/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4476729]

So /sci/, are we alone?
What are your theories, do we have any real evidence?

[Anonymous No.4476736]

I'm not alone.
Your mom just got done blowing me, she's in the bathroom washing her teeth.

[Anonymous No.4476754]

Bump, im interested in what the smarter people of 4chan believe

[Anonymous No.4476759]

The year is 2785.

The intergalactic meeting is taking place.

Earth and other 34 thousand planets with sentient creatures are asking themselves:

Are we alone?

Moral of the story: Whatever we may find in outer space you won't be satisfied so it wouldn't hurt for you to get out, laugh with friends and get laid instead of asking /sci/ silly questions.

[Anonymous No.4476765]

>>4476759
I like this.

Now imagine a bunch of Europeans getting together before the age of sail and asking "Are we alone?"

Ditto for the native americans and the aborigines.

[Anonymous No.4476773]

>Are we alone?
Life is possible (see Earth) and the universe is big (see up) therefore life is likely to occur many times.
>How common is life?
Even if life could only occur on world's nearly identical to Earth there would still likely be several worlds in the Milky Way galaxy with life because stars like Sol are not rare and because we have no reason to believe the qualities of the Sol planetary system are exceedingly rare.
>Is there intelligent life?
Given that intelligent life can arise and the size of the universe it is safe to assume intelligent life exists beyond Earth.
>How common is intelligent life?
There is not enough data to form meaningful answer.

[Anonymous No.4476786]

It is quite obvious that we are not alone seeing as there an possibly infinite number of other universes and planets, but whether or not we will ever make any real contact with them is very unlikely, seeing as they will definetly not look, talk or behave in the ways that us humans do. And I bet that they are smart enough not to believe some bullshit about how they were created by one man in seven days.

[Jim Profit !DgnrydpFYU No.4476792]

Space travel is a bunk of horse shit for the most part.

I believe strongly that we will in our lifetimes, see a transition into type one civilization,and we will become very argumentative over heavy metals and other resources much like Arthur C. Clarke's book Earthlight.

But traveling from point A to point B, either for us to meet aliens, or for aliens to meet us. Is ridiculous. It always relies on soft science principles.

1: Dark matter. With almost infinite energy, it might be able to work. But how would we come across dark matter and then harvest it?

2: Anti-matter. The physics is different as to why we're moving rather then if we used dark matter. But even more mind fuck of how we even encounter it without causing some paradox regression. Let alone use it!

3: Wormholes. The most likely, but also most counter-productive. Because I don't believe we could predetermine a worm hole's destination. The universe is not one flat mall map. I believe if you were to open a wormhole from the same exact destination, you'd reach another place "on the other side" every time. Because of the way our three dimensional space works. Might be good for nomads... for a while... but when full blown entropy takes effect, this type two civilization crap will not fly.

TL;DR: That feel when given what you know about modern physics, type three civilizations are impossible, and most aliens would not waste time or effort communicating or even trying too. If they needed something of out's, they'd just take it, and we're far too underdeveloped intellectually to be of any use to them in some kind of intergalactic power grab.

Science is grim dark.

[Anonymous No.4476799]

>>4476792
>Humanity will make use of every photon that hits the Earth's surface within the next 50 years.
I disagree.

[Anonymous No.4476838]

>4476773
that

[Anonymous No.4476855]

>Do we have any real evidence?

Yes, yes we do.

Us.

[Anonymous No.4476888]

>4476855
I wouldnt say that that is real evidence, that allows us to make and educated guess as the chances of 'us' occuring is possible but does not show that there are other civilisations aparts from Earth.

[Anonymous No.4477056]

There is still the question of whether ALH 84001 contains evidence of life, althought it seems to be a dead end

[Anonymous No.4477076]

I understand you and I can't even begin to fathom it, but do you at least know how fucking vast our universe is?

[Anonymous No.4477097]

>>4477076
>Do you know how vast the universe is?
I know how vast the observable universe is.

[Anonymous No.4477100]

>>4477076

[Anonymous No.4477102]

>>4477097
Good call

[Anonymous No.4477137]

>>4477100
That kid tells it how it is. I like that.

My little brother drew a picture of an an alien Hitler wearing a birthday hat when he was four years old. Guess what he titled the drawing.

[Anonymous No.4477150]

Right now we can only answer that question with statistics and, furthermore, our statistical sources are incomplete. For example, we don't yet know the statistical probability of abiogenesis (life from non-life) occurring. Additionally, we don't yet know the ratio of stars with planets that could harbor life as we know it. In spite of all this, you can still make very conservative guesses to the probabilities and still come up with a resounding "yes"; even if Earth-like planets only occur around one in a million stars and even if life only occurs on one in a million Earth-like planets, the probability of life out there is still statistically almost certain. But our best guesses for these probabilities are nowhere near so bleak. The Kepler planet-finding telescope has pretty much shown us that planets are very, very common and most biologists that have studied abiogenesis agree that the natural synthesis of the chemical components necessary for life is common on Earth-like planets.

A much harder question to answer is whether there are other technological species out there. Earth's history suggests that, while life itself may be common, evolving very complex forms of life is a game of chance where the odds seem to be stacked against you. Since evolution occurs over such long timescales, there is much opportunity for extinction events, like planetary (supervolcanos and ice ages) and astronomical events(asteroids, supernovas, gamma ray bursts), to constantly reset the progress that evolution has made. This suggests that more complex forms of life, like technological species, will be much more rare than life itself.

Continued...

[Anonymous No.4477152]

>>4477150

Continuing:

There is also the argument that, if life is so common, where is everybody? The first time I encountered this argument I thought it was nonsense; "everybody" is just out there but limited to the cosmic speed limit, and so are all confined to their own star systems. But, upon further investigation, you'll see that this argument has a little more to it. Considering the statistics that I've already mentioned and the incredible age of the universe, if life and, by extension technological species, is at all a regular occurrence then our galaxy should be positively booming with technological civilizations much more advanced than ours. Even with the cosmic speed limit, it is easy to imagine hundreds of ways that sufficiently advanced civilizations would stick out like a sore thumb to our astronomical observations. But we have no indication of that, whatsoever. It's a little disconcerting.

That's all I have to say about it.

[Anonymous No.4477157]

>>4477137
um, "alien Hitler wearing a birthday hat"?

[Anonymous No.4477166]

Not really based on anything, but i think where life CAN occur, life WILL occur.

[Anonymous No.4477171]

>>4477157
You're pretty good at guessing. I like that.

[Anonymous No.4477223]

>>4477152

Take a look at this.

http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Fermilab_search.htm

Also, it's extremely impossible for us to catch a radio wave that we can actually notice is some sort of signal from a few light years. And take into account travel times, we've only been monitoring for 40-50 years now.

[Anonymous No.4477243]

Aliens are over here.

We just need to get to them.

[Anonymous No.4477252]

>>4477243
http://youtu.be/17jymDn0W6U

[Anonymous No.4477273]

>>4477265
Heres why

[Anonymous No.4477303]

>>4477243
Found a flaw, means its fake and gay

[Anonymous No.4477310]

>>4477303
I just edited this shit in paint to prove a point.

Space is fucking huge. There being no available evidence of extraterrestrials means nothing.

[Anonymous No.4477324]

>>4476765

>intergalactic meeting
>34 thousand different species
>asking if they're alone

This is not a realistic setting. These species have traveled between galaxies and found other sentient species, they wouldn't be asking this any longer.

Get out of /sci/, macfag.

[Anonymous No.4477332]

>>4477310
I meant the penis shaped supercluster, I can see what you mean about the universe being so large, epic picture aswell it puts everythhing into terms.

[Anonymous No.4477347]

>>4477324
Implying that anyone who thinks they know shit have a macintosh... totally agree

[Anonymous No.4477388]

consider all of the requirements for life (and hence natural selection) to occur:

a star is required for heat. a few planets are required. astronomy tells us this isn't uncommon due to the nature of contracting clouds of gas and dust and their inherent propery of angular momentum. also consider the "habitable zone" of said star (which i find to be slightly ridiculous based on our studies of exobiology, but we will include it).

consider the composition of our planet, the chemical make-up. we know the elements which make up this earth are the remainders of exploding stars, which implies this material is relatively abundant in our observable universe. with this knowledge, we can conclude that a good many planets have the same abundance of elements on their planet as we do ours.

consider, again, the time elapsed for single-celled organisms to appear on our planet. then, of course, the inevitable clockwork of natural selection. i mean, after all, it only took about 400 million years or so after our planet was formed for these organisms to appear. you might as well consider life an inescapable side effect of a planet with the above conditions.

taking all of this into consideration, along with the idea that there are trillions of stars, do you really think we are anything more than average?

[Anonymous No.4477518]

>>4477324
Men travelled between continents and found other fellow men and new species of animals they couldn't even imagine before. And look at us now asking if we are alone.

That's the point.

[None !!w5CHYddUvhS No.4477535]

>>4476729
>What are your theories
>theories

Please stop colloquializing this word, OP.
Say "What are your speculations," or "What are your ideas."

There probably has, elsewhere in the universe, existed life; and there probably has, elsewhere in the universe, existed intelligent life. It is remotely possible that there has existed, elsewhere in the universe, intelligent life which has peopled multiple worlds. These are just issues of probability. However, the probability that intelligent life peopling multiple worlds exists not just at some other point in time and space, but exists <span class="math">within~our~lightcone[/spoiler] – that is a probability I would never put money down on. I do not expect humans ever to encounter intelligent spacefaring life, even if we ever <span class="math">become[/spoiler] intelligent spacefaring life ourselves. (It is, however, entirely possible – and perhaps even probable – that we may encounter microbial life on other worlds, should we ever visit them.)

[Anonymous No.4477548]

>>4477388

haha, I personally like to think that we're below average until evidence disproves that

[Anonymous No.4477570]

>>4477535
Point taken about 'theory', and I agree with what you are saying about the improbability of encountering intelligent lifeforms. If lightspeed travel or the ability to harness energy in dark matter we may -one day- travel to the far extents of our lightcone and possibly further. Then again the chances of actually coming upon an advanced lifeform is still unlikely.

[Anonymous No.4478867]

>>4477388

This guy hit the nail on the head