/sci/ - Science & Math

They are too advanced for us. If they want to talk with us in a useful way, it is better to just wait for our evolution. Is this what you are thinking?

Well, not only i am sure of smart alien life, but it is sure that two smart planets know each other, given the size of the Universe. So do you believe there is a collective of smart planets out there?

If you think the fermi paradox is an intellectual topic of discussion, then you're definitely underaged. Please stop browsing 4chan.

>>7241655
>SPECULATION ALERT
WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING?
>Only posting here because people on /sci/ tend to be on average at least -slightly- smarter than anywhere else this topic would fit.
Someone is a bit ain, isn't he?
>The fermi paradox. What are your thoughts on it?
Never understand why it's seen as such a paradox. The universe isn't so old if you consider that the earth already needed 5 billion years to produce intelligent life. So maybe we're one of the first? And the universe is really really big. Even with very advanced technologies it's not easy to travel from solar system to solar system.
>If speculation such as the fermi paradox is within reasonable assumption, what about a sort of 'nature reserve'? Maybe we haven't been contacted because our solar system is marked as a 'study only' zone?
That's the biggest load of shit I read today. You shouldn't watch so much Star Trek.
>Would advanced life capable of reaching us even give a fuck about that?
It's imaginable that they would have complete other interests as we and so they wouldn't. But I would guess it's likely that the most aliens would try to contact us.

It's probably just hard to meaningfully communicate anything through space without both a transmitter and a receiver. Only planets with some sort of network already set up can probably easily communicate with one another. As it is, the best we can do is assume people randomly send out signals and that those signals don't bounce off the edge of their solar system and back to them or something.

>>7241735
I dont think we can produce a signal stronger than sunlight reflected on Earth. So an artificial signal seems retarded from start, maybe it is just some tool of propaganda.

>>7241698
Caps was for emphasis, there have already been a few comments that would have not been posted if they had read the first capped line, it was my best attempted at a "READ THIS FIRST". Doesn't work all the time.

I have always got the smartest overall comments when posting on /sci/. Not too hard to understand why.

I have never seen star trek and I'm not a sci-fi fan

Maybe we'll get some smarter people in here from the bump. Post 1 failed miserably.

>>7241686
If you think you can judge someone's age by their intelligence, you are definitely not an intellectual. Please stop browsing /sci/

>>7241655
You ask about the Fermi paradox, so i'm going to spout some bullshit here, just to giove you another point of view on the issue. I'm rambling, so i'm not going to write well.

We come from a special evolutionary history, the last species from a group at the brink of extinction. I believe that the quest for colonization is much stronger in humans than what most species would get, and we have weaker mechanisms agains over-population (natural aversion to infanticide, sex as socialization, we actually enjoy the process/ritual of moving out of our parent's house).
On top of that, remember that we only think of aliens in terms of sci-fi space tech and interplanetary contact, but they have their own life, just like we are too busy right now to devote huge parts of our economy to space conquest (though we are seriously getting there). Evolution doesn't stop when you discover math, any animal will still be competing for resources. Space faring civilization requires cooperation between individuals, thus social networking and politics (read "resource management"). You might say "they'd abandon silly politics", but i don't think so. Any civilization capable of space faring means lots of resources. Someone will take advantage od that one way or the other, and generate inner conflict, thus wasting resources. Selfishness is most likely universal

>>7241655
That picture is retarded. Ants know we exist, its the reason every time you lay a finger in front of them they find another way around your finger.

>The fermi paradox. What are your thoughts on it?
Its not a paradox. We don't have enough information about life in the universe to say anything. All we can do is put a lower bound on it which is 1 earth out of 1 universe.

>>7241907
cont.

Space is big. We dream a lot about space awrps and worm holes, but these might be very well impractical mathematical curiosities, and any rendeing of faster than light travel just not possible. It's a sad outlook, I know.
The tiny spec that is the known universe is 93 billion light years across, in a universe that is 14 billion years old. Even if a civ stretches its resources to accomplish the ridiculous task of expanding at lightspeed, it will be very thin. If you are serious about colonization of other worlds you are not going to send much people to Alpha centauri before colonizing your solar system. Again, it sounds all well and good, but just crunch some numbers, it's just not worth it. Our dream of jumping from planet to planet might very well be a pipe dream. Think of it this way: we can "fly", we do have personal jetpacks, but are incredibly difficult to use, expensive, prohibitively dangerous for mass production. It's very anticlimatic, but it's simply not worth it.
Any way of signal broadcasting is absurdly expensive. It's what that anon said about the sunlight reflected on Earth.

Space might very well be very, very, young. I don't think there's a limit to what a civ can do with time, but stuff like creating planets and suns... maybe there are insurmountable time constraints to that, and any great civ putting all of their effort to it might create a lousy sun, lost among the others.

>>7241945
final words.

I live my life thinking that anything is possible and I can do anything, but there is also the possibility that intelligent life is so rare, and contact so expensive, that there aren't so many cases as we'd feel comfortable with

i find it insanity to say there has never been any intelligent life somewhere else, but there is a growing chance we are essentially alone right now.
a lot of theories also that other life forms went down the same technological road as us and created their own virtual realities therefore there is no interest in the rest of the universe

>>7241655
but humans interact with ants all the time

if the ants are on floor tiles, they're probably in someone's house, and they probably get stepped on a lot

>>7241655
There must be some kind of "great filter"

>>7241655
The wiki goes over likely explanations, including yours.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

>>7241998
Aliens interact with humans all the time

from an ant's perspective, the other ants aren't getting stepped on, they are getting struck by an enormous black object from the sky that if you see where its coming from you can calculate its path to some extent, that seems to appear in some sort of period

Anyway, we will never make it off this rock in our human bodies, we need to make monuments.

>>7241655
I like this article:

http://thegoodreads.quora.com/The-Fermi-Paradox-Where-IS-everybody

My favourite theories:

>great filter is behind us

See article. While there are probably many habitable planets, we could be a freak accident. Certain evolutionary steps like the mentioned prokaryote-eukaryote, dino extinction, large brains, or hands, seem very improbable. Apes are dumber than Orcas, yet they evolved humans. Intelligence is not an evolutionary advantage, quite the contrary. It only becomes an advantage when you can apply it to something, like making tools - which happens rarely. Almost all life on earth is dumb as brick. Humans almost got extinct, remember?

>intelligent life is autistic

Have you read Solaris by Stanisław Lem? It's about a planet (ocean) that is so vastly intelligent, he doesn't care about anything else. Humans are getting more and more connected, and it could happen that we will evolve into a single giant supercomputer. If that supercomputer could simulate anything, and constantly improve his own processing power (through scientific discoveries) without new ressources, why would it want to explore the universe?

>we're just a simulation

Theoretically there are infinitely more simulations than realities, so we are probably in one. If the current physics model is correct, the physical constants are just arbitrary and don't make any sense. There are also Planck length and speed of light, which make computations much easier, should this be a simulation.

So, these are the theories I like. It's really a philosophical question and a mental exercise that ultimately has no resolution. Maybe all three of the above theories are true, maybe none? Even if we find alien life, we will always be able to ask "where is everybody ELSE?".

>>7242117
>Intelligence is not an evolutionary advantage, quite the contrary.

>Humans are getting more and more connected, and it could happen that we will evolve into a single giant supercomputer

>Theoretically there are infinitely more simulations than realities, so we are probably in one. If the current physics model is correct, the physical constants are just arbitrary and don't make any sense.
fuck off

>>7241655
pic related.
It's not like our signals have travelled very far at all. It's not unreasonable that no intelligent life has even had a chance to pick up our messages yet, let alone respond.

Of course then the question is, where are _their_ signals? I don't know, but I think I read somewhere that our resolving power isn't good enough to detect radio signals coming from planets that far out in space

Not to mention they might have some very different technology and methods of communication that we are completely unaware of and radio messages are the equivalent of sending a message in morse code to them.

>>7242117
Super intelligent beings have mastered time travel and travel in the 5th dimension between the endless possibilities and might have been. They are perfectly adapted to the world that spawned them, or at least to how it was before they ruined it. To them their world is indeed a paradise unsurpassed in the whole universe, giving them no reason to ever leave. Every one of their species that attains the ability and finds the surroundings too crowded, can pull up stake and strike out for an unspoiled might have been towards the past and live in leisure and independence.

Turns out their world has enough room for them and all of them that there ever will be.

>>7242142
You're retarded.

>>>/b/

>>7242221
I read a book where that was the premise, I find it interesting...however we will never be able to travel through dimensions like that, we are bound to this timestream at least for our earthly lives.

>>7241823
If you think that the typical browser of /sci/ is an intellectual, you are definitely too naive for the internet. Please stop posting.

>>7241655
Ehh I'll respond, not to many great responses below and you clearly need to look more into the subject. There's no doubt the great filter, time and distance factors between planets that can host life, the chances of it existing in a frame where a foreign entity can contact it, and the probability of all those factors coming together are always taken into account in these scenarios, but they're not the end of the story. Why haven't we seen a megastructure, highly unusual phenomenon with no natural explanation, or any major evidence that must be contributed to a stage 3 civilization? The most likely possibilities are:

>Lack of reach
Like this poster noted >>7241945 the size of space is so massive that mass colonization seems a pipe dream. We see the observable universe, but still with a lens regarding the billions of years of light between what's there and what we can watch. Life in all known modern and reasonably speculated forms simply can't complete a task like widespread colonization, even drones replication like systems and mass colonization through a singular informational super form of life might be under such regulations and limitations that it simply won't be spreadable enough to dominate and make it's presence known to most of the universe even if all conditions for it to do so are the best possible.

>Life is a phenomenon off no significance or grand purpose
We like to think given enough tries life could eventually meet conditions and rise to the levels of our science fiction fantasies, but most speculation is under the filter of us presuming a great meaning to existence. We may be a fluke of random factors that occurs and goes, stuck to never reach a level of god like capability just by limitations within the universe that is hostile and a barrier to intelligent life and its capabilities. We may be a universal glitch, not destined to do anything but happen and fade away.

1/2

>>7241698
>WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING
Retard autist pls go

>>7242496
2/2

>Highly advanced life has left known existence
It is quite possible that higher forms of life have left the known universe, eventually changed into
forms outside either dimensions, known energy fields, or simply factored or added changes to themselves in ways unfathomable or entirely outside the known state of reality to us. The major limitations physical existence holds for life and its continued survival may be great enough to invest in another form less hostile to its continued advancement or state of existence. Mostly speculation, but still the way life has been seen so far in our own planet the idea that once it becomes actively conscious at the level we are at and expands and changes rapidly that stopping that forced change leads to extinction. Much older life forms using dying stars or harnessing energy fields we are barely linking together in one grand theory may have sped up their own evolution or forced change to levels we cannot comprehend. Biological life is simply not going to be a form of a type 3 or higher civilization.

Obligatory

I think we will either find signs of life close to within our lifetime (probably not intelligent life), or not at all for a very, very long time, if at all. That being said, some nasa scientist said she was "certain" they'd find life in the next 30 years. A prediction like that is a load of shit. My problem is not with the timeline, but with the fact that she's certain.

>>7242591
I still dispute this claim, because as soon as one race uses such weaponry, every other race then sees them as aggressors and kills them, and then the secondary aggressors are seen and killed by tertiary aggressors, and so on and so forth.

Peace is simply a far more viable long-term on.

>>7242632
That's under the idea that multiple societies on equal ground find existence with one another around the same timeline.

Two intelligent forms of life meeting or even finding out mutually about each others existence is in itself a miracle of odds, them doing it when they both render the same threat is near impossible. As soon as we're a threat they'd take us out, though to render as a threat we'd have to be far more advanced than we are. Still it's only under assumption of how lifeforms evolve, interact, and so forth. It's all idle speculation until we have examples of other life.

>>7242591
That's fucking stupid because no species is going to immediately band together and commit every resource at their disposal because they saw a series of flashes 100,000 light years away. A civilization is going to be in one of three phases of development, if we launched an interstellar starship powered by nukes.

1. Not advanced enough to detect it
2. Around our level or slightly more advanced
3. So advanced, that they wouldn't care, and would probably send some sociologists to our planet because intergalactic flight is nothing to them

If they were around our level, launching a star killer wouldn't be worth it. Even if they were some weird species that had a thought process incomprehensible to our own, it would just take too many resources to commit. If you wanted to launch something that large at 15% the speed of light towards another star, you have to put in the energy to accelerate it that fast. That means 150 times our world's nuclear arsenal divided by whatever efficiency of the propulsion device used. And if you wanted to cause a mass extinction event on another planet, you're going to need a lot more than that.

Sending a planet killer just doesn't make sense because you saw some flashes in the sky, probably a spiral arm away.

>>7242591
>there are no policemen
How do we know there are no policemen?
What if one race, armed with a relativistic bomb, used the threat of it to prevent other species from developing them, and acted as "galactic police" for no reason other than being the ones with the big guns and not wanting to have to destroy literally every other civilization in the universe just to keep the peace.

Also, what about mutually assured destruction? Ronald Reagan pretended he could shoot down nukes before they hit us, but if the commies had shot 1000 nukes at the US and even 1% of them got through, tens of millions of people would have died instantly. Yet, we didn't nuke the Soviet Union. Even though we wouldn't've been able to stop all their bombs, they didn't send even a single one, because of the possibility that we might've been able to retaliate before we all died.

How is the same thing not true for relativistic mass drivers? How does the alien race know that humans don't have a robotic outpost somewhere programmed to fire relativistic bombs all over the place if Earth gets toasted? For that matter, if we did have relativistic bombs, why wouldn't we keep ALL of them stored in remote regions of space, far away from Earth? Our "enemies" ought to assume that we would, so that our armament wouldn't depend on the survival of a fragile planet. They would know that we would prefer to live on our planet in peace and keep the warfare somewhere else, because they would do the same. So even if there was a space war, we'd just be shooting bombs at each other's military bases, and the civilians on the planets would be left alone. If anyone actually tried to weaponize their planet, it would get destroyed instantly, so everybody would agree to keep planets disarmed and leave them alone.

There's no strategic advantage in keeping a bomb on your own planet, so you know other species won't elect to do it, so everyone knows there's no strategic advantage in bombing each other's planets.

There is no basis to make any conjuncture on what aliens would do to us since it's completely unknown. If you assume they will "be like us" then we're better off never coming in contact with them.

People who try to contact aliens are nuts, the only responsible thing to do is try to maintain anonymity.

>>7242700

If they're capable of firing relativistic projectiles, they're capable of sending a scouting party here to determine what OUR capabilities our. It would be painfully obvious on close examination that we have no way to retaliate.

>>7242674
If they are a high level species either stage two or three they may not need to resort much energy to simply extinguish life they detect at such a level. Remember, it's only if they can detect our existence, by use of a high energy technology that can be of danger to them at some point in their expansion, then they would negate risk over allow its festering.

>>7242700
See >>7242665
One will be more advanced than the other, it will be a one sided fight. Remember the USSR gained much of its technology from the US, and had grown around many of the same pressures and influences at least as a species goes, planetary differing races would be a whole other level of difference. One would be able to take the other out before the other could react.

>>7242732
If we discovered a "less advanced" civilization than ourselves, we wouldn't unilaterally destroy it. Exploit it, abuse it, sure. But the typical reaction of colonials to their colony isn't just universal genocide.

This whole belief that we are discussing is based on the single premise that "their survival will be more important than our survival." But why do we assume that they will have a concept of "them" and "us"? If they are a less advanced society than our own, then surely they will have distinct nations, cultures, perhaps even races. Maybe the grey-skinned people on their planet would prefer to align with us, the conquerors, to wage war on the green-skinned people.

The humans on Earth are far from a "united front," if you know what I mean. It's just that most science fiction speculators subscribe to the "Gundam Hypothesis," that the smallest viable political unit in a spacefaring civilization is a single environment. Thus, they believe, when we colonize space, the Earth must become a single "federation," with the colonies either aligned with it, each other, or in independent groupings. This is a convenient scenario for sci-fi stories and thought experiments, but it's not necessarily realistic. There are even some notable counterexamples.

>>7242237
You are telling ME to go to /b/ after you just regurgitated some embarassing pop-sci crap?

>>7242809
In order to find them we have to see their effects on a cosmic scale, meaning they have access to technologies more advanced than ours. Now, if they see us use those technologies, one or two responses will happen once they notice our existence;
>they put us under a level of investigation, observation, and will react depending on our changes

or

>they will destroy us to rid the chance of our threat ever existing in the future

One race will be far advanced than the other, will most likely see the other before the one observed notices, and will react to make sure the other cannot be a threat in anyway. The reactions will be based on logic, and nothing more.

>>7242832
In my example we are the "advanced" civilization. Why would an advanced civilization that discovers a primitive civilization want to destroy it?

The British didn't kill all the Chinese when they colonized Hong Kong even though the Chinese "could have become a threat someday."

Why would an interplanetary encounter be any different?

>>7242849
The distances and timescales involved make "colonization" pointless across space. What are we going to do, go all the way over there to take their gold and women? There is no real way to exploit them, the analogy doesn't hold.

Also even the most advanced and the most primitive civilizations here on Earth were only a few thousand years separated from each other. Odds are any life that happens to be detected will be hundreds of thousands, millions, or even more distant.

>>7242849
There's a difference you are overlooking.

We have nothing they want. A type 3 civilization has no use for our resources. No use for contact, diplomacy, using slaves to til fields and trade spices and mine gold. They will find us by accident, while harvesting stars if anything which is all they would want. If they find us like they that, they won't care, they are the apex and we are nothing.

Now if we find a way to create a weapon capable of destroying solar systems, entire planets across the galaxy, anything they would be bothered by, they will stomp us out. Think of it as a preemptive measure, like trying to fight ISIS before they gain full military potential in a recognized state or sabotaging Iran to fuck their nuclear program up. But the US doesn't own the world, and a type 3 civilization would pretty much own the observable universe. Would you squish a spider in your bed at night as you saw it crawling by? Or would you let it nest in your house?

If it's beneficial to do an action, and there is risk in not doing it, then the action will be taken. That is how life survives, and that's how it will always react to any situation it encounters.

>>7242858
That's fine, then, that's like discovering an uncharted island with a few ants on it. You'd ignore it and move on, not try to burn all the ants just on the off chance they're actually termites that could eat your ship someday if you left them at it for a hundred years.

Essentially, it's the situation in the first half of the next post...

>>7242884
In the first part of your discussion, "we" are puny and "they" are ridiculously powerful. They barely even notice us, and certainly don't perceive us as a threat. Then you have us discovering a way to actually threaten these masters of the universe.
If that were the case, if we were truly threatening enough that we could challenge the very survival of their species, we wouldn't be "nothing" compared to them anymore. We would in fact be able to retaliate if they attacked us. So we're either too pathetic to bother, or we're powerful enough to incite mutually assured destruction.

What I'm saying is that you can't have it both ways. The only time when "they" would have both reason and opportunity to wipe "us" out would be during the short period where we are attempting to build an arsenal of superweapons, but haven't fully armed yet. That's basically the status of ISIS or Iran right now. In human geopolitics, it takes a few years at best to build an arsenal of our most powerful weapons, which is enough time for a war or an intense disruption campaign. How long would it take to build an arsenal of superweapons that could threaten a galactic apex species? How long would it take to fight a space war (or, how long would it take for their missiles to reach us)? Those are questions we don't know how to answer. Relativistic bombs would still take tens of thousands of years to cross the galaxy, and several years at least to cross from even the nearest star systems. The closest O and B stars that a Type 3 civilization would be interested in are tens of lightyears away.

>>7242928
We wouldn't challenge anything, we would annoy them. Destroying a star system is a lose to them the way destroying a building is to us. It's like bugs to the human race. If there's termites in a house, we exterminate them. Doesn't mean they threaten our species, our livelihood, our survival, they just annoy infrastructure and it's better they go than they ruin something useful. If we can bother them, and they know, they will weigh the risks and actions. They will swat us, and continue on. Simply put, like I've said before, you find a spider in your house you kill it and go on with your life. You can kill flies, maybe not obsess over them if they aren't annoying, but a spider or termite or ants? You end them, if we are a threat of any sorts to a civilization that can just get rid of us then they will simply get rid of us.

>>7242591

There are so wrong claims in that pasta that I'm not going take the time to respond to them individually. Instead, the entire thing is going to get one big [citation needed].

What about he wow signal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

The Fermi Paradox also implies that our universe can't be accessed from the outside and/or can't be left.

>>7243069

>>7242591
How would this evil alien race find us?
If they receive a signal, they still have to traverse hundreds of lightyears to reach us. That's IF they can reach c. The more likely speed of c/3 means it could be 1000 years before they can reach us.
We could detect their signals, but they would be signals sent many years ago. 1000s of years, potentially. That civilization will not still be around; certainly not in the form it was when it sent that message.

>>7241655
actually yes

if you give a civilisation that isn't culturally developed enough a great leap in technology then that civilisation will most likely eradicate itself or come close to it. just look at the cold war or look at china's current pollution situation.

>>7242819
No, I'm telling you to go to /b/ because you're retarded. If you don't realize that bigger brains require bigger skulls and more calories, and are therefore an evolutionary disadvantage as long as the added intelligence doesn't cover the cost, then you can't have any relevant education. Even for a highschooler you would be pretty dumb. So

>>>/b/

>>7241655
This pic really explains it.

Our galaxy alone might have thousands of civilizations on hundreds of thousands of worlds, we just haven't looked for them properly.

As far as we know, they might be withing 30 light years even.

It's pretty safe to say that life does exist outside Earth, but to what extent and sophistication?