NFR Do you believe?
- Thread starter Billy
- Start date
Non-fishing related
Rob Allen
Life of the Party
I find it highly unlikely that beings from another planet would recon our planet for peaceful purposes. The idea that highly intelligent beings must by nature of their intelligence be peaceful is faulty thinking. There is no correlation between intelligence and peaceful behavior among humans. Just like there is no correlation between intelligence and good decision making... No bad charecter traits that are mitigated by intelligence at least not in humans.
Peaceful behavior would be to ask permission to visit....... if they're here without express permission evil intent must be assumed... nukem....
Peaceful behavior would be to ask permission to visit....... if they're here without express permission evil intent must be assumed... nukem....
Rob Allen
Life of the Party
You just show up at your buddies with your pillow or do you call first?
Did we ask permission of the man in the moon?
SilverFly
Legend
Yeah, that raised some hairs on my neck, but it didn't quite meet proof criteria with the astrophysics community.
That said, my "scientific" opinion is there is no fudging way we're alone.
The part of the universe we can see is made of the same shit as here, and follows the same laws of physics that we do. That, and there's just too damn much of it for us to be unique.
As if our understanding of universe wasn't already mind blowingly huge 30 years ago, the Hubble Deep Field experiment in 1995, absolutely nuked the limits of human perception. Today, the James Webb space telescope is pushing those boundaries even further.
We now know there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach, and in every desert on Earth - and most of those stars have planets. The number of planets detected around relatively nearby stars, is pushing 6,000 and growing daily. Some have even been imaged directly, and in some cases atmospheric analysis done. We could be getting some real answers on exoplanet habitablilty in the next few years when the Extremely Large Telescope comes online.
So it comes down to (1) how rare habitable worlds are, (2) how rarely does life arise on those that are, and (3) how rarely does intelligent life arise. Considering there are at least 2 other worlds just in our solar system with saltwater oceans, makes question #1 seem much less of a road block. Question #2 may be answered in the next 10 years with the first sample return from Mars (or atmospheric findings from the ELT). Even if only proof of long extinct microbes, that will be one of the greatest discoveries of all time. The answer to question #3 might be a very long wait, but considering what we have learned about animal intelligence here on Earth in the last decade or so, hasn't done much to preserve our sense of uniqueness in that dept.
Actually, there is a 4th question, and that is whether it's even possible for any lifeform to travel interstellar distances. There could be a multitude of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone, but if the speed of light is an absolute limit, then it seems extremely unlikely that we've had, or will ever have visitors.
Rob Allen
Life of the Party
Nope... and if the mood had inhabitants what would we have done?
... what do you mean "if"? Just cause we haven't seen 'em, don't mean they're not there.
And #5. There may have been many intelligent civilizations that have come and gone. There may be many right now that are just breaking out of the hunter/gatherer phase. The universe is very old and with stars still forming and stars dying there is room for all phases of species progress.
At 6,000 years old, the earth is pretty much the end all, be all in the universe, and so there are no other planets with life, and if there are it's bad life, and should be extirpated.
Uhh, unless I’m missing something the earth is much much older than 6k years?