There is a lot of truth to this...
Aliens?
- Thread starter ribsnwhiskey
- Start date
There is a lot of truth to this...
Yep. This is proof that the greater powers are stupid.
After posting this, I realized that the Looney Tunes strategy to come back against the Monstars was eerily similar to the strategy the Castaways and Harlem Globetrotters used to come back against the robots in that one Gilligan's Island movie.
Yes. I'm kind of slow.
While it is likely there is other intelligent life out there within our galaxy (and seems almost a certainty that there is bacterial life and other non-sentient life in many solar systems), the biggest challenge in making contact (along with technology of course) will be finding an alien civilization with a timeline that overlaps with ours. Think about it - we humans have only been on Earth for a small fraction of our planet's existence. And we've only had the technology to even detect a spacecraft orbiting our planet for approximately a century. That is 100 years out of 4.5 billion years out of Earth's lifespan. If we assume other civilizations are somewhat similar to our species history, that creates quite a hurdle. There could be many, many stars where sentient species have already evolved and died out. And many where they won't develop until long after we are gone.
It's a really interesting time now. We are finding loads of planets with our high powered telescopes, many in orbits around stars that could theoretically produce conditions similar to our own that are conducive to life. I'm also really excited about the plan to visit the nearby solar system with the microscopic probes. The one that is backed by Steven Hawking's, and the other scientists and tech geniuses. We could potentially see that come to fruition during our lifetime!
It's a really interesting time now. We are finding loads of planets with our high powered telescopes, many in orbits around stars that could theoretically produce conditions similar to our own that are conducive to life. I'm also really excited about the plan to visit the nearby solar system with the microscopic probes. The one that is backed by Steven Hawking's, and the other scientists and tech geniuses. We could potentially see that come to fruition during our lifetime!
It's also theorized that it is extremely unlikely that a civilization survives long enough to expand past it's own planet or learn how to travel/communicate long distances. In the process of technological development nearly all civilizations would have either killed themselves off directly or killed their planet.
CloneIce & BBH - while I recognize the validity of your posts, and the reality of how astronomical the odds are (you should pardon the pun) that two civilizations make contact across the vast expanse of space, I prefer to keep a somewhat childlike sense of wonder when I look at the stars. 
CloneIce & BBH - while I recognize the validity of your posts, and the reality of how astronomical the odds are (you should pardon the pun) that two civilizations make contact across the vast expanse of space, I prefer to keep a somewhat childlike sense of wonder when I look at the stars.
Me too. The one thing that I always wonder about when I hear those kinds of theories is how do they know those civilizations will be anything like ours? All of their predictions seem to be based off of all other intelligent life developing like us. How do we know that in other places it's not more common for natural selection to select for beings that care deeply for each other and nature?
So many theories are of doom and gloom because WE are, but maybe we're the odd ones and the rest of the universe is a bunch of hippies.
I'm STILL hoping we'll go to Mars in my lifetime...but they might want to speed things up just a tad!
You have a good shot at this. I believe that in <20 years a human will be on Mars. And I even sort of know what I am talking about, as an AeroE grad and space enthusiast. I've even met Seth Shostak, though that is more relevant to the SETI OP.
Elon Musk has publicly stated he "wants to die on Mars, though not on impact". SpaceX will do some version of Mars Direct and get him there.
It was once my dream to go into space. Age and a distinct lack of useful skills for a voyage of that sort meant I would probably have to wait for a more commercial setting. Unfortunately, I lack the financial resources. I hope you're right about less than 20 years...I'm already 61.
CloneIce & BBH - while I recognize the validity of your posts, and the reality of how astronomical the odds are (you should pardon the pun) that two civilizations make contact across the vast expanse of space, I prefer to keep a somewhat childlike sense of wonder when I look at the stars.
Me too! I just wanted to point out - everybody focuses solely on distance, and leaves the civilization lifespan variable out of the equation. I did too, until I heard Neil Degrasse Tyson discussing it. It's really interesting to me to think about how that factors in as well.
True, and a valid point. But of course, we are mostly viewing other potential alien civilizations through the lens of human history, and our own issues. I really hope there are other species out there who are less violent than us.
But on the flip side, war at times also results in great technological leaps forward...
Edit: after I posted this, I saw you posted almost the same thing in another post!
We need an understatement button. I don't mean to belittle your point, but to me this would be like the biggest thing that could happen in my life time. I can't currently think of anything that would compare.
When the aliens took you up inside the space ship, did they perform any experiments on you?
Usually when I read through the comments about videos about aliens on Youtube, someone will inevitably have mentioned "the Nephilim" by now. Since no one did, I took it upon myself to do so...
