SETI - Why look for Alien life when the odds are they have found us


vcoleiro1

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Ok, heres my Sunday arvo thinking.


I have heard time and time again that statistically there must be many many intelligent races in the universe. If this is the case , the odds are heavily stacked that these races must be on majority more advanced than us. The odds being that they should have found us already (even if more intelligent life was a minority). This leads to some interesting thought.


If there is intelligent life out there then why look for it as they would surely have found us already. Perhaps theres a line of thought that some would be trying to contact us and we should be looking for there direct signal.


If it is possible to travel great distances than these intelligent beings would have already visited earth - barring any universal law prohibiting them from interfering with fledgling races. If they have been here, the questions are endless , ie why dont they make themselves known?, have they interfered in our past, if so how would we feel about that?


In conclusion, Statistically there is intelligent life out there , and statistically they would have already found us. Scary thought?. So why havent they contacted us?, or have they and we dont know about it? Perhaps they have interfered in our history - how would we feel about that.


"Hey were the cyborg race from orion .By the way 1000 years ago we interfered in your history and you know religion XX, well we kind of started that, sorry bout that"
 
Lol - if they're capable of crossing interstellar distances without needing a generation ship to do so, what makes you think they'd be at all interested in contacting us? Sure they might come for a look, but contact? With a race that's still pretty much stuck in the dark ages? ROFL.


D.
 
Lol - if they're capable of crossing interstellar distances without needing a generation ship to do so, what makes you think they'd be at all interested in contacting us? Sure they might come for a look, but contact? With a race that's still pretty much stuck in the dark ages? ROFL.


D.

Yes I agree, its like if we found a primitive race some time in the future, there would be nothing to gain for us by contacting them. We also would not want to interfere in there culture and advancement having learned our lessons in our own history. We would only just observe them, perhaps run some tests on there dna and plants to see if we could get find anything interesting we could use. As per War of the worlds, there planets microbacterial defences would stop us breathing there air.


Theres probably an alien computer somewhere scanning this very thread. Spoooky
 
1) Statistics aren't facts. The odds of there being intelligent life out there is fairly high, but not 100%, and the odds that at least some of it is more intelligent than us is also fairly high but still not 100%. They search because there is a chance we're alone, and because someone has to be the first species into space and we could be it.


2) If we are surrounded by more intelligent species that are aware of us but aren't interested, that's all the more reason to keep looking: they have a lot to teach us and we won't learn a thing by sitting here waiting for them to tell us.
 
They way I have always understood it to be is like this.


Parts of the Universe have had conditions similar to our back water corner of the galaxy for a few billion years. The most advanced form of life on our planet 1 billion years ago was a worm. Don't you think we could go to a planet of worms and systematically wipe them all out with out them knowing they were under attack. :p


I'm sure my thinking on this is very very limited but we have only really been broadcasting our presence out into space (radio/tv waves) for a really short time cosmically speaking and those signals haven't gone anywhere in a galactic sense so we still might be hidden, but when they show up, they are going to want our Pandora's for sure!
 
I'm sure my thinking on this is very very limited but we have only really been broadcasting our presence out into space (radio/tv waves) for a really short time cosmically speaking and those signals haven't gone anywhere in a galactic sense so we still might be hidden, but when they show up, they are going to want our Pandora's for sure!

Continuing my line of thinking about Aliens already being aware of us. Surely such Aliens would have unthinkably powerfull computers which would be scanning all Earth communications for chatter about Alien life(them), particulalry the internet. In light of this it is a sure bet that this computer is scanning this thread right now. I would like to take this opportunity to say to this "computer", that Halcyon's Pandora is the best Pandora on earth by far and well worth your journey across the emptyness of space to steal said Pandora. Please do not interpret this as a suggestion that you should take such Pandora by force, but if the situation should arise all necessary actions should be engaged to pry said Pandora from Halcyon's hands. (lol) :p
 
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I think you may be underestimating the vastness of the universe - even if there were at least one super-intelligent spacefaring species "nearby" (say, within this galaxy), there are over 200 billion stars they'd have to check - the resources it would take to monitor every system for intelligent activity are enormous, and could probably be used for more directly beneficial macro-engineering projects.
 
All jokes aside me and my 2 brothers saw a series of lights moving at extremely high speeds in an exacting formation over the mountains in Tralee Ireland.The lights,which i could only think of as spacecraft continued in this formation all night.Oddly the formation would end and start again on a loop resetting all night. It was just like many examples you see on telly or videos.


They were either alien craft or advanced technology made by someone. Though the constantly looping and resetting formation of the craft made me think of something that might have been automated somehow.This went on for literally hours and we went to bed at 6am and it was still continuing.I kid you not.
 
Please do not interpret this as a suggestion that you should take such Pandora by force, but if the situation should arise all necessary actions should be engaged to pry said Pandora from Halcyon's hands. (lol) :p

Some computer comes down here to try to take my Pandora, I hope they bring there A game, Not only do I have a cat army, but I'm willing swallow the whole thing to keep them from getting there hands on it. I think I will make my Pandora less atractive by putting stickers from brands for douche bags on it. Need to round up some of those cowboy up and tap out stickers and cover the whole thing. :p
 
.The lights (...) continued in this formation all night (...) the formation would end and start again on a loop resetting all night (...) the constantly looping and resetting formation of the craft made me think of something that might have been automated somehow.This went on for literally hours and we went to bed at 6am and it was still continuing.I kid you not.

Sounds a lot like high power spotlights - like searchlights, but with a much narrower beam specifically to make attention grabbing displays at high alitude. From nearby the visible ground level beams (think 20th Century Fox logo) guide punters to whatever premises is running them. They are programmable to run in combinations of elliptical and figure 8 patterns.


When the (then) Point Depot (now O2 arena) started using one to signal events, lots of people started reporting sightings all over the suburbs many miles away. There are a number of companies in Ireland that rent these out to nightclubs and parties. With special permission Lasers can sometimes be used, some of the effects with the right atmospherics can be very 'convincing'.
 
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I'd like to hear more about the alleged statistics that posit that there are many intelligent races in the universe and a majority of them are more advanced than we are.
 
Yes, and me. I find it hard to believe that this proof exists, hu-man
 
I have heard time and time again that statistically there must be many many intelligent races in the universe.
How can we have a meaningfull statistic with so many unknowns? How did they do this statistics?

If this is the case , the odds are heavily stacked that these races must be on majority more advanced than us.
Why?


There is no reason to believe that the majority of live is more inteligent or advanced than us. Actualy if we look at the only reference, which is our planet there is only one race out of millions thats advanced as we are and that are we humans.

The odds being that they should have found us already (even if more intelligent life was a minority).
Why?


I am pretty sure there is intelligent life out there but i am also pretty sure the odds are very slim we will actualy find it and if we find it the odds are even slimmer we will personaly meet.
 
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Because our solar system is a youngling in this grand galaxy of ours, with the majority being several billion years older, some as many as three times older. Statistically speaking, assuming an even distribution of life-potential solar systems, more than half are older and therefore should have started developing life sooner.
 
Ok, for the statisticians here are the numbers. There not mine, so don't shoot the messenger:


To put things into perspective, the theory for intelligent life is based on there being over 150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe, this is an estimate based on the visible amount of stars, galaxies etc which seems to go up every year as we discover more with our telescopes etc. Granted that the conditions for life are small for each galaxy, however, when you multiply that very small number by such a vast number as 150,000 Blllion Billion, the number is vastly in favour of inteligent life existing in some numbers . I think the estimate is 50 intelligent races per galaxy (with each galaxy containing 300,000,000,000 stars , so 50 is a pretty small figure). There are 500,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. So the estimate for the universe is 25,000,000,000,000 intelligent races. But this is either nor here or there, my point was ( as per the title of the thread) , why are we looking for intelligent life when.


a) It exists in such numbers that they surely have discovered us, not necessarily traveled to us, but discovered us, and yet dont want to contact us . Think about how far advanced our science will be in 1000 years , we probably would have discovered every exo planet in the universe by then. I seriously doubt communication would still be using electromagnetic waves. Who knows what sort of quantum fluctuation crap they will be using by then, so these arguments about searching for light speed electomagnetic waves dont make any sense. Surely in a 1000 years we will be using something else. So why do we look for electromagnetic/radio waves when these are surely not likely to be the communication most advanced races would use. Its narrow minded based on what we know now .


B) Doesnt exist (as some have said) , so again why look
 
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whats B) ???


Edit: TIL: letter b before a closed parentheses equals cool guy face
 
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