how small we really are

[tonea2003]

i noticed in the last episode of the human universe there was plenty of talk of fusion power

now to explore other worlds we need lots of power and the biggest factor is to get there quickly because of our own limited life spans

currently with our technology it would take a big chunk of an adults life just to get to the edge of the solar system and back.

its quite possible if other species exist in the universe they are encountering the same problem and we could never cross paths

is star trek/star wars power a figment of an imagination or could we produce power to move as quick in the future

who knows?

 

[George Hannah]

Cox's theory is that as intelligent beings we spread across our planet in an incredibly short time. Any alien civilization would have done the same thing but across the entire universe/galaxy

I have a question for you George.

How could he possibly know this?

For something to happen in a "short time" there must be example of a non-short (i.e. long time). We can say that City went to the top of the leagues in a short time because we can compare to other teams who took longer than City and build up what we consider to be a normal speed in contrast to us. We can say that the development of the Sun took a long time compared to other stars in the Universe but only a short time compared to other hydrogen based yellow dwarfs in the area.
When you compare the length of times you always must have something to compare to otherwise it makes no sense as there's no universal measurement of "a long time". The dwarf is king in the land of the midgets and what have you.

He can't compare our speed of technological growth to anything else so he has no idea if we spread across the planet in a very short time or a very long time compared to other intelligent beings if they exist.

He also has that disease that some space lovers have where they presume that all intelligent life must somehow have conquered a bunch of other planets and be these great civilizations. There's nothing to suggest that that is true, perhaps they don't share our love of exploration and they are all sat round in villages in a single continent? Perhaps they have far off advanced technology that we cannot detect? Perhaps King Ziggy the Fourteenth decided that they shall install a radio filter around their planet because they are insular and scared? Perhaps they wiped themselves out in a nuclear explosion and only packets of the civilization remain?

We've had radio for about 120 years give or take. Our species has been on the planet for about 30,000 years and civilized into forms we'd recognise for about 6000-7000 years. Having radio for 120 of those 7000 years and then demanding that this is something any other alien life should have for them to be intelligent would be the height of arrogance.

This is sort of what I said to Mark before. Just because Cox is a particle physicist doesn't give him any authority in this area if his conclusions don't make any sense.

I agree, it seems an unusual claim which is why I mentioned it in the first place. Intuitively, from what we think we know about the scale of space/time, there would seem to be every probability that other sentient beings exist elsewhere than just this planet. His brief TV explanation of his position from the perspective of Easter Island was prefaced by the statement that the issue "bothered him" which would seem to indicate he is well aware of the applecart he is upsetting.

I said before it looks like he is disposed favourably to the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter hypothesis. At the end of the last programme (as someone has already mentioned) he repeated his view about us being "the only island of meaning in an infinite sea of lonely stars" * which presumably takes in the whole universe and makes his subsequent tweet that "there WILL be other civilizations in univ." seem rather odd unless he has switched seamlessly into multiverse speak.

It has occurred to me and no doubt yourself that those who would argue for the existence of alien intelligences despite the lack so far of any straightforward evidence are analogous to those who argue for the existence of the hidden God of Christianity in some respects. Maybe, like his hero John von Neumann, Cox is risking confounding his celebrity atheist chums and coming round to the the belief “There is probably a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t."

*(last few minutes - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276pxp/human-universe-3-are-we-alone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-we-alone</a>
also <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-and-time</a> )

 

[tonea2003]

Cox's theory is that as intelligent beings we spread across our planet in an incredibly short time. Any alien civilization would have done the same thing but across the entire universe/galaxy

I have a question for you George.

How could he possibly know this?

For something to happen in a "short time" there must be example of a non-short (i.e. long time). We can say that City went to the top of the leagues in a short time because we can compare to other teams who took longer than City and build up what we consider to be a normal speed in contrast to us. We can say that the development of the Sun took a long time compared to other stars in the Universe but only a short time compared to other hydrogen based yellow dwarfs in the area.
When you compare the length of times you always must have something to compare to otherwise it makes no sense as there's no universal measurement of "a long time". The dwarf is king in the land of the midgets and what have you.

He can't compare our speed of technological growth to anything else so he has no idea if we spread across the planet in a very short time or a very long time compared to other intelligent beings if they exist.

He also has that disease that some space lovers have where they presume that all intelligent life must somehow have conquered a bunch of other planets and be these great civilizations. There's nothing to suggest that that is true, perhaps they don't share our love of exploration and they are all sat round in villages in a single continent? Perhaps they have far off advanced technology that we cannot detect? Perhaps King Ziggy the Fourteenth decided that they shall install a radio filter around their planet because they are insular and scared? Perhaps they wiped themselves out in a nuclear explosion and only packets of the civilization remain?

We've had radio for about 120 years give or take. Our species has been on the planet for about 30,000 years and civilized into forms we'd recognise for about 6000-7000 years. Having radio for 120 of those 7000 years and then demanding that this is something any other alien life should have for them to be intelligent would be the height of arrogance.

This is sort of what I said to Mark before. Just because Cox is a particle physicist doesn't give him any authority in this area if his conclusions don't make any sense.

I agree, it seems an unusual claim which is why I mentioned it in the first place. Intuitively, from what we think we know about the scale of space/time, there would seem to be every probability that other sentient beings exist elsewhere than on this planet. His brief TV explanation of his position from the perspective of Easter Island was prefaced by the statement that the issue "bothered him" which would seem to indicate he is well aware of the applecart he is upsetting.

I said before it looks like he is disposed favourably to the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter hypothesis. At the end of the last programme (as someone has already mentioned) he repeated his view about us being "the only island of meaning in an infinite sea of lonely stars" * which presumably takes in the whole universe and makes his subsequent tweet that "there WILL be other civilizations in univ." seem rather odd unless he has switched seamlessly into multiverse speak.

It has occurred to me and no doubt yourself that those who would argue for the existence of alien intelligences despite the lack so far of any straightforward evidence are analogous to those who argue for the existence of the hidden God of Christianity in some respects. Maybe, like his hero John von Neumann, Cox is coming round to the the belief “There is probably a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t."

*(last few minutes - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276pxp/human-universe-3-are-we-alone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-we-alone</a>
also <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-and-time</a> )

well if he is then he will have to renounce his support for the BHA

 

[Damocles]

I agree, it seems an unusual claim which is why I mentioned it in the first place. Intuitively, from what we think we know about the scale of space/time, there would seem to be every probability that other sentient beings exist elsewhere than just this planet. His brief TV explanation of his position from the perspective of Easter Island was prefaced by the statement that the issue "bothered him" which would seem to indicate he is well aware of the applecart he is upsetting.

I said before it looks like he is disposed favourably to the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter hypothesis. At the end of the last programme (as someone has already mentioned) he repeated his view about us being "the only island of meaning in an infinite sea of lonely stars" * which presumably takes in the whole universe and makes his subsequent tweet that "there WILL be other civilizations in univ." seem rather odd unless he has switched seamlessly into multiverse speak.

It has occurred to me and no doubt yourself that those who would argue for the existence of alien intelligences despite the lack so far of any straightforward evidence are analogous to those who argue for the existence of the hidden God of Christianity in some respects. Maybe, like his hero John von Neumann, Cox is risking confounding his celebrity atheist chums and coming round to the the belief “There is probably a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t."

*(last few minutes - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276pxp/human-universe-3-are-we-alone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-we-alone</a>
also <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-and-time</a> )

Why did you have to turn this into religion and atheism again and the suggestion that Cox must somehow be turning religious?

I would have agreed with much of that and answered some of the more salient points if you could have just kept that last attempted trolling sentence out of it.

 

[George Hannah]

I agree, it seems an unusual claim which is why I mentioned it in the first place. Intuitively, from what we think we know about the scale of space/time, there would seem to be every probability that other sentient beings exist elsewhere than just this planet. His brief TV explanation of his position from the perspective of Easter Island was prefaced by the statement that the issue "bothered him" which would seem to indicate he is well aware of the applecart he is upsetting.

I said before it looks like he is disposed favourably to the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter hypothesis. At the end of the last programme (as someone has already mentioned) he repeated his view about us being "the only island of meaning in an infinite sea of lonely stars" * which presumably takes in the whole universe and makes his subsequent tweet that "there WILL be other civilizations in univ." seem rather odd unless he has switched seamlessly into multiverse speak.

It has occurred to me and no doubt yourself that those who would argue for the existence of alien intelligences despite the lack so far of any straightforward evidence are analogous to those who argue for the existence of the hidden God of Christianity in some respects. Maybe, like his hero John von Neumann, Cox is risking confounding his celebrity atheist chums and coming round to the the belief “There is probably a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t."

*(last few minutes - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276pxp/human-universe-3-are-we-alone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-we-alone</a>
also <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-and-time</a> )

Why did you have to turn this into religion and atheism again and the suggestion that Cox must somehow be turning religious?

I would have agreed with much of that and answered some of the more salient points if you could have just kept that last attempted trolling sentence out of it.

I'm glad we're in agreement about something at least and I'd be very interested to read your further comments. I post on here in good faith and expect the same of other posters, it's not trolling or wumming to honestly say what you think.

 

[tonea2003]

I agree, it seems an unusual claim which is why I mentioned it in the first place. Intuitively, from what we think we know about the scale of space/time, there would seem to be every probability that other sentient beings exist elsewhere than just this planet. His brief TV explanation of his position from the perspective of Easter Island was prefaced by the statement that the issue "bothered him" which would seem to indicate he is well aware of the applecart he is upsetting.

I said before it looks like he is disposed favourably to the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter hypothesis. At the end of the last programme (as someone has already mentioned) he repeated his view about us being "the only island of meaning in an infinite sea of lonely stars" * which presumably takes in the whole universe and makes his subsequent tweet that "there WILL be other civilizations in univ." seem rather odd unless he has switched seamlessly into multiverse speak.

It has occurred to me and no doubt yourself that those who would argue for the existence of alien intelligences despite the lack so far of any straightforward evidence are analogous to those who argue for the existence of the hidden God of Christianity in some respects. Maybe, like his hero John von Neumann, Cox is risking confounding his celebrity atheist chums and coming round to the the belief “There is probably a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t."

*(last few minutes - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276pxp/human-universe-3-are-we-alone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-we-alone</a>
also <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-and-time</a> )

Why did you have to turn this into religion and atheism again and the suggestion that Cox must somehow be turning religious?

I would have agreed with much of that and answered some of the more salient points if you could have just kept that last attempted trolling sentence out of it.

I'm glad we're in agreement about something at least and I'd be very interested to read your further comments. I post on here in good faith and expect the same of other posters, it's not trolling or wumming to honestly say what you think.

could you please answer damo's question on why you turned this into a religion v atheism debate if you are honestly not trolling or wumming instead of your usual sidestepping.

 

[Damocles]

I think with most things it depends on the logic behind the situation. If somebody says that they believe alien civilisations exist because of Roswell or because they want it to be true then it's a form of blind faith. In fact it's not even a form of blind faith it's pretty much the definition of it.

To be honest I've always said that I believe life (not intelligent life but single celled life like prokaryotes or even protocells) will probably be found to be abundant in the galaxy and the Universe and even the Solar System. We have to recall that the development of the Universe across a broad strokes viewpoint is the same everywhere. Obviously some galaxies will have their own quirks as will some star systems on a smaller level but the general theme of gaseous clouds being pulled together to form stars and then creating the new elements will pretty much have happened all over the place.

If we think about this then the ingredients for the recipe of life; carbon and water and energy, will be all over the place in the Universe. We've seen single celled life on Earth develop independently from each other in places as diverse as underwater volcanoes to the Arctic tundra to the Sahara desert, life seems to be very good at developing to its environment.

Prokaryotes don't contain a cell nucleus and reproduce by division though do contain DNA. I sometimes think people don't understand how big of a deal eukaryotes inventing sex was and there's no reason why this should be a "natural progression" because from what we already know, it was based upon very specific conditions in our atmosphere. I also think that one of the blind spots in this whole thing is where the original RNA came from and how a jump in complexity came about.

So my point is that I can see the skeptics viewpoint here that there are many certain events that had to happen in the very early days to produce us and that we are the only development of intelligent life that we can see so it makes sense to presume these events must also occur elsewhere.

My main answer to this is based on probability. Let's say that all of those events occurring to make intelligent life each had a probability of 10 million to one and a complete probability of trillions to one once you chain them together.

There are estimated to be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the Universe. To give you an indication of the size of that, you could never possibly count to that number because the Sun and the whole Milky Way would have blown up before you could finish. In fact every single planet and star in the entire Universe would have blown up and disintegrated before you could finish counting to that.

It's an extremely big number that our human brains just cannot possibly comprehend properly. If you had that number of aliens for example and they wanted to invade Earth, we would be outnumbered by 142 trillion to 1. That's 7 times the amount of red blood cells in the average human for every single human, man, woman or child on the planet.

With that number you can have a trillions to one event occur pretty regularly. In fact doing a simple math for the number of planets based on intelligent life being a trillion to one chance means that you find 1 trillion planets with intelligent life. This means you could find intelligent life popping up every second and it would take almost 32,000 years to count them all. And this presumes that life needs a planet, it doesn't count all of the dwarf planets, proto-planets, asteroids and comets and random debris floating in space which also have carbon, water and energy in abundance.

If we were to get purely scientific about it, the answer is that there is no intelligent life out there. There's no falsifiable evidence to support the notion that there is and until there is it lies in the same group with fairies, goblins and the Easter Bunny.

However most people would assume logically that being the recipient of a one septillion to one chance is unbelievably far fetched to point towards us missing data.

 

[west didsblue]

I think with most things it depends on the logic behind the situation. If somebody says that they believe alien civilisations exist because of Roswell or because they want it to be true then it's a form of blind faith. In fact it's not even a form of blind faith it's pretty much the definition of it.

To be honest I've always said that I believe life (not intelligent life but single celled life like prokaryotes or even protocells) will probably be found to be abundant in the galaxy and the Universe and even the Solar System. We have to recall that the development of the Universe across a broad strokes viewpoint is the same everywhere. Obviously some galaxies will have their own quirks as will some star systems on a smaller level but the general theme of gaseous clouds being pulled together to form stars and then creating the new elements will pretty much have happened all over the place.

If we think about this then the ingredients for the recipe of life; carbon and water and energy, will be all over the place in the Universe. We've seen single celled life on Earth develop independently from each other in places as diverse as underwater volcanoes to the Arctic tundra to the Sahara desert, life seems to be very good at developing to its environment.

Prokaryotes don't contain a cell nucleus and reproduce by division though do contain DNA. I sometimes think people don't understand how big of a deal eukaryotes inventing sex was and there's no reason why this should be a "natural progression" because from what we already know, it was based upon very specific conditions in our atmosphere. I also think that one of the blind spots in this whole thing is where the original RNA came from and how a jump in complexity came about.

So my point is that I can see the skeptics viewpoint here that there are many certain events that had to happen in the very early days to produce us and that we are the only development of intelligent life that we can see so it makes sense to presume these events must also occur elsewhere.

My main answer to this is based on probability. Let's say that all of those events occurring to make intelligent life each had a probability of 10 million to one and a complete probability of trillions to one once you chain them together.

There are estimated to be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the Universe. To give you an indication of the size of that, you could never possibly count to that number because the Sun and the whole Milky Way would have blown up before you could finish. In fact every single planet and star in the entire Universe would have blown up and disintegrated before you could finish counting to that.

It's an extremely big number that our human brains just cannot possibly comprehend properly. If you had that number of aliens for example and they wanted to invade Earth, we would be outnumbered by 142 trillion to 1. That's 7 times the amount of red blood cells in the average human for every single human, man, woman or child on the planet.

With that number you can have a trillions to one event occur pretty regularly. In fact doing a simple math for the number of planets based on intelligent life being a trillion to one chance means that you find 1 trillion planets with intelligent life. This means you could find intelligent life popping up every second and it would take almost 32,000 years to count them all. And this presumes that life needs a planet, it doesn't count all of the dwarf planets, proto-planets, asteroids and comets and random debris floating in space which also have carbon, water and energy in abundance.

If we were to get purely scientific about it, the answer is that there is no intelligent life out there. There's no falsifiable evidence to support the notion that there is and until there is it lies in the same group with fairies, goblins and the Easter Bunny.

However most people would assume logically that being the recipient of a one septillion to one chance is unbelievably far fetched to point towards us missing data.

Taking this one step further. If there are 1 trillion places in the observable universe with intelligent life, on average there would be 10[super]80[/super]/10[super]12[/super] cubic metres of space for each one which equates to them being on average 6 million light years away from each other if evenly distributed (this is based on the observable universe having a diameter of 93 billion light years) . This would suggest the the numbers in each galaxy would be either zero or a small number. Therefore it's highly unlikely that we would ever find another intelligent life form and equally unlikely that they would find us.

 

[blueish swede]

I agree.

When you look at the maths the probablility of us encountering intelligent alien life is almost zero. We have about 50-60 years of gas and oil reserves left. After that we are stuck on this planet forever. So far we have sent abot 450 people into space and the fathest we have been is the moon (about 1.3 light seconds away).

I think part of the desire to believe in alien contact has the same roots as religion. No one wants to face their own demise and the nothingness. That's why the afterlife was invented. If you don't believe in the afterlife you can obtain immortality in other ways, being famous for exmple.
But these ways don't work if all of earths civilisation is annihiliated, which we now know it will be at some point in the future so it is necessary to invent a scenario where “we” are preserved by an external (extra terestrial) intelligence. Just like our souls are presereved in the afterlife.

It is very difficult to accept our own demise but, in all probability, we will become extinct and all traces of human life, intelligence, learning, culture and achievement will be annihilited without trace or anyone else ever knowing we existed.

On the plus side I saw a documentary about baboons who have started keeping dogs, so we might have someone to chat to if we can stick around a while longer.

 

[PJMCC1UK]

I agree, it seems an unusual claim which is why I mentioned it in the first place. Intuitively, from what we think we know about the scale of space/time, there would seem to be every probability that other sentient beings exist elsewhere than just this planet. His brief TV explanation of his position from the perspective of Easter Island was prefaced by the statement that the issue "bothered him" which would seem to indicate he is well aware of the applecart he is upsetting.

I said before it looks like he is disposed favourably to the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter hypothesis. At the end of the last programme (as someone has already mentioned) he repeated his view about us being "the only island of meaning in an infinite sea of lonely stars" * which presumably takes in the whole universe and makes his subsequent tweet that "there WILL be other civilizations in univ." seem rather odd unless he has switched seamlessly into multiverse speak.

It has occurred to me and no doubt yourself that those who would argue for the exist...e hidden God of Christianity in some respects. Maybe, like his hero John von Neumann, Cox is risking confounding his celebrity atheist chums and coming round to the the belief “There is probably a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t."

*(last few minutes - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276pxp/human-universe-3-are-we-alone" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-we-alone</a>
also <a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0 ... e-and-time</a> )

1) No it doesn't. Your presumption is just that. He put a sentence together to make it sound a bit more profound and appealing on TV. To try and interpret it as anything more shows why you come unstuck and why you fail to see the difference between Universe and Galaxy as he himself clarified.

2) Again, no it doesn't. It may be as analogous as saying there isn't a creator of the Universe, But it is very easy to disprove the Christian version of God by analysing the claims about him/her/it and looking at real life
Same as all the other Gods. But that gets us back into religious debate.

The Universe is too vast for us to ever find out. But the probabilities of intelligent life on other planets is great. So that's all we can go on. Some aliens could even be having a similar discussion on a device much like a computer on a sort of sports team based forum 20 million light years away at this very moment. West Didsblue has shown again how vast (and on topic) the universe is. I've got back into maths so I understand 10 to the power of 80/10 to the power of 12 (don't know how to write it like westdidsblue did). But I could never imagine that in reality. It blows my head to the point that I would probably burst into tears if I thought about it too long.