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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2017 17:27:57 GMT -7
We'll have to add Fd to the drake equation for races that get wiped out by death stars.
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Post by Gorn on Aug 4, 2017 17:59:30 GMT -7
By what mechanisms could one expect a galaxy to be an "underachiever"?
Excess cosmic radiation from: massive black holes (none seen in MW) several coincidental supernovae (none seen in MW) galaxy merger (unlikely, and none happened in MW)
There is no other mechanism I can think of that might account for such a result. I cannot imagine any galaxy being an "underachiever" anymore than I can imagine every human in the world flips a coin simultaneously and none show up tails.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2017 18:16:56 GMT -7
"Where is everybody?"
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Post by Gorn on Aug 6, 2017 6:10:43 GMT -7
You didn't answer the question. Fermi Paradox: As already stated by several Scientists, although Carl Sagan was the first one I heard it from in my teens, 1) We happen to be at the beginning of a civilization 'cycle', where all other intelligent civilizations are more or less at the same technological level, and we simply haven't had time to make contact yet. 2) They already are here, and we are being sequestered and protected from cultural annihilation, (much like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples), by molecular sized machines that edit out any contact data we receive. 3) Civilizations almost unfailingly annihilate themselves 4) Civilizations quickly sink into Virtual Reality/Borg like state and leave the real Universe behind for a much more exciting one. 5) Every other civilization is intelligent enough to keep to themselves exclusively 6) Civilizations almost unfailingly trail off into extinction, leaving behind computerized minds; none of which are interested in contacting others. Some of those are much more unlikely than others. We're doing a good job of #3.
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 6, 2017 8:33:06 GMT -7
^ Sadly - correct on that point.
Between the constant threat of war, which has gotten somewhat worse since the end of the Cold War, and pollution/climate damage - we're doing a good job on #3...
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2017 10:50:39 GMT -7
Well, if they killed themselves off, they no longer exist, so those do not count for the purposes of this poll.
It's also possible that life on other words never becomes intelligent in the first place. Whatever life does get started keeps suffering the fate of Dinosaurs. Evolve, dominate, get whacked by a space rock (or some other natural disaster). Or evolve, dominate, never become intelligent (the dinosaurs were around for something like 175 million years and never even created art).
How many extinction events has Gorn studied?
Imagine how many more he might have seen without our weirdly large moon to reduce impact events. I've read several articles and papers that point out something like a big moon may be important to advanced life. A properly-located gas giant also helps (sucks up space rocks). Many of these articles also indicate the importance of a large moon because it has a stabilizing effect upon the parent planet's axis of rotation.
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 6, 2017 10:57:32 GMT -7
I've heard it doesn't have to be one large moon but, at least one large enough to stabilize the planet's axis or two decent size ones may also work fine (much larger than Phobos/Deimos).
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2017 13:46:21 GMT -7
Yes... Mars needs to grow a bigger pair.
of moons
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 6, 2017 17:01:53 GMT -7
Precisely!
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Post by Gorn on Aug 12, 2017 7:28:26 GMT -7
You cannot escape the time factor. For the sake of the example, let's say KIC 8462852 "Tabby's Star" at ~1250 LY away actually was an alien civilization in the midst of building a Dyson Swarm as we're seeing it now. At the time they were building it, King Arthur Pendragon was dead somewhere ~200 years scale, and Europe was in the depths of the Dark Ages. So they wipe themselves out before they can complete it. But we are just detecting them now, when we are ready to, and when signs of their civilization reaches us. It will still be an Earth changing event for us; the fact they eventually go extinct does not stop us from gathering the data about an intelligent civilization that existed - now we know for certain it does happen with some regularity. If we find shattered civ after shattered civ, we know intelligent life is a regular thing. We also know self annihilation is, too. That was the unfortunate hypothesis Carl Sagan seemed to be betting on.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2017 7:45:03 GMT -7
yeahh... we all had a handle on that quite a while ago, and point has been pretty well covered. I even pointed it out as one of the variables in the Drake equation (see "L"). If the race is dead, it does not exist anymore. That's an important part of the question; "Does Intelligent Life Exist on Other Planets?"
The first word, "Does", is the key. I chose that word carefully. I could have used "Could", which would have made all of your points much more compelling. I could have used "Did", which, again, would have made several points raised in this thread of greater interest. Instead, I specifically chose "Does". I wanted to know if the forum members thought that there are smart beings alive on other planets today. Not "Maybe in a few weeks" or "They were until last Tuesday", but right now. Today.
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Post by starcruiser on Aug 12, 2017 8:01:53 GMT -7
Yes but, knowing that they DID exist is half the game. That's gives some data to work with, it's not much but, also proves that life -intelligent life- can evolve elsewhere and we are probably not alone currently (odds are now in favor of others).
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2017 8:54:00 GMT -7
Absolutely. Receiving a signal for an dead race would be absolutely amazing! It would have a wide-spread effect upon humanity in general.
But that has never happened.
Change "Does" to "Could", and you are off to the races. You remove "L" form the equation and get some really fun numbers. Change "Does" to "Did", and you also remove "L" and still allow for a lot of intelligence in just our galaxy.
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Post by Gorn on Aug 14, 2017 10:48:06 GMT -7
It really doesn't matter if they went extinct within a few thousand years of a contact sphere. They're still on the same scale as us of "now" in the galaxy. If they evolved millions of years ago and surpassed us, they would probably have nothing more in common with us than we would with a bacteria. But if they're more or less equal with us, they *might* deign to talk to us a bit, the same way we interact with chimps. I fail to see what existing alive right now would have any bearing on - it's not like we could travel to each other with any ease unless they were within ~50 LY.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2020 19:04:04 GMT -7
It really doesn't matter if they went extinct within a few thousand years of a contact sphere. They're still on the same scale as us of "now" in the galaxy. If they evolved millions of years ago and surpassed us, they would probably have nothing more in common with us than we would with a bacteria. But if they're more or less equal with us, they *might* deign to talk to us a bit, the same way we interact with chimps. I fail to see what existing alive right now would have any bearing on - it's not like we could travel to each other with any ease unless they were within ~50 LY. I'll go along with that (for the most part). We have not shown much propensity to ignore less-developed people; we conquer them. Less-developed animals; we kill them or make them pets or beasts of burden. If aliens are anything like us we should be glad they are so rare (if they exist at all).
Still, I'm thinking 66 intelligent alien races spread over the 10 billion years of the Milky Way galaxy's existence is not great odds of anyone being around "now", even if we expand the definition of "now" to be a few million years. I didn't even take into account the theories stating that 2/3 of the Galaxy are uninhabitable. Just as many theorize that there is a "Goldilocks Zone" around a star, some have proposed a Galactic Goldilocks Zone. That could reduce an already tiny number to an insignificant number.
And that does not take into account the number of Intelligent Aliens without the ability build radios. Flippers and Tentacles might work for simple art and some forms of writing, but not mechanical fabrication, machining, soldering, etc... The big-brains always seem to think that aliens are just humans with weird foreheads.
As much as I hate it, I think we're alone in the Milky Way right now ("Now" being ±500,000 years from the date of this post).
Sometimes, it's interesting to re-read old threads (and maybe even necropost a little). As I re-read this I found myself chuckling, and saying "ohhh...kaayyy..." a few times. The cats still make me smile.
Gorn certainly could spice up a conversation.
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