Are we alone ?

Regardless of your answer - should we be signalling into space using directional antennas ?

Good article in the NYTimes - notice it mentions HAM radio receivers and the positions of various luminaries in the scientific community.

History shows that no good comes to the lesser advanced culture when someone finds them...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...nytcore-iphone-share

I vote to not signal our galactic overlords...

The nearest star is 4.2 light years away. We have only had ham radio for little more than 100 years.

Those guys haven't even heard us yet, let alone answered. This assumes they might want to after they hear what we talk about.

If they have caught any of our nightly news, it's no wonder they don't want to talk to us.

we are no where near as alone as most think, but its because we choose it

We're alone in the sense that the Universe is so vast, the distances between active civilizations are too great to be traversed, unless we're talking about two different planets in the same solar system (which is unlikely).

However, given the number is stars in the Universe, life elsewhere is a mathematical and logical certainty.

Couldn't hurt.

If you play the odds, with the nearly infinite planets out there and the nearly random way matter is distributed throughout the universe, then it's nearly certain that other life exists.

But until we invent faster than light communications, humanity will be long dead by the time our signals reach an intelligent species out there. And unless that species has faster than light travel, we'll be twice long dead before they get here.

Look at it this way: there's a chance that there's a single cell organism out there somewhere. By the time our signal reaches them, there's a chance that organism might have had time to evolve into a technologically superior culture. Humanity will have been long dead. And by the time one of their envoys arrive here, their civilization will likely also be long dead. On the timeline of the universe, life is only a brief flash. Not only are we contending with great distances, we're also dealing with a timing issue. It's like trying to hit a fire cracker with a .22lr, at the exact moment a fire cracker pops, across the Atlantic ocean, without knowing the location of the fire cracker or when it's going to pop.

No doubt there's life out there. Doesn't mean we are any less alone.

No way we're alone, and I would certainly hope that should that signal be received we are significantly more advanced than we are now by the time any curious/marauding aliens stop by to visit.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
We're alone in the sense that the Universe is so vast, the distances between active civilizations are too great to be traversed, unless we're talking about two different planets in the same solar system (which is unlikely).

However, given the number is stars in the Universe, life elsewhere is a mathematical and logical certainty.

Para and Stephan Hawking agree, mathematically we are not alone.

Para and I agree, the space is so great, we can't traverse the distance to matter.

Read that if the Sun were the size of a tennis ball and located in Dallas, the Earth would be the size of a grain of sand and the nearest sun to us would be in Boston, the next nearest in Moscow. And we gather all our "knowledge" about those stars from a piece of glass which is infinitely small on that grain of sand.

All those stars we see at night are pin holes in a curtain, reflections of our ourselves, or other atoms which comprise another being.

Thank you for the link / post!

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
The nearest star is 4.2 light years away. We have only had ham radio for little more than 100 years.

Those guys haven't even heard us yet, let alone answered. This assumes they might want to after they hear what we talk about.

Light, and radio waves, travel from earth to Alpha Centauri in 4.37 years.

Whenever this topic comes up I always encourage people to read this link:

The Fermi Paradox

It's a very interesting take on the topic.

Oh, and if you like that you should take a look at their 'Putting Time in Perspective' discussion as well. Really cool.

Putting Time in Perspective

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
Whenever this topic comes up I always encourage people to read this link:

The Fermi Paradox

It's a very interesting take on the topic.

Oh, and if you like that you should take a look at their 'Putting Time in Perspective' discussion as well. Really cool.

Putting Time in Perspective

That was a fascinating read, thank you.

I believe we are the only sentient life in the u iverse.

However, if I am wrong, we should NOT try to contact anybody.

Some guy said once in a documentary about SETI that by doing so we would risk "suffering the same fate as any other human 'discovered' race.". .

I'm willing to believe there MAY be other intelligent life in the Universe, but I don't care about it one way or the other. I don't think there would ever be any FTF between us and them. I also don't worry about being conquered by advanced civilizations for the same reason--we won't ever meet.

flashguy

As an amateur astronomer I spend a lot of time looking up at the stars and the thought always crosses my mind.

However I always temper the thought with the fact that with the exception of solar system objects, looking into space is looking back in time.

That bright red star Sirius is 8.6 LY away - what you see tonight is what it looked like 8.6 years ago. And that's relatively close (but not the closest star to earth). The Andromeda galaxy is 2.54 MILLION light years away - what we see today is 2.54 million years old. Fortunately its moving on a collision course with us so over the next few years it will be getting closer

Space is really big and I find it exceptionally difficult to even consider that we are the sole life form anywhere in the universe.

The fact that we haven't been contacted yet is most likely because no one is close enough to have heard us, or even know we are here.

We are going to be a food source.

Thanks for sharing. Now, back to the thread.

quote:

Originally posted by isthatasiginyourpocket:

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
Whenever this topic comes up I always encourage people to read this link:

The Fermi Paradox

It's a very interesting take on the topic.

Oh, and if you like that you should take a look at their 'Putting Time in Perspective' discussion as well. Really cool.

Putting Time in Perspective

That was a fascinating read, thank you.

Disagree partially. Chapter 3 was a craptastic dumpster fire. Otherwise, had some stimulating musings....