Hey guys, what are your thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrial life and the potential involvement of governments in concealing or studying such entities.
I’m open to the idea of life outside of Earth, but I’m sceptical that governments can keep them secret when they can’t keep sex scandals, drug use or financial crimes by leaders secret.
I’m not convinced they’re visiting us. None of the reports I’ve seen appear credible. But non-interference is often critical to scientific study. They could just be doing a decent job at hiding from us.
If they’re out there, I’d be shocked if they wouldn’t visit. Our solar system has been showing life signs for 3.5B years, and technological signs for about a century or so. There aren’t apparently many planets like ours around. We are a very tempting target for study.
It appears to be quite difficult to develop a spacefarring civilization. But there are credible models for sailing light beamed from stars, and even gravity surfing rotating black holes. The vast energies required for interstellar travel should be impossible to conceal. We ought to already be able to see them out there, if they’re close.
13.5B years is an eyeblink in the potential age of the Universe. We developed early. Perhaps not first, but very early. Intelligence and technology are difficult and expensive to develop. Our hubris may destroy us. We might easily be alone in our local neighborhood. Technological civilizations may still be rare. But once they go interplanetary, there are few ways for such a civilization to go extinct.
I’m fairly confident they’re out there somewhere. I’m sceptical that they’re close. We may be the first in our galaxy, or even the Local Group. Who can say? I don’t know.
But there are credible models for sailing light beamed from stars, and even gravity surfing rotating black holes.
Can you elaborate on these? I would like to know more.
I can’t, but this astrophysicist is the one who proposed the idea. Both techniques use compatible tech. https://youtu.be/rFqL9CkNxXw?si=WkbEiTM6usQnSgyy
Of course Aliens is real, I didn’t imagine the movie.
Extraterrestrial life on Earth, and government coverups? Zero evidence.
The only truly reasonable position to have on this question is pure agnosticism: you do not and cannot know if life exists elsewhere in the universe, especially intelligent life. We could, in theory, be the only intelligent species to ever evolve in this universe. Period.
I believe there is extraterrestrial life, unless God exists. Then who knows?
I think UFOs have natural explainations, are mistakes or hoaxes, or are human technology.
I seriously doubt aliens have traveled here only to play peek-a-boo in the skies. I could sooner believe UFOs were interdimensional anomalies than aliens who traveled from another planet in the universe via space.
Yes, and I think, potentially, that it could be so advanced that we don’t have the ability to recognize some or all of them.
Some alien life definitely exists, the universe is a pretty big place after all. There is also zero chance they have come to earth. Such conspiracies need too many people to keep silent and if the US had known about aliens Trump would have tweeted about it.
Growing up in a devout Muslim society, I was made to believe that aliens don’t exist.
But I simply thought that this couldn’t really be possible since there’s at least a few other planets that have signs of life, surely there’s a civilization in there, even if it’s as smart as the animals on earth.
What planet has signs of life?
This YouTube short lists one.
I should welcome your downvotes if you’re somehow not convinced enough, or if you simply hate YouTube Shorts like I do.
It says “oceans of water could exist there”
I understand the 3d animations look really cool and convincing to some people but there’s no evidence here for any sign of life. They don’t even have evidence for water… Just pure speculation.
I think it’s silly to rule out alien life all together. We don’t know so much about the universe. Whether extra terrestrial life has visited Earth, I don’t know and I don’t think anyone does.
The chances of extra terrestrial life to have visited earth is very, very small.
The chances of life to occur are small enough,
The chances of evolution to pass through multiple extinction events and producing a being capable of higher intelligence is even smaller,
The chances they have done this faster than humans is smaller still,
The chances they have evolved close enough to us to have visited is near impossible.
The universe is huge, there’s almost certainly life elsewhere - but to ask whether they visited earth is like speculating on whether ghosts exist.
Also the universe is expanding at such a fast rate that unless we develop faster-than-light tech, we will never reach another solar system.
This is a valid reading of the Fermi paradox. But just for balance I’m going to devil’s advocate all over it.
The chances of life to occur are small enough,
Not known. At the moment the data set is one habitable planet = one occurrence of life, so the odds might be very high indeed, even approaching 1:1
The chances of evolution to pass through multiple extinction events and producing a being capable of higher intelligence is even smaller,
They are smaller, but how much smaller is impossible to tell. What if extinction events are less frequent than they are here? What if 100% extinction events are as rare as they are here? What if intelligence is a natural point of evolution everywhere?
The chances they have done this faster than humans is smaller still,
This one’s not true. The earth is relatively young at 4 billion years compared to 15 billion for the universe. A billion year headstart is completely plausible
The chances they have evolved close enough to us to have visited is near impossible.
Agreed that the earth’s position in the milky way is a bit of a galactic backwater. At 25000 light years from the centre, stars are more sparse here than they are at the centre. But our nearest star is 4ly away. We could have a probe there within half a century with our current technology if we wanted to. So I disagree on the “near impossible” part.
The universe is huge, there’s almost certainly life elsewhere - but to ask whether they visited earth is like speculating on whether ghosts exist.
Can’t really argue with that. Until we see some evidence, ghosts and galactic visitors are in the ‘conspiracy nut’ bin. But it doesn’t mean life on other planets doesn’t exist. There are many theories why we wouldn’t have seen or met alien life if it does exist. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.
Also the universe is expanding at such a fast rate that unless we develop faster-than-light tech, we will never reach another solar system.
Hubble expansion isn’t a big factor at the galactic level. Galaxies are traveling away from other galaxies at relative speeds faster than light, but for stars within the galaxy, the scale is infinitely smaller and the expansion is so small it’s difficult to even measure.
There’s actually a fairly decent argument that life may have developed literally everywhere in space in the first few hundred million years of the universe, since yes it started insanely hot and compressed, but as it expanded there had to be a time period of up to a hundred million years or so, that everything outside of stars was at the proper temperature for water to be liquid. The end result being that you’ll find single cellular life existing literally anywhere it possibly can.
I’m incredibly fascinated by the ghost comparison. Is the probability that ghosts are a real physical phenomenon higher or lower than the probability that aliens exist or have visited us? That’s an extremely interesting question, and I’m sure someone could do a statistical meta-analysis comparing the incidence of, say, UFO sightings with the incidence of paranormal experiences (if such an analysis doesn’t already exist). Both questions seem like the things that should be generally empirically falsifiable (and indeed, specific instances certainly are), but humanity’s curiosity about both has proven remarkably durable despite centuries of curiosity and myriad efforts to settle (negatively) both questions once and for all.
They’re both so near zero as to be hardly worth considering.
The thing to think about is the fact that, in either case, ghost or alien are in any way especially indicated by the evidence. People don’t see something strange and conclude aliens because they have good reason to believe from the evidence that something traveled vast distances across space, but rather they simply don’t have anything good to believe right now.
Having unusual evidence that doesn’t seem to point at the simple, mundane explanation isn’t the same as having evidence that does point at a supernatural or extraterrestrial explanation
I have coined a theory I call “Galactic spring.” It’s that the emergence of intelligent life is a manifestation of and synchronized by some underlying phenomena - perhaps just the natural growth in informational complexity in a galaxy-wide entanglement network. Perhaps just a matter of sufficient amounts of the needed elements being available. The specific underlying mechanism isn’t that important, unless we have an understanding about the initial emergence of life to compare it to. But the theory is that there is a larger synchronizing factor.
Like spring, there are some species that may emerge early. But also like spring, the emergence of one heralds the emergence of others. Every other “the earth is the unique snowflake of the universe” theory has failed. We are simply emerging. The conditions are occurring that generate intelligent life, and there’s no strong reason to believe that our circumstance in that regard is unique.
Jeremy England proposed a while back that life is just an expression of entropy increase. Interestingly, if this could be verified (I don’t think it can) it would point to life being universally abundant.
That we’re not special is one of the founding principles of astrophysics, the Copernican Principle. It goes that we aren’t special, we don’t have a privileged viewpoint, and therefore the universe should look the same in every direction. It does get applied in other fields of science in one form or another, since it’s more a way of thinking than a theory as such. Again, it’s not falsifiable but it does seem reasonable.
Interesting, but i have to disagree with “and therefore the universe should look the same in every direction.”
Everywhere we look, we see asymmetry and variegation, along with instances of homogeneity and monoculture, as one thing wins out in a small domain.
So, yes, in some sense, same in all directions, but that “sameness” sure has a heck of a lot of play. And not being special, per se, doesn’t mean lack of uniqueness. Even cloned plants on the same shelf have differing viewpoints, though perhaps not “privileged”, unless one happens to be closer to a sunny window. But that happens.
I’ve also thought about life being an expression of entropy increase, but I can’t say I fully agree. There are aspects of that at play - somewhat more noticeable in thought and consciousness, and the efficiency of organizing thought - but I think that an assumption of universal entropy is just another local-phenomena-first issue. Although it applies in systems we isolate from the universe as a whole, the broad tendency for substance clumps (i.e., organization) and variegation is also universal.
I suppose that’s fair, since “looks the same in every direction” is a bit of an oversimplification. The principle is an assumption, rather, that we are not privileged observers, and therefore the universe should look the same in every direction. It then follows that we should be very interested to understand why when it doesn’t.
I can’t agree with you that the assumption of universal entropy increase is at all unreasonable. The laws of thermodynamics appear to hold everywhere, therefore entropy must be increasing everywhere. England’s extrapolation to presume that life is an expression of this law might be tenuous, but the law is pretty much ironclad. That’s not to say that structure can’t arise; it clearly can because: hello. But the tendency of the universe as a closed system with a one directional arrow of time is heat death. That’s just a result of thermodynamics. Eventually.
What caused the initial imbalance, and what prevents it from happening again?
Nothing. It’s happening, and has always been. Anything that claims the universe as a whole is deteriorating is absolute bollocks, as it requires a creation myth, just as it postulates destruction.
If the universe is anything that we currently have theories for, the universe is a strange loop.
What caused the initial imbalance, and what prevents it from happening again?
Now you’re talking about some of the biggest unsolved problems in physics :)
I don’t know if it necessitates a creation myth, though. The big bang theory doesn’t imply a creator, but also doesn’t require a steady state.
What’s this about a strange loop? I don’t know if I’ve heard of this before.
I’m pretty much on board, though how much anyone can agree is a matter of relativity.
We know about the closest stars and the planets within them, and based off spectrometry, we’re confident the planets “close” to us haven’t had life, though they might be capable.
The chances of there being no mass extinction events in the millions of years following abiogenesis is arguably smaller than surviving the five or so we’ve had. Given everything we know about astrophysics, we owe the asteroids a few clean hits, we have been astronomically lucky, and that’s not even taking into consideration every other cause of mass extinction.
15 billion years is still considered early in the grand scheme of things, it’s likely that we are the early ones. A billion years head start is plausible, sure, but it’s certainly less plausible than our existence.
All of this is to say that life is rare enough without them being a stones throw away.
And this is all disregarding any possible intent behind a visit. Any being capable of space travel does not need our resources.
Unless they’re sex tourists, which would explain all the anal probing.
On second thought, I choose to believe.
Wouldnt have to do it faster, just first
Wait, what?
That’s like saying you don’t have to drive faster to win the race, you just have to cross the line first.
Maybe more like saying “you don’t have to be fastest to finish first if you get enough of a head start”?
Yup
I expect that many other planets have life. I suspect that interstellar travel is not the only means of traveling between planets.
I am not at all convinced that foreign intelligences do visit, but I do consider it a very real possibility. If I were to somehow know they were here and nothing more, then I would feel confident that their visitation is being concealed.
It’s a wonderful topic, but I’m not particularly interested in beliefs related to it. I am much more interested in the possibilities.
I’m dubious of faster than life travel being for reasons beyond our understanding of physics. If there were a reasonable way to do so 1 race anywhere in the galaxy could have colonized the entire galaxy or at least a substantial portion thereof in only a few million years. If it is possible it seems to suggest that life is so rare that there are very few forms of higher intelligent life in the galaxy at any given time and probably relatively few ever.
There are plenty of alternative explanations.
For a few examples:
- In such a huge universe, even if FTL travel is possible, why should we expect Earth to be a common destination?
- It is possible that only species who do not wish to colonize the galaxy will avoid the Great Filter and acquire the technology needed to colonize it.
- Not all space-faring races must be highly populous, while less populous species will encounter less of the issues that would cause a population to collapse before becoming space-faring.
- We could be colonized without recognizing it.
- Colonization itself could be inherently unsustainable.
There is also no reason to limit the discussion to a galaxy. If we assume that an FTL civilization will colonize (in a way that we would recognize), then they could come from any galaxy. Given the expanse of the universe, if such a behavior is common enough that it would stand a chance of succeeding, then it should probably exist already. And yet we do not appear to be colonized. Which is more likely: That FTL intelligences must colonize, or that we are all alone in the universe? Axiomatic reasoning reveals that the latter is statistically much less likely than the former. So it is less likely to successfully explain why we appear to be uncolonized.
I do I just wish they believed in me.
sigh
Can imagine the disillusionment aliens would feel having seen us from 10 light years away and constantly watching us as they approach until they get close enough for the data to be virtually current. I wouldnt wanna visit either. Probably be attacked on sight.
Has intelligent life that we could communicate with ever existed in time? Yes. Does it exist in this exact moment? Unlikely. Is it or is it ever been in a proximity that we could communicate? No.
That’s not to say there isn’t intelligent life that we cannot understand or communicate with. If we exist inside the brain of some universally large creature, and our existence is just luck, we won’t ever be able to communicate.
At this point, I’m beginning to think the gulf of space is too much to bridge, and if it were possible, they wouldn’t bother hiding / being sneaky / probing whatever.
