Posted on 07/16/2018 10:04:54 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
t’s something people tell me all the time, and usually in hushed tones: “With a trillion planets out there, we really can’t be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.” In other words, given the enormous amount of real estate in space, aliens are sure to exist. So why haven’t we found any?
I don’t dispute this straightforward idea because, after all, it underpins the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). But not everyone agrees. A recent paper by three researchers at the University of Oxford is throwing shade on those who feel confident that the cosmos is thick with extraterrestrials.
The Oxford academics were addressing a puzzle known as the Fermi Paradox, which describes the disconnect between our expectation of many worlds swarming with aliens and the fact that they remain undiscovered. Nearly 70 years ago, the celebrated physicist Enrico Fermi mouthed a deceptively simple question: “Where is everybody?” He made a quick estimate of how long it would take for any society bent on building an empire to colonize the entire Milky Way and realized it was only a few tens of millions of years, which is nearly 1,000 times shorter than the age of the galaxy.
This raised an obvious problem: There’s been more than enough time for aliens to spread out, and yet we don’t see them.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
I lean hard towards believing that there is life, of some manner, out there. Take all the wildly varied examples of life here on earth, then consider the amount of “sweet spot” planets in our galaxy alone, then multiply that by the ocean of galaxies we’ve been able to detect so far.
Perhaps some advancing species hit the wall of self destruction, or natural disaster, while other lesser species are still climbing the lower rungs of development. Perhaps species at our level or beyond are just too far removed to detect during our time frame of attempts, or use a manner of communication yet to be detected. All reasonable scientific theories.
I’m religious and find it hard to imagine that God would create such an immense playground/laboratory, and not fill it with more creatures to entertain himself. I personally suspect he set up the rules of creation, and mostly lets it run autonomously. If that’s correct, then life should develop elsewhere just as handily as it does in even extreme environs here.
The Fermi Paradox is explained by the movie Idiocracy. When civilization stops Darwinian natural selection, the idiots take over and intelligent life becomes unintelligent. By the time that civilization completely collapses, it can never again rise as all of the easily obtainable natural resources necessary to re-start civilization have been exhausted.
Considering how many stars there are and that most of them have planet systems, many with earth type planets it would be logical that there is life in the galaxy.
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It’s not logical if the probability of life is extremely low.
Bravo! Obscure Stones' hit.
I just read that climate change killed the aliens. If only we could have sent them algore [manbearpig] to show them the way!
Take all the wildly varied examples of life here on earth,
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All that wildly varied life comes from a single common ancestor that only evolved one time.
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But the argument that life seems to have evolved very early and quickly, so therefore is inherently likely, can be turned around, Dr. Joyce said. “You could ask why, if life were such a probable event, we don’t have evidence of multiple origins,” he said.
In fact, with trivial variations, there is only one genetic code for all known forms of life, pointing to a single origin.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/science/oldest-fossils-on-earth.html?_r=0
Gives impetus to the command “Go Forth and multiply”.
I take it to mean ‘Spread Life throughout the Universe’.
Ya gotta think four-dimensionally. The earth is less than a flyspeck in comparison to the overall universe.
So - aliens would need to hit our flyspeck, in a sphere that's what - 100 billion lightyears? more? - across.
On top of that, and in evolutionary terms - the universe is around 13 billion years old and the earth has been around for 4.6 billion years, give or take a week. Man has been recording history for about 5000 of those years, less than an eyeblink of time, in comparison.
So, Aliens would have needed to hit our specific flyspeck, in a tiny sliver of time, in order for us to know about them.
They could hit the next galaxy over, and we'd not have a clue. OR, they could have been here a million years ago, with plans to return in a million more. Again, we'd be clueless.
IMO, there are plenty of aliens. We'll never know about them, though, because of time and distance constraints.
How do you know Al isn’t One of Them??
IMO, well proven by the article.
Often scientists make the mistake of thinking because they're brilliant in one field that they're brilliant in all... Better to jump into a shark pool than advertise our location ...
Mathematical probability would suggest, if not prove, otherwise. Furthermore, define ‘alien life’......
Most people I know just assume their is other intelligent life in the universe. When I ask why, all they can say is “because it is so big. We just CAN’T be the only life.”
Well, I can think of 2 reasons.
1.God made us, and put us here. If he didn’t choose to put people or other beings elsewhere, then it is logical to believe we aer alone.
2. We are the first life in the universe. If ETs will sread life through the universe, it illbe us doing the spreading.
As a Christian, I believe in 1. God made us alone in the universe. The problem with 2. is that sace is unimaginably vast and it takes impossible amounts of time and energy to gat from one world to the next inhabitable world. Which presumes there are other inabitable worlds — a theory yet to be poved.
Funny, that's what Darwin said about transitional species. But NONE!
It's not like one 'missing link' is missing - it's ALL of 'em. And yeah, enough time has gone by that we should have found some ...
Even if life was based on chlorine we should have been able to find it. I think we’re looking at the question the wrong way...
Only one in our universe................
This is about as meaningful as a 4,500 page book on the uses of navel lint.
Let’s suppose there is at least ONE planet out there God has created intelligent life on. And then go on to say they did NOT disobey God and they are still pure and unfallen. IOW they did not partake of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Would God let them meet and mingle with us? No. But it is possible they are watching us from a distance.
“Considering the distances involved across the milky way Galaxy I question that estimate of a time to colonize the entire Galaxy.”
... in addition the study presupposes aliens WANT to colonize an entire galaxy. An advanced alien society might find all the resources it needs within its star system and see no reason to travel further. Given the enormous distances it might involve less resources to terraform and adapt bodies within a star system as their civilization grows than for a handful of their people to travel to another star system where conditions may not be any better than their own star system.
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