how small we really are

[George Hannah]

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.

When you ascribe probability values to these events on a cosmic scale one's brain does curdle as the previous poster said. I suppose the logical point is that if the rest of the universe resembles the fragment we have observed so far we would still know of only one intelligent civiilzation. Although lacking empirical evidence for aliens, philosophically we are not really in Easter Bunny territory though. It is perhaps more rational to take belief in the existence of alien civilizations in the way we ordinarily take belief in the external world, other minds, material objects, the past and the like as self-evidently true. From Cox's strict scientific perspective one can understand the fact that our galaxy is not teeming with alien life, given the countless biophilic opportunities, is perhaps hard to explain.

(Incidentally I do look forward to reading (though obviously not on this thread) the previous poster's "Easy Proof of the Non-Existence of the Christian Deity from Everyday Examples" Definitely fame, fortune and and a statue in Heywood Market Hall if he pulls it off but for a man whose gift it is to discern what other people really mean from what they actually say they mean it will be well deserved.)

 

[tonea2003]

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.

When you ascribe probability values to these events on a cosmic scale one's brain does curdle as the previous poster said. I suppose the logical point is that if the rest of the universe resembles the fragment we have observed so far we would still know of only one intelligent civiilzation. Although lacking empirical evidence for aliens, philosophically we are not really in Easter Bunny territory though. It is perhaps more rational to take belief in the existence of alien civilizations in the way we ordinarily take belief in the external world, other minds, material objects, the past and the like as self-evidently true. From Cox's strict scientific perspective one can understand the fact that our galaxy is not teeming with alien life, given the countless biophilic opportunities, is perhaps hard to explain.

(Incidentally I do look forward to reading (though obviously not on this thread) the previous poster's "Easy Proof of the Non-Existence of the Christian Deity from Everyday Examples" Definitely fame, fortune and a place in the hallowed atheist portals if he pulls it off but for a man whose gift it is to discern what other people really mean from what they actually say they mean it will be well deserved.)

you've got some front
i've been waiting a good year or so for your easy proof of the existence of the christian deity

interesting you talking about lack of empirical evidence for aliens....

 

[George Hannah]

Interesting piece on the Great Silence from a few years back

The Fermi Paradox: Back with a vengeance

The Fermi Paradox is alive and well.

As our sciences mature, and as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues to fail, the Great Silence becomes louder than ever. The seemingly empty cosmos is screaming out to us that something is askew.

Our isolation in the Universe has in no small way shaped and defined the human condition. It is such an indelible part of our reality that it is often taken for granted or rationalized to extremes.

To deal with the cognitive dissonance created by the Great Silence, we have resorted to good old fashioned human arrogance, anthropocentrism, and worse, an inter-galactic inferiority complex. We make excuses and rationalizations like, ‘we are the first,’ ‘we are all alone,’ or, ‘why would any advanced civilization want to bother with us backward humans?’

Under closer scrutiny, however, these excuses don’t hold. Our sciences are steadily maturing and we are discovering more and more that our isolation in the cosmos and the dearth of observable artificial phenomenon is in direct violation of our expectations, and by consequence, our own anticipated future as a space-faring species.

Indeed, one of the greatest philosophical and scientific challenges that currently confronts humanity is the unsolved question of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligences (ETI's).

We have yet to see any evidence for their existence. It does not appear that ETI’s have come through our solar system; we see no signs of their activities in space; we have yet to receive any kind of communication from them.

Adding to the Great Silence is the realization that they should have been here by now -- the problem known as the Fermi Paradox.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2007/08/fermi-paradox-back-with-vengeance.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/200 ... eance.html</a>

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Can we all at least agree that the Universe is quite big?

 

[somapop]

Tis a fascinating thread all the same.
Technology has jumped so far up the ladder over the past 100 years (and even more so over the last 20) that I'd hate to begin to predict anything (referencing running out of energy supplies to fire us off this rock).
Those numbers are indeed brain mincing and that's without even discussing multiverses and the theory that multiple big bangs are being created every split second...

Wouldn't mind sitting down with a really good read on the subject if anyone can recommend a book (relatively comprehendible please :) ). It's been a while since I last read Carl Sagan.

 

[tonea2003]

Can we all at least agree that the Universe is quite big?

think that is abundantly clear, just some cheeky rascal unnecessarily chucking in a religious aspect for no good fathomable reason

 

[west didsblue]

Can we all at least agree that the Universe is quite big?

Well the observable universe has an estimated volume of 10[super]80[/super] cubic metres which is quite a lot but it's miniscule compared to the volume of the overall unobservable universe. I've seen estimates ranging from it being 250 times to 10[super]10000000000000000000000000000000000000000[/super] times bigger than the observable universe.

 

[somapop]

Can we all at least agree that the Universe is quite big?

Well the observable universe has an estimated volume of 10[super]80[/super] cubic metres which is quite a lot but it's miniscule compared to the volume of the overall unobservable universe. I've seen estimates ranging from it being 250 times to 10[super]10000000000000000000000000000000000000000[/super] times bigger than the observable universe.

And that's not even taking into account the possibility of multiverses (hovering like sheets above our own)?
Agree it's simply too large for our Shatner's bassoon to fathom out...

 

[somapop]

On similar theme, this Manchester International Festival 2015 announcement looks interesting:

Brian Cox creates pioneering 3D show for Manchester festival

TV physicist Brian Cox and the visual effects team behind the film Gravity will tell the story of the universe using cutting-edge augmented reality technology in a live show next year.

Prof Cox, effects wizards Framestore and film director Kevin Macdonald are using a system called Magic Leap.

Magic Leap has not been seen in public, but reports suggest that its headgear projects images onto users' eyes.

The show will be part of the Manchester International Festival next July.

Titled The Age of Starlight, it is one of the first three productions to be announced for the 18-day event.

Also on the line-up are a ballet created by choreographer Wayne McGregor, musician Jamie xx and artist Olafur Eliasson, and a family show telling the life story of children's TV favourite Mr Tumble.

'Transformative technology'
In October, Magic Leap made headlines when it received $542 million (£346 million) from investors led by Google.

Promotional videos suggest the technology will allow users to "see" computer-generated images in front of them as if those objects were really there.

Now the Magic Leap team are working with Prof Cox, Framestore visual effects director Tim Webber - who won an Oscar for Gravity - plus Kevin Macdonald, who directed The Last King of Scotland and State of Play, and Manchester designer Peter Saville.

Their show will address "the deepest possible questions" about the origins of the universe, Prof Cox said.

"It's the premiere of a technology that allows you to put digital images into your field of vision directly," he said. "I saw the prototype in Miami a few months ago and it's stunning.

"It is going to be transformative technology, there's no doubt about that."

The experience will "disturb" audiences and put them "off balance", he predicted. "That's what it did when I saw it demonstrated."

Prof Cox has presented TV documentaries including Human Universe and Wonders of Life.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-30056232

 

[PJMCC1UK]

When you ascribe probability values to these events on a cosmic scale one's brain does curdle as the previous poster said. I suppose the logical point is that if the rest of the universe resembles the fragment we have observed so far we would still know of only one intelligent civiilzation. Although lacking empirical evidence for aliens, philosophically we are not really in Easter Bunny territory though. It is perhaps more rational to take belief in the existence of alien civilizations in the way we ordinarily take belief in the external world, other minds, material objects, the past and the like as self-evidently true. From Cox's strict scientific perspective one can understand the fact that our galaxy is not teeming with alien life, given the countless biophilic opportunities, is perhaps hard to explain.

(Incidentally I do look forward to reading (though obviously not on this thread) the previous poster's "Easy Proof of the Non-Existence of the Christian Deity from Everyday Examples" Definitely fame, fortune and and a statue in Heywood Market Hall if he pulls it off but for a man whose gift it is to discern what other people really mean from what they actually say they mean it will be well deserved.)

It isn't really a gift to see what people say and understand. But thanks.
Would love to show the proof against the Xtian God (not here), But you're a Christian. You have already ignored the glaringly obvious, the Bible. ;)

Also there is nothing to suggest our galaxy isn't teeming with life. Just not intelligent life. They've found organic molecules on the comet we landed on. I do believe another comet they analysed had Amino acids present. I'd have to look that up again though. Not proof but we won't get close to that in my lifetime