Aliens, hell yes, hell no, get outta here.

If you’re talking intelegent life, the great filter has to be explained.

Either humanity will survive the next couple hundred years and get to a point where we can build self sustaining space colonies, or we will regress and - having used all our fossil fuel - earth won’t produce another space faring civilisation for a long time.

if we do survive though, then those colonies will inevitably head to the stars. One we can launch one colony successfully to alpha centauri we will spread over the galaxy exponentially over the next 10 million years with no way of stopping it, short of a local supernova in the next 20,000 years. We won’t be a single civilisation - culturally or biologically, and may not even have history of where we started, but earth originated dna will be everywhere and it will be unstoppable.

With that in mind it seems unlikely that another space faring species is in this galaxy.

Howver there are answers to the great filter, just finished the Salvation trilogy by Peter F Hamilton, which is one answer to that.

 

Given how huge the universe is, I think it is extremely likely there is other life out there.

However, intelligent life (whatever that may mean exactly) and civilizations might be sparse across space and time. Perhaps so sparse that we'll never directly be in contact with another 'civilization-building' species. But that's also dependent on what kind of (interstellar) travel will ultimately prove feasible, if at all.

Anyway, if we are the 'first ones' as some suggest, I'm not too sure I like that idea.

I mean, then it apparently falls to us to litter the galaxy with mysterious machines and artifacts with terrible powers not well understood by younger races (why not simply neatly clean up after ourselves?), become reclusive from the galactic affairs of other species, yet still manipulate them from behind the curtains, destroying their research under crappy excuses such as 'you are not yet ready for immortality', and offering 'counsel and guidance' only in the form of enigmatic and paradoxical remarks that are completely useless to them, but that, only after the crisis has passed, turn out to be true in some way.

I'm starting to hate us already for the bunch of dicks we'll turn into in that case

 

Earth took 4 billion years to turn out a sentient technological life form. For a planet to do that in the shooting gallery of space, to keep a habitable biosphere in working condition for that long, is just simply luck. Which of course doesn't mean it can't happen. I think most life out there will be very simple life.

 

I think most life here is simple life - even the sort that believes that it's intelligent.

 

Technological civilizations may be rare in time in space. Perhaps ours is the only one in the Milky Way.

But.....

We can't say that none have arisen in other spiral galaxies, of which there are very many in the universe. We even have an encouraging datum-the detection of a planet in the Whirlpool Galaxy. Indicating that not only are planets possible in other spiral galaxies, but also can exist in another subtype of spiral galaxy. (The Milky Way is a barred spiral).

 

If they're smart, they'll stay away from these primitives.

 

Well aliens would have to be at least smarter then the human race.. So they might avoid it. I bet aliens don't have facebook

 

Or faces.

Maybe.

 

Actually that's a valid point they might not have any features we would recognize

 

Heck no if they're anything like the visitors from the 80's V Movies.

 

If anything they'd be like the Independence Day aliens and only want to strip mine everything....

 

An important discovery to be sure. Though I would have been much more surprised had they discovered (or deduced by other discoveries) that planets were non-existent in such galaxies.

 

They already did that to Miranda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miranda_(moon)#/media/File:PIA18185_Miranda's_Icy_Face.jpg

In the news
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221101-should-extraterrestrial-life-be-granted-sentient-rights
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...Earth-needs-prepare-alien-encounter-late.html
https://www.space.com/alien-contact-protocol.html
https://www.theguardian.com/science...-contact-humanity-who-decides-what-we-do-next

Signals
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2023/04/21/seti-and-signal-leakage-where-do-our-transmissions-go/
https://www.livescience.com/seti-planetary-transit-alien-signals
https://www.space.com/seti-planetary-transit-alien-signals

Alone
https://forum.cosmoquest.org/forum/...verse-today/3707393-what-if-we’re-truly-alone

 

That is a matter of opinion. At least they gave it a cool name

 

Given the vastness of the universe, I believe there must be intelligent alien life out there, somewhere. I don't expect to ever know, but I certainly believe.

 

If one might posit that earlier in the universe when conditions were even less welcoming to the development of technological species (I'll just quit using sentient, the we know about sentience the more confusing it becomes, but the ability to develop the vibrator congruently with the first mains-power grid systems is proof we are capable of much more. I digress), one or more Boltzmann Brain entities may have formed. If it is possible such a thing might have occurred before the big bang, and therefore outside of it, or even causing it. If a Boltzmann brain did exist with a capability of influencing events around it, and had been doing so for a few billion years, that would be where to start looking for intelligent life. The downside is if such a hyper-intelligent being existed, we're crossing into the realm of the theological, and if it did not want to be found directly, the only way to know would be to look for signs that the universe had been manipulated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_asymmetry

 

What the?
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/sta...e-pilots-divulge-more-concerning-info-n702342

 

I have a shiny slightly used bridge for sale. One owner

 

what would be some ways in which extradimensional phenomenon might be manifested within three dimensions?

 

Alternatively, what if there is life on other world, lots of it spread across the universe but it really is only about the same level or slightly more advanced then we are, maybe the only differences being what they might look like and maybe technological differences. Maybe their computer and IT tech is for example light years beyond us but they haven't left their home system. Maybe they just build probes and automated ships and have those do all the leg work for them.

What if that is what is going on and they are just content to stay in their part of the galaxy and not venture out, not that they actually could but their machines do the work for them?