The whole intelligent life on other planets and communication with us.

[Minifig]

Bill Bryson said it best:

"Of course, it is possible that alien beings travel billions of miles to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in Wiltshire of frighting the daylights out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona (they must have teenagers, after all), but it does seem unlikely.

Still, statistically the probability that there are other thinking beings out there is good. Nobody knows how many starts there are in the Milky Way- estimates range from 100 billion or some to perhaps 400 billion -and the Milky Way is just one of 140 billion or so other galaxies, many of them even larger than ours. In the 1960's, a professor at Cornell named Frank Drake, excited by such whopping numbers, worked out a famous equation designed to calculate the chances of advanced life in the cosmos based on a series of diminishing probabilities.

Under Drakes equation you divide the number of stars in a selected portion of the universe by the number of stars that are likely to have planetary systems; divide that by the number of planetary systems that could theoretically support life; divide that by the number on which life, having arisen, advances to a state of intelligence; and so on. At each such division, the number shrinks colossally- yet even with the most conservative inputs the number of advanced civilizations just in the Milky Way always works out to be somewhere in the millions.

What an interesting and exciting thought. We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at lease two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these being know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs- people who don't know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin "dear sire," and congratulate us on the handsomeness of our horses and our master of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us..."

Also, do you really think that Aliens will take the time to navigate through all of this, to come down and say "Hi!"?

[FloatingFatMan]

Also, do you really think that Aliens will take the time to navigate through all of this, to come down and say "Hi!"?

The only sensible reason I can think of for extra-terrestrial intelligences to visit us is for some kind of zoological purpose. They'd have to be so far ahead of us to be able to make the trip, that we'd be little more then hairless apes in comparison.

[Malisk]

If we'd truly be visited by someone, I'd imagine it would at least be by robots.

I don't really believe in FTL travel from what we know about it today.

Well, maybe some kind of hibernation and replacing bodily fluids or breeding some sort of long lasting organism if they've mastered genetic (or molecular, whatever, if they aren't using genes) engineering, but I think robots would be the by far easiest way of doing it. Heck, we can already build long lasting probes plus long lasting robots that "phone home" with today's technology. It's only a matter of government budgets.

[HAckEur]

If I was an "Alien" traveling the galaxy trough Hyperspace and came across the third quadrant in the Sirius sector and navigated to a system close to a binary star that had some interesting lifeforms on a planet which was covered by a noxious weed known as "humans", I would try to make contact with the intelligent lifeforms (aquatic) and give them advice about getting rid of the noxious weed :)

[mokthraka]

If we'd truly be visited by someone, I'd imagine it would at least be by robots.

I don't really believe in FTL travel from what we know about it today.

Well, maybe some kind of hibernation and replacing bodily fluids or breeding some sort of long lasting organism if they've mastered genetic (or molecular, whatever, if they aren't using genes) engineering, but I think robots would be the by far easiest way of doing it. Heck, we can already build long lasting probes plus long lasting robots that "phone home" with today's technology. It's only a matter of government budgets.

exactly. as far as we know there isnt

remember 100 years ago it was *impossible to go to the moon* just because we dont know something. does not mean its not possible

[Nebula2020]

I believe primitive or sophisticated life does exist somewhere, maybe everywhere in the Universe. But the distance's to travel are so great we aint ever going to know about it in the near future.

Isnt the Universe only so many billion years old? Only so much time for evolution to progress?

Dont get me started, I could go on all night.

:)

[NfoTech]

Yeah. You know, like we are the only "people" in the galaxy/universe.

[Mr. Gibs]

If I was an "Alien" traveling the galaxy trough Hyperspace and came across the third quadrant in the Sirius sector and navigated to a system close to a binary star that had some interesting lifeforms on a planet which was covered by a noxious weed known as "humans", I would try to make contact with the intelligent lifeforms (aquatic) and give them advice about getting rid of the noxious weed :)

"They" should give you advice on how to end your crack addiction. =)

[Raa]

If we're aware that it takes 200 years to see 200 light years away, I think it's very likely the other "intelligent" forms out there know the same thing. So IF we were to receive a response, it'd more likely to be "Here's how you can reply to us..." :p

[lamminium]

What about the creatures from a dimensional space other than ours? :p

Ah... endless possibilities.

[AllMac]

What I don't get is all those documentaries that tell you how much we understand about the universe, where in fact, we don't understand siht.

We don't even understand 80% of our own planet.

[Athlonite]

and their all saying to each other if those earthlings ever get out of their solar system we'll have no other choice but to annihilate them.... Unfortunately for us our code cracking skills are so crap we interpret what we hear as "hi we come in peace"

[Snowl]

Also, do you really think that Aliens will take the time to navigate through all of this, to come down and say "Hi!"?

Woah, that made me feel really small :(

[Axel]

If we'd truly be visited by someone, I'd imagine it would at least be by robots.

I don't really believe in FTL travel from what we know about it today.

Well, maybe some kind of hibernation and replacing bodily fluids or breeding some sort of long lasting organism if they've mastered genetic (or molecular, whatever, if they aren't using genes) engineering, but I think robots would be the by far easiest way of doing it. Heck, we can already build long lasting probes plus long lasting robots that "phone home" with today's technology. It's only a matter of government budgets.

What about relativistic time dilation? If a form of propulsion were devloped wich could take us to 99% the speed of light (just don't crash into anything), a 200 lightyear distance may be seen as a 200 year mission (well, slightly more) from the perspective of Earth, but in the spaceship it would be a 28 year journey (according to this calculator: http://www.1728.com/reltivty.htm ).

So it is theoretically possible to visit life on other planets with a single generation of human beings. The problem would come in choosing a suitable planet... and what to do when you get there. Either way, using the figures mentioned. It'd be at least 400 years until the experiment would pay off and yield any payback for the people of earth.

[Farstrider]

(Minifig @ Sep 30 2009, 20:13)

Also, do you really think that Aliens will take the time to navigate through all of this, to come down and say "Hi!"?

Although I have seen the pictures of the planet comparisons and the Hubble sequences, it never fails to amaze me! We really are totally insignificant in the great scale of things!

[mokthraka]

Bill Bryson said it best:

Also, do you really think that Aliens will take the time to navigate through all of this, to come down and say "Hi!"?

I dont know exactly where you get they would have to go though half that.

those are based on size

[YBG]

who says they are really that far away anyway :shifty:

[mudslag]

The only sensible reason I can think of for extra-terrestrial intelligences to visit us is for some kind of zoological purpose. They'd have to be so far ahead of us to be able to make the trip, that we'd be little more then hairless apes in comparison.

How many people on our planet have traveled the planet to not only study other creatures but just sit and watch? Answer: millions....No reason to think Aliens wouldnt be interested in doing the same to us. Maybe they are doing tv shows the same way we watch NeoGeo on ants or us.

who says they are really that far away anyway :shifty:

ding ding ding, "far away" is subjective. Far away for us now on Earth is not the same as it was just 100 yrs ago.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

The weak anthropic principle: "...conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exist."

The way my professor explained this in laments terms for us at art school was that we exist on the planet earth because the conditions for us to exist are perfect to do so. The right amount of oxygen, gravity, etc. etc. etc.

So if you believe this, then it is not only possible, but also very plausible, that life exists somewhere else in the galaxy. The way he explained that is it might not be life as far as we know it, and said it could be life that we do not even recognize with the human eye.

So just something to think about. What we know as life forms are indeed not the only type of life forms that may exist... thus the term alien.

[-KJ]

Maybe they are more intelligent beings, have their own set of measurements and understanding of how things work and are more flexible with it than what we have constructed through our observations. I think it's strange to have probabilities thrown with the vast unknown and our VERY limited knowledge of how the universe and even our own damn selves work, but I guess it makes people feel more comfortable.