We can make it so it's never aliens, or always aliens. Public and science opinion has become a free for all lately.
People are so caught up in the 3I/ATLAS stuff, for example. Should we beam a message to it? What should we think of it? It's a circus.
Let's go back to Boyajian's Star instead. Can we really be sure the dimming is not caused by a mothership coming from that direction? It explains everything, right? Maybe that's how they communicate, by sending a paper plane and opening a large occlusion origami that says "we come from this general direction" (I'm cosplaying Avi Loeb here, satirically).
There's something about interpretation in all of this. Space is full of radio signals. We determine lots of them to be natural (with good reason).
I'm afraid proposing "we should answer" (in case of electromagnetic signals) could lead to a scenario in which people are encouraged to believe something without the means to verifying it. Some idiot group could do it just to increase the popular optimism about space in order to induce a favorable perception on the development of space technologies with the ultimate goal of just bumping some industry with money. It's the kind of world we live in right now, unfortunatelly.
If we want to be serious about humanity's place in the universe, first we need to be serious about our home right here. I don't think we're mature enough to have responsible control over technologies that could be used to send a powerful signal into space.
I think Avi knows what he's doing, and he wants other scientists to dismiss him in public, so he gets an audience.
However, there is a chance he could be underestimating that audience, or at least part of it.
Finding a new type of comet is a scientific breakthrough, and I think his work points in that direction (still a guess from him though, but an educated one). He is trying to cake up those potential genuine discovers with sloppy sensacionalist makeup on top, and that's why I call it a circus.
If in a few months we confirm that 3I/ATLAS is a new kind of comet, he could use the papers he wrote to say he found evidence of that new type first, and also described its landmark characteristics. It would "legitimize" him. But the alien stuff would probably continue to be garbage. He can then say the scientists were skeptics, but he was right.
Now, what angle the aliens narrative serve? Why would a scientist subject himself to being a clown? I don't exactly know. In his case, I don't think it's good stuff.
I chose Tabby's Star to satirize him because my description of a mothership deploying an origami-like occluder matches the overall conclusion from the research at the time (a disturbed exomoon). It's an object from that system that changed is shape. In fact, "disturbed exosatellite" and "unfolding mothership from a planet" are quite compatible descriptions. What matters here is epistemology (we can't know if it's natural or not). Also, it's a good demonstration that we (general public non-astronomers) don't need his antics to imagine things.
Not sure. Can some of HN at least agree that if it's the Empire we all join and act as if we love serving the Emperor and then put subtle code in the planet killing weapons that overload and self destruct if pointed at human listed planets?
Though I feel this is fairly lazily written, it does have a basic premise I've seen before.
I read an article about post cold war US society. Basically, from 1989-2001 the United States was in a transition period that culminated with the first opportunity to seize on a "universal bad" (terrorism) because the USSR filled the role so readily for so long, US society was set adrift with partisan factions that couldn't find a common enemy to get behind in times of internal struggle.
That is the gist of the article, sub USSR for aliens and all of humanity for US society and you have the same basic outline
- Setup a massive array of antennas in space for reception only
- Try to decode their radio traffic and understand how they are exchanging information
- Steal their their knowledge and use it to advance human race forward.
- Reduce all our electromagnetic emissions to minimum to deny them the same advantage. Forbid anyone from sending signal towards them so we have time to technologically catch up to them without them noticing.
Any kind of contact will ends up in abysmal disaster as we have seen in the past, when advanced civilization shown up on shores of less advanced one.
Hopefully we never have the pleasure of discovering Prothean style ruins on a nearby planet and Pluto isn't actually a frozen mass relay. That one never ends well.
Though I personally love the idea of advanced, civilized extraterrestrial life. I hope it exists (statistically feels likely but yet to be confirmed). Even if it turns out we humans are at a near lockstep with another civilization it'd be game changing if we could communicate especially.
All that said, maybe there's a "galactic civilization onboarding" program once a species meets a sufficiently advanced criteria independently, with no outside intervention. Perhaps the universe will turn our ideas on their head, and assumptions may not apply.
Our understanding of the world, for however great it is, is still likely full of things we can't fathom and unknowns we don't know. Its fun to speculate but the reality is we are only basing most of our knowledge on how things might be in the universe based on our singular planet's path of evolution.
It makes it truly hard to think of what alternative life forms may exist.
Star trek-ish idea of massive cooperation between species is desperately naive though. Its secondary-school level of hand-holding and singing kumbayah around fire, and yet it still couldn't evade massive wars that sometimes wiped out entire civilizations.
Lockstep evolution is extremely improbable. Even 1000 years head start is massive, a more realistic one would be tens of millions of years or more.
The space is finite, so is Milky way. Eventually, even if its far in the future, species will compete for resources and energy. The smarter ones realize that problems are easier solved as soon as possible, and we have dark forest stuff. Mankind is slowly also inching in that realization. We should work hard on improving ourselves massively and spreading out before caring whats out there. I simply can't imagine a realistic scenario where there won't be some immediate attack, ie speeding up some very dark asteroid into relativistic speeds, aimed at Earth.
Also, why should xenophoby, racism and similar perks be available only to humanity. Even we can see how deeply flawed creatures we are.
Send memes. Most commenters here assume receiving a message means aliens can reach us - they can't. Think about how distant the closest galaxy is and think about how long it would take to reach them even at light speed. The size of the ship needed, the amount of fuel needed not only for acceleration but stopping as well. Even if they 100x or 1000x our space abilities, it would still be impossible.
>The name of the hypothesis derives from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like ghosts". According to the dark forest hypothesis, since the intentions of any newly contacted civilization can never be known with certainty, then if one is encountered, it is best to make a preemptive strike, in order to avoid the potential extinction of one's own species. The novel provides a detailed investigation of Liu's concerns about alien contact.
What would we become in such a universe? We would take a step back, it will become about survival again (I know it's like that on earth here and there), not about growing together, exploring. It's like Star Trek's mirror universe.
Sure I'd fight for humanity, but I'd be so disappointed. Maybe even enough to just give up.
(I have to admit I just could not make it through part 2 of the Three Body problem, it went to slow for me.)
> The Berserker hypothesis, also known as the deadly probes scenario, is the idea that humans have not yet detected intelligent alien life in the universe because it has been systematically destroyed by a series of lethal Von Neumann probes.
Liu Cixin had to break the laws of physics -- badly, multiple times -- in order to make the Dark Forest game theory work. That's not a problem, fictional rules are good fun, but generalizing his conclusions back to the real world without sending them through a customs inspection first is a problem. See also: do the dinosaurs escape because the laws of chaos theory dictate that dinosaur zoos are mathematically impossible? Or do they escape because otherwise I wouldn't pay to see the movie and neither would you?
If we ground ourselves back in reality where the speed of light is probably law and the spooky aliens probably don't get to tamper the laws of physics, the actual game-theoretic winning move is always to grow voraciously, threat or no.
The moot question isn't what will happen after Earth receives and confirms an alien signal.
The question is moot, because any alien species advanced enough to send directed signals across solar systems, can and will reach, overwhelm and subsume Earth with ease, once we Earthlings manage to contact such aliens.
And if such events happened in the past, that might explain a few interesting notions we humans tend to have.
"Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God."
~Shermer's last law
But what if that was their intention from the very beginning? What if Earth itself is just yet another alien farm?
What if Earth's beautiful and bountiful life (flora and fauna) was the result of terraforming, by aliens, but indirectly using spores tacked onto cosmic flying objects (comets, meteors, asteroids) that they knew will cross such solar systems and crash into inhabitable planets on some not so random chance?
Abiogenesis is the emergence of life from nonliving organics. It is the leading theory regarding how life spawned on Earth, but it is being questioned due to recent evidence.
Conditions for Life:
For life to exist, certain conditions must be met. These include:
* Presence of Water: Essential for biochemical reactions.
* Organic Compounds: Building blocks like carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are crucial.
* Energy Source: Sunlight or geothermal energy can drive life processes.
Evidence and Research:
While no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found, scientists continue to explore environments on other planets, such as Mars and Europa, which may harbor conditions suitable for life. The study of extremophiles on Earth—organisms that thrive in harsh conditions—provides insights into how life might exist elsewhere in the universe
One prominent theory regarding the extraterrestrial origin of life is Panspermia.
The Panspermia Hypothesis suggests that life, or the building blocks of life, may have been transported to Earth via comets, asteroids, or space dust.
There are several forms of panspermia:
* Naturalistic Panspermia:
Life evolves on another planet and is ejected into space, eventually landing on Earth.
* Directed Panspermia:
Intelligent beings from another planet intentionally send life to Earth.
* Intelligent Design Panspermia:
Life is designed and seeded by extraterrestrial intelligences.
I believe Earth life is the result of Natural Panspermia. But if SETI or other observatories detect and confirm alien signal, then Directed Panspermia might be our origin.
> The question is moot, because any alien species advanced enough to send directed signals across solar systems, can and will reach, overwhelm and subsume Earth with ease, once we Earthlings manage to contact such aliens.
Not possible if our scientific understanding of c is accurate.
I don't care how many episodes of ST you've binged; warp speed is just fantasy.
Is possible, and easy if one accelerates at 1 G for half the trip, then decelerates at 1 G for half the trip. Conventional nuclear fission AND fusion rocket engines, like NERVA, already exist and are flight-certified. 1 light year could be traveled in 2 pilot years.
What is SciFi today may become the reality in the future.
The iconic flip-type TriCorder telecommunicator of Star Trek, became the inspiration of the world's first portable cellular phone (first of which was the DynaTac, quickly followed by MicroTac and StarTac (world's first portable flip phone, and yup, that name is not a coincidence)) by Motorola (more famous iteration later as the iconic Moto Razr). Motorola engineer Martin Cooper said that watching Captain Kirk using his communicator on the television show Star Trek inspired him with a stunning idea -- to develop a handheld mobile phone.
Did you know that Radar was invented during experiments with radio waves for "Death Ray Gun" weaponry? A
death ray is a theoretical particle beam or electromagnetic weapon that gained popularity in science fiction during the 1920s and 1930s after inventors like Nikola Tesla claimed to have developed one. British scientists, asked to evaluate the feasibility of a radio-wave "death ray gun" (supposedly being developed by the Nazis) finally concluded it was impossible, but realized the same principles could be used for aircraft detection.
Galileo was jailed (put under house arrest, till he died of ill health) for his "blasphemous" statements concerning Heliocentricity, etc., but ancient Hindus have known and documented (in their Vedic texts) about Multiverse, Observer Effect, Illusory nature of Reality (e.g., modern science confirms that touch is an illusion of reality, we really cannot touch anything: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TDgey6g65X0) , and fundamentals of mathematics and science since thousands of years, many centuries or millennia before such concepts became understood and accepted by Western scientists or theorists.
Human flight was considered an impossible fantasy, until the Wright Brothers made it a reality.
Space flight was unproven until the Soviets made it a reality.
Did you know that scientists estimated the mass of all matter and all energy of this Universe, but they believe it accounts only for 5% of the content of the Universe? The remaining 95% of this Universe is unknown, but scientists believe it to be comprised of anti-matter and anti-energy, which are not yet understood properly by modern science. SciFi concept, this may seem, but that's the prevailing scientific theory.
Now think about this idea.. What if an advanced alien species, were made of anti-matter and using anti-energy? Would their technology obey the laws of physics as our modern scie...
Just because something was unpredictable in the past does not in any way make it certain in the future.
The "invention of tricorders" is far, far, far less impressive than breaking the known laws of the universe, after more than a century of literally trying to prove them wrong with experiments.
In all seriousness, I think if we did receive something, it would be classified immediately, and the government, or governments, will move very swiftly with a heavy hand to silence the discovery. At the very least until they know exactly what it is, what it is conveying, and how to respond.
That said, I think that if it got out, a lot of people would absolutely lose their snot. Completely. It would be chaos in some places.
Ha, or, perhaps for a 2025 variant: it would quickly be shared publicly by government scientists (who are not as secretive or good at keeping secrets as the public seems to think!), the evidence all shared publicly, subject to international peer review and consensus. And then 70% of people would believe it's made-up. The US-sphere would believe China made it up as a plot (or "globalists") and the developing world and BRICS would believe the US made it up as a plot. Western countries would repeatedly sign and then remove themselves from international treaties to prepare for contact.
Bit too on the nose, maybe, but a heck of a lot more likely than a coverup by government scientists.
>That said, I think that if it got out, a lot of people would absolutely lose their snot. Completely. It would be chaos in some places.
It would definitely be the most important discovery ever made and would move some billions of dollars, but realistically I think people would just carry on with their lives (assuming physical contact with them is impossible in a lifetime).
I think there were be the usual bunch of weirdos that predict the end of the world for Thursday, and then the other significant batch of weirdos who will quickly explain it with their religion of choice.
After some ohhhs and ahhhhs we would switch to the next thing.
Time is a factor here. How close in time and space would be them?
If we get something coming from more than 100 light years away we might not have the technology to respond, and if we do it may not matter anyway if we are at risk of not having a technological civilization anymore 100-200 years forward. So the meaningful actions on those cases may not include answering back.
Then it will be the actual use of that message. Lets assume that we will decide that is a signal from a civilization that is out there. It will be a signal meant for us and for any other civilization that doesn't have the knowledge/culture level as them, meant for giving us a common ground for communicating back, or it will be something that just will tell us that someone intelligent is out there, but no mean to understand it?
So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one, and how our civilization will react if widely enough will change with time, novelty at first and indifference a few years later.
this is a question i have explored as part of my own scifi world building:
what is a realistic timeline for first contact, and how will it actually happen?
so we decode a message that we are pretty sure is of alien origin.
we send a message back and then wait a few decades or centuries.
we don't know how far away the origin of the message is. let's assume that it is less than 50 light years. that's still a round trip of 100 years. in other words it's a generational project, and we don't know if our first response is understood. we'll have to keep iterating until we can confirm that we are actually communicating. and then, the next step will be to try to understand each other.
with a round trip that long, even under the most optimal conditions just establishing a dialog based on say math is going to take a few centuries.
of course once we have a dialog, communication is going to speed up because then we can send longer messages.
but then it could still take anywhere from 500 to 1000 years before a common language is developed and we are able to share actual scientific and engineering knowledge.
once we reached that level of communication however, we can collaborate on developing FTL.
contrary to star trek, it was always my idea that FTL travel is not developed by the inhabitants of each planet/star system on their own, but only in collaboration across multiple such systems. maybe even more than two. driven by the desire to meet each other.
so from the point of the first received message it will be one millennium before we get to learn anything about and from these aliens, and another millennium before we can meet them in person.
and that's the optimistic projection. it could just as well take 10 times as long.
Earth has a number of very high power semi directional transmitters operating. By this I mean the assorted 50 hertz and 60 hertz AC power systems. These are coherent in areas because there are separated adjacent systems that act to isolate them. These are long in wavelength at about 3000 miles and will penetrate the ionosphere via capacitance. If we had a long wave receiver in orbit past the earth, it could listen on an incrementally varying wavelength from 25 hertz to ~~300 hertz for any similarly radiating civilisation. This radiation would be reduced by square law spreading, but a phase locked loop receiver that gradually scanned this frequency space should be able to detect such radiation out to 100-500 light years. The PLL listens for a long integrating interval, and then steps to the next frequency. The antenna can be tuned to cover the 25 Hz to 300 Hz spectrum by use of mechanically adjustable loading coils. Such an antenna could be a simple long wire that is gravitationally solar stabilised so it would sweep annually. A similar one could be earth centered to enable sweeps at it's far from earth orbit much faster than annually? This is a project that Elon Musk could easily perform and it might get us a Nobel? if we found anything? It would sit there and sieve data in hope of success?
In the end, I kinda... don't care. Look up - there's nothing. There should be at least some alien civilizations trying to make their presence known. There should be some signs somewhere that could be recognized universally as either "stay away" or "come here". It really should be trivial to locate technological civilizations unless you've got some incredibly solid reason as to why EVERY SINGLE ALIEN CIVILIZATION IN THE UNIVERSE acts a certain way. Color me doubtful.
We have billions and billions of data points showing the Universe is empty. We have exactly one (1) data point showing it isn't. And that's us.
Besides, just look at the timeline. The universe has only been cool enough, with enough stable stars, with enough formed planets for potential life to form for a few billion years. Between that and the Drake equation, life alone is likely to be unreasonably uncommon. Life that forms after a planet becomes stable, doesn't have any planet-altering disasters, evolves to complex multicellular forms, evolves some kind of intelligence, becomes social, forms a society, advances technology, and starts exploring the universe...? Why bother? The math doesn't work.
Note: I'm not speaking about any KIND of life existing, I'm speaking about technological civilizations. My belief is that we are essentially the forerunners.
"Given that our civilization is unable to assimilate well even those concepts that originate in human heads when they appear outside its main current, although the creators of those concepts are, after all, children of the same age—how could we have assumed that we would be capable of understanding a civilization totally unlike ours, if it addressed us across the cosmic gulf?"
The decision to not respond should not be considered an option for the UN. They can get a week max to decide what to respond, but a response needs to be sent quick. Otherwise you can assume someone will take the choice away and respond anyway. That someone could be a nation not liking the UN discussions, or it could be a rogue scientists with access to the powerful radios. (I doubt most of us could respond if we wanted to - even if someone is willing to break all laws they are either protected by too much security or they are too expensive to afford - but I guarantee someone who works at such a facility is willing to risk responding if governments delay too long)
Even if the UN makes a respond expect someone else to send a different one at some point.
This is referenced in a sci fi book "The dark forest" of the series "The 3 body problem". It sets a convincing narrative that because of time taken for observation and response and development speed of society it is most likely that all civilizations that announce themselves would likely be a threat in terms of technological supremacy eventually to observing civilizations. In other words, we don't hear anything because any sufficiently advanced civilization would not want to risk being discovered. I.e., the "dark silent forest".
former chairman of the board of the SETI Institute John Gertz:
'In fact, the author has heard from serious U.S. SETI researchers that they are convinced that “men in black suits” will appear at their laboratory door the moment a detection is confirmed.'
IMO a protocol that doesn't involve automated instantaneous backing up of data on a publicly-referenceable blockchain is worthless due to the apparently legitimate (in the eyes SETI researchers that a former SETI institute chairman references) concern about security services quietly stepping in the way.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 74.4 ms ] threadPeople are so caught up in the 3I/ATLAS stuff, for example. Should we beam a message to it? What should we think of it? It's a circus.
Let's go back to Boyajian's Star instead. Can we really be sure the dimming is not caused by a mothership coming from that direction? It explains everything, right? Maybe that's how they communicate, by sending a paper plane and opening a large occlusion origami that says "we come from this general direction" (I'm cosplaying Avi Loeb here, satirically).
There's something about interpretation in all of this. Space is full of radio signals. We determine lots of them to be natural (with good reason).
I'm afraid proposing "we should answer" (in case of electromagnetic signals) could lead to a scenario in which people are encouraged to believe something without the means to verifying it. Some idiot group could do it just to increase the popular optimism about space in order to induce a favorable perception on the development of space technologies with the ultimate goal of just bumping some industry with money. It's the kind of world we live in right now, unfortunatelly.
If we want to be serious about humanity's place in the universe, first we need to be serious about our home right here. I don't think we're mature enough to have responsible control over technologies that could be used to send a powerful signal into space.
Is it really a circus? Seems almost everyone who knows what they're talking about says it's just a natural object.
Anything can be a circus if you listen to people who don't know what they're talking about.
However, there is a chance he could be underestimating that audience, or at least part of it.
Finding a new type of comet is a scientific breakthrough, and I think his work points in that direction (still a guess from him though, but an educated one). He is trying to cake up those potential genuine discovers with sloppy sensacionalist makeup on top, and that's why I call it a circus.
If in a few months we confirm that 3I/ATLAS is a new kind of comet, he could use the papers he wrote to say he found evidence of that new type first, and also described its landmark characteristics. It would "legitimize" him. But the alien stuff would probably continue to be garbage. He can then say the scientists were skeptics, but he was right.
Now, what angle the aliens narrative serve? Why would a scientist subject himself to being a clown? I don't exactly know. In his case, I don't think it's good stuff.
I chose Tabby's Star to satirize him because my description of a mothership deploying an origami-like occluder matches the overall conclusion from the research at the time (a disturbed exomoon). It's an object from that system that changed is shape. In fact, "disturbed exosatellite" and "unfolding mothership from a planet" are quite compatible descriptions. What matters here is epistemology (we can't know if it's natural or not). Also, it's a good demonstration that we (general public non-astronomers) don't need his antics to imagine things.
Not sure. Can some of HN at least agree that if it's the Empire we all join and act as if we love serving the Emperor and then put subtle code in the planet killing weapons that overload and self destruct if pointed at human listed planets?
I read an article about post cold war US society. Basically, from 1989-2001 the United States was in a transition period that culminated with the first opportunity to seize on a "universal bad" (terrorism) because the USSR filled the role so readily for so long, US society was set adrift with partisan factions that couldn't find a common enemy to get behind in times of internal struggle.
That is the gist of the article, sub USSR for aliens and all of humanity for US society and you have the same basic outline
- Setup a massive array of antennas in space for reception only
- Try to decode their radio traffic and understand how they are exchanging information
- Steal their their knowledge and use it to advance human race forward.
- Reduce all our electromagnetic emissions to minimum to deny them the same advantage. Forbid anyone from sending signal towards them so we have time to technologically catch up to them without them noticing.
Any kind of contact will ends up in abysmal disaster as we have seen in the past, when advanced civilization shown up on shores of less advanced one.
Though I personally love the idea of advanced, civilized extraterrestrial life. I hope it exists (statistically feels likely but yet to be confirmed). Even if it turns out we humans are at a near lockstep with another civilization it'd be game changing if we could communicate especially.
All that said, maybe there's a "galactic civilization onboarding" program once a species meets a sufficiently advanced criteria independently, with no outside intervention. Perhaps the universe will turn our ideas on their head, and assumptions may not apply.
Our understanding of the world, for however great it is, is still likely full of things we can't fathom and unknowns we don't know. Its fun to speculate but the reality is we are only basing most of our knowledge on how things might be in the universe based on our singular planet's path of evolution.
It makes it truly hard to think of what alternative life forms may exist.
Lockstep evolution is extremely improbable. Even 1000 years head start is massive, a more realistic one would be tens of millions of years or more.
The space is finite, so is Milky way. Eventually, even if its far in the future, species will compete for resources and energy. The smarter ones realize that problems are easier solved as soon as possible, and we have dark forest stuff. Mankind is slowly also inching in that realization. We should work hard on improving ourselves massively and spreading out before caring whats out there. I simply can't imagine a realistic scenario where there won't be some immediate attack, ie speeding up some very dark asteroid into relativistic speeds, aimed at Earth.
Also, why should xenophoby, racism and similar perks be available only to humanity. Even we can see how deeply flawed creatures we are.
We would learn that they are gelatinous beings who coi5nt in base 17 and show an antenna to say hello.
>The name of the hypothesis derives from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like ghosts". According to the dark forest hypothesis, since the intentions of any newly contacted civilization can never be known with certainty, then if one is encountered, it is best to make a preemptive strike, in order to avoid the potential extinction of one's own species. The novel provides a detailed investigation of Liu's concerns about alien contact.
Sure I'd fight for humanity, but I'd be so disappointed. Maybe even enough to just give up.
(I have to admit I just could not make it through part 2 of the Three Body problem, it went to slow for me.)
> The Berserker hypothesis, also known as the deadly probes scenario, is the idea that humans have not yet detected intelligent alien life in the universe because it has been systematically destroyed by a series of lethal Von Neumann probes.
If we ground ourselves back in reality where the speed of light is probably law and the spooky aliens probably don't get to tamper the laws of physics, the actual game-theoretic winning move is always to grow voraciously, threat or no.
Couldn't they have some other way of seeing things?
The question is moot, because any alien species advanced enough to send directed signals across solar systems, can and will reach, overwhelm and subsume Earth with ease, once we Earthlings manage to contact such aliens.
And if such events happened in the past, that might explain a few interesting notions we humans tend to have.
"Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God." ~Shermer's last law
But what if that was their intention from the very beginning? What if Earth itself is just yet another alien farm?
What if Earth's beautiful and bountiful life (flora and fauna) was the result of terraforming, by aliens, but indirectly using spores tacked onto cosmic flying objects (comets, meteors, asteroids) that they knew will cross such solar systems and crash into inhabitable planets on some not so random chance?
Abiogenesis is the emergence of life from nonliving organics. It is the leading theory regarding how life spawned on Earth, but it is being questioned due to recent evidence.
Conditions for Life: For life to exist, certain conditions must be met. These include:
* Presence of Water: Essential for biochemical reactions. * Organic Compounds: Building blocks like carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are crucial. * Energy Source: Sunlight or geothermal energy can drive life processes.
Evidence and Research: While no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial life has been found, scientists continue to explore environments on other planets, such as Mars and Europa, which may harbor conditions suitable for life. The study of extremophiles on Earth—organisms that thrive in harsh conditions—provides insights into how life might exist elsewhere in the universe
One prominent theory regarding the extraterrestrial origin of life is Panspermia.
The Panspermia Hypothesis suggests that life, or the building blocks of life, may have been transported to Earth via comets, asteroids, or space dust.
There are several forms of panspermia:
* Naturalistic Panspermia: Life evolves on another planet and is ejected into space, eventually landing on Earth.
* Directed Panspermia: Intelligent beings from another planet intentionally send life to Earth.
* Intelligent Design Panspermia: Life is designed and seeded by extraterrestrial intelligences.
I believe Earth life is the result of Natural Panspermia. But if SETI or other observatories detect and confirm alien signal, then Directed Panspermia might be our origin.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a66036689/a-scientist...
Not possible if our scientific understanding of c is accurate.
I don't care how many episodes of ST you've binged; warp speed is just fantasy.
Very different.
The iconic flip-type TriCorder telecommunicator of Star Trek, became the inspiration of the world's first portable cellular phone (first of which was the DynaTac, quickly followed by MicroTac and StarTac (world's first portable flip phone, and yup, that name is not a coincidence)) by Motorola (more famous iteration later as the iconic Moto Razr). Motorola engineer Martin Cooper said that watching Captain Kirk using his communicator on the television show Star Trek inspired him with a stunning idea -- to develop a handheld mobile phone.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/motorola-startac-rainbow-ce...
Star Trek's teleportation may have been SciFi, but Quantum teleportation has been proven to be doable in reality.
https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/first-demonstrat...
https://www.aol.com/articles/oxford-physicists-achieve-telep...
Iron Man's Arc Reactor is a fusion reactor and pure sci-fi, but the Chinese and Americans are racing to build the first viable fusion reactors. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a64704814/ch...
Did you know that Radar was invented during experiments with radio waves for "Death Ray Gun" weaponry? A death ray is a theoretical particle beam or electromagnetic weapon that gained popularity in science fiction during the 1920s and 1930s after inventors like Nikola Tesla claimed to have developed one. British scientists, asked to evaluate the feasibility of a radio-wave "death ray gun" (supposedly being developed by the Nazis) finally concluded it was impossible, but realized the same principles could be used for aircraft detection.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41188464
Galileo was jailed (put under house arrest, till he died of ill health) for his "blasphemous" statements concerning Heliocentricity, etc., but ancient Hindus have known and documented (in their Vedic texts) about Multiverse, Observer Effect, Illusory nature of Reality (e.g., modern science confirms that touch is an illusion of reality, we really cannot touch anything: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TDgey6g65X0) , and fundamentals of mathematics and science since thousands of years, many centuries or millennia before such concepts became understood and accepted by Western scientists or theorists.
Human flight was considered an impossible fantasy, until the Wright Brothers made it a reality.
Space flight was unproven until the Soviets made it a reality.
Did you know that scientists estimated the mass of all matter and all energy of this Universe, but they believe it accounts only for 5% of the content of the Universe? The remaining 95% of this Universe is unknown, but scientists believe it to be comprised of anti-matter and anti-energy, which are not yet understood properly by modern science. SciFi concept, this may seem, but that's the prevailing scientific theory.
Now think about this idea.. What if an advanced alien species, were made of anti-matter and using anti-energy? Would their technology obey the laws of physics as our modern scie...
The "invention of tricorders" is far, far, far less impressive than breaking the known laws of the universe, after more than a century of literally trying to prove them wrong with experiments.
Now, if they left some time ago...
In all seriousness, I think if we did receive something, it would be classified immediately, and the government, or governments, will move very swiftly with a heavy hand to silence the discovery. At the very least until they know exactly what it is, what it is conveying, and how to respond.
That said, I think that if it got out, a lot of people would absolutely lose their snot. Completely. It would be chaos in some places.
Bit too on the nose, maybe, but a heck of a lot more likely than a coverup by government scientists.
It would definitely be the most important discovery ever made and would move some billions of dollars, but realistically I think people would just carry on with their lives (assuming physical contact with them is impossible in a lifetime).
After some ohhhs and ahhhhs we would switch to the next thing.
If we get something coming from more than 100 light years away we might not have the technology to respond, and if we do it may not matter anyway if we are at risk of not having a technological civilization anymore 100-200 years forward. So the meaningful actions on those cases may not include answering back.
Then it will be the actual use of that message. Lets assume that we will decide that is a signal from a civilization that is out there. It will be a signal meant for us and for any other civilization that doesn't have the knowledge/culture level as them, meant for giving us a common ground for communicating back, or it will be something that just will tell us that someone intelligent is out there, but no mean to understand it?
So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one, and how our civilization will react if widely enough will change with time, novelty at first and indifference a few years later.
what is a realistic timeline for first contact, and how will it actually happen?
so we decode a message that we are pretty sure is of alien origin.
we send a message back and then wait a few decades or centuries.
we don't know how far away the origin of the message is. let's assume that it is less than 50 light years. that's still a round trip of 100 years. in other words it's a generational project, and we don't know if our first response is understood. we'll have to keep iterating until we can confirm that we are actually communicating. and then, the next step will be to try to understand each other.
with a round trip that long, even under the most optimal conditions just establishing a dialog based on say math is going to take a few centuries.
of course once we have a dialog, communication is going to speed up because then we can send longer messages.
but then it could still take anywhere from 500 to 1000 years before a common language is developed and we are able to share actual scientific and engineering knowledge.
once we reached that level of communication however, we can collaborate on developing FTL.
contrary to star trek, it was always my idea that FTL travel is not developed by the inhabitants of each planet/star system on their own, but only in collaboration across multiple such systems. maybe even more than two. driven by the desire to meet each other.
so from the point of the first received message it will be one millennium before we get to learn anything about and from these aliens, and another millennium before we can meet them in person.
and that's the optimistic projection. it could just as well take 10 times as long.
Resume the search for intelligence right here on Earth?
Just my personal opinion.
We have billions and billions of data points showing the Universe is empty. We have exactly one (1) data point showing it isn't. And that's us.
Besides, just look at the timeline. The universe has only been cool enough, with enough stable stars, with enough formed planets for potential life to form for a few billion years. Between that and the Drake equation, life alone is likely to be unreasonably uncommon. Life that forms after a planet becomes stable, doesn't have any planet-altering disasters, evolves to complex multicellular forms, evolves some kind of intelligence, becomes social, forms a society, advances technology, and starts exploring the universe...? Why bother? The math doesn't work.
Note: I'm not speaking about any KIND of life existing, I'm speaking about technological civilizations. My belief is that we are essentially the forerunners.
"Given that our civilization is unable to assimilate well even those concepts that originate in human heads when they appear outside its main current, although the creators of those concepts are, after all, children of the same age—how could we have assumed that we would be capable of understanding a civilization totally unlike ours, if it addressed us across the cosmic gulf?"
It's the only way to be sure.
Beg to be saved from ourselves? Fire up the old electronic thumb? Open a theme restaurant?
Even if the UN makes a respond expect someone else to send a different one at some point.
It will be out in 2 weeks!
'In fact, the author has heard from serious U.S. SETI researchers that they are convinced that “men in black suits” will appear at their laboratory door the moment a detection is confirmed.'
Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.08422
IMO a protocol that doesn't involve automated instantaneous backing up of data on a publicly-referenceable blockchain is worthless due to the apparently legitimate (in the eyes SETI researchers that a former SETI institute chairman references) concern about security services quietly stepping in the way.
(see my other comment for reference)