I believe if life is common than there must of been at least one group of aliens that at least attempted to colonize it self everywhere in space?
Unless humans are a extreme anomaly and that most other aliens don’t really care about space exploration, and just focus on their home planet.
We can barely see other stars, and have only recently confirmed the existence of extrasolar planets despite that being basically a given. What artificial structures would exist that would be detectable at that (non)level of clarity? The only thing we can detect at this moment is something capable of meaningfully interfering with a star's natural EM radiation output.
Dyson Spheres are theoretical and arguably not terribly useful or desired, and no known substance has the strength to build one or anything remotely on the same scale without tearing itself to shreds. Dyson swarms are easier to build but still unfathomably massive undertakings, and might not noticably detract from a star's output from the perspective of a telescope light-years away. Anything else is too small to matter for this question.
Furthermore, space is almost perfect at hiding signs of intelligent life. The distance between neighboring habitable worlds is measured in light-years, and the best long-distance form of communication we have (radio waves) are drowned out by several orders of magnitude by naturally occurring sources of radio waves like stars.
Basically we have no idea how common life, intelligent or otherwise, is in the universe and there's no way of confirming one way or another unless someone in our immediate neighborhood decides to abuse the Kardashev scale for shits and giggles or we invent FTL communication/travel and go look for ourselves. We may or may not be alone, but the difference is academic; we're stranded on an island with no radio and there might be an island full of people just over the horizon, or there might not be.
"Everywhere in space" is a size that is so big and vast that it is beyond comprehension. The space within our own solar system is absolutely massive by our own standards of space, but its a tiny speck in the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy is a tiny spec relative to the universe. There is a lot of space in space.
Also consider that humans have not reached or mapped many points on this planet, mainly isolated parts of the ocean. We could be in a relatively similar position if there are colonizer aliens. Maybe they think our galaxy is not worth exploring.
The scale of the universe is a cool and scary thing to think about.
It might be that self-replicating chemistry is an anomaly and life is extraordinarily rare. It might be that life is common but multicellular life isn't. It might be that whenever a biosphere pops up it gets swiftly eradicated by some cosmic event. It might be that we're extremely early to the game, and the heavy elements that are required for life just didn't exist, or don't generally exist in the right ratios, until around the time our solar system formed.
It might be that evolving sapience is a crazy unlikely dice roll, or that sex as a means of reproduction is extremely rare to evolve, and thus the genetic mutation rate is way slower.
Humans have also been around about 250,000 years, of which maybe the last 100 have been us sending out signals, mostly accidentally.
Also, physics is a real bitch to deal with, and a society that doesn't have some inherent drive to commit to space exploration probably won't bother, even if they otherwise have advanced technology.
Also, physics is a real bitch to deal with, and a society that doesn’t have some inherent drive to commit to space exploration probably won’t bother, even if they otherwise have advanced technology.
Also, it's very easy to imagine a kind of planet on which intelligent, advanced life could form but which is significantly more difficult to leave than Earth. If you're on a planet with even slightly stronger gravity and thicker atmosphere than ours ... good luck. It won't be easy.
this question implies any alien life would necessarily engage in the most speculative (and insane) works of solar engineering for (infinitely expanding) energy needs. like it honestly pisses me off that people can entertain this idea that some alien must've decided to build a fucking dyson sphere cause that's just what they should do... and this complete speculation is used as 'evidence' in a debate of whether aliens exist? No-one knows how a goddamn different sapient would treat their solar system. We don't even know what the space-footprint of us would be if we had a different dominant culture or economic system!
a bunch of douches in the Great Satan figuring we should blot out the sun to use all its energy as efficiently as possible cannot be assumed to be a natural or logical progression for a species. I, a human person, would personally rip the engineers limb from limb if they got serious about Dyson-ing my God-Sphere
and this side-steps that these assholes assume such engineering is plausible & and possible, something i also heartily contest. like physics works the same everywhere, i don't know where we get off having an expectation of someone being able to build things in space well enough to be perceptible millions of lightyears away, when our species crowning achievement is a million-pound space station that will only exist for 33 years
I agree. The overwhelming majority of creatures on this very planet are completely different from us, if there are aliens anywhere ”near“ us they will be absolutely nothing like we can imagine. We share common ancestors with every life form on Earth, we’ve evolved in comparatively similar environments and yet we are nothing like a tree. You can’t even begin to imagine what a creature would look and act like that evolved on an entirely different planet, completely independently from anything we‘ve ever known.
Trying to predict what alien civilizations would do is like trying to imagine a new color. We have a staggering sample size of one (1) intelligent civilization, ourselves, from which any predictions stem. It’s fun to speculate, but imo it’s ultimately completely pointless because if they’re out there, they’re absolutely nothing like we can expect.
4-limbed bipedal racist sterotype alien :geordi-no:
sapient solar system with a very annoying personality :geordi-yes:
thus likely preventing life from ever arising in that same solar system, as well.
i was under the impression that one of the theories for life starting on this planet was that it was spread to earth from elsewhere via comet impact or what have you
idk i just don't think massively retooling entire solar systems is something humans should do on any timeline that makes it worth discussing since we can't even manage to fully understand the ramifications of our actions on this single planet.
similar to our inability to understand the repercussions of our actions, we have no real ability to discern that with certainty.
like it honestly pisses me off that people can entertain this idea that some alien must’ve decided to build a fucking dyson sphere cause that’s just what they should do
It's not that people think that's something that every alien species would definitely inevitably do, but rather that a dyson sphere (swarm is probably more accurate) is possible with our current understanding of physics and would therefore likely be one of the best things to build for a species constantly seeking to expend its energy output. So if the galaxy were filled with alien species, it would be curious that none chose to do this. It's easy to think of possible reasons why a different alien species would choose not to, it's less easy to think of why every alien species would choose not to.
possible
this word. yeah, a satellite is a real thing. get me a satellite that gathers energy and sends it back. get me one of those whose efficiency makes it worth the fuel & resources to create it. justify millions upon millions more of those. find me a purpose for infinite energy gathering & infinite energy use. And then explain how fusion power planetside isn't suitable/or is less efficient
The power doesnt necessarily have to be sent anywhere, people would probably live on these satellites, manufacturing would happen there, agriculture too, and a population of trillions that signifigantly dims a star could start with a few space homesteaders that becomes an entire culture with growth only limited by the total mass in their solar system.
what kinda shmuck would homestead a satellite. what kinda shmuck-ciety would dedicate the resources to allow said shmuckery
I didn't mean we could start in the near future, just that they don't contradict our current understanding of physics the way, say, FTL travel would. Even if sending the energy back proves to be impossible to do efficiently enough to be worth it, you could probably just use the it there. As far as resources go, the solar system is filled with them. We don't really need Mercury anyway. The purpose doesn't need to be anything beyond meeting the needs of an expanding population. For a space faring civilization, anything planetside is inefficient because gravity. But yeah, it's possible that the answer to the question is that buried in the nitty gritty details of how it would actually be built, there lie challenges that render it completely either impossible or pointlessly inefficient. But that would be curious itself, since it doesn't look like that from here.
Option 1
- We are in the backwaters of the Milky Way, and no alien civilization has expanded to a star system that is near enough or in the optimal position for our limited survey capabilities to detect.
Option 2
- We are early. It has taken up until now for the universe to evolve complex Self-aware/self-directed life, and we are one of if not the first that has the aptitude for technology and the drive to colonize space.
Option 3
- Most species don't have the expansionary instinct that humans do. We can see this on Earth. Many species are certainly territorial but don't have whatever gene mutation in humans that causes our species to see everything they lay eyes on as free real estate.
There are many plausible solutions to the Fermi Paradox. But the only scientifically acceptable answer is Not Enough Information, Please Try Again Later
The great filter is the idea that there is something that filters out most if not all of life in the galaxy. It could be behind us, possibly the cellular with how unbelievably rare the mitochondria development was. Or the filter could be in front of us such as nuclear war keeping most life from never leaving their planet and leaving a galactic imprint.
I'm taking microbio this semester, the cell is absolutely insane. DNA synthesizes messenger RNA, which tells ribosomes to take amino acids and form them into these perfectly ordered chains where hydrogen and oxygen line up perfectly to form bonds which cause the peptide chains to fold back on themselves, forming complex proteins. It's so ridiculously complex, it almost seems like magic.
Yeah it’s insane, like why and how the do these ribosomes just do that and do it so reliably. it makes me look at deism as being possibly just because it doesn’t seem like something that can happen without a creator.
tbf, you cant really argue what likelyhood life is with one example, we only have the top of the fraction. it could be one in ten, or one in 10 quadrillion.
I think a somewhat opposite approach is better, life seems extremely improbable, and we have a single example of life, so we ask why life seems so rare. No one without an example of life would be asking why life is so improbable so for anyone or anything asking this question there is a 100% chance they will have an example of life. You dont go around asking why smoopityboopity is so rare, cuz u dont even know what that is.
Eh, the evolutionary mechanism is simple though, even if the process is complex. Those mechanisms that aren't as reliable are out competed by those that are, leaving us with mostly reliable ribosome activity (environment non-withstanding). What would be interesting to see is what those more unreliable methods looked like.
Not that this rules out deism, it's just that self-replicating biological life has it's own rules here.
I'm still not ready to embrace creationism, the primordial seas had a couple of billion years for the right ingredients to combine. On a long enough timeline even highly improbable events become likely occurrences.
I love this stuff. I kind of like the protein world hypothesis, which posits that in primordial seas rich with organic matter some simple peptides form and, over the course of incomprehensible amounts of time, combine together such that they become self-replicating. Though AFAIK the RNA world hypothesis is more accepted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis
Travelling at literally the fastest possible speed we're aware something can travel at it would take 4 years to reach our next closest star. If you wanted to say "hello" to someone on Mars it would take 3 minutes to reach them, and that's at our closest orbits.
Space is infinitely big. It is so incomprehensibly big that humans cannot really conceive of it. If you could, it would drive you mad.
If someone were to look across the galaxy at Earth with intense detail they would be getting images of the first Homo Sapiens leaving the African continent.
This fails to really reckon with deep time. Yes the Universe is unimaginably large, but time is also unimaginably deep. Von Neumann probes with modest replication rates and interstellar cruise speeds could colonize the Milky Way in a few million years, which is exceptionally quick.
One of the things that's always bothered me is the "when you look out at the night sky, most of the stars you're seeing are already dead!" line because it's just flat wrong. You can't really see stars more than a few thousand light years away, and even 10,000 years is quite short on stellar lifetimes. The only stars that are likely in our sky but already gone are supergiants already on the verge of collapse like Betelgeuse.
I don't know shit about statistics but I read/watched something that suggested we're just early statistically. When taking into account how long the universe has existed compared to how long it could continue to exist, we're much closer to the start than the end.
I don't think we're the first in space, but I wouldn't be surprised if we were early enough that finding evidence of other life hasn't happened bc there just haven't been that many lifeforms that could leave behind that evidence yet, and space is so big that there's a low chance that we will just happen across it.
Maybe we're one of the first. That would be cool, and I can just tell humans would totally take that knowledge gracefully and be respectful to all who come after. :)
Yeah suddenly all those stories about progenitor races being brought down by their own hubris/creations seems like it might be us lol.
This plus the nature of light travel across the vast distances of space makes me assume that alien life is both possible, likely, and imo is already out there, but it's just not in a form sufficiently advanced enough that we would see it and/or it's so far away that the visible signs of life have been masked from observation. I mean our ability to see astral objects outside of our solar system accurately is relatively new, what are the odds we had the telescope in the right spot at the right time to catch an infinitesimally small blip of light from a civilization halfway across the galaxy
I think literally maybe we just can't see them. We only know about exoplanets because of gravity wobbles and slight periodic dimming of stars. How are we supposed to see any details on planets when a planet isn't even a pixel in our telescopes
That's the thing that really tilts me with these arguments. Sarah Palin claiming to see Russia from her porch is more likely than some alien picking up Elvis from 20 light years away.
The thing about Alien structures in space is that they're not obvious, for all we know Tabby's Star could be a Dyson swarm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stars_that_dim_oddly
It also starts with the bizarre assumption that the structures would radiate heat that we could detect, which if you're a hyper-advanced species capable of building mega-structures seems kinda like an oversight and a waste
There's the idea of the Dark Forest, that alien civilisations, when confronted with other intelligent life, have to make the assumption that those others can't be trusted not to become a threat, so that the only sensible thing to do is a pre-emptive strike. This would lead to the only surviving civilisations being the ones who keep their heads down and make sure they don't get noticed.
To be honest, I think that's a bunch of crap, and one of the reasons why I didn't really enjoy the Three Body books as much. The other one being the automatic assumption that there'd be a substantial amount of doomers who would collaborate with aliens to help them invade the earth and decimate mankind. Yeah there are wreckers around, but the motivation of these wallbreakers and Trisolarian sympathisers just seemed too damn artificial.
An interesting bit of info to add to this is that Earth is as almost 1/3 the age of the entire universe which is kind of a lot when you think about it. We really just might be one of the first ones.
Our universe has existed for 14 billion years, our planet for 4 billion years. Formation of new stars in our universe is projected to last for another 100 billion years. Were early
Because the fictional materials needed to make megastructures that would be visible from light years away don't exist.
