# The truth is NOT out there, there are no alien civilisations.



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 16, 2015)

A leading astronomer has concluded that advanced civilisations are very rare or 'entirely absent' in the galaxies surrounding our own.








He used sensitive new telescopes to search for signatures of waste heat being emitted from planets that might indicate the presence of an advanced alien civilisations, but came up short.
After scouring nearby galaxies which show unusually high infrared emissions, which would indicate they were 'abonormally hot', the scientist said it could simply be a natural phenomenon.

Professor Michael Garrett, scientific director of Astron, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and a researcher at the University of Leiden, said: 'Some of these systems definitely demand further investigation but those already studied in detail turn out to have a natural astrophysical explanation too.

*WHAT IS THE KARDASHEV SCALE? *
_The Kardashev scale was created in 1964 by Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev as a way of categorising a civilisation's technological advancement. 
It is based on the amount of energy a civilisation is able to harness and use.
The hypothetical scale has three levels:
Type I civilisation uses all available resources on its home planet and has mastered the use of nuclear fusion.
Type II civilisation harnesses all the energy of its star while a Type III harnesses energy that exists across the whole galaxy it inhabits.
Earth has currently still to reach even Type I, and four further levels have been proposed to the original scale.
For example, some have proposed a Type IVcivilisation capable of harnessing the energy across an entire universe._



'It's very likely that the remaining systems also fall into this category but of course it's worth checking just in case.'

Professor Garrett was particularly looking for signals in the mid-infrared part of the spectrum which are thought to be a sign of advanced civilisations capable of harnessing energies on galactic scales.

These so called Kardashev Type III civilisations are thought to be capable of tapping into the huge energies contained within black holes and gamma ray bursts.

This sort of civilisation is thought to be the most likely to be capable of long-distance space travel.

A team of astronomers led by Dr Jason Wright from Penn State University recently drew up a list of several hundred candidate galaxies from around 100,000 that might host these civilisations.

Nasa has also been searching for signs of distant planets that may have the conditions to support life with its Kepler Space Telescope.

However, Professor Garrett, whose results are presented in the European journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, said he has found little evidence to suggest there were any galaxies near by inhabited by such advanced life forms.

Instead, he said the kind of infrared emissions coming from these candidate galaxies are more likely to be caused by natural astrophysical processes.





Nasa's Kepler space telescope has been searching the skies for signs of planets that may be hospitable to life. It recently discovered a planet called Kepler 452b which is the most like Earth yet discovered (pictured)

In particular, he believes they may be caused by dust generated and heated by regions of massive star formation.

'The original research at Penn State has already told us that such systems are very rare but the new analysis suggests that this is probably an understatement, and that advanced Kardashev Type III civilisations basically don't exist in the local universe,' Professor Garrett said:

'In my view, it means we can all sleep safely in our beds tonight – an alien invasion doesn't seem at all likely.'







However, Professor Garrett now hopes to use similar techniques to help search for less advanced Kardashev Type II alien civilisations.

Such civilisations are still considerably more advanced than our own on Earth, which has yet to reach the Kardashev Type I level.

He said: 'It's a bit worrying that Type III civilisations don't seem to exist.

'It's not what we would predict from the physical laws that explain so well the rest of the physical universe. We're missing an important part of the jigsaw puzzle here.

'Perhaps advanced civilisations are so energy-efficient that they produce very low waste heat emission products – our current understanding of physics makes that a difficult thing to do.

'What's important is to keep on searching for the signatures of extra-terrestrial intelligence until we fully understand just what is going on.'

Earlier this year, a group of physicists led Adam Stevens from the department of physical sciences at The Open University proposed a similar idea for searching for alien life.

In the paper, Observational signatures of Self-Destructive Civilisations, the team claims that if intelligent life is spread far and wide across the universe, chances are they have developed similar technologies to us - including the development of nuclear and chemical weapons.

And, like on Earth, they could use these weapons to start wars and bring about their own demise.

With this mind, the researchers studied the various ways in which such alien civilisations could destroy themselves and established that signs of this destruction would be visible using telescopes on Earth.

This includes nuclear wars, bioterrorism, the so-called 'grey goo' scenario and planetary pollution.

The current thinking around the hunt for alien life centres around the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation.







The Fermi Paradox questions why have we not found aliens, despite the existence of hundreds of billions of exosolar systems in our galactic neighborhood in which life might evolve, and was devised by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

The Drake Equation, first presented by radio astronomer Dr Frank Drake in 1961, details the specific factors need for such civilisations to develop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Dr Drake said that any search for distant intelligent life must also be a search for distant technology.

With this in mind, Adam Stevens from the department of physical sciences at The Open University, in Milton Keynes with colleagues from the University of Edinburgh, University of St Andrews, and Cornell University wanted to see if such technology would create visible 'signatures'.

For each scenario, they detailed the types of signals that each would emit into the atmosphere and the likelihood of these signals being picked up with technology on Earth.

They believe that this approach may present the best chance of finding any evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth.

*THE $100 MILLION HUNT FOR ALIEN LIFE BACKED BY STEPHEN HAWKING*
_A new search for intelligent alien life using two of the world's most powerful telescopes has been launched by leading scientists including Professor Stephen Hawking.
The telescopes will scour one million of the closest stars to Earth for faint signals thrown out into space by intelligent life beyond our own world.
Scientists taking part in the $100 million (£64 million) initiative will also scan the very centre of our galaxy along with 100 of the closest galaxies for low power radio transmissions.
In a second initiative, an international competition will be held to generate messages representing humanity and planet Earth, which may one day be sent to alien civilisations.
The new search for intelligent life, which promises to cover 10 times more of the sky than previous attempts, is backed by Russian billionaire entrepreneur Yuri Milner, who set up the Breakthrough Prize for scientific endeavours.
The attempt to find signs of alien life, which has been named the Breakthrough Listen Initiative, will draw on the expertise of leading scientists, physicists and astronomers.
Professor Hawking, who has in the past said there is certainly alien life out there but has warned humanity against trying to contact them, was among those to back the project.





_
SUPPORT SETI
_http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/_


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## Ikaruga (Sep 16, 2015)

_"The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space..."_


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## 64K (Sep 16, 2015)

I've seen some scientists guestimate the odds of there being intelligent life in our own galaxy and they usually arrive at some number of planets with intelligent life in the Milky Way but we don't have any data to go by. So far we haven't found any intelligent life beyond Earth so we can't estimate the probability. If we did find evidence it would still be almost impossible to converse with them. Say tomorrow we receive a signal from a solar system 1,000 light years away. It would take another 1,000 years to reply and 1,000 light years distance isn't that much. It could be millions of light years distance.

Unless there is some highly advanced life that isn't bound to physical forms and can instantly travel around the Universe. We wouldn't be aware of them through any monitoring methods that we have if they didn't want us too and humans might seem to troublesome to even deal with.


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## Vayra86 (Sep 16, 2015)

Inb4 returning theories about a 'multiverse'.

I still feel that would be way cooler than an alien race in our own universe. Reminiscing Jet Li in 'The One'


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## Jetster (Sep 16, 2015)

We don't know shit


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## dorsetknob (Sep 16, 2015)

Chance of life outside of earth 50/50
Chance of Intelligent  life outside of earth 50/50
Chance of Intelligent  life outside of earth  smarter than us 50/50

what ever odds some scientist quote for life outside of earth  ie 1 in 10.billion they are wrong
its 50/ 50   either there is   or there is not............... simple as that
Personalty i'm the /50 of the 50/50  there is life out there somewhere

ps Do ancient fossil nematodes found in Martin Meteorites count as life (extraterrestrial but extinct)


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## 5DVX0130 (Sep 16, 2015)




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## Mathragh (Sep 16, 2015)

I can't help but feel like almost everything I read about the subject of "intelligent life other than our own" completely skips over some crucial assumptions being made:

Do we know for a fact EM-waves(or gravity waves for that matter) are the de-facto best way of communicating across the stars regardless of technology level? Seems a bit short-sighted, or atleast presumptuous to me.
Of course we cannot look for what we don't (yet) know exists, but the claim that "there is nothing out there" based on the fact that we cannot detect artificial EM waves imho might say more about us than it does about any life out there.

Do we know for a fact that they would have the same morals and philosophies as us? Things like the *KARDASHEV SCALE *rely on the assumption that an alien (race) would want to expand, and would want to use more resources.
Why can it not be possible for other beings to use their intelligence in order to be the least obtrusive to their surroundings as they can be? The fact that you already see this sentiment growing in some parts of our society makes me wonder about the possibility of this possibly being a more likely outcome of the development of intelligence, instead of the exponential expansion most of us seem to accept as the inevitable outcome.

More to the point of this thread: why would a prosperous alien civilization put out loads of heat at all? Seems to me like producing loads of heat is usually actually one of the most wasteful things you can do at any point. If i expect anything from a technologically more advanced race, it is that they can better control their energy, and purely by doing things in the most efficient way possible they all but abolish the concept of waste heat.

And then of course there all these ideas like the "zoo" theory, in which they actively hide their presence from us, although this atleast gets somewhat talked about.

Instead of just thinking about aliens as "more powerfull" or "more advanced" beings such as myself, I tend to think of them more like one could look at a rich kid, but then maybe with a stronger sense of responsibility.
If you as a species technologically can do pretty much whatever you want, what use it there to exponentially spread, produce loads of heat and disturb everything around you? This might be what a species driven by instinct would do, but not one that has managed to transcend its bodily and technological limitations.

As someone else said just before me 


Jetster said:


> We don't know shit


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 16, 2015)

Paddypower currently offer 100/1 returns on the detection of alien life.

http://www.oddschecker.com/novelty/alien-existence/when-will-alien-life-be-proven


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## dorsetknob (Sep 16, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Paddypower currently offer 100/1 returns on the detection of alien life.



continuing the redicklus (intentional spelling )
they are not out there they the lizard people walk amonst us


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## Ikaruga (Sep 16, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Paddypower currently offer 100/1 returns on the detection of alien life.
> 
> http://www.oddschecker.com/novelty/alien-existence/when-will-alien-life-be-proven


At our current technology level, which is best described with Jetster's post above:


Jetster said:


> We don't know shit


 we could look for radio waves, which is pretty much hopeless. To put that into perspective, here is one of my fav pics where you can see how far our radio waves traveled from earth since we started transmitting those:




, so when those waves will reach anybody out there, we will probably won't even transmit radio-waves anymore for anything.


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 16, 2015)

Professor Brian Cox says alien life is all but impossible and humanity is 'unique' 

The biological process which lead to intelligent life on earth was a fluke that is unlikely to have been repeated anywhere else in the universe, claims Professor Brian Cox.

The presenter and scientist blames a series of 'evolutionary bottlenecks' for the lack of extraterrestrial life on other planets, despite there being a mind-bogglingly vast number of them in the galaxy.

Humanity miraculously overcame them in a chance binding of two single cells merging somewhere in the mists of time, he said.

'There is only one advanced technological civilisation in this galaxy and there has only ever been one - and that's us. We are unique.

'It's a dizzying thought. There are billions of planets out there, surely there must have been a second genesis?

'But we must be careful because the story of life on this planet shows that the transition from single-celled life to complex life may not have been inevitable.'

He made the claims in an episode of BBC's Human Universe, 








https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=BBC's+Human+Universe

adding that yet another freak occurrence - the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs - allowed mammals and ultimately humanity to dominate the planet.

On the subject of the genesis of complex life, he added: 'We still struggle to understand how this happened. It's incredibly unusual.

'We're confident this only happened once in the oceans of the primordial earth.Life here did squeeze through.'


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 16, 2015)

Someone yank this guys funding. It could feed starving children or give a war vet a new leg.

Seriously we don't even know all the life on our own F#$KING planet. Yet we know about life 200 light years away. Seems legit.

This world needs an enema or at the very least a reintroduction of natural selection to mankind. To many are surviving childhood that by all natural reasons shouldn't.


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## 64K (Sep 16, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Professor Brian Cox says alien life is all but impossible and humanity is 'unique'
> 
> The biological process which lead to intelligent life on earth was a fluke that is unlikely to have been repeated anywhere else in the universe, claims Professor Brian Cox.
> 
> ...



How does he know it's incredibly unusual? That's the same kind of thinking that tries to estimate the odds of intelligent life existing on other planets in the Milky Way. He doesn't have a data set to go by. It's nothing more than an outright guess on his part.


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## Easy Rhino (Sep 16, 2015)

Just imagine for a moment a universe where humans are the only intelligent life. There are certainly philosophical and spiritual ramifications to that idea.


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## qubit (Sep 16, 2015)

WTF Caps, you mean to tell me that Mulder and Scully were wrong?!!!


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## btarunr (Sep 16, 2015)

Ikaruga said:


> ...so when those waves will reach anybody out there, we will probably won't even transmit radio-waves anymore for anything.



We're actually producing more radio waves today than we ever did, and it's not going to go down any time soon. WiFi is radio. So is cellular. The emerging IoT industry is entirely reliant on radio technologies like WiFi/Bluetooth/NFC. TV stations are beaming shitloads of radio-waves into space (satellites), and there are shitloads of TV stations.


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## Brusfantomet (Sep 16, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> Professor Brian Cox says alien life is all but impossible and humanity is 'unique'
> 
> The biological process which lead to intelligent life on earth was a fluke that is unlikely to have been repeated anywhere else in the universe, claims Professor Brian Cox.
> 
> ...



Claiming that there is no other civilizations out there because you cant find their EM radiation during a short search is like sitting far out to sea a few hours and then proclaim that there is no ships on earth since you saw none. In short i think his dataset is to small to give any sort of accurate statement.


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Sep 16, 2015)

Albert Einstein said, “There is every reason to believe that Mars and other planets are inhabited.” One can only wonder what qualified as life from Einstein’s perspective.







It seems Einstein was pretty confident that earthlings are bound to run into aliens beginning with Mars. Though modern science has yet to find conclusive evidence of “life on Mars,” conspiracy theorists andUFO hunters are convinced that Einstein felt there was life on the red planet.

As with all of his ideas, Einstein had a hypothesis about alien life, stating, “Why should the earth be the only planet supporting human life? It is not singular in any other respect.”

Interestingly, Albert Einstein’s argument has been proven right on multiple occasions when the various international space agencies, the most notable being NASA, found multiple earth-like planets which could support life.

1.30 on


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## laszlo (Sep 16, 2015)

nice thread here...

there are two many possibilities and is hard to know which is true(if any..)...
-is our life real? or we're in a simulation like "matrix" ?
-is earth a "zoo" made for entertaining ?
-were we genetically engineered  by aliens for labor force and than left behind ;why can't we use our brain 100%? will we become "gods" if we could? 
-are they(our makers) still watching us ? even help us by not allowing a nuclear war?....
-is true we cannot leave earth due lethal radiation which exist in van allen belt  (and further in deep space..including moon...so we never step there...)?

and so on... to many unanswered questions and secrets maybe; our lifespan is too short ...maybe future generations will know the truth.


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## ShiBDiB (Sep 16, 2015)

laszlo said:


> nice thread here...
> 
> there are two many possibilities and is hard to know which is true(if any..)...
> -is our life real? or we're in a simulation like "matrix" ?
> ...




And that's how this thread went off the deep end.


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## dorsetknob (Sep 16, 2015)

ShiBDiB said:


> And that's how this thread went off the deep end.



Deep end of what ? ( no its the shallow end of the gene pool )
Call the Lifeguard

about 600 years ago 
when the White European Explorer arrived in the various Indo american lands
It was described as A Savage hostile land with no civilization

NO civilization   that was the Belief   at the time

sod the Achievements of the Aztec /toltec /maya of the civilised cherroke nation ect 
the citys found in the amazon jungle or in central America...... not found at the time but with developed technology we have now found them.....
with the passing of time and the development of advance technology  what was not found or not reconised   now can be

so in hindsight Continental America Did have civilization  we Europeans ( the peek of civilization of that time) either did not see or recognize the indigenous civilization

So the Claptrap being spouted about that we are the only form of life   is just that
"" Claptrap  ""

There is no proof that we are the only form of life or of civilization


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## RejZoR (Sep 16, 2015)

Who says aliens use same radio waves as we do? Anyone watched Stargate SG-1? I know it's fiction, but aliens there used subspace communications, meaning communication "data" was not going through their present time/space, but sort of through alternate dimension (iirc), meaning there was basically NO latency even at massive distances. Where our radio signal takes several seconds even from our own moon to Earth...

And I assume, if you use subspace communications, you cannot detect the signal using our known methods, because it's not actually present in our present time/space.


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## dorsetknob (Sep 16, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> Who says aliens use same radio waves as we do? Anyone watched Stargate SG-1? I know it's fiction, but aliens there used subspace communications, meaning communication "data" was not going through their present time/space, but sort of through alternate dimension (iirc), meaning there was basically NO latency even at massive distances. Where our radio signal takes several seconds even from our own moon to Earth...
> 
> And I assume, if you use subspace communications, you cannot detect the signal using our known methods, because it's not actually present in our present time/space.



A good parrall to your statment  would have been Papa new guinea in the aftermath of world war 2

Natives in the central highlands upon meeting the white man for the first time were astonished and amazed  these white aliens ( to them) descended  from the Sky from thunder birds from the gods (early helicopters) they could kill with thunder (guns) speak to the other gods far away (Radio ) Heal the sick from illness that their shanmen could not (Modern drugs)
Food from metel rocks   (Tin Food )


Ps  they ate a few white aliens and said "we tasted like long pig "
Thats the stone age man encountering 20th Century man

and if we ever meet travelers from the stars   for a while we will be that Stone age man ""again""


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## RejZoR (Sep 16, 2015)

Yeah, scientists assume aliens develop same solutions for communications as we have. But in reality, maybe their "radio waves" operate on entire different level not even by far understandable by/to us.

Such things happen even on micro scale. Give two different people same task of designing something and isolate them. They'll design different solutions for same or very similar end result.

Now separate "designers" (us and aliens) with massive distance in space and different evolutionary tree and remove the scientific bias (pre-existing knowledge of technology) and assume they both want to design same thing (for example wireless communication system). You can be sure the end solutions will be WASTLY different and most likely entirely incompatible on all levels.


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## Ikaruga (Sep 16, 2015)

btarunr said:


> We're actually producing more radio waves today than we ever did, and it's not going to go down any time soon. WiFi is radio. So is cellular. The emerging IoT industry is entirely reliant on radio technologies like WiFi/Bluetooth/NFC. TV stations are beaming shitloads of radio-waves into space (satellites), and there are shitloads of TV stations.


I was talking about, lets say (warning: random number!) *5000 years* (note: the Milky way's diameter is approx 160.000 light years).
In 5000 years, we would be still just newborn noobs technology and development wise, but I would be really surprised if we wouldn't find some FTL (sub-space) communication form in the next few hundred years, let alone what we will be able to do in a few millennia... so no, I have to disagree.


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## the54thvoid (Sep 16, 2015)

Pile of crap thread with necessarily uninformed information. Our pea brains can't deal with shit. Given the insane plethora and variety of life on our planet, it seems life is plausible 'everywhere'. Cyanobacteria, life existing in anaerobic environments and those that exist in super hot, black as pitch sub terrananean hells.

Pfft.


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 16, 2015)

This thread needs....


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## dorsetknob (Sep 16, 2015)

Mailman offers to trouserfart flame thrower the thread
Nice


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## FreedomEclipse (Sep 16, 2015)




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## BiggieShady (Sep 16, 2015)

Even if we look at the star in our own galaxy with our most advanced telescopes we can only tell if there are planets in the system. Any energy signature we receive is from the star itself and any emission of a planet orbiting that star are lost to us because it's below noise threshold (please someone who knows more prove me wrong). And he is looking at neighboring galaxies ... yeah right.


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## AsRock (Sep 16, 2015)

More fud that people should not get payed for,  fact is we exist so some thing else does too saying any thing other than is plain ignorance.


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## haswrong (Sep 16, 2015)

humans are the only alien "civilisation" in the universe. the other civs are friendly and cooperative and are effectively hiding from human arrogance and hypocracy. let it stay that way.


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 16, 2015)

haswrong said:


> humans are the only alien "civilisation" in the universe. the other civs are friendly and cooperative and are effectively hiding from human arrogance and hypocracy. let it stay that way.


Maybe they are hiding from us because our women are insane?


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## natr0n (Sep 16, 2015)

Well I have seen ufo many times in my life; some Dbag "astronomer" can't speak for everyone.


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## haswrong (Sep 16, 2015)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Maybe they are hiding from us because our women are insane?


 that may be the first half of the reason.


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 16, 2015)

natr0n said:


> Well I have seen ufo many times in my life; some Dbag "astronomer" can't speak for everyone.


In Florida? I call BS.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Sep 16, 2015)

I'm siding with @TheMailMan78 on this one, so you know there's some bullshit about to be debunked.


1) Radio waves is a stupid term.  What we aren't looking for is a radio signal, but an emission in the electromagnetic spectrum which cannot be chalked up to natural phenomenon.  The electromagnetic spectrum covers everything from infrared (heat) to gamma rays (ultra high frequency emissions).
2) Emission, in general, are spherical.  We live in a three dimensional world, and something like a radio tower emits energy as a sphere.  That means the area that emitted energy needs to cover is 4(PI)r^2.  Doing a little math means that at just one light year away the transmission energy must cover an area of 1.131*10^12 square kilometers.  If you had a 10,000 watt initial transmission that's 8.842*10^-9 watts per square kilometer.  Think about that for just one moment.  To measure 8.842 nano watts you'd need a telescopic array 1 square kilometer big at only one light year away.  A 200 light year distance would decrease your signal strength to less than background radiative emissions on a more reasonably sized collector.  Seriously, they want to detect something like infrared, which even on a planetary scale would be nothing at multiple light years away?  Come on.

3) Both the Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation are cited in the initial post.  They, put concisely, answer the likelihood that intelligent life exists in the universe and ask why we haven't seen any of it yet.  These things are based off of mathematics, which we are still working on.  The actual extent of habitable zones around a star, how many planets exist in these habitable zones, and what the natural progression of species is requires guess work.  That's why these are thought experiments about intelligent extraterrestrials, not scientific theories.
4) None of this even begins to address the vast void between our observations and reality.  Light might be fast, but the emissions from a star 200 lightyears away have taken that long just to get here.  Put that into perspective.  In 1815 we had first discovered atomic decay, via alpha particles.  Coal mining was our primary power source.  200 years has meant a heck of a lot of difference on this planet.

5) Probability is a crap argument.  Go out onto a beach, pick up a sea shell.  This shell is a contained universe.  It's composed of billions of atoms, arranged by the natural laws of the universe and a large sampling of chaos.  What is the likelihood that exact configuration existed?  If we assume there are 2 billion atoms, because this is my example, the probability that exists is 1/2000000000!.  That's not a statistical anomaly, that's impossible.  Despite that, it exists.  Arguing mathematical improbability for other life is the same crap.
6) Finally, why does increased thermal emissions mean life?  Our civilization has this feature, but what if the intelligent life is trapped below kilometers of frozen material?  The way we are currently searching for life, right now, in our own solar system.



Put simply, this is a crap premise built upon crap assumptions.  Claiming that a bad assumption means that your ramblings must be truth is an example of garbage in, garbage out.  This "scientist" claims that after observing only a small fraction of worlds, and only within a very limited range, that reasonable conclusions can be drawn.  

Let's engage in the same hyperbolic fallacy.  The temperature today is cooler than the temperature yesterday, so we must be going into an ice age.  I can heal from a 1" cut without scarring, so you should be able to slice off my arm and it will regrow.  I can imbibe a glass of water, so I should be able to down Lake Michigan in a single gulp.  Garbage premises produce garbage results, and this "scientist" needs to enter social sciences if they want their stupidity not to be eviscerated by facts.  Science is a cruel mistress, but she is fair.  This person doesn't deserve to be called a scientist.


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## natr0n (Sep 16, 2015)

TheMailMan78 said:


> In Florida? I call BS.


 Yep a few years ago.There were some white glowing orbs moving around in the sky viewable from my backyard.

When my brother and I saw them they would hide below tree lines in the distance as if they knew were watching.

It was surreal.


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 16, 2015)

natr0n said:


> Yep a few years ago.There were some white glowing orbs moving around in the sky viewable from my backyard.
> 
> When my brother and I saw them they would hide below tree lines in the distance as if they knew were watching.
> 
> It was surreal.


You need to stop huffing paint. I was born and raised in FL. My old man was, My grandfather was, my great grandfather was. Not a single "UFO" sighting. In over 150 years of verbal history has my family seen a UFO in FL. Sorry man but you didn't see a UFO. You probably saw a plane landing in the distance.


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## kn00tcn (Sep 16, 2015)

the54thvoid said:


> Pile of crap thread with necessarily uninformed information. Our pea brains can't deal with shit. Given the insane plethora and variety of life on our planet, it seems life is plausible 'everywhere'. Cyanobacteria, life existing in anaerobic environments and those that exist in super hot, black as pitch sub terrananean hells.
> 
> Pfft.


uh this is about advanced life, not some cells, who says there arent any cells?


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## natr0n (Sep 16, 2015)

TheMailMan78 said:


> You need to stop huffing paint. I was born and raised in FL. My old man was, My grandfather was, my great grandfather was. Not a single "UFO" sighting. In over 150 years of verbal history has my family seen a UFO in FL. Sorry man but you didn't see a UFO. You probably saw a plane landing in the distance.



150 years of moonshine abuse slouched in a corner looking downward

I know what I saw.


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## manofthem (Sep 16, 2015)

natr0n said:


> re were some white glowing orbs moving around in the sky viewable from my backyard.
> 
> When my brother and I saw them they would hide below tree lines in the distance as if they knew were watching.



You'd think they'd have turned their lights off if they didn't want to be seen?  Stupid aliens


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 16, 2015)

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”   ― Arthur C. Clarke


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## Luka KLLP (Sep 16, 2015)

"We don't know shit" is a good summary I think. Problem is the only sciences where you can be completely sure of something are the ones that are completely theoretical, i.e. NOT physics, chemistry, biology etc. etc. These sort of questions are fun for philosophical discussion, you can't give concrete proof for anything


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## Mathragh (Sep 17, 2015)

Luka KLLP said:


> "We don't know shit" is a good summary I think. Problem is the only sciences where you can be completely sure of something are the ones that are completely theoretical, i.e. NOT physics, chemistry, biology etc. etc. These sort of questions are fun for philosophical discussion, you can't give concrete proof for anything


You give those "exact" sciences too much credit: People just assume they can be sure of things,... untill they discover otherwise. Remember spontaneous generation, or the aether? Were seen as totally valid until someone discovered something new and realises how wrong we were before. Ofc there can be no other way to learn things, but still.


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 17, 2015)

manofthem said:


> You'd think they'd have turned their lights off if they didn't want to be seen?  Stupid aliens


Frankly, I'm very concerned about how much energy Earth is emitting into space.  I think Hawking wrote about that subject too.  Some things to consider:

-The nearest potentially habitable planet in another star system is Tau Ceti e at 11.905 light years away.

-Even if they turned a light on 12 years ago, it would have to be very bright and pointing directly at Earth for us to see it.

-Even if they did turn on a light, it was sufficiently bright, and we happened to be looking directly at it, would we be able to distinguish that artificial light source from the power of the Tau Ceti sun?

-There are a countless number of potential planets out there that support life.  When you put it into context of light years versus how long said light was being emitted, our visibility is quite limited unless the civilization is very old.

-Even if we received a signal for a planet, it's easy to forget how alien the signal would be.  Remember everything on Earth comes from a common ancestory--this is why humans can form relationships with most mammals, for example.  Even though modern man has removed himself from Earth's nature as much as possible, we all live a similar existence.  That creates an understanding on a deep level.  That's even more true of the different, isolated human cultures.  For example, we can learn each other's words by referencing something we both know, like a bird.  Now consider this as it relates to radios, telescopes, and other forms of wireless communication.  Even if we saw their communications, would we know we were even looking at it?  Case in point, and this a far-out-there-theory, what if the "cosmic microwave background" noise isn't from the Big Bang at all but is, in fact, an encrypted or alien message that's constantly being broadcasted?  How would we know the difference?  How could we even begin to unravel it because it is so alien?

-Just look at humanity now: it's commuting less and less by analog means (you know, talking and listening to each other) and more by digital means.  This happened over the period of just a few decades--what happens in 100 years? 1000?

-Our means of bursting transmissions (which end up in space) is inefficient.  A species with far more years under their belt likely found a more efficient means to communicate, like through quantum entanglement, so there is no longer wasteful communication into space.

-Why does a species have to live on a planet at all?  It is theoretically possible to build a space ship that is 100% sustainable, mining asteroids for raw materials.  It's also possible to breed a species for living in a zero gravity environment.

-If there were aliens mining asteroids in the asteroid belt, would we even know?

-Even if a message were sent directly at us from 10+ light years away, would the message be clear by the time it arrived?  Parts of it get lost due to hitting mass, parts of it get bent and misdirected because of the effect of mass on light, some of it gets jammed by background noise (e.g. a pulsor), and the list goes on.

I have every right to be a skeptic; we all do. To be certain of anything in this universe is to be ignorant of everything we don't know and understand.


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## Ikaruga (Sep 17, 2015)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Why does a species have to live on a planet at all?


 It doesn't need to at all, but scientist look for things they can understand, and they only observed and understand earthlike life so far. As far I'm personally concerned, even a star or a giant cloud can be a lifeform if it's up to me, it has lots of stuff at one place and those can be 1 or 0, that's all you need.


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## Luka KLLP (Sep 17, 2015)

Mathragh said:


> You give those "exact" sciences too much credit: People just assume they can be sure of things,... untill they discover otherwise. Remember spontaneous generation, or the aether? Were seen as totally valid until someone discovered something new and realises how wrong we were before. Ofc there can be no other way to learn things, but still.


You know I said you CAN'T be sure of anything in physics right?


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## Aquinus (Sep 17, 2015)

I'm sure alien civilizations have computers, cell phones, TechPowerup, and chicken salad sandwhiches as we know them. My problem with this thread is that it rides on a whole lot of assumptions that can't be proven and kind of forgets about a large part of physics that we know to be at least mostly true. I think @FordGT90Concept hit this one on the head.


FordGT90Concept said:


> Frankly, I'm very concerned about how much energy Earth is emitting into space.  I think Hawking wrote about that subject too.  Some things to consider:
> 
> -The nearest potentially habitable planet in another star system is Tau Ceti e at 11.905 light years away.
> 
> ...



Why does an alien civilization have to be just like ours? Are we really that self-centered and delusional?


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 17, 2015)

It doesn't (I know that was rhetorical).  It could be biological based too (think Boron in X-series or that fourth faction added to Earth 2160).  A ship could be organic.  In a 1000 years, I wouldn't be surprised if we're "growing" vehicles here on Earth.  Hell, we're already printing organs.

It also must be asked if these conditions for "habitable planets" are even remotely true outside of Sol.  "Habitable" for lifeforms native to Earth, sure, but what of lifeforms that weren't of Earth in the first place?  The exploration of Titan is critical to that theory.

I mean, look at us stipulating what's potentially billions of light years away and we haven't even left the grasp of Sol yet.  We haven't explored the depths of the oceans yet.  We haven't walked on any planet other than Earth yet.  We haven't probed Titan for life under the ice yet.  When it comes to the universe, frankly, we're clueless.


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## dorsetknob (Sep 17, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> Why does an alien civilization have to be just like ours? Are we really that self-centered and delusional?



Yes we are 
its in our nature  as the scorpion said as it Stung the Lion carrying it across the river ( old folk proverb)


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## AsRock (Sep 17, 2015)

manofthem said:


> You'd think they'd have turned their lights off if they didn't want to be seen?  Stupid aliens



Just saying and all but maybe they cannot, as we know light is the fastest now from what we know, what if aliens use \ used light to travel or maybe they figured a way to stop light from showing.

Humans don't know it all we just like to think we do even more so, in fact the more we think we know the less we know.

.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Sep 17, 2015)

You stand upon a celestial body with a source of energy that, within reason, emits energy at a relatively constant rate.  The rate at which its emissions contact this celestial body are also relatively constant, on the face which looks at that emissions source.  Let's say that the intensity is 1.5 kW/M^2, according to the following sources: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/ManicaPiputbundit.shtml

That means any source of energy that is in the same energy emissions band as the energy source must be at an intensity greater than 1.5kW/M^2 to be observed.  This functionally means that anything in observation of our star is functionally incapable of detecting any other emissions sources.  This is why people don't claim to see aliens in broad daylight.  If they were actually here, they could hide all of their activity from us simply by having it drowned out by the background emissions.  Any species intelligent enough to make the non-trivial flight across the cosmos would be able to figure that out, therefore they'd never be detected if they got here and just wanted to observe us.

Taking some immense leaps of luck, placing an observatory outside of interference from local sources, and making an ultra sensitive receiver is what we do.  That's why Hubble is in space, and our earth based observatories are built as high up as possible.  My earlier calculations demonstrated that at 1 lightyear a 10000 watt signal is only 8 nano watts strong.  This is why generalized emissions (the kind we use for communication and thermal dissipation) are a crap measuring stick for anything extremely far away, which our initial scientist somehow failed to mention.

To quote Thunderfoot, "Science bitches, it works."




FordGT90Concept said:


> Frankly, I'm very concerned about how much energy Earth is emitting into space.  I think Hawking wrote about that subject too.  Some things to consider:
> 
> -The nearest potentially habitable planet in another star system is Tau Ceti e at 11.905 light years away.
> 
> ...




I've done the foot work to prove out your theorizing previously.  Mathematics is our friend here.

My problem is that after a bunch of provable statements, you jump the track and enter the BS world of theology.  NO.  You can't mix the two and come up with a coherent answer.  Heck, you don't even need theology.

1) Cosmic background radiation is potentially an alien signal set on constant loop, because we may not be capable of understanding it.
Crap.  Any species capable of permeating all of space with a constant signal would be intelligent.  Any intelligent species would understand that communication can vary between species, and would therefore make first contact with a limited amount of information that could not be misconstrued.  Even humanity figured this out in the 70's.  You start with a message to which a response would mean potential intelligence, evaluate the species responding to you, and initiate communication with them in a way that makes sense.  Any message complex enough to not have a regular repeating pattern (and background radiation has never had a discernible pattern) would be too complex to initiate contact.

2) We may not understand other species trying to make contact, because communication is so different.
Crap.  The Apache and Germans are both Homo Sapiens.  Both developed language with fundamentally the same hardware.  Yet Apache wind talkers could communicate without code and not be understood by the Germans.  The thought that we somehow have a magical ability to understand each other, because of similar origins, is fantastic at best.  What really matters is that if the Germans could have received enough examples of wind talker transmissions, they could have built a database of them.  They could search out the strings that appear most often, and categorize this to build an approximation of lingual cues.  Once they had enough lingual cues it would only take a few confirmed values to reconstruct the message.  We humans have done it with a bunch of absolutely dead languages.  There's no reason to conclude that a constantly repeating signal wouldn't be able to be cracked.  Our shared language is mathematics, and that is a universal language.  Whether it be alien, human, or our fellow denizens of this planet.

3) We could build a ship, and live on it.
Technically true.  At the same time, spontaneous generation of a ship is functionally impossible.  This means you started on a planet.  At some point you had enough resources to construct said ship, including energy.  Said ship would have to expend a massive amount of energy to leave the gravitational well of its construction.  Once it started moving it would either have to expend huge amounts of energy to steer, or spend decades speeding up and slowing down to get to locations where resources could be collected.  While this does solve the emissions issue by putting everyone in a bubble, it doesn't really address how that bubble collects and expends energy to go anywhere.

4) Messages from 10+ lightyears would potentially degrade.
No.  Most of space is nothing, so let's consider it a vacuum.  Let's say you're an intelligent species, with a burning desire to contact your neighbors.  You build a single communications facility, that produces a coherent beam of photons.  Said beam of photons is focused through a lense, whose focal length is 5 light years.  This means a 2 meter wide wide beam would still be 2 meters wide at 10 lightyears away.  Now the energy to do this requires supercooling, a nuclear reactor, and a very advanced civilization.  On this beam, you transmit a greeting, that it a string of prime numbers.  What you are hoping to receive back is a pulse of light with the next number in that series.  You are advanced enough to calculate obrital positions, as demonstrated by the laser.  This means that the message will arrive on the determined planet, and you transmit it for weeks to make sure the inhabitants get it as a message, and not a random energy spike.  Wait the time it takes for the message to get there, the weeks you transmitted, the time it took you to build your own array, and the return trip time.  If you receive a message back, there's intelligent life with a comparable or better level of technology.  If there's no response, no life.  While this requires massive periods of waiting, it's the only way we know of for a message to be transmitted across space.  Any general direction transmission would require so much energy to be seen that it would functionally have to use the energy of a sun.  Anyone capable of actually tracking Earth, determining its orbital path, calculating and aiming an emitter, and encoding a message would find it trivial to calculate the path of visible bodies which may interfere with the signal.

5) Digital versus analog
100% crap.  Digital and analog broadcasts are still broadcasts.  Encoding it in 1s and 0s is immaterial.  Also "analog" communication is also a crap term.  You communicate in discrete sounds, created by a larynx and vocal cords.  The only "analog" thing in the system is your ears, which are sensitive to volume on a logarithmic scale rather than a linear thing (doubling apparent volume requires significantly more than double the energy).  Our analog television broadcasts and our digital television broadcasts are identical from far enough away.  Any other life would simply know an emission of unnatural radio waves was created, so it must have a source that is intelligent enough to make it.  That's kinda the whole reason the scientist in the OP said they were measuring a high thermal radiation source that did not have a natural explanation when they started.

6) Alien mining
110% crap.  This is a common misunderstanding, so I can't begrudge anyone for it.  If there were aliens in the oort cloud or asteroid belt we'd know they were the short bus kind of people.  Mineral density in the cloud is tiny.  The existence of large object, worth mining, is minimal.  If Aliens wanted to mine it'd be Earth, Mars, or Venus.  Largest concentration of rocky minerals, no real defenses to anyone advanced enough to cross space, and relatively easy on the environmental demands as well.



Aliens exist.  Intelligent life may or may not exist.  Whenever this is proposed though, there's plenty of facts to argue with.  If your argument boils down to inductive reasoning, you've failed.




AsRock said:


> Just saying and all but maybe they cannot, as we know light is the fastest now from what we know, what if aliens use \ used light to travel or maybe they figured a way to stop light from showing.
> 
> Humans don't know it all we just like to think we do even more so, in fact the more we think we know the less we know.
> 
> .



I'm sorry, I agree with you but come on.

"The more we know, the less we know" is about as useful as Anita Sarkesian's "The less you think you're affected the more of an effect violent games have on you."  It's turning a reasonable debate into a childish finger pointing game.

1) Light isn't what we measure here.  In fact, there are telescopes out there that are absolutely opaque to the visible light spectrum.
2) The act of "turning off the lights" would generate a black spot.  It'd be black on black, but the cosmic background means that a truly non-radiating body would be visible due to its absence.  If you'd like an example of something that is invisible with visible light, but a heck of a show in the radio wave spectrum of the electromagnetic spectrum check out a pulsar: http://missionscience.nasa.gov/ems/05_radiowaves.html
3) Travel by light is for chumps.  It'd still take enormous amounts of time to get anywhere, and when you did the enormous amounts of energy expended would require you harvest the local resources just to replenish your stock.  Prove that matter and energy can be created or destroyed, not just converted, and this might hold some value.  Even our technology is working on spatial folding, to make traveling massive distances less energy intensive than travel via light.



Edit:
Oops.  Forgot a 0.  That was a 10000 watt transmission source, not a 1000 watt one.


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 17, 2015)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> 1) Cosmic background radiation is potentially an alien signal set on constant loop, because we may not be capable of understanding it.
> Crap.  Any species capable of permeating all of space with a constant signal would be intelligent.  Any intelligent species would understand that communication can vary between species, and would therefore make first contact with a limited amount of information that could not be misconstrued.  Even humanity figured this out in the 70's.  You start with a message to which a response would mean potential intelligence, evaluate the species responding to you, and initiate communication with them in a way that makes sense.  Any message complex enough to not have a regular repeating pattern (and background radiation has never had a discernible pattern) would be too complex to initiate contact.


Forgive me if I gave the impression they wanted us to understand.  I thought I made that pretty clear that a) it would be alien so the pattern is alien to us, b) it resembles white noise which encrypted data mirrors, and c) "encrypted" means they don't want it decrypted.  Let's apply human logic to an alien problem (silly, I know), if it were encrypted using binary we recognized but say it were done using a million-bit key, would we still even recognize it as encrypted payload?  I highly doubt it.  "Hidden in plain sight" is relevant here. 



lilhasselhoffer said:


> 2) We may not understand other species trying to make contact, because communication is so different.
> Crap.  The Apache and Germans are both Homo Sapiens.  Both developed language with fundamentally the same hardware.  Yet Apache wind talkers could communicate without code and not be understood by the Germans.  The thought that we somehow have a magical ability to understand each other, because of similar origins, is fantastic at best.  What really matters is that if the Germans could have received enough examples of wind talker transmissions, they could have built a database of them.  They could search out the strings that appear most often, and categorize this to build an approximation of lingual cues.  Once they had enough lingual cues it would only take a few confirmed values to reconstruct the message.  We humans have done it with a bunch of absolutely dead languages.  There's no reason to conclude that a constantly repeating signal wouldn't be able to be cracked.  Our shared language is mathematics, and that is a universal language.  Whether it be alien, human, or our fellow denizens of this planet.


You pretty much argued my point for me here.  "Lingual cues" are a result of human physiology.  The Germans could have eventually cracked it, again, because of the shared human experience.  Until we study an alien species that created the language--communicated directly with them, it is doubtful we'll understand their language.

I never said it was a "constantly repeating single."  Assuming it is encrypted or ciphered on top of having an unknown payload, it may never repeat.



lilhasselhoffer said:


> 3) We could build a ship, and live on it.
> Technically true.  At the same time, spontaneous generation of a ship is functionally impossible.  This means you started on a planet.  At some point you had enough resources to construct said ship, including energy.  Said ship would have to expend a massive amount of energy to leave the gravitational well of its construction.  Once it started moving it would either have to expend huge amounts of energy to steer, or spend decades speeding up and slowing down to get to locations where resources could be collected.  While this does solve the emissions issue by putting everyone in a bubble, it doesn't really address how that bubble collects and expends energy to go anywhere.


That "planet" may no longer exist or be too far away to detect.  You're also still thinking in the confines of the technology we have today.  Any species that has abandoned their planet--you have to think of humanity at least 1000 years from now.  Ehm, operating on the assumption they know quantum mechanics better than we know atoms.



lilhasselhoffer said:


> 4) Messages from 10+ lightyears would potentially degrade.
> No.  Most of space is nothing, so let's consider it a vacuum.  Let's say you're an intelligent species, with a burning desire to contact your neighbors.  You build a single communications facility, that produces a coherent beam of photons.  Said beam of photons is focused through a lense, whose focal length is 5 light years.  This means a 2 meter wide wide beam would still be 2 meters wide at 10 lightyears away.  Now the energy to do this requires supercooling, a nuclear reactor, and a very advanced civilization.  On this beam, you transmit a greeting, that it a string of prime numbers.  What you are hoping to receive back is a pulse of light with the next number in that series.  You are advanced enough to calculate obrital positions, as demonstrated by the laser.  This means that the message will arrive on the determined planet, and you transmit it for weeks to make sure the inhabitants get it as a message, and not a random energy spike.  Wait the time it takes for the message to get there, the weeks you transmitted, the time it took you to build your own array, and the return trip time.  If you receive a message back, there's intelligent life with a comparable or better level of technology.  If there's no response, no life.  While this requires massive periods of waiting, it's the only way we know of for a message to be transmitted across space.  Any general direction transmission would require so much energy to be seen that it would functionally have to use the energy of a sun.  Anyone capable of actually tracking Earth, determining its orbital path, calculating and aiming an emitter, and encoding a message would find it trivial to calculate the path of visible bodies which may interfere with the signal.


That's another pretty big assumption especially knowing how much "dark matter" is out there.  Do we really know what lies beyond the Oort Cloud?  Everything we received thus far is from extremely powerful sources of radiation.  I don't know we'll definitively know what effect long distance artificial transmissions have until we successfully transmit and receive one between solar systems.



lilhasselhoffer said:


> 5) Digital versus analog
> 100% crap.  Digital and analog broadcasts are still broadcasts.  Encoding it in 1s and 0s is immaterial.  Also "analog" communication is also a crap term.  You communicate in discrete sounds, created by a larynx and vocal cords.  The only "analog" thing in the system is your ears, which are sensitive to volume on a logarithmic scale rather than a linear thing (doubling apparent volume requires significantly more than double the energy).  Our analog television broadcasts and our digital television broadcasts are identical from far enough away.  Any other life would simply know an emission of unnatural radio waves was created, so it must have a source that is intelligent enough to make it.  That's kinda the whole reason the scientist in the OP said they were measuring a high thermal radiation source that did not have a natural explanation when they started.


I used the wrong terms there but I think you missed my point: first we communicated using very human means (voice, listening, gestures; very short range), then we communicated using longer distance but still primitive means (signal fires and flags), then we communicated via transmission wires (morse code, telegraph), then wireless (same thing using radiation).  The payloads have grown with the advancement in technology.  I merely asked what comes next?  We're looking for our understanding of communication, not out future understanding of communication.  How would an intelligent species that existed a 1000 years before us communicate?   One million years?  One billion years?  I don't think we can answer that question yet.  It could be there, but we're still oblivious to it.



lilhasselhoffer said:


> 6) Alien mining
> 110% crap.  This is a common misunderstanding, so I can't begrudge anyone for it.  If there were aliens in the oort cloud or asteroid belt we'd know they were the short bus kind of people.  Mineral density in the cloud is tiny.  The existence of large object, worth mining, is minimal.  If Aliens wanted to mine it'd be Earth, Mars, or Venus.  Largest concentration of rocky minerals, no real defenses to anyone advanced enough to cross space, and relatively easy on the environmental demands as well.


You're assuming you know what they want to collect.  Perhaps it is abundant in asteroid belts.  Also, the point of mining an asteroid belt for any species is that no one will miss it.  Sure, they could have siphoned off atmosphere from a planet too (like Jupiter) and no one would be the wiser for it.  A mining operation on a planet is unlikely because it requires too many resources and is too visible.  If we needed resources from another solar system that had intelligence life, would we try not to be obvious as well?  It is theft, after all.


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## Steevo (Sep 18, 2015)

The real issue we face is the speed of light, or as we should say the speed of propagation. The second issue is we are assuming that they are smarter than us. What happens when we finally receive the equal to our 16 and pregnant transmission from another civilization that demanded it to be streamed to all their viewing devices all the time. Or we never got a transmission as they formed a religion that held science back fearing discoveries as some form of paganism?

Lastly we can use the following thought process, assuming that another civilization started broadcasting 10,000 years before us, that is only 10,000 light years of available space around us to search out of the trillions out there, so for a civilization to be in place, searching for life, transmitting a signal that we are capable of receiving has such astounding odds against it..... 

I am NOT saying we shouldn't try to make any sense out of the "noise" we gather, but we have more pressing issues, like getting over the divisions among our own race, and the issues on our planet.


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 18, 2015)

I think humanity will eventually discover how to successfully FTL travel.  I have no idea when and I have no idea how, but I believe it will be done eventually (provided humanity doesn't perish first, anyway).

I don't believe humanity is broadcasting a message into space specifically for alien species to pick up.  SETI is listening for a signal though.  Funny how they expect them to be transmitting when we aren't transmitting either.


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## Ikaruga (Sep 18, 2015)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Funny how they expect them to be transmitting when we aren't transmitting either.


There were a few "exceptions": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI#Transmissions


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 18, 2015)

They're so brief.  Those target systems would have to be listening in the right direction at the right time to catch it.


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## broken pixel (Sep 18, 2015)

THC found on a meteorite in 2009 debunked by mainstream scientists. THC found again on a meteorite by NASA not debunked. 

The Universe is fucked if human beings are the only intelligent life. I would believe other more advanced beings would travel by interdimentional means so you cant just detect them with human made scientific intruments, even advanced ones.


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## Steevo (Sep 18, 2015)

broken pixel said:


> notallowedto.com/marijuana-in-space-nasa-discovers-thc-on-meteorite-fragment/



http://phishlist.com/marijuana-in-space-nasa-discovers-thc-on-meteorite-fragment-hoax/

Perhaps another forum or thread would be better suited to your tastes.


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## lilhasselhoffer (Sep 18, 2015)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Forgive me if I gave the impression they wanted us to understand.  I thought I made that pretty clear that a) it would be alien so the pattern is alien to us, b) it resembles white noise which encrypted data mirrors, and c) "encrypted" means they don't want it decrypted.  Let's apply human logic to an alien problem (silly, I know), if it were encrypted using binary we recognized but say it were done using a million-bit key, would we still even recognize it as encrypted payload?  I highly doubt it.  "Hidden in plain sight" is relevant here.
> 
> 
> You pretty much argued my point for me here.  "Lingual cues" are a result of human physiology.  The Germans could have eventually cracked it, again, because of the shared human experience.  Until we study an alien species that created the language--communicated directly with them, it is doubtful we'll understand their language.
> ...




My point, put concisely, is that you transition from fact and reason into wishy washy garbage.  The transition is abrupt, yet there is no distinction between the realistic and the hopeful.

We could theorize about alternative forms of communication all day (both biological and technological).  The truth is, it doesn't matter.  If we find other intelligent life out there it'll have to be similar to us.  This means that they have to emit non-natural amounts of electromagnetic (preferably radio or infrared) energy.  Idle theory on alternative communication and technologies is fantastic for science fiction, but it's functionally useless to science fact.

We know what is in the debris belts, because we are standing upon it.  NASA and other space agencies have actual samples of meteorites, which prove that these bodies are made up of water, iron, and other elements far more abundantly found on earth.  You accuse me of trying to impose my logic onto aliens, yet why would any species capable of interstellar travel give a crap about humanity?  Even if they did, that doesn't explain why Mars isn't being stripped.  The simple truth is that if you expend the energy to travel across the stars, why would you go about mining resources inefficiently?  No matter what species you are, if energy out is greater than resources in you're on a death march to starvation.

The idea of a planet ship is interesting, but stupid.  I'm not demonstrating the math here, because it'd be two pages of posting.  The reality is that most of a planet's mass would have to be converted to energy in order to escape its own gravity well and overcome the inertial forces present on a spinning planetary body.  Even then, you're still bound by conventional physics once moving.  If you get too near a large gravity well you're sucked in.  If you fly through a dark matter body you're functionally being shot at.  If you survive all of this, you've still got to accelerate and slow down when you go anywhere, so even more of your planet has to be converted into energy.  There's better understanding of the quantum mechanics which govern our universe, then there's needing to completely reinvent physics to make your assumptions work.  Be real here.

Transmitting a message to somebody else is pretty idiot resistant, and it works exactly like computers do now.  You observe the body you're sending the transmission to, and send away.  If that body disappeared at some point, you know your message wasn't received due to an obstruction.  Yes, this would take a full ten years of observation, but after building a giant space laser do you really think parking an observation drone on it would be anything but trivial?  Do you know how we discover planets right now?  We observe a star, and hope for it to dim on a regular cycle.  This means something blocks the emissions, and that something is in orbit.  Despite these planets being thousandths the size of the suns, we can observe them.  It would be trivial for us to make sure the transmission was unobstructed, let alone someone advanced enough to build a giant space laser for communication.

Finally, cosmic background radiation.  Where in Hades do I begin?  I gave you the benefit of doubt when you posed it was a transmission.  Your response is that the sender is encrypting it, sending it out on multiple bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, has harnessed more energy than is found in a complete conversion of matter to energy for multiple solar systems, and on top of all of that ask me to believe that they want nobody to get the message.  Exactly how do you justify taking a leap of faith like that?  Either the people making this transmission are literally gods (as in can bend reality and the laws of physics to their will), or there isn't an intelligent source.  Let's tick the boxes.  No discernible patterns, variable intensities, consistent source, multiple different emissions bands, and a natural explanation for the emissions.  Seems like the only reason you'd believe it was a transmission is if you couldn't recognize the impossible from the so remote that it is functionally impossible.  Arguing "but aliens have different logic" is like arguing tomorrow you are going to spontaneously combust because there's nothing explicitly telling you that you won't, it's an unarguable point because it requires an initial leap of logic too great to be plausible.



I guess all I'm trying to say is please don't cloak random theorizing with factual arguments.  It makes the facts harder to discern, and makes people believe theory is fact.  It's hard enough trying to get people to even fathom the breadth of space, let alone trying to do so and explain why some postulations aren't founded in the same reality as the science.  It may be true, it may be useful to expand our thinking, but right now it's as useless as high heels for a tuna fish.


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## FordGT90Concept (Sep 18, 2015)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> Even if they did, that doesn't explain why Mars isn't being stripped.


What makes you think it already hasn't been?  If a planet was stripped of its useful resources, I imagine it would look very much like Mars.



lilhasselhoffer said:


> The simple truth is that if you expend the energy to travel across the stars, why would you go about mining resources inefficiently?  No matter what species you are, if energy out is greater than resources in you're on a death march to starvation.


Because energy is pretty easy to produce once you have the means to do it.  Resources, however, still deplete.



lilhasselhoffer said:


> The idea of a planet ship is interesting, but stupid.


Wot, mate?  I said no such thing.  Let me iterate: think humanity taking to the stars on nomadic ships and Earth itself is hit by an asteroid and is no longer life sustaining.  Intelligent life would still exist in the solar system, our ships too small to detect, and our planet evacuated.  There no longer is any beacon of life in the system but intelligent life still exists in the system.  It would give the appearance of being a dark, dead, solar system from afar but should one actually travel there, they'd potentially find an abundance of space stations, space ships, and planet/asteroid mining going on.  I never meant to suggest a "planet ship" and I apologize for not being clearer.



lilhasselhoffer said:


> No discernible patterns, variable intensities, consistent source, multiple different emissions bands, and a natural explanation for the emissions.


Picture all of the communications here on Earth scaled up to cover the Milky Way.  It would be pretty much as you described:
-Encryption deliberately obscures patterns.
-Intensities vary based on the mediums the signal has passed through.
-A defining feature of CBR is "no discernable source."  I think it not impossible to build an array of transmitters that could replicate that appearance.
-FM, AM, UHF, VHF, etc.  Every fraction of a frequency could be a different dataset just like it is in our man made broadcasts here on Earth.
-How best to hide something you don't want to be seen (e.g. a SCUD missile launcher)?  Make it appear benign, ordinary, camouflaged.

If I had damn near unlimited resources and a massive navy that covers most of the galaxy, CBR is exactly what I'd make my communication system look like.  It can even make enemies deaf and dumb by acting as a jammer too so long as my transmitters are more powerful than theirs.




lilhasselhoffer said:


> I guess all I'm trying to say is please don't cloak random theorizing with factual arguments.


I prefaced it and layed it out as random thoughts on the subject.  Never meant to give the impression it was "factual." There are some facts in there, sure, but if I didn't explicitly link to a source to prove it then consider it opinion.


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## dorsetknob (Sep 18, 2015)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Wot, mate? I said no such thing. Let me iterate: think humanity taking to the stars on nomadic ships and Earth itself is hit by an asteroid and is no longer life sustaining. Intelligent life would still exist in the solar system, our ships too small to detect, and our planet evacuated. There no longer is any beacon of life in the system but intelligent life still exists in the system. It would give the appearance of being a dark, dead, solar system from afar but should one actually travel there, they'd potentially find an abundance of space stations, space ships, and planet/asteroid mining going on. I never meant to suggest a "planet ship" and I apologize for not being clearer.



If you can get out there with enough manpower/ robots  you can mine the smaller metal rich asteroids to Plate one of the larger Asteroids there are loads of nickel iron Asteroids out there
once you start to plate the surface and you mine into your asteroid
you can create a sealed habitat
some would and could call this a Space Station


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## lilhasselhoffer (Sep 18, 2015)

FordGT90Concept said:


> What makes you think it already hasn't been?  If a planet was stripped of its useful resources, I imagine it would look very much like Mars.
> 
> 
> Because energy is pretty easy to produce once you have the means to do it.  Resources, however, still deplete.
> ...




We seem to have some fundamental differences, and I am either not making a clear argument or talking to someone making an argument I don't fully understand.  As such I've only got a couple more things to say before I'm going to allow you to have this discussion, and just bow out.

The cosmic background does have a discernible source, assuming that you trace it back using multiple wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.  Our current models suggest this radiation is functionally a left-over from extremely hot clouds of proto-matter interacting with some bits that had cooled enough to generate electrons, thereby creating vast amounts of radiation emissions that still exist to this day because of the absolutely insane amount of energy involved.  Again, this amount of energy is so fantastic because complex matter hadn't really formed because the energy involved would not allow it.  To think that any species could mimic this even would literally be to make them gods.


You seem to not remember some fundamentals about multiple signal sources.  Fundamentals which make multiple signal sources as easy to discern as a single source.  Assuming that this was a signal, broadcast among all the electromagnetic spectrum, you'd need at least a couple of transmitters to make sure that the signal didn't come from one clear source.  The problem with that is signal interference.  Have you ever seen one of those visualizations of frequency with an oscillating table and sand?  Basically, dependent upon the frequency the sand will find different areas where there is less apparent energy and it will congregate.  The same thing happens for electromagnetic waves.  Multiple sources of the same signal would therefore generate a signal with dead zones and very high intensity zones.  This is antithetical to being a consistent background, as the cosmic background radiation is.  I'm again forced to ask what amazing feat of logic allows you to literally divine a signal from the aether?  There's no pattern, there's no unique source, there's strong indication that the radiation cannot be from multiple sources, and the signal itself is so insanely powerful as to blanket all of space.  If I am to believe there is an intelligence producing this signal I'm going to have to call it god.  Anything powerful enough to do this has bent the natural laws to their will, and the only adequate way to describe that is godhood.  


Your earlier quote, that I'm having trouble with: "-Why does a species have to live on a planet at all? It is theoretically possible to build a space ship that is 100% sustainable, mining asteroids for raw materials. It's also possible to breed a species for living in a zero gravity environment."

Assume you've got a planetary body the size of Earth.  Assume this because it's easy to do the math, but if you'd like to do it for some other body you'll be welcome to do so.  The escape velocity for Earth is 11.2 km/s.  Let's assume that the minimum acceptable size of a ship matches that of the ISS, so you've got a weight of 450 tons or 408233 kg.  That means you've got to have 408233*11200^2=51208747520000 joules, rounded to 51*10^12 J, or 51 terajoules.  Let's assume that a matter to energy conversion process propelled this ship, and the efficiency was a rather substantial 80%.  That would mean that to get off your planet you'd need  64 terajoules.  Now this particular craft is designed for 6 people.  We'll waive the need to restock supplies, because our theoretical species is more advanced than us.  The minimum viable breeding population for a species is a rather fluid calculation, but let's ballpark it at 1000, with additional room provided for 62 passengers to account for birth rates, deaths, etc...  That's 177 vessels required to be shipped out into the solar system, at a total initial power investment of 9.920 petajoules.  

Of course, these ships also need matter to energy conversion systems.  Let's work backwards on this one.  The ISS currently uses 75 to 90 kiloWatts of power according to NASA http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/onthestation/facts_and_figures.html.  Factoring in a 50% fudge factor (life aboard the ISS is not something long term, to make it so you'd need more power), we're looking at 136 kiloWatts.  We'll assume that this spacer fleet requires a year worth of matter, before it can travel anywhere to get new matter.  Again, approximating Earth, that's 365 days.  That means 31536000 seconds, which means you'll need 4.3*10^12 watts.  Factor in 80% efficiency, and you've got 5.4 terajoules.  I've done the math to show you , but the math proves that operational energy costs an order of magnitude (10^3) less than escaping the gravity well.  Thus, from now on we'll assume that the energy cost is just 9.920 petajoules.

How much matter do you need then?  e=mc^2, which means 9.920*10^15=m*300000000^2, m=0.11 km.  So the math checks out there.  You could theoretically send 177 ships into the solar system.  But, then we have to ask why.  If you can convert matter into energy with an 80% efficiency you don't have to worry about asteroids.  If its because you've screwed up you planet, you'd need more than a couple of generations to fix things.  Is it an experiment?  I hope not.  Low gravitation isn't something we can breed for, not to mention the shielding for radiation is less than that of an atmosphere.  Astronauts now come back with degenerative bone conditions and a risk of cancer greater than most nuclear power plant workers.  Your proposed situation requires that aliens are smart enough to have 80% efficient matter-energy converters (the rocket fuel version of this equation functionally strips a planet of all of its resources), but incapable of stopping an extinction level event.  Seems to be a very narrow potential intelligence you're aiming at.  That's why the argument is a thought exercise, and not a genuine attempt to answer fundamental questions.  


Finally, to any species advanced enough to cross the void in reasonable spans of time there is no distinction between matter and energy.  It is one resource that can be collected, converted into whatever is needed, and then expelled to propel your ship.  Making the distinction between matter and energy is for those who don't yet have access to enough power to travel faster than light.  Those species would need generational ships just to cross the void, and they'd be technologically similar to our own (just google "Project Orion").  That would mean thermal and radio emissions.  See how the logic loop closes itself there?



Sorry, but one last point.  I respect individuals with their own opinion that can be proven.  Case in point, this particular thread is refuting a scientist who said something monumentally foolish.  My problems arise when the fundamentally reasoned argument is conflated with the raving lunatic feelings.  Feelings can't be tested, proven, or even really addressed.  I have no problem with feelings, but not making a distinction between the feels and the facts is problematic.  You lose the logic and the feels because a strong argument is made only on one side of the line or the other, not toeing both sides of it.  You generally have a high standard of argument, and it took me for surprise when you descended into the feels after the science.  My apologies for potentially blowing this out of proportion.


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## broken pixel (Sep 18, 2015)

Steevo said:


> http://phishlist.com/marijuana-in-space-nasa-discovers-thc-on-meteorite-fragment-hoax/
> 
> Perhaps another forum or thread would be better suited to your tastes.



Oh man! Puff! I am so bummed out man! No THC in outer space. 

Carl Sagan enjoyed the grass and he was a renowned, Astronomer & Astrophysicist. 
Thanks for clearing that one up for my tired internet eyes Steevie, I deleted the link. 

http://homealonestoned.blogspot.com/2010/09/carl-sagan-renowned-astronomer.html


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 20, 2015)

natr0n said:


> 150 years of moonshine abuse slouched in a corner looking downward
> 
> I know what I saw.


Moonshine abuse? I aint the one seeing UFO's son.


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