Originally posted by The MISTER
I realistically wonder why there's such a shortage of other highly intelligent species. Life strives so hard here it's hard to imagine why the existence seems so void of more like us. I was curious though as to whether alien DNA has ever on meteorites or mars rock samples.
That is like me going outside and looking for signs of Russians in my backyard. If I don't find any Russians in my backward, then there are no Russians.
Originally posted by The MISTER
I realistically wonder why there's such a shortage of other highly intelligent species. Life strives so hard here it's hard to imagine why the existence seems so void of more like us. I was curious though as to whether alien DNA has ever on meteorites or mars rock samples.
Lots of reasons.
First of all the universe is big compared to the speed pf light (and some sort of magical FTL communication would be invisible to us) so if someone in Andromeda (2.5 million ly away) sent a message to the Milky Way when the first homosapiens were walking around (2 million years ago) we would still have five hundred thousand years until it reaches us, longer than all of human civilization. As a result we're basically confined to the Milky Way when it comes to getting messages from aliens. If you assume aliens invented radio a few billion years before humans did then you can look at our local group of galaxies. The whole universe is only a valid place to look for life if you assume aliens invented radio at the moment of creation!
Secondly we've only been really looking for a few decades and even then we can only look at very tiny portions of the sky. So if that alien signal reaches Earth it either has to be so insanely powerful that it overwhelms everything else or we have to have to be looking at exactly the right fraction of the sky at the time.
Thirdly some people have proposed that aliens wouldn't be using radio or laser communications. Instead they might take advantage of having lots of wavelengths that can propagate through vacuum and send messages using many frequencies at once. If we only look at portion of the spectrum we would get garbled nonsense.
Fourthly, and most commonly ignored, we have to assume aliens actually care. If intelligent life is common but most species don't have any interest in searching for life then we'd never know about them unless they stumbled through our solar system. Which brings up another point, aliens might well have no interest or ability to engage in space travel or building radios.
So yes, while the odds of "life" existing "in the universe" are incredibly high we're not going to find "life". We have to find intelligent life, that evolves within a fairly small part of the universe, that is able to develop technology, does develop technology, uses it to broadcast into space and sends messages we can recognize in a way we can recieve during the time that we happen to be looking. The odds of that are much lower.
Originally posted by The MISTERSounds like the Fermi Paradox. In addition to the reasons already mentioned...
I realistically wonder why there's such a shortage of other highly intelligent species. Life strives so hard here it's hard to imagine why the existence seems so void of more like us.
- They're avoiding us because we're the "bad neighborhood."
- They're staying hidden on purpose because as a species we're not ready for First Contact.
- Intelligence may not be required for very long-term survival (ie, other traits will do). Consider that in the 3.9 billion years life has apparently been on Earth, for about 3.4 billion of those years, simple life ruled. The dinosaurs reigned for 100+ million years. Modern man's been around for only about 150,000 years: we're hardly tested. Indeed, if we end up destroying ourselves, intelligence like we have will have proven to be counterproductive in the long run.
Those are good answers even yours shaky....But what about that simple life that you guys spoke of? that's why I asked about dna that is found on mars rocks and such... There is water under the surface of this planet and there is warmth nearer the core of planets. Shouldn't that be enough to spark evolution on other worlds as it is the accepted recipe for life? even if complex organisms are rarer even simple organisms found on mars rocks would be useful in convincing skeptics of life on other worlds.
Originally posted by The MISTER
Those are good answers even yours shaky....But what about that simple life that you guys spoke of? that's why I asked about dna that is found on mars rocks and such... There is water under the surface of this planet and there is warmth nearer the core of planets. Shouldn't that be enough to spark evolution on other worlds as it is the accepted recipe for life? even if complex organisms are rarer even simple organisms found on mars rocks would be useful in convincing skeptics of life on other worlds.
We haven't looked. The rovers on Mars have only covered a few miles combined. There could be life under the surface, and out of reach to robots.
Originally posted by inimalist
it is also important to note that the rovers are not designed to test for life even in the areas they have searched.it is unexpected that they would find anything, but technically, the rovers could be covered in Martian microbes, they just have no way of knowing it
They don't want a repeat of Viking.
Originally posted by Shakyamunison
They don't want a repeat of Viking.
the mars face stuff?
really, I don't think NASA should be too concerned with how the lunatic fringe interprets their results.
an interesting story about something related to this:
I have a friend who is convinced about psychic phenomenon, absolutly convinced.
also, in the department I used to work in, we had a prof who had been involved in testing the psychic Ingo Swan.
They came up with some interesting results, and I told my friend about them, thinking he would be interested and it could be something we had common ground on.
He was instantly dismissive, as if these strange results were useless. He was so convinced in psychic phenomenon that the results weren't good enough. He didn't care that there were replicable EEG readings or whatever, psychics can tell the future and talk to aliens.
my thoughts are, for most people who are convinced by the mars face, the same will be seen. Microbial life likely wont change their opinions on the mars face, and they will still see it as uninteresting. They know aliens built the pyramids, after all.
Originally posted by inimalist
I remember the same thing happening after the rovers first got therea bunch of actually very reputable scientists said there were conditions that could only be caused by life, but was then found not to be.
did NASA say they had found life with Viking?
Yes, I remember the news.
Originally posted by Mindship
Sounds like the Fermi Paradox. In addition to the reasons already mentioned...- They're avoiding us because we're the "bad neighborhood."
- They're staying hidden on purpose because as a species we're not ready for First Contact.
- Intelligence may not be required for very long-term survival (ie, other traits will do). Consider that in the 3.9 billion years life has apparently been on Earth, for about 3.4 billion of those years, simple life ruled. The dinosaurs reigned for 100+ million years. Modern man's been around for only about 150,000 years: we're hardly tested. Indeed, if we end up destroying ourselves, intelligence like we have will have proven to be counterproductive in the long run.
Intelligence WAS needed for survival for the Hebrews
Originally posted by alltoomany
Intelligence WAS needed for survival for the Hebrews
...missing the point. The jury's still out on whether intelligence at our level is an evolutionary boon to the survival of our species, or if it's toxic to our continued existence in the long run. Realistically, we have a lot more ways of killing off our species than the dinosaurs did, and we might survive longer on planet Earth if we were less intelligent.
Personally, while I think that it's almost statistically impossible for us to be the only life in the universe, I do think that the likelihood of (prolonged) intelligences like humanity is very slim. The right balance between aggression and pacifism would be hard. I feel like any species aggressive enough to survive in its environment long enough to develop intelligence would possess too many self-destructive tendencies once that intelligence was achieved. And though it hasn't happened to humans yet, I feel as though that may be our eventual fate before we are able to branch out to other planets and solar systems, which would be the surest way of ensuring the prolonged existence of the species.