Not a Drill: SETI Is Investigating a Possible Extraterrestrial Signal From Deep Space

[ancient]

You mean that they are blundering fools.

Confirmation bias gets the best of us all, reminds me of Pulsars. They sound a lot like broadcasts from intelligent life, but they turned out to just be rapidly rotating stars giving off radio transmission bursts.

...That's what the gubment CLAIMS anyway...

 

[ancient]

Have you seen how Russians drive? It's like that.

In Soviet Russia, car drives you, etc.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Confirmation bias gets the best of us all, reminds me of Pulsars. They sound a lot like broadcasts from intelligent life, but they turned out to just be rapidly rotating stars giving off radio transmission bursts.

...That's what the gubment CLAIMS anyway...

This isn't a case of confirmation bias, since evidence refuting a hypothesis has not been excluded.

It's also not a case of apophenia, which I suppose you might have meant, since the signal was never accepted to have been caused by ET intelligence.

Furthermore, if in fact it was an emission from, say, some country's military satellite, then the event really was caused by an intelligence, and scientists can hardly be faulted for being unaware of the satellite's position and function as the event occurred. The facts that the event was reported and that that conclusion has been recognized as a possibility would support the idea that our scientific programs are functioning properly.

 

[locutus101]

In Soviet Russia, car drives you, etc.

And the TV is watching you...

 

[YellowSubmarine]

And the TV is watching you...

No, that's Samsung.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

No, that's Samsung.

Holy fuck.

 

[locutus101]

No, that's Samsung.

Orwell's Nightmare!

 

[psCargile]

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/we_may_be_the_first_life_in_the_universe-177602

Be forewarned, Science 2.0 will destroy all your sci-fi dreams. . .

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes. That seems a likely explanation to me for the Fermi Paradox as I've stated in other threads -- we might be the first (or among the first) sentient life forms to evolve in our Galaxy. Other possibilities are that we survived the Great Filter (perhaps when eukaryotic, multicellular life developed) or we have yet to experience the Great Filter. This means that the easier it is for life to evolve to our level, the worse are our chances of surviving into the future.

ETA: If the Great Filter lies in our future -- perhaps superbright AIs or their ultrabright creations will choose to wipe the slate clean as the basis for their plans without the encumbrance of having to support what seems like the dead weight of demented and feeble parents. Monstrous from our point of view, of course. Alternatively, perhaps they will choose to keep us on as virtual exhibits in a simulation space. Perhaps that has already happened.

 

[BillJ]

First in the Milky Way? I think that's a stretch. First in this region? Possibly.

 

[locutus101]

Yes. That seems a likely explanation to me for the Fermi Paradox as I've stated in other threads -- we might be the first (or among the first) sentient life forms to evolve in our Galaxy. Other possibilities are that we survived the Great Filter (perhaps when eukaryotic, multicellular life developed) or we have yet to experience the Great Filter. This means that the easier it is for life to evolve to our level, the worse are our chances of surviving into the future.

ETA: If the Great Filter lies in our future -- perhaps superbright AIs or their ultrabright creations will choose to wipe the slate clean as the basis for their plans without the encumbrance of having to support what seems like the dead weight of demented and feeble parents. Monstrous from our point of view, of course. Alternatively, perhaps they will choose to keep us on as virtual exhibits in a simulation space. Perhaps that has already happened.

It could also be that life is so improbable a phenomenon that it happens only once in several instances of universes in the multiverse.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

First in the Milky Way? I think that's a stretch. First in this region? Possibly.

I mostly share your view, but I'll add that we actually know one of the relevant variables – the number of stars in the galaxy and/or universe. We don't actually know the probability of life starting, or the probability of any life evolving into species that form an intelligent civilisation, or how probable is it for the process to fit within the lifespan of a star with a habitable zone. We reason that it must be somewhat probable, because we have kind of sketched the process, but we don't really know. If the overall probability comes out very very very low, we could be the only life in not just the galaxy, but the whole universe.

It's crazy, but our existence in itself is not evidence of anything, since we would experience nearly the same whether civilisations like ours were found once in 100 stars, once in a galaxy, or once in 100 universes. The only difference would come with better understanding and knowledge of evolution and abiogenesis from studying Earth life, to the point where we can tell how likely we are (and therefore everybody else is).

It will be kind of creepy if we learn this before we get direct evidence. We might be at a point where we have scientifically proven that there is other intelligent life in the galaxy, but we are still nowhere in detecting it, every thread like this one is still a false alarm and we have little hope of finding anything.

I've been wishing for us to find find life – even extinct past life – elsewhere in the Solar system (Mars, Enceladus, Europa), as that will solve the first part of the problem the easy way. Well, unless it's related to Earth's life – then it wouldn't be as helpful.

(Other than that, I'm somewhere between “only life in the universe” and “there are clay pots on Mars”, with personal preference of nearest life about 10 light-years away, and nearest civilisation about 500 light years away.)

ETA: There's one argument for being alone in the galaxy though – the possibility for a civilisation to settle the whole thing by launching colonies exponentially.

 

[locutus101]

I don't think we'll colonize anything. Living in space will always costs a few millions times what it costs to living on Earth, so before we can afford to have colonies of thousands within the orbits of the telluric planets we will have resolved absolutely all our problems of scarcity on Earth, and we're more likely to sight flocks of pigs than to see that happen.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

It's not about our costs. If you ever sent a manned exploration mission to another star, and they are equipped with 3D printers that work with in-situ material, robotic construction utilities, and everything to make it not a suicide mission, they would find it cheaper and easier to stay there than to turn back. So as long as they don't die, they'll have colonised the world and will probably would hate you for it.

Actually, the world “sent” is incorrectly used. Someone will want to go there, and will find a way. And for any successful colony, they would probably send another. And the new colony will send another, etc.

The argument against this happening is the same – if it would happen, the aliens should have already done it. And it doesn't seem to be that way.

 

[locutus101]

It's not about costs. If you ever sent a manned exploration mission to another star, and they are equipped with 3D printers that work with in-situ material, robotic construction utilities, and everything to make it not a suicide mission, they would find it cheaper and easier to stay there than to turn back. So as long as they don't die, they'll have colonised the world and will probably would hate you for it.

Actually, the world “sent” is incorrectly used. Someone will want to go there, and will find a way. And for any successful colony, they would probably send another. And the new colony will send another, etc.

The argument against this happening is the same – if it would happen, the aliens should have already done it. And it doesn't seem to be that way.

If you send anything to another star, it'll take millennia to get there, so you'll never hear of it again. Basically it'll be the economical equivalent to burning money..

 

[BillJ]

It's not about costs.

Everything is, at least partially, about cost.

To send anything to HDwhatever is going to cost a heck of a lot of money/resources. Someone's going to have to foot the bill whether taxpayers, private citizens or corporations, and they are going to have to be happy with the fact they'll be long dead before the mission bares any fruit.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

If you send anything to another star, it'll take millennia to get there, so you'll never hear of it again.

Hearing from it again is not necessary. If it took 10 millennia to reach another star, and 40 millennia for them to bootstrap a civilisation with inherited hardware, we would colonise the whole Milky Way in 2.5 million years, which is nothing in geological terms. Just send two.

Everything is, at least partially, about cost.

Not really, as sooner or later someone will do it with their own money, even if the cost comparisons don't make sense to any other sane person. Do it twice successfully, and we're on a roll.

(Of course, that assumes advancements in technology that are presently non-existant, in particular some level of self-replication and better robots.)

 

[locutus101]

Hearing from it again is not necessary. If it took 10 millennia to reach another star, and 40 millennia for them to bootstrap a civilisation with inherited hardware, we would colonise the whole Milky Way in 2.5 million years, which is nothing in geological terms. Just send two.

There's only one problem. If you send say one hundred people you'll have to pack one hundred thousand lifetimes worth of rations with them! Why would we do that? EIther life is ideal on Earth so we can afford to spare that and you'll never find one hundred people willing to exchange paradise with spending the rest of their lives like sardines in their boxes, with barely enough space to breathe and train their waning muscles, or life is not ideal on Earth and we won't be able to afford that waste.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

There's only one problem. If you send say one hundred people you'll have to pack one hundred thousand lifetimes worth of rations with them!

We'll just use 1% less lipstick to pay for it.

Or the crazy people going there are a group of trillionaires who don't need for you to spare anything. They already took your money, and are using it go on a personal suicide mission. Go figure.

Or we are underestimating the technology of tomorrow, and we can get there much faster.

 

[locutus101]

...
Or we are underestimating the technology of tomorrow, and we can get there much faster.

I seriously doubt that. There's not even the shadow of a hint in fundamental Physics that we could ever do something like that.