Why Habitable Exoplanets Might Mean Humanity Is Doomed

[Spendulus]

Perhaps we are the first technical civilization in our galaxy? Someone has to be the first.

Ah, very unlikely.  The theory of stellar evolution indicates that many generations of star systems - with planets - have come and gone.   

Some of those you can reckon had smart folks.  Where did they go?  Assume, for the moment that interstellar dust makes physical travel between star systems pretty much impossible.

Where, indeed?

They do not talk with us just like we do not talk with bugs...

One question is how many cycles are needed to produce sufficient amount of materials needed for interstellar travel? That is heavier metals and such. Or are those needed at all?

Or maybe we just don't know how to identify their communications...

Correct.  I have a rather fascinating book which is a compilation of tech articles on 'finding et' dated late 1960s.  EVERYTHING IS DATED TO THAT VIEWPORT!

There are serious math analysis of how ET would send a television signal, for example. 

Today we would try to figure how ET would send a router signal.

Tomorrow...

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[minime]

wise conclusion... maybe "they" are around... humans tend to think in 3 dimensions,,,
the other question how could humans become interstellar if humanity is devided like it is...

[Spendulus]

wise conclusion... maybe "they" are around... humans tend to think in 3 dimensions,,,
the other question how could humans become interstellar if humanity is devided like it is...

I am personally not convinced that interstellar travel is possible with mechanical creations such as what we think of as "spacecraft".  The speeds required for such travel are so high that even dust impacting would be power of atomic bomb.  

I have read proposals for the engineering and operation of such vehicles and frankly, it seems like something that'd be very risky.  Maybe you get to Alpha Centauri in a couple hundred years, maybe the ship vanishes without a trace after a random impact.

Personally (in the "belief" category) I think there are very likely decodable data streams that we could detect and learn very interesting things from and here is why.  

We are now detecting exo planets which are possibly life substaining, this means our planet has long ago been detected as such a place by the hypothetical THEM.

So we don't know if THEY are out there.  And THEY might or might not know that WE are here.  But it would not be difficult to rotate a high power transmitter in the direction of each of 1000 likely exo planets.  Or 100,000.  Consider if one year 7200 hours transmit for 5 minutes to each of 100,000 exoplanets.  Hundreds of years later you get a reply.  When a reply occurs set continuous streaming.  Thousands of years later you have a nice little community.  A little corner of the galactic party.

This works both ways - first, locate the exo planets, then point sensitive radio and light band receivers at those locations.  This is very different than the random searching of the skies which we have been doing.  Then, find a signal.  Etc, Etc...

[Wilikon]

wise conclusion... maybe "they" are around... humans tend to think in 3 dimensions,,,
the other question how could humans become interstellar if humanity is devided like it is...

I am personally not convinced that interstellar travel is possible with mechanical creations such as what we think of as "spacecraft".  The speeds required for such travel are so high that even dust impacting would be power of atomic bomb.  

I have read proposals for the engineering and operation of such vehicles and frankly, it seems like something that'd be very risky.  Maybe you get to Alpha Centauri in a couple hundred years, maybe the ship vanishes without a trace after a random impact.

Personally (in the "belief" category) I think there are very likely decodable data streams that we could detect and learn very interesting things from and here is why.  

We are now detecting exo planets which are possibly life substaining, this means our planet has long ago been detected as such a place by the hypothetical THEM.

So we don't know if THEY are out there.  And THEY might or might not know that WE are here.  But it would not be difficult to rotate a high power transmitter in the direction of each of 1000 likely exo planets.  Or 100,000.  Consider if one year 7200 hours transmit for 5 minutes to each of 100,000 exoplanets.  Hundreds of years later you get a reply.  When a reply occurs set continuous streaming.  Thousands of years later you have a nice little community.  A little corner of the galactic party.

This works both ways - first, locate the exo planets, then point sensitive radio and light band receivers at those locations.  This is very different than the random searching of the skies which we have been doing.  Then, find a signal.  Etc, Etc...

If we cannot move beyond what we know now, i.e. our total amount of scientific knowledge of what "What" is made of it is not even necessary to contemplate interstellar travel from anyone, us or THEM.


                                 
So... Is the speed of light our ultimate prison guard forever?
                       

[Paya]

the other question how could humans become interstellar if humanity is devided like it is...

Although our future as possible spacefaring species may look a little bit grim these days, when 3/4 of humanity is still struggling to survive living in the dirt from day to day, while in the same time the most important thing for 1/4 is to learn what some clown has said or worn, and only technological progress they know is newest model of cell phone or bigger TV screen, we shouldn't forget Carl Sagan and his eternal optimism:

"We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the Earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls. Our little terraquious globe as the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds. We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds; Are we to venture out into space? By the time we’re ready to settle even the nearest of other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We’re… an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses. More confident, farseeing, capable, and prudent. For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders, undreamed of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation? And another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered by the end of the next century? And the next millennium? Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds through the solar system and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that whatever other life there may be, the only humans in all the universe come from Earth. They will gaze up, and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of raw potential once was. How perilous, our infancy. How humble, our beginnings. How many rivers we had to cross before we found our way."

[Spendulus]

wise conclusion... maybe "they" are around... humans tend to think in 3 dimensions,,,
the other question how could humans become interstellar if humanity is devided like it is...

I am personally not convinced that interstellar travel is possible with mechanical creations such as what we think of as "spacecraft".  The speeds required for such travel are so high that even dust impacting would be power of atomic bomb.  

I have read proposals for the engineering and operation of such vehicles and frankly, it seems like something that'd be very risky.  Maybe you get to Alpha Centauri in a couple hundred years, maybe the ship vanishes without a trace after a random impact.

Personally (in the "belief" category) I think there are very likely decodable data streams that we could detect and learn very interesting things from and here is why.  

We are now detecting exo planets which are possibly life substaining, this means our planet has long ago been detected as such a place by the hypothetical THEM.

So we don't know if THEY are out there.  And THEY might or might not know that WE are here.  But it would not be difficult to rotate a high power transmitter in the direction of each of 1000 likely exo planets.  Or 100,000.  Consider if one year 7200 hours transmit for 5 minutes to each of 100,000 exoplanets.  Hundreds of years later you get a reply.  When a reply occurs set continuous streaming.  Thousands of years later you have a nice little community.  A little corner of the galactic party.

This works both ways - first, locate the exo planets, then point sensitive radio and light band receivers at those locations.  This is very different than the random searching of the skies which we have been doing.  Then, find a signal.  Etc, Etc...

If we cannot move beyond what we know now, i.e. our total amount of scientific knowledge of what "What" is made of it is not even necessary to contemplate interstellar travel from anyone, us or THEM.


                                 
So... Is the speed of light our ultimate prison guard forever?
                     

Gee, I don't know.  There is a long illustrious history of prison guards being bribed, cajoled, or blackmailed into working for the team.  Now I can't help but think little Ms. Lightspeed could be influenced to look the other way sometimes....

[Vod]

Gee, I don't know.  There is a long illustrious history of prison guards being bribed, cajoled, or blackmailed into working for the team.  Now I can't help but think little Ms. Lightspeed could be influenced to look the other way sometimes....

I'm on the other side of the fence.  I believe the fact we haven't been contacted by an alien race is proof that faster than light travel (for mass) is impossible.

[minime]

wise conclusion... maybe "they" are around... humans tend to think in 3 dimensions,,,
the other question how could humans become interstellar if humanity is devided like it is...

I am personally not convinced that interstellar travel is possible with mechanical creations such as what we think of as "spacecraft".  The speeds required for such travel are so high that even dust impacting would be power of atomic bomb.  

I have read proposals for the engineering and operation of such vehicles and frankly, it seems like something that'd be very risky.  Maybe you get to Alpha Centauri in a couple hundred years, maybe the ship vanishes without a trace after a random impact.

Personally (in the "belief" category) I think there are very likely decodable data streams that we could detect and learn very interesting things from and here is why.  

We are now detecting exo planets which are possibly life substaining, this means our planet has long ago been detected as such a place by the hypothetical THEM.

So we don't know if THEY are out there.  And THEY might or might not know that WE are here.  But it would not be difficult to rotate a high power transmitter in the direction of each of 1000 likely exo planets.  Or 100,000.  Consider if one year 7200 hours transmit for 5 minutes to each of 100,000 exoplanets.  Hundreds of years later you get a reply.  When a reply occurs set continuous streaming.  Thousands of years later you have a nice little community.  A little corner of the galactic party.

This works both ways - first, locate the exo planets, then point sensitive radio and light band receivers at those locations.  This is very different than the random searching of the skies which we have been doing.  Then, find a signal.  Etc, Etc...

somewhere i did read that 95% of our surrounding is dark matter... 95% so the computer/desk you sit on only represents 5% of matter.... what are the other 95%... maybe its like in matrix that we only think we sit on a computer/desk..
like i said humans tend to think in 3 dimensions...

[Light]

IMO, the conditions necessary for intelligent life is extremely rare. Despite this, given the vastness of the Universe we should still be able to find this 'other' life right? Well, from what I can see - there could be a number of reasons for our failure thus far:

1. There is life but the lifeform is not advanced enough to send us or receive our messages
2. The lifeform could simply be a microbe which we would have no hope of seeing given our supreme distance from any noteworthy planet
3. Life exists beyond the observable Universe and as a result of space expansion at greater than the speed of light we will never see nor reach them

I'm personally inclined with the latter - either that or since we're getting light from a planet like 500 million years back the lifeform may exist now but at that time didn't.

[Wilikon]

wise conclusion... maybe "they" are around... humans tend to think in 3 dimensions,,,
the other question how could humans become interstellar if humanity is devided like it is...

I am personally not convinced that interstellar travel is possible with mechanical creations such as what we think of as "spacecraft".  The speeds required for such travel are so high that even dust impacting would be power of atomic bomb.  

I have read proposals for the engineering and operation of such vehicles and frankly, it seems like something that'd be very risky.  Maybe you get to Alpha Centauri in a couple hundred years, maybe the ship vanishes without a trace after a random impact.

Personally (in the "belief" category) I think there are very likely decodable data streams that we could detect and learn very interesting things from and here is why.  

We are now detecting exo planets which are possibly life substaining, this means our planet has long ago been detected as such a place by the hypothetical THEM.

So we don't know if THEY are out there.  And THEY might or might not know that WE are here.  But it would not be difficult to rotate a high power transmitter in the direction of each of 1000 likely exo planets.  Or 100,000.  Consider if one year 7200 hours transmit for 5 minutes to each of 100,000 exoplanets.  Hundreds of years later you get a reply.  When a reply occurs set continuous streaming.  Thousands of years later you have a nice little community.  A little corner of the galactic party.

This works both ways - first, locate the exo planets, then point sensitive radio and light band receivers at those locations.  This is very different than the random searching of the skies which we have been doing.  Then, find a signal.  Etc, Etc...

somewhere i did read that 95% of our surrounding is dark matter... 95% so the computer/desk you sit on only represents 5% of matter.... what are the other 95%... maybe its like in matrix that we only think we sit on a computer/desk..
like i said humans tend to think in 3 dimensions...

We may find one day there is a form of life that only exists withing the dark matter. The same way we found those amazing tube worms way down the ocean floor, not using the sun and natural light as a source of energy but something very alien to us, humans, forest, microbes, rabbits, living on the surface of Earth.
But since we exist withing those 5% of what we define as matter, and if everything is made out of the same thing across the whole universe, even if you multiply the unlucky number of many worlds who got hit by killer asteroids, or destroyed by gamma ray burst, you still get that huge number of the possibility of life on many worlds.

The question is why haven't we heard about them yet?

[Fatpony]

Humans have not been listening to the "space" long enough to take that time into consideration and a prof that aliens do not exist. Let's put it like this. If i live on an island in some ocean with 100 other people and the closest land is 6.000km in any direction, chances that me and my "friends" will find any other life are slim ( considering we still havent discovered planes, boats that can cross oceans ). In that case my enitre life I would thing that we are the only humans.

If theory that nothing can travel faster then life is true then chances that we find prof on an alien life are even slimmer. We are not listening to the stars long enough so we cant say that we are 100% certain that we are the only intelligent life in universe/galaxy. Looking at one Exoplanet today and not "hearing" anything doesn't mean that id didnt had intellignet life or it has it now. From that planet you mentioned for anything to come it would take close to 500 years and that is a long time. 5 centuries ago we couldn't even dream of flying and look at humanity now. What if 500 years ago they were at same level of technological development as we were or even less developed.

So no, it's not even remotely a prof of anything....

[Spendulus]

Humans have not been listening to the "space" long enough to take that time into consideration and a prof that aliens do not exist. Let's put it like this. If i live on an island in some ocean with 100 other people and the closest land is 6.000km in any direction, chances that me and my "friends" will find any other life are slim ( considering we still havent discovered planes, boats that can cross oceans ). In that case my enitre life I would thing that we are the only humans.....

But now we have detected exo planets similar to Earth.  And that will continue, now that we know how to do it.  After a while, we'll have - let's say - a list of 100 such planets.  We can aim DIRECTIONAL recievers at those points.

Right now we are just randomly pointing antennas around hoping to maybe pick something up.  With radio that doesn't work too well.  You'd never hear or talk to the Mars rovers unless you had extremely narrow directional antennas.

And obviously to listen to another star system, the problem is that much worse.  We do have some good guesses as to what frequencies to listen on, but have not to this time, known WHERE.

[counter]

This is just more of the same from people who will refuse to believe anything good can come from us believing others could exist in the universe beyond us.  Or that we have the potential to grow as a species and populate other planets.  it's all this negativity and babble that people make up to keep themselves and other in the dark that is really killing progression in my opinion.

[Fatpony]

Humans have not been listening to the "space" long enough to take that time into consideration and a prof that aliens do not exist. Let's put it like this. If i live on an island in some ocean with 100 other people and the closest land is 6.000km in any direction, chances that me and my "friends" will find any other life are slim ( considering we still havent discovered planes, boats that can cross oceans ). In that case my enitre life I would thing that we are the only humans.....

But now we have detected exo planets similar to Earth.  And that will continue, now that we know how to do it.  After a while, we'll have - let's say - a list of 100 such planets.  We can aim DIRECTIONAL recievers at those points.

Right now we are just randomly pointing antennas around hoping to maybe pick something up.  With radio that doesn't work too well.  You'd never hear or talk to the Mars rovers unless you had extremely narrow directional antennas.

And obviously to listen to another star system, the problem is that much worse.  We do have some good guesses as to what frequencies to listen on, but have not to this time, known WHERE.

And how will that help? There are billions of planets in our galaxy alone, what are the chances that those planets would have intelligent life? Less then winning a lotto 3x in a row. You are forgetting many things, and one of them evolution and technological develepment. Being a planet that can sustain life doesnt equal intellignet life has yet evolved or survived, or taht species is capable to emit radio into space. And we as humans have been brought to near extinction many, many times... And dont forget that human made radio wave has traveled about 100 LY so far ( furthest ), so if lets say there is an intelligent life on that Exoplanet listening to our part of the galaxy ( pointing radio waves to our planet ) he wont detect ANYTHING.

[jinjuro]

Gee, I don't know.  There is a long illustrious history of prison guards being bribed, cajoled, or blackmailed into working for the team.  Now I can't help but think little Ms. Lightspeed could be influenced to look the other way sometimes....

I'm on the other side of the fence.  I believe the fact we haven't been contacted by an alien race is proof that faster than light travel (for mass) is impossible.

Do you believe that aliens still using radio signals? Our race just started using electricity few hundreds years ago. Imagine some other civilizations have existed for a millions years. Their communications would not be detected if they would not to. We will not detect their presence if they will not to. They will be like god. There is a possibility that we are only a simulation on their computers.

[Vod]

Gee, I don't know.  There is a long illustrious history of prison guards being bribed, cajoled, or blackmailed into working for the team.  Now I can't help but think little Ms. Lightspeed could be influenced to look the other way sometimes....

I'm on the other side of the fence.  I believe the fact we haven't been contacted by an alien race is proof that faster than light travel (for mass) is impossible.

Do you believe that aliens still using radio signals? Our race just started using electricity few hundreds years ago. Imagine some other civilizations have existed for a millions years. Their communications would not be detected if they would not to. We will not detect their presence if they will not to. They will be like god. There is a possibility that we are only a simulation on their computers.

A few hundred years of electricity eh?   

You're right about the radio signals.  We started those last century and already turned most of them off.  All the US and Canadian TV signals are digital now (ignorant about the rest of the world).  What are the odds that an alien race turned their radio telescopes to us in just that short period we were transmitting?

[acs267]

I never thought much of the "habitable zone" theory. We have no idea what life really likes. We only have one example to look at, and for all we know it is a weird example. Perhaps it is more common for life to exist on stars than planets? or maybe the ultra-cold areas of deep space is where most life exists? 

Me neither. And what if there's another 'humanity' that looks different from us? Not your alienish one. That would be rather interesting, yet scary. What humanity is capable of now, is scary. What another humanity might be able to do, possibly a more intelligent one, is scary.

[Wilikon]

If we are scared, should we stop looking? I am sure THEY won't until they found us

[Spendulus]

Humans have not been listening to the "space" long enough to take that time into consideration and a prof that aliens do not exist. Let's put it like this. If i live on an island in some ocean with 100 other people and the closest land is 6.000km in any direction, chances that me and my "friends" will find any other life are slim ( considering we still havent discovered planes, boats that can cross oceans ). In that case my enitre life I would thing that we are the only humans.....

But now we have detected exo planets similar to Earth.  And that will continue, now that we know how to do it.  After a while, we'll have - let's say - a list of 100 such planets.  We can aim DIRECTIONAL recievers at those points.

Right now we are just randomly pointing antennas around hoping to maybe pick something up.  With radio that doesn't work too well.  You'd never hear or talk to the Mars rovers unless you had extremely narrow directional antennas.

And obviously to listen to another star system, the problem is that much worse.  We do have some good guesses as to what frequencies to listen on, but have not to this time, known WHERE.

And how will that help? There are billions of planets in our galaxy alone, what are the chances that those planets would have intelligent life? Less then winning a lotto 3x in a row. You are forgetting many things, and one of them evolution and technological develepment. Being a planet that can sustain life doesnt equal intellignet life has yet evolved or survived, or taht species is capable to emit radio into space. And we as humans have been brought to near extinction many, many times... And dont forget that human made radio wave has traveled about 100 LY so far ( furthest ), so if lets say there is an intelligent life on that Exoplanet listening to our part of the galaxy ( pointing radio waves to our planet ) he wont detect ANYTHING.

You misunderstand.  I suggest not that an ET would hear anything from us, but that signalling from, to and between ET would be by narrow beam communications.  Of what type?  Does not really matter.  Narrow beam requires knowing where to point, so ET(planet 937) would point at what he considered habitable planets.  Because of some details of chemistry, water is most suitable, so he would have had a beam pointed at Earth.

How would you detect it?   You'd crank a directional antenna around in turn between planet 0...999, and when you hit 937, you might pick it up.  If you did, you just hit the jackpot.  Because that repeating broadcast from ET would contain the details of how, where and when to communicate.

[Spendulus]

Gee, I don't know.  There is a long illustrious history of prison guards being bribed, cajoled, or blackmailed into working for the team.  Now I can't help but think little Ms. Lightspeed could be influenced to look the other way sometimes....

I'm on the other side of the fence.  I believe the fact we haven't been contacted by an alien race is proof that faster than light travel (for mass) is impossible.

It is simply not proof.  As a way of looking at this, let's first assume that the universe is rich in consciousness.  That there are millions of races of ET.  They seek to communicate and learn, they are curious. 

This gives you the position with the most weight in favor of your argument.

But FTL could simply be highly risky.  It could be hugely costly in terms of energy expenditure.  It could only go between certain points in the universe, not anywhere.  There could be limits to the size or mass moveable through FTL.  So forth and so on.  None of these meet the criteria of "impossible", yet they all would in a practical sense explain why physical ET has not been seen around these parts.

Then again, for most of human history man has been steeped in myth and superstition, and ET could easily have visited and would have fit right in as a god, a devil, a spirit, or any of a number of things that man had working frames of reference for. 

So you can't support the premise nor the conclusion.