Why Haven't We Found Life Yet In the Universe?

[Trekker4747]

I think I feel good putting my money on the chances of there being another planet, lots of other planets, with life and even intelligent life on it.

Don't get me wrong -- I was never questioning your enthusiasm for the idea, just your rationalization.

Personally I can take or leave the notion of extraterrestrial civilization. If it doesn't exist then fine, and if it does we'll likely never interact with it.

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As certain as I am that there's life on other planets I am also certain that we'll never interact with it. That's a lot to say because our species has accomplished a lot in just the last 200 years or so as far as technological and scientific advancement and who knows what we'd accomplish in 1,000 years so long as we don't manage to destroy ourselves. I just think the notion of bending space to, essentially, move at FTL speeds to get to other star-systems in any kind of meaningful time is very, very, very difficult.

It may be technologically possible, in theory, but would probably require a hell of a lot to achieve.

Overall, I don't think we'll interact "face to face" with an alien species for millennia.

Though we may be able to discover/observe a habitable/ed world within decades.

 

[MacLeod]

There is also the small matter that the amount of the universe we have explored is so small as to be irrelevant. Even if we go by Radio siganls we've only had the ability to detec them for what seventy years. So it is possible that we have missed them, have yet to detect them, they are using some form of communication that we haven't reached yet, they haven't progressed to a level which they radiate signals which can be detect. Of course that's for intelligent life.

 

[Trekker4747]

There is also the small matter that the amount of the universe we have explored is so small as to be irrelevant. Even if we go by Radio siganls we've only had the ability to detec them for what seventy years. So it is possible that we have missed them, have yet to detect them, they are using some form of communication that we haven't reached yet, they haven't progressed to a level which they radiate signals which can be detect. Of course that's for intelligent life.

Yeah, I mentioned this above. That's what gets me whenever we see these equations, predictions, or summations trying to answer why we've not yet seen any signs of intelligent life. It's because we've essentially looked nowhere for it for no length of time.

We've only done so much in the astronomically speaking infinitesimal length of time we've been looking for it. It also assumes quite a bit that any alien life out there would have colonized other planets or done things of that nature. It first assumes alien life would behave like humans have in Earth's past and it assumes there's actually, really, any way to even travel the distances between planetary systems -let alone galaxies- in any meaningful length of time.

It's one thing when sailors came to "the new world" in a matter of weeks or months by sail-ship. There was still, reasonably, a "way" to go home and give updates and new information and stuff.

It's a whole other thing when the fastest you're likely to travel between stars means generations upon generations are going to pass.

There's no reason at all to assume that we're the only planet with life on it simply because we've not seen any signs of life on other worlds. We haven't even begun to look for it, cosmically speaking. So trying to say there isn't any out there to find is sort-of absurd. Going back to my "thimble full of water out of the ocean" analogy. It's a big ocean and we're going to need a bigger thimble to find that life.

 

[scotthm]

There's no reason at all to assume that we're the only planet with life on it simply because we've not seen any signs of life on other worlds.

Just as there's no reason to assume there's life on any other planet just because other planets exist. We haven't looked for a jar of peanut butter on the far side of the moon either, but that doesn't mean there might be one there.

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[PurpleBuddha]

There's no reason at all to assume that we're the only planet with life on it simply because we've not seen any signs of life on other worlds.

Just as there's no reason to assume there's life on any other planet just because other planets exist...

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To be fair, other planets are not the only thing that exists. Life does exist as well on this planet, so we are not talking about anything this is impossible. As well, having reasons to think life may exist out there is not the same thing as saying we know it exits out there. There are plenty of reasons to suggest that it does, but nothing we can prove yet. That is why we are finally starting to put some money into looking. I am excited about a lot of the new scopes coming online soon, not to mention China's radio telescope.

 

[Romo Lampkin]

I think I feel good putting my money on the chances of there being another planet, lots of other planets, with life and even intelligent life on it.

Don't get me wrong -- I was never questioning your enthusiasm for the idea, just your rationalization.

Personally I can take or leave the notion of extraterrestrial civilization. If it doesn't exist then fine, and if it does we'll likely never interact with it.

---------------

As certain as I am that there's life on other planets I am also certain that we'll never interact with it. That's a lot to say because our species has accomplished a lot in just the last 200 years or so as far as technological and scientific advancement and who knows what we'd accomplish in 1,000 years so long as we don't manage to destroy ourselves. I just think the notion of bending space to, essentially, move at FTL speeds to get to other star-systems in any kind of meaningful time is very, very, very difficult.

It may be technologically possible, in theory, but would probably require a hell of a lot to achieve.

Overall, I don't think we'll interact "face to face" with an alien species for millennia.

Though we may be able to discover/observe a habitable/ed world within decades.

I read a while back that a physcist managed to get the energy requirements way down for the Alcubierre drive to the point where the energy generator could be the size of a small satellite. Of course I think it relied on negative energy or something. Wouldn't it be ironic if we're approaching it in the wrong way? Maybe travelling interstellar distances doesn't involve spaceships at all? Perhaps it involves reaching a post-physical stage with a computer network and quantum teleportation?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Because the amount of the universe we've "explored" in one form or another in any way at which we can detect life comes to looking at a single, tiniest, drop of water possible; finding no life in it, and then assuming there's no life in the entire ocean?

Maybe I've got this wrong but isn't the paradox part of Fermis paradox that if life were common in the universe it basically would be everywhere.

Yes, it's just that "being everywhere" in cosmic terms does not translate to "being detectable." We could be within 60ly of a dozen different civilizations and have no way of detecting them unless they are beaming radio signals DIRECTLY AT US at extremely high intensity and doing so at exactly the moment we happen to be looking directly at them. And that just for civilizations; the existence of wild life would leave few detectable signs at all, wishful thinking of JPL scientists notwithstanding.

 

[Drone]

It's possible we're on the only civilized planet in the entire Universe.

I'm going to say that that is literally impossible. Simple math should tell us that.No, your imagination tells you that.

Pretty damn hard to accept because it brings into the question of what's the point of literally everything else?

We do seem to at least agree that there is a point to the universe.

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Isn't that a philosophical or metaphysical consideration that has nothing to do numerical calculations. probabilities, or theories?

 

[RoJoHen]

It's possible we're on the only civilized planet in the entire Universe.

I'm going to say that that is literally impossible. Simple math should tell us that.No, your imagination tells you that.

Simple math and statistics are the reason this could very well be true.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Well, we could look at the hypothetical side. Let's pre-assume humanoid or humanoid-like life exists elsewhere in the known and unknown universe.

Let us also assume multiple ones have the ability to travel at speeds well beyond light, thus giving us the possibility that we could be reached by an extra terrestrail life form.

I theorize the following for why it hasn't occured yet:

1. We assume other life wants to make contact with us. Maybe they jsut don't give a fuck. Most people on Earth that can afford to travel, don't, and even a portion that do, just do so to see friends and family; they never wake up and say, "Boy, you know what indiginous people I'd like to meet? The people of Timbuktu."

2. The intellectual interference argument. They know that even with their technology, they were once imperfect and wared and created other problems between themselves -- the last thing they'd want to do is show a planet of people still trying to dominate, wipe out, or committ genocide against people based on their affiliation and religion, that hasn't even achieved inter-planetary travel yet, advanced alien technology. All sorts of cans of worms could be opened there.

3. They don't even know we are here. The universe is a huge place and we just assume because they can hypothetically travel great distances in short periods, that they'd know we are here.

4. They can't travel that fast. Let's think about warp speed in TNG, Memory-Alpha shows warp nine to be 834 times the speed of light. The speed does not increase by factors of one, it just goes up exponentially from warp one. (warp one: one times the speed of light; warp two: eight times the speed of light). Without the aide of fanciful travel methods or wormholes, your standard warp speed ship with a high speed of warp 9.9 (21,473 the speed of light), can't get out of the alpha quadrant -- one of four quandrants in just one galaxy. There are thousands of galaxies. Even at shockingly fast speeds like that of warp 9.9, presumed real alien life still can't reach us. Not even fanciful subspace communications survive in tact over a quandrant, let alone radio waves or more modern broadcast methods.

5. Again: the universe is huge. They simply haven't reached us.

6. Our resources are limited. I remember seeing a documentary in television years ago about the possiblity of Earth getting struck by a large object. They said we'd likely not even see it coming, as only about 3% of the sky is even being watched. Even if we sextupled that, there's just too much universe to cover, to much to wade threw, so much to anylize -- we just assume that because life is out there that we should have found it by now.

7. Rules and regulations. Most alien life on a planet doesn't have access to such vehicles and never get out, so very few actually travel in space. Likewise there may be rules about even leaving the system.

8. Extinction. We've seem reports of humongous black holes, systems colliding, stars going nova, etc. Maybe life or what little there was, simply got wiped out completely.

9. The final thing to occur to me: there simply isn't that much alien life out there. You know the phrase "a needle in a heystack"? Well, how about "a micron in a universe"?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Bad assumptions:

* Life elsewhere in the universe will look much like life does here.
* Intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be recognizable as such to us.
* Intelligent life elsewhere in the universe a) develops an interest in spaceflight, b) pursues that interest to reality, and c) maintains and develops that interest long enough to achieve a long-term and long-range interstellar presence.
* The previous point happening anywhere within detectable range of us (it's a big universe).
* Faster-than-light travel is possible.

The Drake Equation posits that spacefaring civilizations should be commonplace; our own observations tell us that they aren't. Even if they are, the prospect of such a civilization being close to us and coexisting at the right time for us to pick them up is a pretty tall order. A lot of stars must align (so to speak) for us to make contact.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

* The previous point happening anywhere within detectable range of us (it's a big universe).

I don't think the previous ones you mentioned are bad assumptions, but this is the mother of bad assumptions. The universe is huge, empty, desolate and hard to traverse. Underestimating the scale of the haystack we are rummaging for the needle is a recipe for disappointment.

You know, alien life may well be like us, it may even be commonplace, but the universe just can't be less empty than we know it is. Second law.

 

[Tim Walker]

A number of different techniques/strategies have been suggested for Slow Boats. I have to wonder if at least one combination of such could make a Slow Boat a real possibility.

I imagine colonists building space habitats at the destination.

Of course, you don't really get an interstellar civilization, but a series of isolated daughter civilizations.

Communications would be limited to the speed of light.

 

[2takesfrakes]

Pipe dreams never come true.

SETI, for better or worse, is just that - a pipe dream.

If you take Human evolution into account, a significant slice of the history of Life on land has actually been dominated by dinosaurs. Their dominion lasted something like 200 million years. Including our early, ape-ish ancestors, Humans have only been around for like 4 million years, max. And, once we were self-aware and all that, for a very long time, the Human race simply didn't know what to do with its newfound brainpower. We pretty much lived like animals for an embarrassingly long stretch of time, there. It makes you kind of wonder how that might've happened. And once civilisation had reached a certain point, anyway, the Church, especially, was very critical of scientific doctrine and controlled how it was spread for quite a long time. And then, finally, when Man went into space, we haven't really done too much about that for political/economic reasons.

And yet, we just suppose that aliens are so far advanced and so "above" these types of failings with their own arrival at self-awareness, that they're very keen to initiate a very lopsided relationship with Humanity. "Lopsided" because, naturally, they have to school us on everything, first, before they can even begin to have a dialogue with us. Humanity's desperation, in this regard, this need to be taught by aliens how to evolve next may, in fact, be offputting to their evolved sensibilities. And if aliens we get to make contact with are roughly our "equals," then the rewards of such an exchange of information would be most limited, indeed, depending on how far they were.

I'd love to find out that Mankind has made first contact with intelligent life, elsewhere. The implications would be incredible, regarding what could come out of it. But I'm convinced that it's entirely possible for Human intelligence to be a fluke. PETA and VOICELESS and other such agencies quietly fund research studies that want to suggest that animals are - somehow - our "equal" in awareness and intelligence. "Oh! A dog is as intelligent as a 3 year old!" one study has already tried to state. But my friend's 3 year old kid can already count into the hundreds, which no Airedale can do. Can already abstract and reason in a way no Basset Hound is able to. I mean ... there's a lot of wishful thinking, all around, when it comes to trying to find Human intelligence, even on our own planet. A lot of very biased studies, with a pre-conceived agenda fall victim to that, but how can't they?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Personally, I believe we should attempt to uplift other Earth species that show the potential to develop human-level sapience or higher - elephants, dolphins, bonobos, corvids, and so on. That way, even if we humans were to go extinct as a species, there'd be other species ready to fill the niche immediately. It might also give us more interesting sapient beings with which to converse than other humans.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

Pipe dreams never come true.

SETI, for better or worse, is just that - a pipe dream.

Your first point is completely false. Even so, there is faulty reasoning here. The dreams people have here on earth have no bearing on whether life really does exist out there or not.

 

[2takesfrakes]

SETI has been listening for half a century, already and has found nothing. Personally, I would've been disappointed in ... I don't know ... Humanity, I guess, if we hadn't stopped to listen to see if we were, in fact, missing out on some kind of Cosmic chatter all around us. Well, we did stop and listen and we got static. We got static because it was not very likely to start with.

There were always impossible odds associated with it and yet there is constantly some new spin put on why SETI and their associates haven't picked up on a signal. "Oh! In the early days, we didn't have enough of, or the right, equipment to listen properly!" And then it's all like, "Oh! But we need to take higher technology into account, the Galactic culture out there is using LASER technology to talk, let's use that." And still nothing. Instead of just admitting that it was a noble, yet useless gesture.

Believe me, it would give me great pleasure to find out that SETI, NASA, ESA, JAXA, somebody owning Microsoft ... I don't give a toss who, really ... informs the world that contact with aliens has been made. I don't know what it'll mean for the ordinary Man on the street, maybe it won't end up being anymore than academic, due to whatever factors there are, like distance. But the assumption that there MUST be a signal out there is what's false. You don't know that. I don't know that. There is nothing to suggest that SETI will ever be vindicated for decades of fruitless searches.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

Who knows? The only thing that is certain is we haven't even scratched the surface yet.

 

[scotthm]

Who knows? The only thing that is certain is we haven't even scratched the surface yet.

The universe is so large we could make that claim for the next million years.

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[Dryson]

SETI has been listening for half a century, already and has found nothing. Personally, I would've been disappointed in ... I don't know ... Humanity, I guess, if we hadn't stopped to listen to see if we were, in fact, missing out on some kind of Cosmic chatter all around us. Well, we did stop and listen and we got static. We got static because it was not very likely to start with.

There were always impossible odds associated with it and yet there is constantly some new spin put on why SETI and their associates haven't picked up on a signal. "Oh! In the early days, we didn't have enough of, or the right, equipment to listen properly!" And then it's all like, "Oh! But we need to take higher technology into account, the Galactic culture out there is using LASER technology to talk, let's use that." And still nothing. Instead of just admitting that it was a noble, yet useless gesture.

Believe me, it would give me great pleasure to find out that SETI, NASA, ESA, JAXA, somebody owning Microsoft ... I don't give a toss who, really ... informs the world that contact with aliens has been made. I don't know what it'll mean for the ordinary Man on the street, maybe it won't end up being anymore than academic, due to whatever factors there are, like distance. But the assumption that there MUST be a signal out there is what's false. You don't know that. I don't know that. There is nothing to suggest that SETI will ever be vindicated for decades of fruitless searches.

There are countless pictographs of aliens in ancient history on the walls of caves and temples. Some would say that the drawings were simply clouds with light shining through them. But when the clouds have three holes that are round and look like headlights that is an alien depiction. Even if day dreaming how would the ancients of known to day dream about flying ships and aliens to begin with?