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Altina McAlterson
Pure Innocence.
EoN.
717
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Posted - 2014.01.03 00:01:00 -
[1] - Quote
I've always believed that there are probably aliens out there but the vast distances between stars makes me feel it is extremely unlikely that they've ever visited here. Not to mention we've only been broadcasting out into space for a short time so picking up our transmissions isn't really probable as on a galactic scale 100 lightyears or so is infinitesimally tiny.
Also there is really strong evidence that life exists out there in at least bacteriological form as a lot of the signs point to life on earth originating from organic material brought here by an asteroid.
Again, I'm a strong believer that other life is out there but I think the odds of them stumbling onto this tiny corner of the galaxy to be incredibly small and unlikely. But to say there is no other life in the universe is equally small minded as far as I'm concerned.
"STFU I'm awesome, all your points are invalid as I kill proto's all the time nubs." - Infinite Diversity IDIC
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Altina McAlterson
Pure Innocence.
EoN.
718
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Posted - 2014.01.03 06:22:00 -
[2] - Quote
calvin b wrote:
I agree our transmission may or may not have been received due to a lot of factors. History has shown us that we have been visited in the past. Religious text from different cultures all speak of flying craft and shinning beings that were also known as angels or demigods. The reason we have not been visited on a broad scale in my opinion is due to our cultures. Society would rip itself apart in many ways. If another form of life was to appear almost all religions would be undone or needed to be reexamined in some fashion. Money would become obsolete, for technology would feel all our needs. Life as we know it would change drastically and I feel the human mind is to fragile at the moment. How would society feel if it found out we were social and biologically engineered by an advance race and this was the god spoken of in many religious text.
I dunno about all that. I guess this really boils down to personality. I don't believe in anything until I see evidence for it and pretty much all of the ancient aliens or whatever is all speculation. I'm not saying it is impossible by any means, merely improbable.
I think about it like this:
First the aliens would have to travel the unimaginable distances between stars and just happen to find us here. I'm assuming "subspace" isn't a real thing and all information is restricted to luminal velocity. They would have to literally just being going randomly to every earth-like planet since a pre-industrial society would have no visible external markers without direct visual observation.
They would also need a reason to even do that in the first place but I'll accept that curiosity could be a universal trait for intelligent life forms.
Also by your logic they would have to either understand our society extensively or have a comparable society in order to know not to make their presence known. Again, I'll admit the possibility but caution against unwarranted assumptions. Their curiosity could be assumed because they would have to actively be exploring space for knowledge but there's no guarantee they even know what "religion" or "money" is.
They would also have to actually care about us and our society. Again not impossible but still a pretty large assumption.
Then when they do all that and zip around all nimbly bimbly in their space ships they reveal themselves to a few people in loin cloths, stack a couple of big rocks together, steal a cow, bend some corn and then bounce?
I'm going to go all Occam's razor here and posit that ancient religions are full of beings descending from the sky because to ancient people the sky was a crazy weird place with with millions of strange blinking lights and half the time had a giant ass ball of fire hanging out in it. Fewer assumptions that way. But again, it really is a matter of personality as there isn't real proof either way.
Although I will call BS on your statement that the human mind is fragile right now. Total crap. People can be stupid don't get me wrong but we're a lot tougher and smarter than most people want to admit. I know it's the cool thing to talk about how crappy and stupid we are but you know what? In 1903 two jackass flew a plane built out of some boards and bits of string powered by and engine that connected to the props with a bicycle chain. 66 years later we put a human being on the moon, 240,000 miles from earth.
I love Star Trek as much as the next guy but the Prime Directive was the work of a man that was so afraid of conflict he forbade it on a show that featured a ship with a crew consisting of 50% terrorists and zero issues arising from that. It's a work of fiction and somewhat insulting to the poor "primitives". It worked for the TV series but you can't apply that same thing to real life.
"STFU I'm awesome, all your points are invalid as I kill proto's all the time nubs." - Infinite Diversity IDIC
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Altina McAlterson
Pure Innocence.
EoN.
721
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Posted - 2014.01.03 21:25:00 -
[3] - Quote
calvin b wrote:
It is already proven there is at least 4 dimensions, you are proof for you are currently standing in the third dimension.
It's only been proven that there are 3 spatial dimensions: X,Y,Z.
The fourth dimension is usually referred to as 'time', which in a way makes sense but it's only a "dimension" used in calculations for particular purposes. You only need 3 dimensions to plot the point of any object in the observable universe. The fourth one comes in to play if you need to determine the speed of an object, but time isn't exactly a dimension like the other 3 are as it is just a basic scalar and not part of the spatial dimension set.
Or if you want to go with String Theory there's 10 of the bastards and they are all spacial dimensions and "time" is something else.
"STFU I'm awesome, all your points are invalid as I kill proto's all the time nubs." - Infinite Diversity IDIC
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Altina McAlterson
Pure Innocence.
EoN.
746
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Posted - 2014.01.06 09:16:00 -
[4] - Quote
Fizzer94 wrote:There is no doubt in my mind that there is extraterrestrial life out there. Zooming out for a few minutes on Space Engine cleared any of those doubts once I realized I wasnt looking at clusters of stars anymore, but clusters of galaxies. The chance of other life not existing is just too unfathomably abysmally small that I don't even know why anyone could think it.
The real question is how common complex and intelligent life is. Intelligent life could be really rare and we might be the only self conscious species in our entire galaxy.
This is possible. Not only could it be rare in and of itself but if you look back at the history of the Earth a lot of things had to go perfectly for life to survive and flourish here. If I had to just make a guess I would say that life is fairly common, complex life rare, and intelligent life exceedingly rare, relatively speaking. Although even "exceedingly rare" on cosmological terms could very well mean millions of intelligent species out there. But if they are 5 billion light years away they might as well not exist.
Unless we find a way to travel much, much faster than is even depicted in most science fiction we could very well explore a large portion of our galaxy and find ourselves alone. Conceivable even that we would never meet another form of intelligent life. I know that sounds counter-intuitive given the number of stars and planets in the galaxy but the unimaginable vastness of space really makes contact a rare event indeed.
"STFU I'm awesome, all your points are invalid as I kill proto's all the time nubs." - Infinite Diversity IDIC
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