Why We Haven't Met Aliens Yet

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Then again, we could run into Klaatu.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

We're assuming robots will be rational? In that case they would eliminate humans without warning.

It's a very short story, so try http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.shtml

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

 

[Corsair 115]

It's related to my problem with Sci-Fi robots: why fight humans? They're ROBOTS--they don't need atmospher, or protection from radiation, or the like, so they could operate on airless asteroids, moons, and the like and never come into conflict with us. There's no reason to assume they'll want to kill us. There's no profit margine in it for them.

Unless they were just programmed that way (like the horde of killbots Zapp Brannigan successfully defeated).

 

[nvidiot]

Personally I think it's just sheer distance and timescales involved that has prevented contact so far. It's not that they aren't out there, it's that the incidence of intelligence and technological development is rare enough to spread it around galactic space far enough to make contact exceptionally unlikely.

But I still run seti@home.

 

[DreadNiK]

So, uh, that article wasn't really about aliens...

yeah, I can't tell if people are just deliberating ignoring the fact that the article was actually a piece of anti-capitalist, luddite drivel that somehow tries to argue that capitalism/consumerism and recreational technology could be the reason for the paradox...

It thinks it has a point, but fails to realize that even if we humans learn the lessons the article thinks it has, we can't control whether the aliens will....

 

[gnome]

I just wanted to add that "profit margarine" would make an awesome band name.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Personally I think it's just sheer distance and timescales involved that has prevented contact so far. It's not that they aren't out there, it's that the incidence of intelligence and technological development is rare enough to spread it around galactic space far enough to make contact exceptionally unlikely.

But I still run seti@home.

Yep, I just went over 300,000 credit.

 

[nvidiot]

Yep, I just went over 300,000 credit.

Wow hadn't checked mine for a while: just passed 935,000. I run it on my laptop when I'm not taking it with me to work, though I used to have a much larger desk rig that frankly pwnd the crap out of it.

More OT, I don't think that we're likely to be looking in the right places, in the right way, for the right thing yet. I can easily imagine some more advanced civilisations using methods which exclude radio waves as the transmission method purely because it is crude, early technology. Perhaps neutrino beams or some kind of high energy particle beams that can only be produced artificially and are clear signs that a given signal is made by a species that has a good grasp on the way the universe works.

But even if we don't end up finding other intelligent life, (in the technological and self aware sense we have), I would be astonished if there wasn't some very interesting life forms out there that come damn close to that definition. Just being able to find bacteria/viruses nearby would impress me. Larger multicellular plant like or animal like life would have me jumping for joy.

Still, if we're alone it's kinda awesome though. What a cosmic lottery win! It would definitely be a good reason to try and spread out into the galaxy as much as possible. If we have company nearby or even many thousands or millions of light years away I'll just be more convinced that the universe is just plain freaking awesome and gets nowhere near enough credit for it, and we would have even more reason to try and spread out into the galaxy, of only to meet them.

(sorry for the ramble, bit deep in my pipe this evening.)

 

[BTMO]

They may well have passed by taken a look and felt it better to keep on going.

"Dad, I am bored. Are we there yet?"

"Hey look, there's the off-ramp for Earth. Shall we stop there and stretch our legs?"

"I'm not that bored. Acturus is only another half hour. Let's stop there instead. At least there is stuff to do there"

"Are you sure you don't want a toilet stop?"

"I can wait. There is nothing to do on Earth, let's just keep going, huh?"

"Okay, sweetheart. Earth is a dump full of inbred, crazy hicks anyway."

 

[Dinwar]

I pretty much agree, but they may see the potential for conflict for resources.

Some, but I don't think fighting would be worth it. Fighting costs time, effort, resources, etc. And once either of us took over territory held by the other, we'd have to fight not only a war, but that very territory--humans would have to deal with hard vacuum and radiation, while robots would have to deal with the corrosive effects of atmospheres and water. It'd be more efficient to let the other group deal with the territory they're best suited for, and trade resources. Why mine the asteroids ourselves when we can have robots doing it?

We're assuming robots will be rational? In that case they would eliminate humans without warning.

Again, there's no profit in that. What would they gain? Unless we attack them first (which would be stupid, because we can't live on airless rocks), it'd be more efficient to trade with us than to bomb us.

Think of it this way: Why haven't we glassed the Middle East yet? Those same reasons are the reasons robots and humans probably won't attack one another. A few skirmishes, sure; you always have those. But all-out war? Nah. Never happen.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

Personally I think it's just sheer distance and timescales involved that has prevented contact so far. It's not that they aren't out there, it's that the incidence of intelligence and technological development is rare enough to spread it around galactic space far enough to make contact exceptionally unlikely.

Actually, the numbers argue against you, unless one makes a rather unnerving assumption: when a civilization reaches roughly our level of development, it invariably collapses.

Consider: we are very nearly at the point where we could consider building generation ships. Give us another century of technological progress, and it seems pretty clear we could do it.

Now assume we send out 3 such ships before we lose interest, and let's say they each take 1000 years to reach a colonizable star at, let's say, 5 light years away. How long would it take to build a society capable of sending out more ships? 4000 years? (That's basically how long it took us, starting from scratch.) That's a total of 5000 years to travel 5 light years, or an average speed of .001 c. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, so it would take us about 100 million years to fill the whole damn galaxy. That is about 2% of the age of the galaxy.

So, unless you assume that we're the lucky first species to achieve this level of civilzation, the neighborhood really ought to full of neighbors.

 

[Complexity]

It's related to my problem with Sci-Fi robots: why fight humans? They're ROBOTS--they don't need atmospher, or protection from radiation, or the like, so they could operate on airless asteroids, moons, and the like and never come into conflict with us. There's no reason to assume they'll want to kill us. There's no profit margine in it for them.

Several reasons come to mind.

We will make the robots. We could make something else that could threaten the robots.

Our continual drive towards destruction could damage them or something they value inadvertently.

They value some other species more than they value ours and want us to not harm these other species.

Our existence reminds them of their dependence upon us for creating them.

They watch television.

We violate their aesthetics (many of us certainly violate mine) - 'You are ugly bags of mostly water.'

For the hell of it - a real-life arcade game.

 

[Roboramma]

Some, but I don't think fighting would be worth it. Fighting costs time, effort, resources, etc. And once either of us took over territory held by the other, we'd have to fight not only a war, but that very territory--humans would have to deal with hard vacuum and radiation, while robots would have to deal with the corrosive effects of atmospheres and water. It'd be more efficient to let the other group deal with the territory they're best suited for, and trade resources. Why mine the asteroids ourselves when we can have robots doing it?

I was thinking they'd just chuck a few asteroids our way and be done with it. As technology (and energy levels) increase, the potential for them to simply destroy any capability to retaliate increases as well. If they arrived here and noticed us before we noticed them, it would be simple (relative to the difficulty of getting here in the first place) to divert some asteroids to cross the earth's orbit and thus end our civilization's ability to do anything about their future activities in this solar system.

Again, there's no profit in that. What would they gain? Unless we attack them first (which would be stupid, because we can't live on airless rocks), it'd be more efficient to trade with us than to bomb us.

Think of it this way: Why haven't we glassed the Middle East yet? Those same reasons are the reasons robots and humans probably won't attack one another. A few skirmishes, sure; you always have those. But all-out war? Nah. Never happen.

The difference is that we're not worried about middle eastern expansion into untapped territory (asteroids, moons, perhaps planets), whereas they would be. Moreover, they'd have first strike capacity and potentially no moral qualms about using it.

I'm not saying "this is what they'd do": depending on their nature and motivations there are plenty of potential reasons not to. Rather, I'm simply saying that I think it's a reasonable possibility.

 

[Corsair 115]

Actually, the numbers argue against you, unless one makes a rather unnerving assumption: when a civilization reaches roughly our level of development, it invariably collapses.

The Earth has been around for about 4.6 billion years. Human civilization has been around for perhaps 10,000 years or so. If you were to have visited Earth at a random point in its history your chances of that visit coinciding with a civilization are vanishingly small. If this rate of progression is even remotely similar for other worlds where life can arise, and you combine it with the vast interstellar distances (let alone the intergalactic distances) then the chances of running into someone else appear rather low.

Consider: we are very nearly at the point where we could consider building generation ships.

I think you are underestimating the considerable technical challenges involved.

 

[Roboramma]

The Earth has been around for about 4.6 billion years. Human civilization has been around for perhaps 10,000 years or so. If you were to have visited Earth at a random point in its history your chances of that visit coinciding with a civilization are vanishingly small. If this rate of progression is even remotely similar for other worlds where life can arise, and you combine it with the vast interstellar distances (let alone the intergalactic distances) then the chances of running into someone else appear rather low.

That argument depends on the average lifespan of civilizations also being small. If we begin to colonize other worlds, I find that extremely unlikely.

I think you are underestimating the considerable technical challenges involved.

I agree with you here, however. It should be noted, though, that when he said "Consider: we are very nearly at the point where we could consider building generation ships." he seemed, at least to me, to be using "very nearly" on astronomical timescales: ie. hundreds or thousands of years are certainly "very nearly" on the time scales under discussion.

 

[nvidiot]

That argument depends on the average lifespan of civilizations also being small. If we begin to colonize other worlds, I find that extremely unlikely.

But of those 10,000 years of "civilisation" only the last hundred or so could be regarded as technologically advanced, and only the last few decades has seen the rise of appropriate technologies that can even consider looking for other civilizations.

We are after all talking about a sample of one. Who knows, maybe humanity is a very late bloomer in intelligence and technology stakes. Or maybe we're the equivalent of a child prodigy.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

13.9 Billion years was the last estimate I saw for the age of the Universe, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and we have only been around for something like 250,000 or 400,000 depending on who you read, so we have only just arrived it could be the same elsewhere.

Human civilization has been around for perhaps 10,000 years or so.

The earliest life appeared on Earth about 4 billion years ago, and it's taken that long for life to evolve the ability to travel very short distances in space. We have only been doing it for 50 years, and already our 'advanced' technology is threatening to destroy the civilization that created it. Over the next few hundred years we will be struggling just to maintain our present population and infrastructure, let alone colonizing the galaxy!

If this is the pattern for intelligent life on other planets then I think the possibility that 'aliens' are visiting us right now is extremely remote. That so many people are desperate to believe otherwise is just a symptom of our psychological need to form social groups (a genetic trait that has helped our species to survive), nothing more. The 'aliens' are just another tribe that we are hoping to trade with (and/or interbreed with, conquer, exterminate...).

 

[Roboramma]

Over the next few hundred years we will be struggling just to maintain our present population and infrastructure[...]

Wow, I'm just surprised because we have such disparate views of the human future. I don't really see how that is at all likely.

 

[nvidiot]

Given the propensity of the universe to do nasty things to planets, and the inherently delicate nature of life as it exists today, I find it rather naive to expect a species like ourselves to last much more than a few hundred thousand years, and likely a lot less than that.

 

[SezMe]

1. Communications.

We have been looking for radio waves mostly as a sign of civilization. However, even our own civilization is starting to use other means of communication rather than sending powerful radio waves into space. Efficient communication means that only the intended recipient receives the message and only enough energy to get that message to the recipient is used. For example, early tv shows were broadcast by radio waves that went into space but now most are transmitted via cable. For us, there will be a period of about 60 years or so that you could detect us via radio waves. After that, you could not.

I disagree. Two immediate examples come to mind. Radar is not going away and neither are satellite communications.