Aliens “They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognize them

[Ichingcarpenter]

Invisible Extraterrestrials? World-Leading Physicist Says "They Could Exist in Forms We Can't Conceive"



The intriguing remark was made by Lord Martin Rees, a leading cosmologist and astrophysicist who is the president of Britain’s Royal Society and astronomer to the Queen of England. Rees, who last month hosted the National Science Academy’s first conference on the possibility of alien life, said he believes the existence of extra terrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.

“They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognize them. The problem is that we’re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology."


“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”


SNIP...............

Milan Cirkovic of the Astronomical Observatory in Belgrade, points out that the median age of terrestrial planets in the Milky Way is about 1.8 gigayears (one billion years) greater than the age of the Earth and the Solar System, which means that the median age of technological civilizations should be greater than the age of human civilization by the same amount. The vastness of this interval indicates that one or more processes must suppress observability of extraterrestrial communities.

Since at this point, there is no direct and/or widely apparent evidence that extraterrestrial life exists, it likely means one of the following:

We are (A) the first intelligent beings ever to become capable of making our presence known, and leaving our planet. At this point, there are no other life forms out there as advanced as us. Or perhaps extraterrestrial life does exists, but for some reason extraterrestrial life is so very rare and so very far away we’ll never make contact anyway—making extraterrestrial life nonexistent in a practical sense at least.

Or is it (B) that many advanced civilizations have existed before us, but without exception, they have for some unknown reason, existed and/or expanded in such a way that they are completely undetectable by our instruments.

Or is it (C) There have been others, but they have all run into some sort of “cosmic roadblock” that eventually destroys them, or at least prevents their expansion beyond a small area.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/invisible-extraterrestrials-one-of-worlds-leading-physicist-says-they-could-exist-in-forms-we-cant-c.html


Check out his BBC three part series on youtube it is an excellent program

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35qntqRBo5I

[Warren Stupidity]

1. "the median age of technological civilizations should be greater than the age of human civilization

That is an assertion with a whole set of basically unsustainable assumptions behind it, one of which is that technological civilization exhibits continuous progress, another of which is that technological civilization is permanent over time frames on the order of billions of years.

The assumption of "life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive" is the interposition of 'magic' as an explanatory mechanism. A reasonable scientist should be ashamed for suggesting this.

Another explanation for the lack aliens among us, or even more problematically the failure of SETI to find any signs of technological civilization, is that technological civilization is both rare and brief. That explanation requires no magic. I'll go with that for now.

[fasttense]

2. I have always been an advocate of (A)

He dismisses hypothesis (A) way too quickly. Someone has to be 1st. Yes, billions and billions of years have passed since the big bang but I suspect intelligent life is so unique and rare that very few inhabitable planets have developed it. Besides the Universe is a huge gigantic place. If intelligent life has developed on a planet, it may be so far away we will never contact it.

I have always suspected that we are either the 1st or the 1st within contact distance of earth.

[Newest Reality]

3. (B) is a humorous option

If you take a really good, unbiased look at our species and its history, then it might make sense.

I think I would put a shield around our part of the Galaxy with warning beacons that indicate: "Approach with caution. Being undetectable to the dominant species here is strongly advised!"

That would be highly intelligent.

[Tansy_Gold]

4. A fellow rockhound sent me this several years ago

JON CARROLL

San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, September 7, 2004

An article published in the journal Nature last week presented an interesting hypothesis: If beings from another planet were trying to contact us, they would not (as is generally supposed) send us radio waves containing prime numbers or relativity equations or whatever.

Nope: They'd send us a refrigerator.

This is all serious. The authors, Christopher Rose and Gregory Wright, did elaborate calculations on the relative costs and benefits of various methods of delivering information between star systems. Radio waves disperse as they go out from their source, and thus the amount of information arriving at any given point -- say, the Very Large Array of telescopes in New Mexico -- would be relatively small, and the chances of picking it out from all the radio noise relatively slim.
On the other hand, a refrigerator does not disperse as it travels, and it's real hard to
ignore when it slams down in your backyard.

OK, I made up the refrigerator part. But the authors did say that a physical object of some sort could be delivered more efficiently than radio waves. There were all sorts of calculations involved, and although I understand the math, I wouldn't want to burden you with technicalities. But there are square roots and parentheses and Greek letters -- cool stuff.

Instead, I will steal an explanation from Dennis Overbye of the New York Times. I will fail to give him credit, and later I will resign in disgrace. That's what makes this column fun: "Although the result sounds counterintuitive, the problem will be familiar to anyone who ever spent time shrinking a digital photograph before trying to send it over the Internet through a dial-up connection. It would be much easier just to drive a truck of photo albums across town or put them in an overnight mailbox than to go through the process of scanning and shrinking each photo."

Think of it: Anything you find beside the road could be a message from another planet. Anything you pick up on the beach or buy at a garage sale or rescue from a recycling bin could be the key to the mysteries of the universe. Heck, some very intelligent super-race of communications-addicted beings could be shooting little hello bundles into the universe a thousand times a minute - - we may have two dozen of them just in California.

Scientists pooh-pooh this theory, and if you've ever heard a scientist say "Pooh-pooh," you know how arrogant it sounds. The SETI project, which spends its precious evenings scanning the sky for the intergalactic equivalent of "The Howard Stern Show,'' is not interested in looking around on the ground underneath its radio telescopes for dense little bundles of titanium-coated data.

But I think we should start looking. In what form would an alien civilization choose to package its message of peace and friendship? I think it's obvious: pretty little rocks. I'm willing to bet you have some pretty little rocks around your house right this minute. If not, go find some.

Now put one in the microwave. Will that unleash the power of the space-o- tron pod people? It's worth a shot. Take another rock and throw it into boiling water. Put another in the freezer. Grind up another one and eat it. This is all science, friends. Not some namby-pamby theoretical doodling, either: honest experimental science just the way Newton did it. But perhaps it isn't rocks! Perhaps it's weird plastic things that look like broken toys -- but aren't! Or it could be water molecules, water molecules with elaborate galactic histories burned into them using advanced nanotechnology devices. It might be good to start saving water now. You're going to need a lot of plastic jugs, so hurry.

See, this puts civilians back in the science game. No need for fancy equipment or advanced learning -- just a compass, a big canvas sack and plenty of free time. Your prize could be a ride on a space ship to a far-off planet where alien beings will admire your dental work.

You might consider carrying your umbrella at all times because the universe is throwing golf balls at us. Why? Because it wants to be friends.

This sentence does not impeach Bush or contain a secret coded message
from [e-mail].

Page E - 10
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/
07/DDGIJ7Q44T1.DTL




Tansy Gold, who has lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of pretty rocks at her house

[BadgerKid]

5. (A), minus the self-importance.

Astronomers so far have found a few hundred exoplanets. Evidence from asteroids shows that molecular precursors are present in space. Even on Earth, life shows up in many of its nooks and crannies. I'm inclined to believe the possibility of life "out there" is fairly likely.

The universe is also vast. Life is likely somewhere else but is essentially out of reach.

[Fumesucker]

6. And then there is (D)..

The aliens are using technology that is simply undetectable by our current means..

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, it could easily be that our magic detectors are either nonexistent yet or just not up to the job of sniffing out the aliens using it.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. A million years ahead of evolution

would make us lab rats to some advanced civilization.

I'm waiting for subspace communications to be found because light seems to have its limitations
and would surmise they don't use the light spectrum for stellar communication.

Anyway be sure to see the program on youtube if you haven't already
its really good.

[anarch]

9. what makes you think we are not?

"lab rats", I mean.

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. If I told you or didn't tell you would change the thought experiment?

Some physicists and philosophers have suggested that the universe is a huge computer simulation.


http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/even-if-life-is-but-a-computer-simulation/

http://www.nesteduniverse.net/2007/12/are-you-living.html

Who knows? But it does make one think.

[qazplm]

8. I find it unlikely

that entities could be millions of years ahead of us and yet perform no activity that is observable across the EM spectrum. Being advanced does not necessarily mean that the underlying physics of the universe don't still hold.

communication over interstellar distances is still highly likely to use some part of the EM spectrum for example.

I think Option A is as likely as any other option. We have no idea how long it takes intelligent level at our level to form. There could have been many potentials that were destroyed before they could get started. What if a moon is necessary to stablize a planet's ecosystem enough to get intelligent life to our level? What if a star somewhat like our sun in being relatively stable and long-lasting is also needed? (ruling out most red dwarfs and other stars that could support life but not necessarily intelligent life to our level?)

What about the fact that many stars have companions which could affect their Oort Clouds shooting comets and whatnot into their planets at a frequent enough rate to have constant rebootings of life on a planet?

A is a real possibility, at least as real as B. C I think is somewhat gobbledygook as it presupposes that a certain level of intelligence/expansion equals automatic death/cessation of expansion.

Of course, D is ignored which is, the universe is teeming with life, but not necessarily our galaxy, or that there truly is no way to accomplish FTL travel or communication even with a million years advantage and so there could be a dozen million year advanced civilizations sitting in Andromeda for example but none of them have either reached here or communicated with us because Andromeda is just too far away.

Given enough time, even with slightly more advanced tech, we could eventually colonize every planet in our galaxy. Even if we never met any other intelligent life, that would say nothing about the billions of other galaxies in our universe. This may be a question that is never answered, and might not even be answered fully if we do meet an intelligent lifeform out there (e.g. we could end up being the 2nd intelligent species in the galaxy, or even the universe).

[Swede]

10. Perhaps there is a "Prime Directive" of non intrusion.

A star faring race would have the tech to filter all evidence of extra terrestrial life.

[Posteritatis]

11. They'd all have to agree on it, though. (nt)

[caraher]

13. This kind of gives me an excuse to post this...

From xkcd.com, of course

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. Are you calling Lord Martin Rees, a leading cosmologist and astrophysicist

a flake?


Awards

Heineman Prize (1984)

Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1987)

Balzan Prize (1989) for High Energy Astrophysics

Knight Bachelor (1992)

Bruce Medal (1993)

Bruno Rossi Prize (2000)

Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2001)

Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society (2004)

Lifeboat Foundation's Guardian Award (2004)

Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for science communication (2004)

Life Peerage (2005)

Crafoord Prize, with James Gunn and James Peebles (2005)

Order of Merit-the personal gift of The Queen (2007)

Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum (2007)

Or me for posting it?

[caraher]

16. No, it's just the general topic

Some say, "Where is everyone?" Others are not surprised. The Drake Equation is a typical vehicle for discussing the matter, and the cartoon points out a similar analysis of alien encounter stories.

I didn't intend to suggest anyone in particular is or is not a "flake" - just thought it was a clever play on the Drake equation.

[hunter]

15. (E) Humans are not intelligent, nor are they particularly interesting.

The only invisible aliens here on earth are studying beetles. Humans are simply annoying.