Zog's Blog

I do not beleive the information is depressing, i believe it to be an accurate reflection based on what we know today, you are not bad for pointing that out. Other things to think about should some advanced alien culture overcome the vast distances of space and pay us are visit are -

1) Why assume that they would be friendly, if they are that well advanced they might be looking for somewhere to set up a new colony (as our own explorers did) or even a buffet table.

2) If they do come here our civilisation as we know it will be destoryed, in all human history i can think of no single instance where the visited culture was not changed for the worse or destroyed.

The Pale Blue Dot puts everything into perspective.

I think there are some factual errors here.

1. This assumes that life must be our kind of life. I dont believe that is a warranted assumption. Habitable band for life that is pretty much just like us is pretty narrow, but for life in general? The boundaries are unknown and almost completely unexplored.

2. Agree there. Our form life has been around on earth at least 3.5 billion years, and while some will claim that we have recently managed to achieve rudimentary intelligence, I frankly have my doubts.

3. I am not sure the net affect of these catastrophes is always negative however.

4. Well the 10k year mark may be short for agriculture, but is about right for writing. And writing does seem to be a pretty good benchmark of sorts.

I will quit going point by point here, and just add that while I agree that there are a number of hurdles there, there are also an inconceivably large number of stars much older than ours. So if you want to look at it as a numbers game, it may be a very unlikely throw of the dice, but when you throw the dice often enough you can count on some hits.

I am more worried about what a truly intelligent species would do if they happened to notice us. Quite possibly declare the planet a menace to public health and sterilise it.

An interesting topic. For one, I think some of the limitations noted include degrees of intelligence.

Sure, it took "us" many years to do things we consider extraordinary, but that's assuming we're the limit of intelligence and that "aliens" if you will can only match, if not fail to come close, to that level of intellect.

The idea that attracts most people is the never ending possibilities. If there is life out there, and I believe there is, then who's to say they follow the rules our civilisation follow?

I find it hard enough to grasp the concept of there being senses other than ours. "Mind reading" was invented by our imagination, but surely any beings out there would have senses other than our 5?

I do not believe any of us have a valid reason to suggest something will "never be". To say "never", is close to, if not the same thing as, saying something is impossible, when comparing what we do know to all that we have not even remotely begun to scratch the surface on, us humans are still too extremely primitive in our intelligence and understanding to actually make a sound judgment suggesting that something will never happen. As far as intelligent life goes, we are yet to even leave our own galaxy, however we have reason to believe there are countless other galaxies out there, all with their own planetary systems. To me, it don't sound too far fetched at all to suggest that it's likely that out of all those galaxies out there, there are one or more planets aside from earth, capable of, or currently sustaining life, perhaps even intelligent life.

None the less, this is a good blog, so I figured I would add my two cents.

We don't even know from what the majority of the universe is built. We just call it "dark matter". It is not that different from saying how Moon is build from cheese, prior to us learning better.

So I suppose what I am trying to say here is and to not put a finer point on it: "We know !@#$." Us speculating about extra terrestrial life is an interesting pass time that intrigues our imagination. As well as a profitable branch of entertainment industry. Now that as a life form, we can actually comprehend the meaning--- not that incredibly long ago, it would take quite some time to explain to an average human what "extra terrestrial life" means and it would be questionable if he would really properly understand.

So humanity learned a new word and its now playing with it. That is all fine, as long as all those playing with our new learned word realize and always stress that-- they really know !@#$. Basis upon which they have to build their speculations is too little for anything more serious then "poking in the complete dark". That goes for what you wrote as much as for what Stephen Hawking has to say.

We just do not know.

Just imagine, what new words we will learn in the next 100 years,...

.nvm.

There are probably countless other civilizations similar to ours in the infinite universe. As a young civilization here on this planet- we cannot fathom what truly is.

Mass Effect 2 will be reality one day. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE.

The problem with discussing this kind of thing is the same problem with debating the existance of any sort of "supernatural being". As of me writing this, both sides of these arguments are non-falsifiable. We do not have enough knowledge to prove whether or not these things exist, so we can do is make informed guesses based on what we do know. And given the apparently infinite nature of our reality, "what we know" is inherently insignificant.

I agree for the most parts on why you feel that it is extremely unlikely that we will make contact with intelligent life other than our own, but I don't see that as a reason to believe that we will not. As well, I see no particular reason to assume that humanity is definitely doomed - other than the inevitable heat death of the universe.

Mass Effect 2 will be reality one day. I REFUSE TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE.

I hope you're right. Liara T'Soni is pretty hot and I would find the shadow broker for her any day of the week.

There's probably some sort of life a couple of light years away. Hopefully we can find a way to create and control worm wholes. Would make space exploration a tad easier... Or we just happen to find a Mass Relay :v

The problem with aliens visiting us is that the level of technology they would have to have would make it, literally, child's play to kill us all. Like, throwing-a-battery-at-us easy.

And there probably is other advanced life out there, its just that radiowaves take a long, long time to reach us, so we probably won't ever find them. And it is scientifically possible for us to move beyond Earth, just not very politically possible.

You're acting as if the behavior and physiology of intelligent life of the universe will be the same as humanity, which is naive.

Is this information genuinely depressing? If so, why?

There is something oddly cool about the possiblity of other life, and especially intelligent life, on other worlds, something Hollywood etc has tapped into, I guess it's rather depressing to then be told that the chances of finding it are the same as winning the lottery a couple of weeks in a row.

Am I wrong? Is there some law of physics I'm overlooking? Are Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha and Frank Tipler going to arrive to take us to a wonderful singularity filled with virgins and beer bongs?

The only bit I disagree with is the assertion that intelligent life can only exist on a planet like earth, I think it's too early to say that it can't exist outside that zone. A few decades ago the possiblity that life could exist on the moons of Jupiter would have been unthinkable, yet now there is quite a serious discussion on the subject. Obviously on earth Humans have had a lot of help in becoming intelligent from the conditions on this planet, but we only have one case study of life existing on a world, it's too early imo to say therefore that intelligent life can only exist on a world like ours.

If I'm right, does my my pointing this out make me a bad person? Should everyone just give up? Should you stop reading this and just go 'off' yourself?

No it doesn't but then some people like have a understanding of the world they like and don't like people telling them it's all wrong.

Putting doughnuts in the refrigerator is criminal, it hardens the cake. That is more important than alien discussions.

Mahomet isn't coming back for anyone; he was a merchant who noticed that legitimate faiths could amass wealth, and won his gamble that fake ones can, too. Second most important.

The only alien anyone is ever going to have to worry about is carrying a leafblower and hanging out at the far end of the hardware store's parking lot with about 16 more aliens.

And one more observation: The nutters who believe Earth was seeded by aliens get all the benefits of religion with none of the responsibilities. Awful self-serving.

There may be significant barriers to space exploration, but dammit zog we will have our long rod penetrators.

No your point is apt. I see no reason why it should crush anyone's dreams or hopes. I also see no reason why it would conflict with religious views. I mean that is like basing your relgious belief on the fact that God dwells in the 10th sphere.

Putting doughnuts in the refrigerator is criminal, it hardens the cake. That is more important than alien discussions.

You, my friend, 'get it'.

You are officially someone from CN I would like to hang out with sometime. Not that you didnt know that already....

The Pale Blue Dot puts everything into perspective.

He is completely wrong. Why want to live for fame and glory? You are known by your own little fans. What is wrong with that? We live on Eearth, this is where it matters. Its very hard to explain, but our world is OUR WORLD.

An interesting topic. For one, I think some of the limitations noted include degrees of intelligence.

Sure, it took "us" many years to do things we consider extraordinary, but that's assuming we're the limit of intelligence and that "aliens" if you will can only match, if not fail to come close, to that level of intellect.

The idea that attracts most people is the never ending possibilities. If there is life out there, and I believe there is, then who's to say they follow the rules our civilisation follow?

I find it hard enough to grasp the concept of there being senses other than ours. "Mind reading" was invented by our imagination, but surely any beings out there would have senses other than our 5?

Yes, there are beings. In fact, sharks, as you may have known, have a sixth sense. So why not intelligent life.

Also, OP, that is a pretty horrible way to look at things. I am looking for not truth, but discovery. I don't care about how real or unreal it is, just DISCOVERING is enough. To go, "i asume der iz no aleean liff" is a bad way to think. I'm sure there is. The universe is infinite. Huge and full of minerals, planet, heat, food, and other things us humans have never seen before. Maybe there is life, that is intelligent! Have you counted all the planets? There are quadrillions, most likely more. The chances of two having intelligent life are extremely high, maybe 20%! Now I don't think life will contact us, but just space in general boggles the mind.

What I find curious is that most of the responses here address not what I've said, but what people think I've said. Not going to single anyone out....I just wish folks would read a bit more carefully.

*tear* beautiful...

I think that overall this was a little pessimistic. There could be thousands of intelligent civilizations in the stars but don't use radio or TV equipment to communicate with eachother. Maybe these civilizations are intelligent but have no interest aside from maintaining their own civilization on their own world.

Since the only way we could determine if there was/is another civilization out there is by radio contact, there really is no way to know how many are out there. I think that it would be prety low though, considering that of the millions of species on Earth only one is "intelligent" (but there are a few others which communicate with eachother verbally and use tools).

I think the prospect of life beyond Earth is pretty likely. We see life living in the most extreme environments on Earth, so what's to say there aren't aquatic life forms living beneath the surface of Europa? Or methane based life living in the thick atmosphere of Titan? There's also the possibiliy of fossils on Mars of life that could have existed there billions of years ago.

These three worlds are the most likely to contain life in our solar system, so the best place to start looking would be there. Do not be discouraged by the fact that we have found hundreds of gas giants but only one exoplanet in the habitable zone- this is just a sampling bias, it's a lot easier for astronomers to detect these huge planets than it is for them to find one the size of Earth.

Over time our technology will develop where we can actually view exoplanets in high detail. The possibility of manned interstellar travel is there too, though that is quite far off from now, as we haven't even been to another planet yet.

As long as humans devote more of our resources to space exploration and technological advancement, I firmly believe we will discover life elsewhere within the next 30 years.

The fact of the matter is that our technology to detect alien life is pretty weak right now, so the only correct answer to alien civilizations and extraterrestrial life is simply, "We don't know". Life here on Earth could have just been a miraculous fluke, or it could be pretty common throughout the galaxy. But the fact that there are billions of stars in our galaxy, and the fact that life is in extreme abundance here on Earth, means that it could happen elsewhere. It's only a matter of time I think until we find life beyond Earth.