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Old 01-25-2016, 01:42 AM
 
Location: Oregon, formerly Texas
10,004 posts, read 7,147,048 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vasily View Post
What we'd look for to identify life is: structural complexity; some sort of metabolism; active response to what's happening around the organism; growth; reproduction; a mechanism for passing that complexity to the next generation while allowing for natural selection (without natural selection, there will be no speciation and in effect, no biology).

Since the first views of Titan close up, biologists have been thinking about the sort of biochemistry you'd have in an environment that's several hundred degrees below zero F and has oceans of liquid hydrocarbon. Water can't be a solvent, because at those temperatures it's as hard as granite.

So yes, people are considering what life would look like in an utterly alien environment. And the possibilities are limited because the periodic table will be the same no matter what the star system or galaxy; you can only roll the dice so many ways, and the best basis for any kind of self-replicating life is carbon.

If you're asking would the actions of intelligent life be completely unintelligible to us, I believe it's unlikely for a number of reasons. All organisms including humans strive for self-preservation and preservation of their genetic material. We are motivated by a number of other things, including curiosity about the world around us. We've discovered things about the world around us using the scientific method and mathematics, and those will be universals no matter where you're looking in the universe.

So what would motivate an intelligent species to attempt contact with other worlds, or go off-planet?

Attempting contact - curiosity, some ethical or religious reason, a desire to find others like themselves, or some weirdness in their view of the universe or themselves that makes sense within the context of their biology and environment but not in ours. Because of the expense involved, a major effort would need to be worth it to them. Economics will be economics, no matter where you find it. We're not going to engage in a multi-trillion dollar centuries (or millennia) long effort to find other intelligent life; what we're likely to do is a more realistic passive program of looking for the signatures of life and intelligence in other star systems. For the reason of basic economics, any aliens like us will do a cost-benefit analysis before committing their species to an effort of this magnitude -- and it's hard to imagine that making contact would be worth it, unless they're motivated by some weird religious belief system. Or unless they reach a level of sophistication where cheap FTL travel is possible.

Going off planet - I think that one's actually easier: long term survival. We're starting to understand how truly fragile our continued existence here is. Aliens would realize the same thing, and after colonizing their star system and exploiting its resources, be motivated to move outward for survival. Why? Because survival will be programmed into the genes of any species that survives and thrives. If it weren't, they wouldn't survive and thrive, no matter how "alien" they may seem.
If there are advanced aliens with inter-stellar travel capabilities, they probably progressed to post-scarcity economics ages ago. If they could travel to different star systems in reasonable amounts of time, they would have access to all the metals and other elements of theirs and neighboring star systems and their energy sources near-unlimited. I seriously doubt they would think in the economic terms we do. Their valuation systems would be completely different.

I highly doubt they would think in terms of "dollars" and would probably think we're stupid for doing so. The only similarity might have with us is if their life-spans are similarly limited. Then their time would be valuable to them.

It's not inconceivable that in 200 years WE ourselves could have hand-held devices that, after being put out in the sun for a day, would power a car or a house for a year. Imagine how little we would care about oil then - which today is completely responsible for our whole economy. Aliens with FTL travel would probably be exponentially farther along than that.

Also much of our economics are based on our ape-like psychology and behavior. It's unlikely that aliens would share that.
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Old 01-25-2016, 05:20 AM
 
Location: UK
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Apparently quantum physics is already showing us that time travel and warping space is possible and in a few years will be a reality. Then it does not matter how far away these distant stars are, we will be able to get there in very little time. Now.. if we can almost do that now, then others will be able to do that and will be able to get here easily.

It may not be our mineral resources aliens need but may be our human and DNA resources they need. Or.. it could be that the Earth has a special place in the universe and is like a terminus to other places in the galaxy.

There are some people who say that the aliens who are abducting everyone to use for genetic engineering are infiltrating us and have already placed hybrids amongst us. That way of taking over a race "from the inside" would be far more effective than an all-out war and we would not realise it until it was too late.
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Old 01-25-2016, 06:01 AM
 
Location: Falls Church, Fairfax County
5,162 posts, read 4,457,351 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark S. View Post
It's certainly a possibility. But only one of many.

How long have we seriously been looking for extraterrestrial life? 60 years? Given the vastness of the cosmos, a little bit of patience might be in order.

How long have we had the proper tools to find extraterrestrial life? On this, there's absolutely no way to answer.
This is an easy answer. Since humans have existed we ahve had the proper tools.
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Old 01-25-2016, 08:56 AM
 
4,288 posts, read 2,041,589 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John1960 View Post
If the universe is so full of the building blocks for life as we know it, why haven't we found any? Because all the aliens are extinct, a new paper proposes.

Why haven't we found aliens yet? Maybe they're all dead - CNET
I would go with they haven't been found because the universe is an incredibly large place.
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Old 01-25-2016, 09:25 AM
 
Location: City of the Angels
2,222 posts, read 2,328,319 times
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I'm going with the belief that they exist but aren't interested in setting up a communication link with us as we have nothing that they want or if they want something on our planet, they will just take it as they don't need our permission.
There have been so many sightings and legitimate reported encounters to not believe that they exist among us.
Our biggest fears is that they want us for pets to show off to their planetary neighbors like we have our cats and dogs or as working slaves to cater to their wants and needs.
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Old 01-25-2016, 10:07 AM
 
Location: CT
3,440 posts, read 2,507,057 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vasily View Post
See my later post -- I think if a really advanced civilization is out there, there's little reason from an economic perspective for them to find us. I can't recall a lot of discussion of the economics of contact among SETI types; fact is, a species isn't likely to invest a lot of resources in finding primitives (other than passively by remote observation), and barring some breakthrough in cheap FTL travel, won't be particularly motivated to spend enormous amounts of resources over centuries to reach the stars for "research" (species survival is another matter).
I've thought about this perspective for a long time, there would need to be a reason for "them" to come here, is it to exploit resources, or for territorial dominance, or maybe a friendly visit? For any reason there is a financial budget as well as a time budget and we maybe quite insignificant to invest either on.

As far as resources go, what makes us unique? To date, almost every planetary probe and comet mission, we've conducted, hasn't found any unique elements or minerals, some surprising compositions but nothing unusual, it looks like what we see here on earth, is what we can get throughout the galaxy, including water. Resource distribution appears to be pretty homogeneous, much cheaper to access resources closer to the home world.

Galactic empires, why conquer us? What's the point, at our current level of technology and space faring capabilities, we would be insignificant to any nearby advanced races. Besides, our solar system has only one rock that can support complex life (as far as we know), so why expend assets and resources on a relatively primitive world? We're not a threat, we don't offer significantly advanced technologies to a race that can travel light years.

The earth as an interesting place to go? Why? Our sun is nothing particularly special, we have a planetary system, a few planets in the Goldilocks zone, but our early detection of far away solar systems is finding this to be quite common through out the galaxy. Most of our planets are small, nothing interesting about our area of the galaxy that we know of, much more interest near black holes or evolving star clusters, nebulae, novas, neutron stars, to an advanced civilization I would think the locales of high energy sources would attract their scientists, to evolve to their next level of advancement. Again, they would still have a time and resource budget and with so many choices of where to go and what to do, what makes us unique enough to expend them on?
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Old 01-25-2016, 10:08 AM
 
77,734 posts, read 59,889,067 times
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My personal belief is that there is other life out there but the vast distances involved and the restarts on habitable planets due to asteroid impact or other phenomenon limit our interactions.

Also, as one poster so wisely noted, have patience.

We went from the Wright Brothers to the moon in a single persons lifetime....and in the meantime split the atom and developed computers which are a complete joke by what standards will be in just 20 years.

P.S. I have to chuckle though because the stupid history channel had their "Ancient Aliens: Ultimate Evidence" on (I didn't watch it) last night. There is just so much crap out there to wade through and the trash shows, tabloids etc. are a constant barrage of pseudo science and fakery.
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Old 01-25-2016, 10:12 AM
 
Location: CT
3,440 posts, read 2,507,057 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NickofDiamonds View Post
I'm going with the belief that they exist but aren't interested in setting up a communication link with us as we have nothing that they want or if they want something on our planet, they will just take it as they don't need our permission.
There have been so many sightings and legitimate reported encounters to not believe that they exist among us.
Our biggest fears is that they want us for pets to show off to their planetary neighbors like we have our cats and dogs or as working slaves to cater to their wants and needs.
So what you're saying is, it's kind of like messing with your cat by squiggling a light on the floor and driving it nuts trying to catch it? I can see it, in the UFO, "hey Meatzorp, watch this, if they see a light in the sky, it makes them crazy-LOLOLOL"
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Old 01-25-2016, 10:24 AM
 
Location: Asgard
1,185 posts, read 799,401 times
Reputation: 670
Maybe to the advanced aliens who have attained intergalactic travel capabilities, we are just like an insect to them just like we look at an earthworm, so no interest.


OR


Our planet atmosphere is not convenient for their lives? WE need oxygen, they might need something else?


OR


There is nothing on this planet that they might need


OR


They tapped into our cable TV satellite and after seeing what we watch on TV and how we act, treat other creatures, decided that there were no intelligent life forms worthy of a contact?


Or


All the above
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Old 01-25-2016, 10:36 AM
 
3,298 posts, read 2,457,082 times
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Would human society - our governments and religious institutions - be able to survive revelation of superior alien existence? There was an article I read probably 40 years ago that concluded "no"; our systems would fail catastrophically. Therefore the article concluded that it would take generations for humans to assimilate and accept such a truth.
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