Extraterrestrial Theory

I

IROC89

Registered Member
ok here is something i have been throwing around lately...

for starters, im not bashing SETI, or any of you ET believers, i am just pointing out some basic mathematical probabilities, and putting the universe and time in perspective.

first, lets start out with some basic givens….it is said that the universe is about 10 – 20 billion years old. i will stay on the conservative side, and go with 10 billion years old. now lets talk about the human race. going with a high estimate, i will say that the intelligent human race has inhabited the earth for about 10,000 years. i am no historian, but for the sake of argument, this will do. i will get into the size of the universe later.

now that i have defined some givens, let me put this into perspective. 10,000 years or human existence divided by 10 billion years of universe existance =

10,000/10,000,000,000 =

1/1,000,000, or 0.000001.

this means that humans have only lived through 1 millionth of the years that the universe has been in existance. in other words, if a straight line was drawn for 1 km, the time the human race has been in existence would only take up 1 mm of that line.

what is your point, you may be thinking? my point is this: the probability of meeting extraterrestrial life in our stage of intelligence is very small. any alien form would most likely be either way ahead of us, or not in existance at all. if they were way ahead of us, they would most likely have made contact with us already, which we know has not happened.

some people may say that an alien civilization that is very advanced could visit the eath undetected, but it is very doubtful that they will. look at it in a human perspective. we have always been looking for alien lifeforms, and we would make ourselves know to them if and when we ever find them. wouldnt they do the same? that is assuming they think like us, and are humanoid is some way. but taking into account the advancement stages through intelligence, it is likely they would not find a way to "covertly" visit us, before they actually visited.

the size of the universe should also be taken into account. wheather this helps or hurts my case, i dont know, but i will just point out the facts. it is estimated that the universe is about
1.5 X 10^26 m (150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m) or 15 billion light years wide.
this is an unfathomable distance, that humans can not even begin to relate to, considering the earth is only a mere 130,000,000 m wide. even if alien lifeforms were to exist, the chances that they are even in the earth's reachable distance is extremely small. the earth is about 3,750,000,000 m from the moon on average (remember, the moon's distance from earth changes depending on orbit), and that is really the farthest humans have ever been from the earth. now we have sent satilites and mars rovers many many times farther than that, but we still have found no trace of alien life forms. in my opinion, it will many years before we are able to send man powered spacecraft into space, or even to mars. we will have to find an efficient way to grow food in space for long journeys to mars and beyond. also, if aliens have even been close to the earth, they would have left at least some sign that they have been there (no that stupid face on mars doesnt count). i mean, look at our own moon. we left a flag, and that rover thing at least. plus the footprints and stuff. any alien form would at least leave something. this means that humans are the only lifeforms in our immediate range. what i am gettin to is that unless there is a very advanced alien civilization originating from very far away, we will not come in contact with aliens for a very long time to come, if
they even exist.

all these points point to the fact that, although there may be lifeforms somewhere in the vast universe, it is very unlikely that any exist, or that we will come in contact with them. being that the universe is so old, and the human race so young, many different alien civilizations may have come into existance, and died off. but the probability that a alien civilization being alive and able to contact us today is very very small.

....thoughts.....?
 
I have a few questions about your statements (at some points emphasized by me):

if they were way ahead of us, they would most likely have made contact with us already, which we know has not happened.
Click to expand...

Do we really 'know' this?

....and we would make ourselves know to them if and when we ever find them. wouldnt they do the same? that is assuming they think like us......
Click to expand...

and,

even if alien lifeforms were to exist, the chances that they are even in the earth's reachable distance is extremely small.
Click to expand...

In my opinion, these two quotes are contradicting: First, you are saying we shouldn't make the assumption that 'they' think like us. yet, in the next paragraph you are talking about 'the earth's reachable distance', which in my opinion, is a very narrowminded, human way of thinking.

I've been reading many threads (including the archived one's) in Pseudoscience for the last couple of months before becoming a member. What struck me most, was that in many discussions people tend to assume that phenomena, ET, strange events etcetera, should all be explainable by our standards of science and knowledge. When something doesn't fit these standards, it can't be true and will be debunked, ridiculed, laughed at. History has proven the opposite on many occasions...
or are there still people affraid falling of the face of the Earth if they come to close to it's edge...?
;)
 
A very important parameter is, how many stars have planet systems? A decade ago, the most precise answer we could give was: "At least one". Lately, however, numerous stars in our immidiate vicinity have been shown to have planet systems. So now we know that planet systems are probably abundant.

Next parameter; how long is the life-time of a technological civilization. All we know is that our history reaches back a couple of thousand years, earlier than that, it gets very uncertain. If we avoid destroying ourselves, however, we have at least a good chance of existing for hundreds of thousands of years, maybe millions.

I dont know what the equation adds up to at present, but it would seem likely that several civilizations could exist within detectable range, both in time and space. Physical contact is quite another matter. Of course, the physical laws apply universally, both to us and other civilizations, so according to our present knowledge, interstellar travel is extremely difficult and extremely costly, both in terms of ressources and time.

So it seems pretty unlikely that an ET civilization that has mounted the tremendous task of bridging the interstellar gap and reached Earth, whatever their psycology, would not contact us in an obvious way.

We must leave open the possibility of faster-than-light travel. We cannot be sure that this is impossible, but it is important to remember that this is still in the realm of science fiction. We have no indications that it can be achieved, and in particular, that it can be achieved at less than astronomic energy expenditure.

Hans
 
werd to the mothership

spirituality with an understanding of science makes anything possible

extraterrestrials were here before any of us homo sapiens existed
elohim,anunnaki,nephilum

PEACE ONE
zulu--
 
Let me add some odd thoughts to this mix.

Drake tried to come up with a mathematical statement that might allow you to get some idea of what might exist out there in the terms of intelligent life. The thing is that you must guess at several parameters because we don't know what those parameters are. IE, how many planets are capable of supporting life?

Fermi came up with the idea that if a colonizing civilization existed within our galaxy that they have had time enough to populate all planets within our galaxy in around a 1000 years at an exponential growth rate. Yet no where have we seen such signs, so where are they?

The universe is expanding, the evidence of such is in the red shift that we observe while viewing it. At some point the distances will become to great to over come. I mean if we reach the point of being able to travel to another galaxy in say 3 million years, how much farther will we have to travel to reach outlying galaxies as opposed to today? We will be able to?

You will notice that I have made no speculation into whether other life forms exist, much less intelligent life forms.
 
I mean if we reach the point of being able to travel to another galaxy in say 3 million years, how much farther will we have to travel to reach outlying galaxies as opposed to today? We will be able to?
Click to expand...

Perhaps, in 3 million years of exponential technology advancement, we would be able to not only colonize our own galaxy but find ways to move from galaxy to galaxy...assuming we dont destroy ourselves along the way...
 
But!

"in reply to the original statment"

you share some nice math equasions into the picture, but is it not possible we dirived from aliens, we could could be aliens medical experiments, human race could of originated from alien and we are just a lesser evolved form of them. a mutated strain. there are questions about the pyrimids, easter island and the face on mars. what if aliens dont wanna make contact cuase they simply dont care, with the "technoligy" they posses, they are probly off confronting other planets and species. mabey they have a law to not interfear with other forms of life. mabey they dont make contact becuase our form of life is too primative to them and they are fair how WE would use their technoligy. mabey they wish to know more about our world before making contact, we do live in a complex world, full of thousands of creatures and organisms and differnt ways of life. or mabey just mabey they only pass by to pick up our TV and radio signels and enjoy some earth media. heck if you even wanna go far fetched, they may be our gaudians, protecting the earth from other "visitors" or commets or astroids. Mabey just mabey they failed to protect the dinosuars from the big bad commet and there trying just a lil harder to protect us. POSSIBLITYS ARE ENDLESS! i look down on anyone whos doesnt belive in ETs just a little tiny bit :)

PS: i dont think that bring in math to prove a point about comparing the size of the univers and chances of 2 life forms meeting very justifable. please remeber there are still things in space we cannot explain.


PPS: sorry my non-sense dribble, tho i had to say something :)
 
Remember the movie Mars? I want to go where they have gone....:D

BTW: What makes you think that we dont have alines among us disguised as humans (see the first episode of Taken at Sci-Fi )
 
aliens

my opinion is that we are still in a very primative stage of evolution and that we are just begining to understand how the universe works. if you asked someone that lived in the 17th century what they thought about makeing a maned rocket that can go to to the moon and back they would think your crazy because they wouldn't have the same understanding of how things work they probably wouldn't even be able to comprehend a maned rocket going to the moon so to limit your thinking to what we can do now is extreamly narrow minded we haven't even scratched the surfus of what is posable
 
Maybe we don't know shit.

Think about it. The Earth evolves and the plates wipe out continents. Look at continental drift and what the Earth is "believed" to look like several hundred million years ago.

Maybe these ancient civilizations that existed were literally eradicated by tectonic movements - never to be found by future generations of the survivors.

It's like Groundhog Day (the movie with Bill Murray) ... we keep doing it until we do it right (leave the planet).

Just a thought influenced by Sutter Home ....
 
Life must be abundant in the universe. You only have to look at planet earth and its varying forms of life. There are millions and millions of different species of life including some that shouldnt be able to survive in their hostile envornment according to our preconceived prerequisites that are alledgedly required for life to flourish. We are learning every day that life can exist in even the most extreme places.

There will be species of life out there far in advanced of ourselves and how can prove that we have not been visited. I think there is a lot of evidence to the contrary albeit not 100% conclusive.

We as a race would be stupid to think that other intelligent life could be out there. I am open to the possibility that we have been visited and perhaps genetically tampered with over thousands of years. The many religious ancient texts of this world have myths/stories that could be interpretated as a convincing exraterrestrial visitation.

:m: :D
 
this means that humans have only lived through 1 millionth of the years that the universe has been in existance. in other words, if a straight line was drawn for 1 km, the time the human race has been in existence would only take up 1 mm of that line.
Click to expand...

If aliens are way ahead of us,like that quote shows,how can you make guesses like this:

even if alien lifeforms were to exist, the chances that they are even in the earth's reachable distance is extremely small.
Click to expand...

If they are very far from us (other intelligent race),still they have had many more years to develop such a great space technology to detect possible other intelligent races anywhere..
 
heyya IROC89 :)
quote...
i will say that the intelligent human race has inhabited the earth for about 10,000 years.
=====
problems is...
saying that is like saying pie = 3.1 and then building an entire mathamatical system on that bassis.
no offence intended!
its just soo far off the mark it renders your attempted calculations into a fictional story.

groove on :)
 
There are two factors I'd like to add here that i think you are all missing.

Let's examine a pop culture example, the movie Cast Away, Tom Hank's character breaks down the math on the probability of being found to Wilson the volley ball, it's hopelessly small. And that is on a planet 130,000,000 m wide. Now consider how vast Jupitor is compared to Earth? Now comapre the Solar system to Jupitor. The galaxy to the solar system? See where I'm going with this? The greater probabality is that civilizations are rising, dying off and exploring all the time. But considering the massive 3 dimensional space there is to search, the odds of discovering one another is absurdidly small.

My next point builds on the last. The way you guys talk is as if the universe is a vast flat plane with all matter laid out in a linear 2d format. that is not so. the universie is, for all intensive purposes a ball, a sphere. 3D. we sent a satallite out past the asteroid belt yes, in a straight line -> that way. but what if aliens are ^ that way. see what i mean? the cold truth is the probability of discovering one another is infinatly improbable.

Sorry, i believe in aliens too, but seaching through 3 dimensional space is pointless. And to restate what was already said, that's if these aliens are even capable of comunicating with us in a fashion we'd understand.

maybe static is actually a signal? no pattern you say? no pattern that we can see, but as we all know humans are far too 2D to really deal with the universe on a serious level anyway.

please read my article <"Instantism" - The Act of Being> in psuedoscience.

I'd appreciate your views and opinions
 
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