notion of humans as God’s special creation a lie.
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