Why We Might Be Alone in the Universe (or not)

[dragulagu]

 

[JennyDaniella]

Ooo this looks interesting! Thanks for sharing drag! Saving this and will watch this on my lunch time tomorrow. Excited to watch it!

 

[John K]

I think it’s very likely that we are alone. The observation ‘where are they?’ is very powerful. It isn’t enough to argue that space is very big and keeps us isolated - a few hundred thousand years is nothing in cosmic time and plenty long enough to colonise a galaxy. If intelligence were common then there would be lots of aliens who were there millions of years before us. At least some of them would have been curious and expansionist.

I think if we could see 10 million years or 100 million years into the future the galaxy may well be full of aliens - all very different to us and all our descendants. I do hope so .

 

[dragulagu]

I think it’s very likely that we are alone. The observation ‘where are they?’ is very powerful. It isn’t enough to argue that space is very big and keeps us isolated - a few hundred thousand years is nothing in cosmic time and plenty long enough to colonise a galaxy. If intelligence were common then there would be lots of aliens who were there millions of years before us. At least some of them would have been curious and expansionist.

It certainly requires a lot of specific conditions (goldilocks zone, water, the dynamic structure of our planet, the structure of our solar system, ...) for "us" to exists. However, to me personally, it's really unlikely that we are alone in the universe, it's just that the probability of having intelligent life able to communicate over interstellar distances would just be very low and that these specific environmental conditions would be far in between within the universe. And although the physical laws are universal, (communication) technology could pretty much diversify from what we have, let's for example assume that they perfected the concept of communicating through quantum entanglement, the probability of us detecting this kind of communication would be slim to none. And as an alien expansionist I would not be broadcasting all around the universe if it would not be deemed necessary but rather just observe planets like ours from a distance while expanding my own.

If anything, the great filter concept seems to be pretty valid, any intergalactic civilisation would have to go past these at some point. And the human race certainly is capable of slamming head first into these filters.
https://www.universetoday.com/11166...t-filter-could-affect-tech-advances-in-space/

I
I think if we could see 10 million years or 100 million years into the future the galaxy may well be full of aliens - all very different to us and all our descendants. I do hope so .

+1
Very low probability though. Would be awesome.

 

[John K]

It certainly requires a lot of specific conditions (goldilocks zone, water, the dynamic structure of our planet, the structure of our solar system, ...) for "us" to exists. However, to me personally, it's really unlikely that we are alone in the universe, it's just that the probability of having intelligent life able to communicate over interstellar distances would just be very low and that these specific environmental conditions would be far in between within the universe. And although the physical laws are universal, (communication) technology could pretty much diversify from what we have, let's for example assume that they perfected the concept of communicating through quantum entanglement, the probability of us detecting this kind of communication would be slim to none. And as an alien expansionist I would not be broadcasting all around the universe if it would not be deemed necessary but rather just observe planets like ours from a distance while expanding my own.

If anything, the great filter concept seems to be pretty valid, any intergalactic civilisation would have to go past these at some point. And the human race certainly is capable of slamming head first into these filters.
https://www.universetoday.com/11166...t-filter-could-affect-tech-advances-in-space/


+1
Very low probability though. Would be awesome.

It's fun to speculate on this isn't it? What you suggest is very possible, but I think it's very possible too that we are alone in the galaxy, maybe even in the universe. The main argument is simply that if there were many surviving alien intelligences, they would almost all be a lot older than us. At least some of those that survived the filters would have developed advanced technology which would look like magic to us, and would have colonised most of the galaxy. Imagine that they had the ability to create forms of life that could exist happily anywhere, even in the depths of space - creatures that may look like robots to us. Nature is profligate once an evolutionary process gets under way, and I could imagine the evolution of spacefaring creatures that are the equivalent of animals as well as intelligent ones. They would get everywhere, colonising planets and smaller bodies that look totally uninhabitable to us - and they could fill the galaxy in a couple of hundred million years. It only needs one planetary intelligence to seed this and it would just run away. There are no signs of anything like this either here on earth or on the other places we have visited in the solar system.

It's taken 5 billion years for earth to evolve us, and we have only had the ability to understand that and think about its cosmic implications for a couple of hundred years at best - 1/25,000th of the life of the earth. We have probably just now reached the risk point where we have the ability to finish ourselves off and this risk may well persist for hundreds, or thousands of years, with only a small chance of transitioning to stability intact as a civilised people. It seems highly unlikely to me that there would be alien civilisations that reached the same level of development at the same time as us if they only lasted a few hundred years, or a few thousand years. Any longer lived civilisations should already have been here long before we came down from the trees.

I guess another possibility is that intelligent creatures more advanced than ourselves develop technology that allows them to live for ever, effectively, in a heaven of their own making, in virtual realities that they download themselves into. That would certainly explain why we don't see them.

I hope you are right and that there are other intelligences out there that we will meet one day. It would be good for us I think - although a big mismatch in technological capability could be a dangerous thing for the less developed party. The universe would be a lonely place if we were the only ones around.

 

[dragulagu]

It's taken 5 billion years for earth to evolve us, and we have only had the ability to understand that and think about its cosmic implications for a couple of hundred years at best - 1/25,000th of the life of the earth. We have probably just now reached the risk point where we have the ability to finish ourselves off and this risk may well persist for hundreds, or thousands of years, with only a small chance of transitioning to stability intact as a civilised people. It seems highly unlikely to me that there would be alien civilisations that reached the same level of development at the same time as us if they only lasted a few hundred years, or a few thousand years. Any longer lived civilisations should already have been here long before we came down from the trees.

Agreed for the most part but a lot still depends on where that civilisation is located and if such a civilisation would have been wiped out by chance, or not. Earth already had 5 extinctions happening and "we" survived. So how many extinctions would other civilisations have had? It could be much less, much more, it all depends on many variables. The ability to finish ourselves lies more in our own nature than as a general requirement for the evolution of a civilisation (at least I hope so).

Now let's say there would be another civilisation that would have survived their extinctions, it could take them longer or a lot less time than us to reach our technological point, so they would not be able to communicate with us if we'd be too far away from each-other.
https://www.sciencealert.com/humanity-hasn-t-reached-as-far-into-space-as-you-think

And let's say they have developed way beyond our technological capability, perhaps they are still limited by "our" current understanding of physics. Eg. they are unable to travel faster than light. It could take an enormous amount of time before they could reach us. Maybe an intelligent race survived within our star cluster, but went the other side. Perhaps there is a race within the Milky Way, it could still take 1000's of years to even reach us. Other galaxies could be millions, etc.

The whole conundrum is that we only have ourselves as a reference point. And we are currently observing the universe with our current technology that is just far too inferior to have any solid conclusion on whether we are alone or are sharing the universe with other intelligent beings. But purely in terms of probability on the scale of the universe, I'd say the chance is a lot higher of us not being alone.

What you suggest is very possible, but I think it's very possible too that we are alone in the galaxy, maybe even in the universe. The main argument is simply that if there were many surviving alien intelligences, they would almost all be a lot older than us. At least some of those that survived the filters would have developed advanced technology which would look like magic to us, and would have colonised most of the galaxy. Imagine that they had the ability to create forms of life that could exist happily anywhere, even in the depths of space - creatures that may look like robots to us. Nature is profligate once an evolutionary process gets under way, and I could imagine the evolution of spacefaring creatures that are the equivalent of animals as well as intelligent ones. They would get everywhere, colonising planets and smaller bodies that look totally uninhabitable to us - and they could fill the galaxy in a couple of hundred million years. It only needs one planetary intelligence to seed this and it would just run away. There are no signs of anything like this either here on earth or on the other places we have visited in the solar system.

I've switched this part here because there's a specific point of interest here I wan't to point to from your argumentation and that is the probability of having an advanced intelligence capable to go beyond current limitations (eg. warp-speed, intergalactic communication, ...). IF such a race would exist or rather would have existed in the far past...then why would we not have been in contact with them? Is there perhaps a final Great Filter that we do not know of which stops any civilisation that have reached a certain point of advancement? Maybe a certain technological point which involves some kind of galactic doomsday event?

I guess another possibility is that intelligent creatures more advanced than ourselves develop technology that allows them to live for ever, effectively, in a heaven of their own making, in virtual realities that they download themselves into. That would certainly explain why we don't see them.

Or the ability to clone themselves or transfer themselves unto other vessels, ... . As long as their information is preserved (memories/being/genetics...). And perhaps such a race would even just be saturated in the end by the universe, having visited that many other galaxies, having "seen it all" and reside, as you said, in their virtual reality world.

I hope you are right and that there are other intelligences out there that we will meet one day. It would be good for us I think - although a big mismatch in technological capability could be a dangerous thing for the less developed party. The universe would be a lonely place if we were the only ones around.

For now, it would be a mismatch. There is no guarantee by our human nature, as it is now, that we would not be able to misuse a technology capability against ourselves or the intelligence from whom we have received it from. We are aggressive beings by nature (primates). Our developed brains suppress that part but does not stop it.

It's fun to speculate on this isn't it?

It certainly is.

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_76.html - Oldest Planet (did not expect it being that old)
https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/...signal-that-could-explain-the-modern-universe - Random curiousity

 

[John K]

Oldest Planet (did not expect it being that old)

That’s fascinating because at that time the elements above lithium were non existent. It was only when later generation stars appeared, forming on the ashes of the first generation stars, that planets like the earth were possible. This very old planet must have been just hydrogen and helium if that theory is correct.

 

[dragulagu]

I do recall there being a difference in the composition of stars depending on the age of the star...but I'm not entirely sure in regards to the age of the elemental composition?
For example, in this list there is a planet 10.2 billion years old made out of carbon: http://www.oldest.org/geography/planets/
That planet though is a gas planet.

https://home.cern/science/physics/early-universe

Within minutes, these protons and neutrons combined into nuclei. As the universe continued to expand and cool, things began to happen more slowly. It took 380,000 years for electrons to be trapped in orbits around nuclei, forming the first atoms. These were mainly helium and hydrogen, which are still by far the most abundant elements in the universe. 1.6 million years later, gravity began to form stars and galaxies from clouds of gas. Heavier atoms such as carbon, oxygen and iron, have since been continuously produced in the hearts of stars and catapulted throughout the universe in spectacular stellar explosions called supernovae.