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Experts have hammered out a simplified game plan to follow in the event that signals from an extraterrestrial civilization are ever detected.
The new guidelines for dealing with theoretical radio transmissions from E.T. were adopted unanimously by the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Study group last week during a meeting in Prague, the Czech capital.
The timing is weirdly coincidental, in that the long-scheduled meeting came amid an international buzz over the United Nations' role in responding to a hypothetical E.T. call. Malaysian astronomer Mazlan Othman, head of the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs, said the world body was "a ready-made mechanism for such coordination," and quite a few news outlets suggested that Othman herself might be named the point person for dealing with extraterrestrial communications.
Othman eventually said she wasn't aiming to become an ambassador to the aliens. But the newly approved protocol does say the U.N. secretary-general would be among the first people officially notified if alien contact is confirmed. I'm stressing the word "officially" because the protocol also says scientists shouldn't try to hush up any detection of signals they think might be coming from E.T. Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon may well find out about alien detection from a Twitter tweet rather than an official phone call.
The earlier version of the protocols was a lot wordier, and called for notifying 10 separate organizations about "credible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence." The revised protocols also make a point of saying that scientists should deal honestly with the news media in the event of a signal detection ... which of course I'm glad to hear.
Conspiracy theorists might say the one-world government "don't need no stinking protocols," to paraphrase a classic movie scene. And it's true that the protocols are not legally binding. But the SETI League found it comforting that the experts declared their commitment to openness in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
"The advent of the Internet has changed the way the world does collaborative science," H. Paul Shuch, the grassroots group's executive director emeritus, said in a statement released over the weekend. "The revised IAA SETI Protocols better reflect this reality and provide a workable means for honoring both scientific integrity and the public's right to know."
Here's the text of the revised protocols, which are posted on the SETI League website:
Preamble
The parties to this declaration are individuals and institutions participating in the scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
The purpose of this document is to declare our commitment to conduct this search in a scientifically valid and transparent manner and to establish uniform procedures for the announcement of a confirmed SETI detection.
This commitment is made in recognition of the profound scientific, social, ethical, legal, philosophical and other implications of a SETI detection. As this enterprise enjoys wide public interest, but engenders uncertainty about how information collected during the search will be handled, the signatories have voluntarily constructed this declaration. It, together with a current list of signatory parties, will be placed on file with the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA).
Principles
1. Searching: SETI experiments will be conducted transparently, and its practitioners will be free to present reports on activities and results in public and professional fora. They will also be responsive to news organizations and other public communications media about their work.
2. Handling candidate evidence: In the event of a suspected detection of extraterrestrial intelligence, the discoverer will make all efforts to verify the detection, using the resources available to the discoverer and with the collaboration of other investigators, whether or not signatories to this Declaration. Such efforts will include, but not be limited to, observations at more than one facility and/or by more than one organization. There is no obligation to disclose verification efforts while they are underway, and there should be no premature disclosures pending verification. Inquiries from the media and news
organizations should be responded to promptly and honestly.Information about candidate signals or other detections should be treated in the same way that any scientist would treat provisional laboratory results. The Rio Scale, or its equivalent, should be used as a guide to the import and significance of candidate discoveries for the benefit of non-specialist audiences.
3. Confirmed detections: If the verification process confirms – by the consensus of the other investigators involved and to a degree of certainty judged by the discoverers to be credible – that a signal or other evidence is due to extraterrestrial intelligence, the discoverer shall report this conclusion in a full and complete open manner to the public,
the scientific community, and the Secretary General of the United Nations. The confirmation report will include the basic data, the process and results of the verification efforts, any conclusions and intepretations, and any detected information content of the signal itself. A formal report will also be made to the International Astronomical Union
(IAU).4. All data necessary for the confirmation of the detection should be made available to the international scientific community through publications, meetings, conferences, and other appropriate means.
5. The discovery should be monitored. Any data bearing on the evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be recorded and stored permanently to the greatest extent feasible and practicable, in a form that will make it available to observers and to the scientific community for further analysis and interpretation.
6. If the evidence of detection is in the form of electromagnetic signals, observers should seek international agreement to protect the appropriate frequencies by exercising the extraordinary procedures established within the World Administrative Radio Council of the International Telecommunication Union.
7. Post Detection: A Post-Detection Task Group under the auspices of the IAA SETI Permanent Study Group has been established to assist in matters that may arise in the event of a confirmed signal, and to support the scientific and public analysis by offering guidance, interpretation, and discussion of the wider implications of the detection.
8. Response to signals: In the case of the confirmed detection of a signal, signatories to this declaration will not respond without first seeking guidance and consent of a broadly representative international body, such as the United Nations.
Unanimously adopted by the SETI Permanent Study Group of the International Academy of Astronautics, at its annual meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, on 30 September 2010.
These revised and streamlined Protocols are intended to replace the previous document adopted by the International Academy of Astronautics in 1989.
Will these protocols ever be put into practice? Most of the scientists involved in SETI say 50 years of searching isn't long enough to judge whether our efforts to detect alien signals are on the right track or not. It may be that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations don't care enough about us monkeys to make contact, just as we don't spend a lot of time letting ants know what we're up to. It may be that intelligence is a volatile thing, and that civilizations self-destruct before they're around long enough to send signals to other star systems. Or it may be that aliens are just boring themselves to death.
Over at Discovery News, Ray Villard explores the issue of cosmic boredom. This is one of the issues raised a couple of months ago in a paper posted to the arXiv physics website by Igor Bezsudnov and Andrey Snarskii. They built computer models that gave "bonus life" to civilizations that contacted each other — and not surprisingly, civilizations too distant or dissimilar to achieve contact were more prone to die away.
It's just a simulation, but Villard takes away a couple of lessons from this. One implication would be that the cross-cultural effects of contact could be good for both sides. That argues against "the idea that extraterrestrials would devote an enormous amount of resources to physically travel here only to snoop around, be mischievous, yet avoid direct contact," he says.
The other implication is that there may be a "use it or lose it" quality to the quest for contact. "Extraterrestrials may wither away due to a loss of interest in the universe around them, or the atrophy of technological capability," he says. "Their brains might turn to mush as they become totally preoccupied with their versions of Facebook, World of Warcraft and reality TV shows."
Wait ... are we still just talking about extraterrestrials? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about the search for aliens:
- Timeline for the SETI quest
- 2060: Will contact come by then?
- Six frontiers in the search for alien life
- Calculate the odds of finding alien civilizations
Visit the brand-spanking-new Cosmic Log page on Facebook and hit the "Like" button. You can also follow @boyle on Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."
Leave a Comment:
"A formal report will also be made to the International Astronomical Union (IAU)."
Oh, please, could we leave the IAU out of this? If they can't even figure out what a planet is, how could they possibly contribute anything to our communication with ETs? Their first message is likely to be, "your world is not a planet; it doesn't clear its orbit." And everything we be all downhill from there.
Laurel - thanks for the funniest thing I've heard today!
(Long Live the PLANET PLUTO!)
~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)
Michael,
in my opinion....
I consider the IAU discredited. They waited till there were 400 (There were 10000 at the meeting but most had to leave for various reasons) astronomers left (All of them it seems, apparently supported the final faulty new description of a Planet) to vote. If this vote had taken place In the USA it could had landed a congressional investigation which might had lead to arrest for curruption.
Hiya Magnum!
Congressional investigation? No. Poor science? Yes.
Dr Alan Stern, who is the principle investigator of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto (and who did not get a vote in Prague), had this to say about the IAU Pluto vote:
I was rather fond of the proposed planet definition that came out of committee just prior to the vote. The committee was headed by Owen Gingerich (a colleague), and several of its members are friends. Owen had this to say after the IAU turned down his committee's proposal:
"In our initial proposal we took the definition of a planet that the planetary geologists would like. The dynamicists felt terribly insulted that we had not consulted with them to get their views. Somehow, there were enough of them to raise a big hue and cry." [NOTE: I'm a planetary astronomer, hence why I like the geological definition so much.]
"Their revolt raised enough of a fuss to destroy the scientific integrity and subtlety of the [earlier] resolution."
I was just looking for the vote totals; I can't find it at the moment. If memory serves, there were a total of 425 astronomers who voted on the measure; 225 (or so) voted Pluto a "Plan-Not", and 200-ish voted that Pluto is a Planet.
That 425 votes, out of the tens of thousands of astronomers around the world. NASA, and in particular planetary astronomers (you know, the people who actually EXPLORE THESE WORLDS!!!) are poorly represented in the IAU. I know and work with hundreds of astronomers around the globe; I personally know only two IAU voting members (Owen and Guy Consolmagno; who both voted in favor of Pluto's planethood). The IAU is one heckuva exclusive club.
There are notable exceptions (Mike Brown, Neil deGrasse Tyson, etc) who like the new "plan-not" definition. But you will find many more (Steve Squyres, Heidi Hammel, Al Stern) of the folks who are the hand-on explorers of these worlds who still consider Pluto to be a Planet, and that the IAU messed up.
The IAU is wrong. Their definition of what constitutes a "planet" is flawed, and out of step with current exploration of these worlds.
Pluto is a planet, dammit.
Cheers! ~Michael (AFM★Radio / Astronomy.FM)
What a crock ! You can bet the government to which the country that makes the detection will
seize all the information. For all we know they already have. This would be the most powerful
possession ever. And anyway, a directed message would probably be far more complex than
a stream of pulses that are of un-natural origin. I like to think this might happen but it's difficult to conceive that such civilizations are "in the neighbourhood". The galaxy is 100,000 LY's in diameter so either there have been signals all along or there are none. To me it's like trying to detect gravity waves predicted by Einstein but have yet to be found.
I seriously doubt that the "don't care about us monkey's" thing flies. We are aware of the possibility that we are very rapidly approaching a "singularity" in our development, and any advanced intelligence out there that has been monitoring our emissions would also be aware that we are at this point, and probably very interested in how we develop from here.
As long as someone knows what they are doing...
"To serve man..."
With fava beans and a nice chianti
mmmmmmm...
A clear, comprehensive statement.
Google it
rod serling;-)
Our ambient radio signals are like a ripple. The longer we're around as a species, the larger the ripple gets. There is now a constantly expanding circle of radio and television signals heading out into space, with our planet at the center. The problem is that since we've gone predominantly to cable and digital TV, we're not screaming television signals out into the void anymore. However, there is still a ring of television signals from earth, a band 40 light years wide, expanding out into space. So any species with the ability to pick up television signals or radio signals that comes within 40 LY of Earth will know we're here, and be able to triangulate to get a rough estimate of where our system is located. They don't even need to understand or translate the signals at first, they just need to recognize it as artificial and structured. A circle with a diameter of 80 light years might not seem that big on a galactic scale, and it isn't, but there are 1400 star systems with 2000 stars within 50 light years of Earth, most of those within 40 light years of earth.
And here's an interesting thought.
It's been 50 years since we started broadcasting powerful television signals.
Twenty years ago, those signals reached the Gliese 581 system, a system with a lot of rocky planets of varying mass that would be a very interesting place for any spacefaring civilization.
If it took them ten years to realize what they were getting from us, translate it, and be able to come up with a response, it would then take twenty more years for those signals to get back to Earth.
That's 50 years total.
Notice how many ET stories are in the news lately. Stephen Hawking has been talking about them. Governments have been releasing their UFO files. SETI is publicly changing their protocols. On top of this, we "found" Gliese 581g, by a pretty unusual method (it wasn't the Kepler telescope).
And all this at just the right time, 50 years after we started broadcasting.
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
And I just had my 50th birthday. OMG. O,O
To add to this particular conversation Gliese 581 G was found using 11 years worth of observations by way of the HIRES spectrometer at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
That's too bad radio signals get distorded and what you'll hear from the nearest star is just a noise a star would emit.
Maybe a response was sent back as soon as Gliese 581 received the signal.
For radio signals, not for television signals which are much stronger.
I really really hate to link to Fox, but here you go.
From somewhere slightly more credible,
Here's something I wonder... our signal would have started dropping off significantly around the end of the Cold War, from cable and an increase in satellite TV. I wonder if it would make an alien race think we've wiped ourselves out?
the problem is this: if they received tv signals from the early 60's, it was 'my favourite martian', 'my mother the car', 'the beverly hillbillies' and 'green acres'. they would quickly have concluded that this planet was of no interest, if not to be strenuously avoided.
We need to be finding a way to be civilized here first.
Yeah, I'm sure if they don't plan to make contact if we're touting A-bombs. No matter what their ship may be made of, I'm sure an A-bomb would make a good sized dent in its hull. And seeing how 'civilized' we are, we'd probably 'missfire' the bomb faster than they could say "We come in peace."
The reason the visiting aliens haven't contacted us is the same reason scientists do not contact their lab rats. We are the experiment!
All I can say is that if there is intelligent life out there in Just our galaxy (which I believe there is) I find it highly unlikely that they would want to have anything to do with us, here are the reasons.
1. Any species that has the ability to traverse space is unimaginably more advanced then us.
2. Why would said species have any interest in us, it would be like us wanting to know all about the life ofof and ant or at minimum a species of bacteria, The only ones that would be interest in that would be those studying it.
3. We are still a baby species, until we stop craping where we sleep and stop killing each other over stupid reasons why would a technological advanced species want anything to do with us?
Oh and just to touch base Aliens invading our planet for resources is a joke, our own solar system is full of raw resources just waiting to be tapped. The only reason an alien species would try to take over the planet is for the planet itself to live on (aka a land grab for the sake of land to settle and colonize) and food (as in meat either animal or human meat) or slave labor.
That pretty much is it, anything more then that there isnt a reason. Water is abundant in our solar system so the earth water isnt a target.
Quite possibly they are here to talk with the most intelligent set of species on the planet: The Whales!
I have a tendency 2 agree w/u Pirate C. If they're out there(and I do believe they r), we'd b way behind them technologically and most likely socially-ie politics, religion, wars, etc. There would b no interest n contacting such a back-water society:us. It would b comparable 2 having 1 of our smartest scientists going back n time 2 talk 2 neanderthals and expecting an intelligent response. Not gonna happen. However, we as a species r striving 2 get 2 the point where we would like 2 join our cosmic brethren but many hurdles still stand n our way such as our stupidity of killing each other, the slavish way n which we "entrust" our lives 2 government and a "God" instead of ourselves. Then the technological challenges of creating artificial gravity, an engine capable of traveling at, near or faster than the speed of light and/or creating a stable, movable wormhole. Point is, we as a species always wonder and try 2 seek out new discoveries and apply methods 2 understand them but as far as space and the very possible inhabitants of other worlds, we still have a long way 2 go. I'd love 2 c that happen n our lifetimes though. So many of us wanna know so bad we feel it n every fiber. We gotta get past our own bs 1st though.
You know, I have to disagree with most of this post.
1. They don't have to be unimaginably more advanced than us. We can envision space travel with technologies we're aware of today such as fusion, anti-matter, micro black holes, etc. Not to say the engineering challenges aren't immense, but the actual technological advancement itself is really insignificant.
2. Yesterdays headline was "Marine life census finished". Um, why does anyone care what's in the ocean? I mean, I don't live there so why would I visit an ocean? Why would anyone from my nation catalogue it's species? You get the point. Sometime knowledge is pursued for the sake of having knowledge.
3. My dog craps in the house, yet I still went and got a dog. Maybe they like pets? Or you could read bullet #2.
First, this whole "ant" thing people keep talking about. I feel it's a bad analogy to aliens viewing us. Here's why... We see ant's everyday. We kill them. Kid's hover over them with magnifying glasses. Adult's start multinational corporations that create toxins and poison's aimed ridding our species of their species, or at least making sure they don't live where we live. It is possible for certain types of ants to kill a person. On the flip side, some people have ant farms. It's interesting to see the way they live. Scientists have studied ants. We teach kids all about this study in school. Everyone knows how much an Ant can lift. An interesting fact about ants: they may make up 15-25% of the terrestrial animal biomass of this planet. for more on ants go to wikipedia. They are pretty damn interesting to me. And so are aliens, or rather, information I have seen on the possible sightings, ufo's, myths, legends, lore, etc..
I find it hard to imagine a universe without alien life forms. There MUST be planets with alien deer or alien whales and perhaps (and very probably) alien humanoids.
1.) space-faring civ's are way more intelligent... this is speculation but I would agree with the statement.
2.) Why would aliens take any interest in us? the list is too long, but it's all conjecture so I'll some up by saying "just because".
3.) we are a baby species with bad habits. This is true but it's not inconceivable that a younger civilization could make it to the space-faring stage sooner than we have. and it's also not a stretch of the imagination to think that they may keep their bad habits. Heck, they may make contact with us simply because we remind them of themselves. who knows?!
The UFO phenomenon is a compelling one what with Roswell, Area 51, the 1952 Wash DC incident, and the evidence points to the whole matter being not all that far fetched.
http://ufopartisan.blogspot.com/
Why does everyone always assume that they are going to be humanoid by default? The might not have arms, legs, eyes, mouths, noses, hell even skin or bones or muscle. It just depends on what microorganism they started out as and evolved into. It could be a floating brain, a jelly-like figure, or anything that you can and can't imagine. We don't have any idea as to what they look like but I like to think that sure they might be humanoid, but that's not the only option.
You seem to assume they are stuck with whatever they evolved into. I would assume that any race a lightly more advanced than we are now will be able to choose its shape freely, either through genetic engineering or (more likely) mind loading.
But don't tell the conspiracy theorists this -- once they get wind of the idea that aliens could easily look just like us if they so choose, they'll get even nuttier than they already are.
Once they start to see that our broadcast signals have become full of content like CHEATERS and REAL HOUSEWIVES and JERSEY SHORE, they'll do one of two things: lose interest, or exterminate us like rodents. I'm cool either way.
God help us all if they become MORE interested after seeing Jersey Shore. I would prefer extermination to a bunch of jersey type aliens. ;-P
My biggest worry is: Where is RICK CARTER-XLEagle1???
My guess is that he is in the nut house by now or overdose on his meds or got a job with the green guys.
His last comment on newsvine was last Friday (Oct. 1st).
New research on the probability of other intelligent life developing in the universe or at least our galaxy, put the odds down around zero. This is a total waste of time. The odds are that we are ALONE.
To think that we r the only intelligent life in the universe seems pretty arrogant.
Perhaps someone needs to look into how "the odds" are actually calculated.
or maybe you could look at the drake equation.
differnet, you just sound lonely. what's wrong??
mob, I'm not lonely. I'm a realist. The point is that unlike in science fiction advanced kindly aliens are not going to show up to rescue us. We need to figure out how we are to get on by ourselves. Moreover, our sun has only about a billion years left in it. We had better stop fighting each other and figure out what we need to do to move forward as a species. Read this article. It's all a big squabble about who gets first dibs on communication with species that are unlikely to even be there. Maybe we should be just figuring out how to communicate with each other effectively.
No it's not. You missed the point of the article entirely. It's about ANYONE who finds proof of aliens would be remiss if they didn't alert the WORLD of that proof so that a coordinated effort could be aligned to structure a unified response. I see how you could make the mistake of thinking the UN wants to "have dibs" on this but it's really just a bunch of people saying they will not speak for the world. They will pass on the message they get, if they get one. So it really has nothing to do with who gets dibs.
Moreover, the sun has MORE than 5 billion years left on it's clock (it's LESS than 5 billion years old), and then AFTER that 5billion years it will become a red giant, it doesn't have the capability to go supernova. Right now it's in it's main sequence. The amount of fuel it has to burn and the time it will take to burn that fuel can be calculated. Where did you come by that "a billion years" number???
I agree we need to stop fighting and figure things out to move forward as a species. That is one reason I read these articles and comment on them. I'm not in a point in my career where I can truly make an impact so I read and learn and discuss as much as I can as often as I can. And it's apparent to me that almost all disputes come from a simple miscommunication. Everybody says the same thing in different ways.
Hi MB! Thanks for your points on the UN. May I add a bit about the lifetime of the Sun? (And more importantly, at least for us, about the length of time the Earth will remain habitable.)
While we debate the range, the current best guesstimate of the Sun's remaining life in its current phase is 6.5 to 7 billion years, at which time the Sun will bloat to a red giant star, and will likely swallow the inner planets. (Whether the Earth will be enveloped by the expanding Sun is still debated, but Mercury and Venus are certainly going to be road kill.)
However, well before the Sun begins to run out of fuel, our host star will no longer be a life-giver. Stars, as they age, gradually become hotter. In a billion years or so the Sun will be so hot that the Earth's oceans will have all evaporated, and our atmosphere will be largely cooked off into space. (Imagine what the Earth would look like if we had the same conditions as Mercury.) That will be the end of complex life on this planet, and well past time when we should (at the least) have established ourselves on Mars, Europa, and other newly warmed worlds.
Perhaps when differnet said, "Moreover, our sun has only about a billion years left in it.", differenet was referring to the length of time until the Sun no longer made the Earth "just right", rather than how long until the Sun went pfffft. Other than that quibble, I wholly agree with your post.
~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)
As always Michael you bring the light of knowledge to these comments. That must be where the billion years number came from in differnet's post.
I can't wait for the missions to the gas giants to begin. Cassini/Hyugens has provided so much great info. I wonder though whether or not a mission will ever get the greenlight to swim in the oceans of Europa since it would need to be ultra sterile to avoid contamination of the Europan sea.
Oh, man, I would SO love to see a Europa sub mission! Such an interesting chance of finding some "swimmers".
~Michael
I admit, I too would LOVE to see a mission go thru the ice on Europa, such things to possibly see there for sure!
Of course, I am confused at why the fact that they have found fossils on Mars has been kept so quiet, You can see them in many of the pics taken by the Micro camera, some of them even before they ground into the rock, others, such as shells and the like, can be plainly seen in the ground rock faces too.
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/2116/1M316035268EFFA9X7P2996M2M1.HTML Is one such showing what looks like a shell of some sort in the grind area.
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/1986/1M304486257EFFA5C7P2976M2M1.HTML is another, at the bottom is what looks to be a skull of some sort, you can make out the eye socket with the brow ridges and the attachments for the muscles at the base of the skull, there is even a curved spike on the top...
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit.html is the site for the Rovers's raw pix, there are thousands of them there and are great to just browse thru anyways. Both rovers can be accessed thru this site, and more!
Ok as much as I hate skipping comments before I state my own oppinion, I'm gonna anyways :D. I'm getting this general vibe from a lot of your comments and a lot of people in general which is
"why would they care about us? since they are probably much more advanced than us."
I agree that if there is an alien race with the capability of easy interplanetary space travel then they PROBABLY would be able to do and have done everything we can. But would we not still be pretty F-ing interesting to study? We aren't ants.
We aren't a single celled organism. Yes we have many people who kill and steal and destroy and rape.
But we also have an incredible amount of love, kindness, beauty , creativity, and nature that SURROUNDS US.
If those aliens are so damned smart, I think they would realize that we are something special.
And if not? Well they are just missing out :]
and for the record..... i do believe in extra-terrestrial life, i believe they've visited us many years ago and they still are today, i believe there is no coincidence with all these ufo news stories, the vatican statements, Gliese 581g....etc. etc. etc
Peace!
-J
Well said. I agree. Many gloss over the great, beautiful, wonderful side of life.
It would be full employment for us linguists.
Differnet says:
"Our sun has only a billion years left in it."
Yikes! Time is running out! We better get with it!
Interesting discussion, folks. Makes me want to watch "Close Encounters . . . " a few more times.
Maybe NBC should run it during prime time.
Wait - In these days of unemployment, and of agencies and businesses "cutting the fat", there is actually U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs? And if Malaysian astronomer Mazlan Othman is head of the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs, then that means there are other employees - HOLD THE PHONE - WHAT exactly are they doing while waiting for ET to call???? How many are there? And, how much are they being paid to sit around? SHEESH! I'm not laughing, here....
You clearly do not understand what that office DOES. They are not the ones waiting for ET to call. and they are NOT alien ambassadors or anything like that. the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs is the U.N. arm that deals with international space law (making sure everyone is on the up and up in outer space) and they guide countries toward only using space for peaceful purposes. to LEARN more follow this link...
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/
I am willing to bet we will not be around the lenght of time needed to travel to other systems or ever get close to that technology. It is possible we may die off just as some animals go extint now on our planet. I think the last thing we need to worry about is sending probes or spending all this money on space stations and such and worry about our planet because this is where we are going to live out our lives. Advanced alien races can care less about us at this time and we should never reach out and try to contact them either. I feel very much if there are some close enough to us, they would probably use us as some type of food or something along those lines or maybe even as feed for their animals. It would be fantastic to know there is life out there but I really dont think we should be looking for it either! atleast until we are ready for it!
Oh jeez... yawn..
so tell me Greg, would you be willing to say when we "are ready for it"???
Considering the time it took for us to get to this level of where we are at now and thinking of a civilization who has a head start of say a very moderate 5000 years on us then you would really have to think about it. Think about where we will be if our civilization is around atleast another 5000 years? Would we care about someone at the stage we are at now? I don't think so! Now think about a civilization say 100,000 years ahead of us and I am still thinking small there. ???
Greg you dodged my specific question... I asked you to if you could say when would we be ready?
You stated "It would be fantastic to know there is life out there but I really don't think we should be looking for it either! at least until we are ready for it!"
So, you want to know there is life elsewhere, but you feel we should NOT look for it, until we are ready for it.
This raises some questions and you only answer one.
1.) When should we look for it? (your answer: when we're "ready for it")
2.) When will we be "ready" to look for it?
3.) What constitutes "ready"?
4.) Why would that constitute "ready"?
5.) Who could possibly make the definitive judgment whether "we" are "ready" or not?
As for what you DID respond with... let's "think about it"... shall we?... think about where we will be 5000 years from now. Would we care about someone at the stage we are now?
well, let's use that logic another way... Here we are, right now, October 2010. Do we "care" about someone who lived 5000 years ago? MOST CERTAINLY. Archaeologist are working at this time to find out all they can about those alive at EVERY period in OUR OWN history. The information they gather is disseminated to the public in many ways. Will this behavior not exist 5000 years from now? Perhaps. Who could say? Well, that makes me wonder, Is there any evidence in our current archaeological findings to suggest that 5000 years ago our ancestors performed archeology?
This leads me to think that as a civilization progresses the tools they use allow them to better understand the past. A tribe of natives will sit around a fire and retell old stories (oral histories) to their young. Today's culture tends to put kids through school. Tomorrows young ones will inevitably learn in a vastly different way.
The point I am making is that the more advanced civilization is the more tools they have to understand EVERYTHING around them. So, a lot of what you are arguing Greg is in the definition of the word "care"... Would an advanced Alien civilization "care" about us dumb monkey's? My answer is yes, they would take an interest in our species. We as a species take an interest in all other species so why would an advanced species take an interest in us??
Are sure we have not been visited. If the aliens know of us they have been here for a long time watching are developement. They may consider earth a planet of lunatics and come here to entertain themselves with our antics. Or they may be keeping and I on any future rivials to the resources of this galaxy or their safety and could be manipulating us for their benfit but not ours.
Are you sure they don't know of our existance and have not been watching us. They may consider us lunatics with why they have not contacted us. They may be coming here seceretly to monitor us as potenially future rivials or to entertain themselves with our antics for their amusement or they are monitoring and manipulating us to protect themselves from our dangerous behaviour.
The study of Earth and it's inhabitants is the most prevalent reason given by those who claim to have been abducted.
Should they be here (I personally think that they are) they may also, some of them, be guiding us away from our destructive tendencies and towards a kinder, gentler method of living. Of course, there may be those who are working at odds with those who are helping us and trying for total world domination through our banking, Oil and other corporations, and military groups as well, and from the way it looks they have been fairly successful at it. I also believe that the Good Guys have a lot more power at their backs than the malefactors and that we shall soon see the Evil Empire created by Oil and Money disappearing as more people wake up and realize just how badly we have been being used by "The Powers That Be" that have been working for greed and control.
This doesn't really have anything to do with aliens or this particular conversation but in terms of people "waking up" there is an interesting you tube or google video featuring Ian Lungold in which he goes into LENGTHY detail of his interpretation of the Mayan calendar and the whole 2012 bit. Just search for Ian Lungold and you'll find it. It's interesting stuff but it's just a video of a guy drawing on some paper and talking. don't expect any flashy visuals. Just thought I'd put it out there in light of the "good guys" vs. the "evil Empire" comment from B. Honest.
it seems to me that the point is moot. for whatever reason if there are any aliens out there, they have not contacted us and/ or will not be contacting us in any foreseeable future, so what the @#$! are we worried about?
at the end of the day any calculation on the probability of intelligent life is a guess (including the drake equation): made by individuals- some more or less educated than others, but still only a guess that uses other guesses (not verifiable facts) as premises to arrive at a conclusion. that means that joe six pack's guess is equally as valid as most learned astro physicist's; sure, michio kaku's or stephen hawkins' might be better reasoned, but it would be just a valid.
Even if there were intelligent species out there, would we be able to recognize them as such? who says they would even have sensory perception in the same manner as we do? how would we be able to communicate with, say, a cloud of sentient energetic plasma that "speaks" to its kind through microwave nanopulses? what about their though processes? so much of the way measure and calculate is based on the way we perceive the world, our relationship to it and how we deal with it - is it any wonder that our math is based on base 10, the same number of our digits? what if we're dealing with entities with no digits? or psuedopod based manipulation so that they can create any number of digits they need? We can barely communicate amongst ourselves, much less another completely alien species? so, no, i don't think that even if they're out there, we could communicate at all- we are talking about completely separate and independent evolutionary paths, with little or no guarantee of parallel evolution. paint me green and call me a pessimist.
at the end of the day i do believe that we are alone in the universe. maybe we're even a fluke of creation - the exception that proves the rule. far from being this a nihilistic standpoint ("we're alone so nothing matters"), we should seize the opportunity this presents us and realize that we are all TRULY unique, embracing our collective humanity and stride forward TOGETHER for the advancement and fellowship of all on this great and vast cosmos at our disposal.
'nuff said.
We have dissimilar views of the universe but I share your sentiment that we are all truly unique and should embrace our collective humanity and stride forward together. I believe humanity will get off this planet and figure out ways to survive off the Earth. We will adapt and spread like a virus in the Universe. To quote the "chaotician" from 'jurrasic park' "Life Finds A Way". This is a statement I will always believe. If by some strain of the imagination this planet is the only place in the Universe that life exist then it is the same as saying this is simply where life has started. Our little machines are already flying around the cosmos. Every one of them has microbes from Earth on it. Research has been done and it has been shown that the microbes do okay in space and they can survive more than we thought. the Huygens probe sent to Titan (the moon of Saturn) inevitably has microbes from Earth on it. Will we "contaminate" the universe? Have we already?
Hi stratcat2k!
May I add one more point on your observations on the Drake Equation?
Since Frank noodled the eponymous formula almost 50 years ago we've made progress on coming up with real numbers for the first three therms (rate of star formation, how man of those stars have planets, and how many of those planets have the potential to support life).
I agree with your observation that, with so many completely undefined terms, the Drake Equation is totally useless as a predictor now. But, I am confident that eventually SETI will find appropriate values for the variables. (It may take decades, or perhaps centuries, but we'll get there. All the more reason to keep going now.)
"We may be alone in the Universe. Or, the Universe may be filled with life.... Either answer is profound." ~Arthur C. Clarke
"If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space." ~Carl Sagan
~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)