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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:13:24 AM EDT
[#1]
We have to develop warp drive before they will talk to us.
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:14:54 AM EDT
[#2]
  
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:16:02 AM EDT
[#3]
Bill Watterson said: The greatest sign of other intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:18:45 AM EDT
[#4]
Well you would'nt want to talk to us either.
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:19:23 AM EDT
[#5]
Hey....I thought "they" got you.... Where's the sexy avatar???? |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:19:38 AM EDT
[#6]
We haven't "opened a hailing frequency" to them yet.
Or maybe we just don't have "radios"capable of recieving whatever form of "radio"waves they are transmitting. I bet they think we are some stuck up sob's since we won't answer them. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:21:01 AM EDT
[#7]
 
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:24:51 AM EDT
[#8]
Because we've only been looking since '63 when Penzias and Wilson "discovered" background radiation?
I don't know if "aliens" can defeat the laws of physics. A non-directional "ping" would be extremely weak even if it came from mars. (square root of the radius, or something like that) 
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:26:09 AM EDT
[#9]
Seriously, I'm quite sure it will happen. We've been able to indirectly and directly image planets far, far away. It's only a matter of time before we train sensors on those planets and detect something.
My fervent hope and prayer is that many of our petty squabbles can be quelled once this happens. No, I have no Star Trek pretensions of world peace and harmony, but it would be nice to have that "there's something else out there..." feeling in the backs of your heads... maybe it would humble us, remind us of our place in the universe. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:26:36 AM EDT
[#10]
Light and sound take forever to get anywhere in interstellar distance terms. For all we know, subspace could be full of message traffic that we do not currently have the technology to hear.
As for equivitech civilizations that might have sent a signal millions of years ago that are just now reaching us... Dunno. Maybe in this arm of the galaxy we are either way ahead, or way behind, the curve. We've only been putting out radio signals for a little over a hundred years. If we come up with something faster in the next 20, the amount of radio waves that another civilization could actually pick up from us would be a rather small window of opportunity. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:27:14 AM EDT
[#11]
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:29:34 AM EDT
[#12]
Have you read "Inherit the Stars" and the rest of the "Giants" novels by James P. Hogan. I think you'd like 'em. Very hard core sci fi that tackles this very subject. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:30:00 AM EDT
[#13]
You raise a good point. If we've only been really looking for this for about 43 years, if the civilization we're trying to pick up develop at approximately the same rate as we have (just assuming here...), we might not be able to pick anything up for another 60+ years... (assuming by "Light and sound" you meant "Light and radio waves"  )
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:31:00 AM EDT
[#14]
Read, re-read, and due up for another reading! One of my favorite sci-fi series of all time in fact.
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:31:59 AM EDT
[#15]
That's why I am a proponent of Douglas Adams "Sub Ether Wave Net".....love that phrase!!! Instant commo from ANYWHERE in the Universe. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:34:40 AM EDT
[#16]
me, too!!! I am re-reading "the Gentle Giants of Ganymede" right now!!! Hey, how was "Entroverse" ? I still haven't picked that one up yet ( time dialation effect, you know )...maybe next week.
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:36:59 AM EDT
[#17]
how about this.
they don't talk to one another... a ship goes out. does it's thing and comes back. just like 13 century traders. if you have FTL travel why "talk"? just dock and download or if you have to get out a message send out a "torpedo" loaded with a hard drive to dock to a ship. then again why have ships? just hop from one place to another thru a portal. want to explore? send a ship with a FTL drive and a habitat with a portal mounted in it and just walk thru the port and your in a new place. you can have a lot of fun if your not constricted by the rules as you know them. we are just now understanding the rules. when we get to the point we "get it" then you get to see ET. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:40:32 AM EDT
[#18]
They wont contact us becuase they are afraid that the first humans to visit their planet would be Christian and Muslim Missionaries!!
 Nobody wants THAT kind of trouble. Though i hear they are keen on Bhuddhism. 
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:40:41 AM EDT
[#19]
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:41:02 AM EDT
[#20]
We have been broadcasting strong electromagnetic signals for about 60 years.
These propogate at the speed of light - one light year per year. Hence, take our solar system and draw a 120 light year diameter sphere around it. That is the range where ET could detect us. Now, overlay that into a map of the galaxy. You can't even see the pinprick, it's so small. You can have entire civilizations rise & fall long before any detectable signals could reach us. FYI - the closest star is 4.3 light years away |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:42:07 AM EDT
[#21]
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:42:14 AM EDT
[#22]
Chappa'i
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:42:54 AM EDT
[#23]
I believe there is no extra-terrestrial life. But, I have a two theories if they exist. 1. While humans on this planet lived without the technology to receive communications from space, aliens tried to make contact with others. Thousands of years later, we have the technology to pick up signals, but the aliens are dead. 2. While we have the technology to send out signals, intelligent life in outer space do not have the technology to pick up the signals. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:43:26 AM EDT
[#24]
Never heard of that one 'til right now... Didn't get good reviews on Amazon but if I find it at the used bookstore I'll pick a copy up... |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:43:58 AM EDT
[#25]
The conditions needed to sustain life are very, very, very rare. We may be the only intelligent life in this galaxy.
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:47:03 AM EDT
[#26]
A guy wrote a book a while back that addressed that very question. It's a SciFi novel, but it's still an interesting idea. The title is The Toolmaker Koan. His hypothesis: Whenever a species becomes intelligent and develops the ability to make tools and alter their own environment, that species shortly dies out (shortly in geological terms) due to war or environmental catastrophe. Thus, no space exploration, no interstellar communication.
Kinda chilling idea. Too bad the book wasn't better written. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:49:11 AM EDT
[#27]
+1  They sure wanted to convert the Marklar. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:49:31 AM EDT
[#28]
For radio waves, the probabilities are pretty low for hearing alien communications.
There's the power problem - any radio wave that has travelled over interstellar distances would be pretty weak by the time it reached us. That's if any other civilization is actually trying to transmit radio signals intended to reach other star systems. Maybe they're all listening too, thinking an even more advanced civilization will transmit to them. Or they could be using some sort of Faster Then Light communication technology that we can't currently comprehend. But then again, we just don't have the slightest clue what, if anything, might be out there, and what kind of life it may be. We seem to have pretty poor imagination when it comes to alien life - every sci-fi alien is some simple variation on humans. They're like humans, but they have these funny ears or something, and they're all greedy capitalists/fierce warriors/ultra-logical/etc. Few have any life forms that are completely different from everything we've ever thought of. Though this may be more lack of special effects budgets then imagination - I have read a few books with interesting alien cultures. But we just don't know. The galaxy could be teeming with an unimaginable variety of intelligent life, or we could be all alone in the universe. Hell, it's only been a hundred years or so that we could even conceive of planets around other stars which might harbor life similar to ours. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:51:37 AM EDT
[#29]
I just hope they hate terrorists as much as we do and will help us out to eliminate them.
I bet the aliens have some bad ass weaponry. We could create a new coalition... just the US, Britain, and the aliens. We could eliminate Iran's entire nuke program, take out all opposition, not harm a single innocent bystander, and be done by lunch on the first day. The next day, we'd take care of Syria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and quell China's rumblings. Might as well stop by Russia while we're at it... those bastards got something going on. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 6:57:44 AM EDT
[#30]
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:01:33 AM EDT
[#31]
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:08:09 AM EDT
[#32]
I'm thinkin it may warrant its own thread... |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:14:20 AM EDT
[#33]
Too far away or they existed in a different time.
Or maybe they don't exist and never did. While it would seem unlikely that life didn't gain a foothold elsewhere, given the enormity of the Universe, it is clearly a possibility that we are the first. If we survive long enough to spread out of our own solar system we may be the progenitors of life throughout the Universe. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:16:28 AM EDT
[#34]
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:26:40 AM EDT
[#35]
The server is just overwhelmed. It roughly says at 2pm eastern today, NASA is going to make a huge announcment. Rumors are flying that it would be about life being found in the solar system. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:36:09 AM EDT
[#36]
They found liquid water on the Saturn moon Enceladus. The moon has been spraying liquid water into orbit via huge gysers. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:38:33 AM EDT
[#37]
I bring peace and love to you all!
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:38:41 AM EDT
[#38]
The avatar went bye-bye when my membership expired. 
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:42:14 AM EDT
[#39]
That's the key word in that entire statement. You could very well be right but you do realize there are BILLIONS of galaxies out there, right? Now imagine if in each of those galaxies there exists only one planet capable of supporting life. Of those planets let's say only %1 actually developes any type of life. That is still a shitload of planets that could potentially send someone our way who likes Reese's Pieces and needs to call home! 
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:54:41 AM EDT
[#40]
Given the enormity of the universe, I'd be really surprised if we were the only planet sustaining intelligent life. However, there's a couple of reasons that I don't expect us to make contact with another form of intelligent life in my lifetime:
1. There may be very (relatively) short windows between the time that a species gets the ability to communicate with electromagnetic radiation and the time that a species uses that technology to wipe itself out. I don't think there are any guarantees that the human race will still be around in 3000 years. Even a modest nuclear exchange could wipe out most life on the planet (and would certainly wipe out most of the people who are bothering to listen for communication from other planets). In order for humans to communicate with another intelligent species, our radio transmit and listening times would have to overlap by perhaps 3000 years. Given that the planet is 4 billion years old, that's a very small window of time. 2. We understand the physics of light very well. There are some serious problems with causality if you allow things to travel faster than light. The twins paradox We know that very strange things happen to time and space at near the speed of light. These are things that we can verify experimentally. All of the mathematical models that we have today seem to indicate that there's a singularity at the speed of light that just can't be breached. Given that limitation, it's unlikely that we're going to get visitors. 3. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:55:03 AM EDT
[#41]
What if they don't have any sort of language or math at all?!
I mean, we're the only species on THIS planet with these two ways of thinking; do you think some goobers from another planet would necessarily construct systems of measurement and communication exactly like ours? Seems highly unlikely to me. They don't understand time, distance, measurements, words, or even have what we would call "thoughts", per se, and therefore are incapable of communication with us. But they understand one another, and are still organized, active, and intelligent (just in a different manner than us). But they are fundamentally alien, in the truest sense of the word, which is why we have no communication with them. Human beings have designed language and mathematics to communicate our thoughts and measure our world, according to our limited (mortal) perspective. The truth is that neither math nor language exist anywhere outside of the human mind; I think the idea of communication with an alien species would be much more difficult than anything we could possibly imagine. Or maybe they think we're stinky and are avoiding us. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:55:40 AM EDT
[#42]
Because they are afraid I will kick them right in their gigantic, misshapen, grotesque heads. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 7:57:05 AM EDT
[#43]
Fight it correct. Based on those calculations, in 2012, our signals will be detected by a cylon base star. They will send a task-force to destroy earth before galactica can find earth and save us. This is the real reason why the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. You've been warned....I can say no more PS Practice your head shots, and don't use those wimpy 9mm rounds |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 8:02:54 AM EDT
[#44]
Much better! 
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Posted: 3/9/2006 8:17:14 AM EDT
[#45]
Source? Heard this from someone else too... TIA |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 9:02:53 AM EDT
[#46]
Considering the fact that life is so abundant on earth, and life thrives in every nook and cranny. I would submit that life is very opportunistic and it is very likely much more prevalant than you believe. Of course I'm guessing and so are you. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 9:08:15 AM EDT
[#47]
Because extra terrestrial civilizations do not exist. The fact that I even need to state this to some people is disturbing, to say the least.
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Posted: 3/9/2006 9:19:12 AM EDT
[#48]
Quoted:
What if they don't have any sort of language or math at all?! Then they are not intelligent. I mean, we're the only species on THIS planet with these two ways of thinking; Sorry, don't know about math but most creatures have language of some kind. It is seriously condiered that the Great Whales, the Great Apes and Elephants may very well even be sentient. Particualrly the Great Whales do you think some goobers from another planet would necessarily construct systems of measurement and communication exactly like ours? Seems highly unlikely to me. They don't understand time, distance, measurements, words, or even have what we would call "thoughts", per se, and therefore are incapable of communication with us. But they understand one another, and are still organized, active, and intelligent (just in a different manner than us). But they are fundamentally alien, in the truest sense of the word, which is why we have no communication with them. Human beings have designed language and mathematics to communicate our thoughts and measure our world, according to our limited (mortal) perspective. The truth is that neither math nor language exist anywhere outside of the human mind; I think the idea of communication with an alien species would be much more difficult than anything we could possibly imagine. We did not design mathmatics. Mathmatics rule the entire universe...we just happened to figure that out. [\quote] |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 9:19:57 AM EDT
[#49]
What he said. The universe is way too scary big to even begin to conceptualize. |
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Posted: 3/9/2006 9:24:58 AM EDT
[#50]
I am a lot tougher than Chuck.... |
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