The Fermi Paradox - Why we haven't been contacted by aliens

[Chief_For_Life58]

Interesting read. What's your opinion?


http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

[alnorth]

I do think there's a chance that we may detect a faint signal someday. We'd know roughly where it came from, but probably wouldn't be able to make sense of it other than its unnatural.

But then what? We'd be detecting the trace of what a civilization was sending out at least millennia ago, if not millions or billions of years ago, we'd never be able to have a conversation or see each other, and they would probably be dead by the time we got the signal. It would just be stuff for poets and philosophers to talk about.

[Rain Man]

A variant on the Great Filter could be that there are non-zero odds of getting wiped out by some flyby object, so maybe if a civilization is around long enough the odds are high that it'll get wiped out before it can settle other planets.

[wazu]

Originally Posted by alnorth

I do think there's a chance that we may detect a faint signal someday. We'd know roughly where it came from, but probably wouldn't be able to make sense of it other than its unnatural.

But then what? We'd be detecting the trace of what a civilization was sending out at least millennia ago, if not millions or billions of years ago, we'd never be able to have a conversation or see each other, and they would probably be dead by the time we got the signal. It would just be stuff for poets and philosophers to talk about.

Yeah, but wow. Wow! Somehow the concept would knock me off my feet for a few minutes.

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

Studies have shown that we could possibly be using as low as 10% of our brains potential.

This is a myth. Over the course of a day you eventually use every part of your brain. There's no reason to think we have a savant lurking inside each of us.

[alnorth]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

A variant on the Great Filter could be that there are non-zero odds of getting wiped out by some flyby object, so maybe if a civilization is around long enough the odds are high that it'll get wiped out before it can settle other planets.

Rogue planets are cool to think about.

After a lot of study and simulations, we are now pretty sure that our solar system probably had about 20 or so planets, but during the early chaotic phase where things were colliding and sharing orbits, most of them got flung off into the cold depths of space. The 8 that are left were the survivors who cleared their orbits, behaved nicely with one another, and achieved stability with the sun.

There could be just as many rogue, cold, rocky planets out there with no sun as there are planets orbiting suns. Who knows, we may have taken our revenge on whichever planet crashed into us and formed our moon by flinging it away into darkness.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by alnorth

I do think there's a chance that we may detect a faint signal someday. We'd know roughly where it came from, but probably wouldn't be able to make sense of it other than its unnatural.

But then what? We'd be detecting the trace of what a civilization was sending out at least millennia ago, if not millions or billions of years ago, we'd never be able to have a conversation or see each other, and they would probably be dead by the time we got the signal. It would just be stuff for poets and philosophers to talk about.

Contacting another live civilization would have lots of external impacts. Proving that another live civilization exists would have lots of internal impacts.

[Kaepernick]

Ditto why we haven't been visited by earthlings from the future. Conclusion: time travel is not possible or the people with it in the future would have come back to visit us by now.

[Third Eye]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I disagree. We have not even began to tap our brains potential. Studies have shown that we could possibly be using as low as 10% of our brains potential.

That is one of the greatest myths still in circulation.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...cent-of-brain/

Edit: oops, somebody best me to it.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Kaepernick

Ditto why we haven't been visited by earthlings from the future. Conclusion: time travel is not possible or the people with it in the future would have come back to visit us by now.

Agreed. To me, it's either that or "everyone else is so far more advanced than us that we can't even comprehend it". But that seems unlikely.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Agreed. To me, it's either that or "everyone else is so far more advanced than us that we can't even comprehend it". But that seems unlikely.

But as cdcox cleverly alluded, maybe one of the rules of Time Travel Club is that you don't talk about Time Travel Club.

[Dave Lane]

Excellent article thanks for posting it.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by alnorth

There's no reason to think we have a savant lurking inside each of us.

I don't think we need to be "savant" or super intelligence" species to be able to travel at the speed of sound.

[ChiTown]

What an awesome read. Thanks for the link.

[Kaepernick]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Certain molecules possess a trait called chirality, or handedness. The chemical formula is the same, but one branch is a mirror image that you can't superimpose on the other molecule (think about your right and left hands). This usually doesn't affect much chemistry, except with other chiral molecules.

For example, you cannot have a peptide chain unless all of the amino acids are of the same handedness, because an S-amino acid won't be able to form a chain of bonds with two D-amino acids (S, sinister, means left and D, dextro, means right). Without those chains, you don't have proteins, thus, no life.

No one knows why this happened. More than likely, it was just a quirk of genetic randomness.

Egads, you are forcing my mind to recall my Organic Chemistry classes of 35 years ago. I haven't heard sinister and dextro for 35 years.

[Rain Man]

If there are a lot of advanced civilizations and the superpredator theory is true, then it seems like we'd be picking up signals that then stop abruptly.