OMNIpotusCOM writes "Noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking thinks that alien life is likely, albeit primitive, according to a lecture delivered at George Washington University in honor of NASA's 50th anniversary. It begs the question of if we need to consider a Prime Directive before exploring or sending signals too far into the depths of space."
firstly many Scientists have came to that conclusion, Many mathematically proven that even if you call life rare, the sheer number of stars with the possibility of planets in a habitable zone means there is a crapload of civilizations out there.
Hawking has said this before earlier as well. Just because he makes the same statement again instantly makes this news??
Come on the Drake Equation has been around for a long time now guys.
Not to mention a blatant physics error*, good on him, give him a/. gold star;-)
Justin. * "sending signals too far into the depths of space" - see 'inverse square law' and 'size of solar system', not to mention 'microwave background'
Well, most of us assign quite a low value to B_6 in the Drake Equation. That said, the likelihood of life existing and the likelihood of our encountering it are two very different things. If it is not possible to travel faster than light then the space and time between us and our nearest neighbouring civilisation is likely to be prohibitive.
The idea that intelligent life MUST have evolved on many other planets, just because of the sheer number of them, is hardly a "proven." The reality is that we know so little about how life really began and how it evolves that it's impossible to even begin to estimate its likelihood. Combine this with the fact that we know very little about other solar systems and planets out there, and it's clear that it's WAY to early to begin speculating about the number of other coexistent alien species. The number could be an astronomical one, it could also, just as easily, be 0.
It is nevertheless still entirely possible, however unlikely, that our own civilization might actually be the only one in the whole universe.
We certainly don't know for sure yet. But, if the universe is infinite (our current best measurements indicate that the universe is flat [wikipedia.org] and infinite), and if the initial conditions were ergodic [wikipedia.org] (which is indeed the prediction of our best model, inflation [wikipedia.org], and is consistent with the data, e.g. the microwave background [wikipedia.org]), then there are an infinite number of causally-disconnected Hubble volumes [wikipedia.org], which essentially guarantees that life exists at multiple locations in the universe.
What this means is that in an infinite universe that has totally random initial conditions, every possible state will be realized somewhere. That means that somewhere in the universe, conditions very similar to our local conditions will be realized. Not only does this mathematically guarantee that life exists somwhere, but also that "copies" of Earth and you and me exist somewhere. All possible variants of matter organization are realized somewhere in the infinite universe (and in fact may be repeated over and over). Of course, the distances over which you will see a repeat may be fantastically large (much, much larger than the observable universe, for instance). Also, life-forms in causally-disconnected volumes can never communicate with each other. (So you may say... who cares?)
In any case, it's not known with certainty that the universe is infinite (or that the big bang was ergodic)... but our current theories allow for models where the multiple emergence of life (and all physically reasonable variants) is in fact mathematically guaranteed. Kinda interesting.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday April 22 2008, @09:55AM (#23158488)
Population of the Universe: none.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds.
Cute, but spurious. What is half of infinity? What is infinity minus a million? The argument falsely assumes that if X < Infinity that X as automatically finite, when it should be obvious that X < Y can be true while X and Y are both infinite. In other words, there is no single value for Infinity. There are an infinite number of infinite values.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday April 22 2008, @09:34AM (#23158150)
Not only does the old usage hardly exist anymore, but when you try to use it people have no idea what you are talking about.
When I quote relevant Shakespeare, people often have no idea what I'm talking about. Does this mean I should abandon my referencing Shakespeare, especially when it is poignant to illustrate that some political dilemma, moral quandary or even humorous device had been broached over 300 years ago?
The view that language is good enough as long as it is fairly likely to get the point across is - even putting aside that it is usually harder to parse incorrect, intelligible writing than correct prose - antithetical to the "standards" culture espoused on Slashdot. It is the permissive, lackadaisical Internet Explorer approach to HTML. And it is born, I fear, of the average nerd's mediocre ability in his own language, and his desire to change the rules to suit his own lack of interest in a discipline at least as complex, and millennia older, than his own - that of effective communication. Put down the Knuth, pick up the Fowler, and learn to express yourself as elegantly to your fellow man as you might to your computer.
Anyway, I've met no reasonably educated man who does not know the correct usage of "beg the question". A few minutes ago I was reading a book published in the last decade which employed it correctly. Had the author wished to indicate that a particular question was "raised", he would have done so. While I'm here:
The gay/homosexual debate is a red herring; "gay" is a term of self-identification associated with the liberalisation of attitudes towards same-sex attraction and lifestyle; the term has evolved over 80 years in tandem with the LGBT movement. The poster's use of "beg the question" is, on the other hand, the result of incorrectly applying a well-known phrase of standard English.
Since this site targets computer professionals and enthusiasts, it would do well to respect the field's established jargon. If I need to reinstall Windows (and that means I've erred at least twice;-)), I have notbricked my PC!
No that's stillnot right. The correct sentence structure would be
"I bought a soda for my wife and another for myself, so she wouldn't feel guilty drinking it.
You stil don't have it right. "I bought a soda for your wife, and a double shot of rum for myself, because your wife is so fugly that even drunk, she scares me!"
We, as a species, haven't managed to solve the problem of destroying primitive cultures *here* or a thousand other problems that suggest not corrupting alien cultures is something we shouldn't worry too much about.
I mean seriously -- if we think our technology and culture is okay for the entire planet, why should we stop here?
It begs the question of if we need to consider a Prime Directive before exploring or sending signals too far into the depths of space.
You're absolutely right! We should definitely set hold back on all the space exploration we've been doing. Also, we should set physical limits for our transmissions to "expire" after a certain distance, so we don't send them "too far". In fact, that would be the only responsible thing to do for Masters of the Universe such as us.
we should set physical limits for our transmissions to "expire" after a certain distance
New York - April 22, 2008 - The RIAA/MPAA today announced a new initiative targetting so-called "transmission sharing." A spokesperson for the group is quoted as saying "just because an intelligent alien signal has been put out there - illegally - in the public domain doesn't mean the recording label doesn't deserve their fair cut of the action." As with the ongoing file-sharing battle, technology will play a pivotal role in the battle against transmission sharers. Several not-for-profit SETI organizations
However, because alien life might not have DNA like us, Hawking warned: "Watch out if you would meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance."
That is precisely why I wouldn't be worried. Any pathogenic symbiote would have evolved to take advantage of the host's physiology -- not ours.
Those things are very species specific already here on earth. I don't find it very plausible that alien cooties would be very fond of us.
Parasites and diseases which are common in household animals seldom accept human as a host. Furthermore, I have never been infected by a tree fungus. I guess they don't find me favorable for symbiosis.
Was there a planet that Kirk/Picard/Janeway didn't leave in a fundamentally different state after turning up?
Humans are designed to trade, travel and exploit resources. Then move on when there are too many tourists.
Frankly, I'm surprised there isn't aready a Prime Directive that reads:
"See that blue/green planet with all the space junk and EM noise? You want to leave that one well alone!"
Was there a planet that Kirk/Picard/Janeway didn't leave in a fundamentally different state after turning up?
Yes. Two episodes of TNG come to mind and they illustrate the Prime Directive. I don't know the names of the episodes (and too lazy to look them up) but here are their descriptions.
The first involved Riker being found out while on a mission to make contact with a civilization that was beginning space exploration. The actress who played Lillith is the female doctor who realizes what he is and wants to hump him at every opportunity (no argument from me). In the end, Picard meets with their leader and is asked not to return until the people are ready for the fact that there are other beings in the universe.
The second involves Deanna's mother and her infatuation with David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester III). On his planet, when people reach a certain age, they are required to commit suicide. Deanna's mother can't come to grips with this and begs him not to go through with it. She even asks for Picard to offer him asylum. Picard refuses and things go on.
In both cases, while contact had been made, the balance of the civilizations was not upset. One could argue that in the first case, the fact that certain people knew about these visitors fundamentally changed things but since only a select few knew, the general populace went about their business none the wiser.
Personally, I think those two episodes, along with the one where Picard has to convince a group of pre-industrial people he is not a god despite his "powers", are the three episodes which best illustrate the Prime Directive and some of its permutations.
The Prime Directive applies when an advanced culture encounters a more primitive one. While I think there is alien life out there, I seriously doubt that we'll find anyone more primitive than us.
Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man who once claimed to be fortunate to suffer from ALS, because it gives him far more time to think and do things that normal people would instead spend on other activities (because they can).
The only problem I have with his statements at GWU is that he is focusing too much on radio waves. He is speculating that since we haven't detected any radio waves, it is unlikely that any intelligent civilization exists close to earth (and by close, I mean in astronomical measures).
In my opinion, scientists are taking too much for granted when looking for life. We assume that it is more likely to find life wherever water exists and we constantly assume that the conditions must be earth-like. And regarding the radio waves, I don't understand why an extraterrestrial civilization would even need to use such technology. It is just as likely that they communicate in entirely different ways. After all, hearing and seeing is just one way of living, but not a necessity.
I realize that radio waves occur from more than just television shows, but this is mainly the type of signals we look for since the odds of intended communications from other planets are insanely small.
And regarding the radio waves, I don't understand why an extraterrestrial civilization would even need to use such technology.
They are limited by physics (or at least what we understand of it). "Radio waves" are just photons. If a culture is going to communicate wirelessly, they'll need to use photons.
Then it's just a matter of settling on WHICH photons to look for. Some don't work well for communications (like the visible spectrum). Some won't travel very far. We are capable of producing photons at just about any desired wavelength, and yet we've settled on a narrow range for communications.
You could argue that we don't understand the natural world completely yet, and so there could be other means of communication. This is absolutely true, but how would we look for something that we don't know about? Electromagnetic waves are so easy to detect and discover that any technologically advanced culture is bound to use them eventually.
It begs the question of if we need to consider a Prime Directive
"Hello Mr. Alien. Welcome to our planet. Boy, you sure are more advanced than us!"
"Why, yes, we are, thank you. By the way, I couldn't help noticing that many of you still die from cancer."
"'Still die'? You mean you don't?"
"Oh, no, we cured that a long time ago. Same for that crooked politician thing you've got going. And war. Oh, and that thing you call 'Alzheimers', too. And global warming. We don't have any of that. They all turned out to be really simple to fix, in fact."
"Really? that's wonderful. Will you teach us how to solve these things."
"What? No, no, child, your culture isn't ready for all that. Besides, you're so cute the way you are. No, we'll just stay up in our ships and watch you figure it out. It will probably take several more generations, but that's OK, with our advanced medical technology, we will live long enough to see it... unless you wipe yourselves out in the process, that is. He he. You amuse us."
Ahem, I suspect he is a little more tha noted. He holds the same chair as Sir Isaac Newton did at Cambridge University, worked out how black holes work and is probably the most famous scientist in the world. Even the article [yahoo.com] says:
Stephen Hawking asks this rhetorical question in dismissing the possibility of intelligent alien life:
If there is life elsewhere in the universe, Hawking asks why haven't we stumbled onto some alien broadcasts in space, maybe something like "alien quiz shows?"
There is an answer to this question that is so simple and elegant and decisive that it shocking that a great mind like Hawking has not already thought of it:
Because the aliens have learned to compress their data stream!
The better you compress a data stream the more it looks like random noise!
Plans to recognize alien signals are all based on finding redundancies in the transmission. But from the point of view of an alien signal engineer all redundancies are opportunities to save energy and transmission time by adding compression! The more compression you add, the more your signal looks like random noise. Also the aliens might be using spread spectrum techniques which make a signal even more difficult to detect.
Think of it, the FCC is already starting to require TV signals to move to digital in order to save bandwidth that can be resold to the cell phone companies. How long will it be till the FCC requires that these signals be compressed? Our signals are already becoming more difficult to detect.
Probably in the natural technical evolution of any species there is only a very small window where the species is smart enough to use radio energy for communication but not smart enough to use enough compression to make its signals look like random noise.
Thus our SETI efforts are looking for a needle in a heystack and failure only indicates that species in a transitional phase like us is very rare.
because chances are that if they are more advanced than us, they will exploit us in some way.
And if we are more advanced than them, we will exploit them.
I think it's more likely that, in an evolutionary time-frame, we'll colonize our solar system (and beyond), and extra-terrestrial humans will evolve in different directions and become the "aliens".
I remember a story that I read long ago in a compilation of Sci-Fi short stories where we were visited by a group of aliens that thought they were going to subjucate us, believing that they were superior because they had FTL travel. They leave their spaceship to face the primitive earthmen... with their muskets. It seems theat to them and most other races that FTL travel was so easy that they never had to develop weapons of mass destruction, tanks, and other weapons of war. The story ended with the aliens lamenting that they had just give us, a warlike planet of much superior weapons, the keys to the galexy.
If something hard to us maybe easy to them, the oppisite may be true too.
Will they simply laugh at us earthlings; or shake their heads in frustration, wondering "when will we ever learn"?
What makes you think life forms entirely alien to earth will even have heads? Starfish have no heads, jellyfish have no heads.
I think it's a bit early to worry about TFS's "Star Trek Prime Directive". Sure, there is probably life alien to earth but face it, guys - we haven't found any. Not yet.
There are folks who think an advanced civilization from some other star has already come here to study us (Roswell), but if in fact those are aliens come to visit us, I think it more likely that it is a species descended from us come back in time to do some archaeology rather than visiting from Betelguise to work on a Wikipedia entry on us..
Travelling faster than the speed of light is, after all, just as impossible as time travel. Humans have been human for less than a million years, what will we be like in another ten million? Will we have found that time travel is as impossible as air travel was 1000 years ago?
> Travelling faster than the speed of light is, after all, just as impossible as time travel
Travelling faster than the speed of light is pretty much the same thing as time travel. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, then you could time travel.
Actually, without going too much into details, some things make so much and evolved independently so many times on Earth, that they make sense when you think of it.
Or even better explained: they make sense when you
A) want an alien at least evolved enough to hold a conversation with. Bacteria are exciting for biologists, but an alien you can actually make contact with, has damn good reasons to indeed look kinda like us.
B) take evolution and RL constraints into consideration. It's easy to imagine giant amoeba creatures, or sacs of gas floating on Jupiter, but those tend to either (I) have blatant disadvantages that natural selection would discriminate against, or (II) they're bloody impossible. E.g., a cell is really just a drop of sea water in a lipid membrane, and evolved from some aminoacid chains which originally started replicating in plain sea water without a membrane. And from there it's been baby steps towards any complex organisms. It was first just bacterial films, then some "worms" which were just a toroidal bacterial film and "sponges" which were just a bacterial colony with holes in it, and so on. Most fantasy extraterestrial forms proposed, like those giant gas sacks, it's not clear how they'd evolve in the first place.
But anyway, that in mind, I'll say that, for example:
- to start with the easy part, any creature of any complexity above "bacterial colony" will have specialized cells for specialized tasks. Simply because it's a huge advantage to. Cells on your skin need to largely insulate you from the uncontrolled outside world, while cells inside need to allow a freer flow of nutrients, for example. As an added bonus, specialization also means that each cell only needs a smaller set of proteins and reactions to do its job, which reduces its energy and nutrient needs and also the number of things that can go wrong.
So basically this rules out any ideas some may have about sentient amorphous blobs.
- almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA. Your left side is largely a mirrored copy of your right side. It also has advantages like that it's easier to swim or walk when your left and right legs/fins/tentacles are the same length. And having redundant organs is an advantage by itself too.
- any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs, because again it's a great advantage to. Even some of the most primitive cells can detect changes in the environment, and react to them in one way or another. Some unicelular organisms already have light sensors. Over time some stuff will remain rather distributed, but high-bandwidth stuff like eyes, it makes sense to have a small number and complex/high-res, rather than photosensitivity all over your body. Other stuff tends to work _because_ it's a single structure instead of a widely distributed array, e.g., hearing. Etc. Basically given enough time and evolution, see the previous stuff about specialization: a lot of things will get concentrated and specialized.
- almost any complex creature will have a mouth at one end and an arse at the other end, simply because it all evolved out of some ultra-primitive worms which were just a thin tube that pushed water from one end to the other. And evolution works in baby steps, small changes to what already existed. Even the exceptions tend to be actually really built the same way. E.g., gasteropods have a funkier configuration, but start as the above described tube anyway: later a diagonal muscle twists them into an different configuration.
- neurons (or whatever the alien equivalent is), are inherently slow, compared to transistors. They're chemical things, just because they evolved out of other cells, and that's how cells work. They don't have to just transmit the signal, they actually have to produce chemicals to excite the next neuron's receptors, and then neutralize those so the next one doesn't keep firing for ever. Again, _because_ they evolved from other cells, which are just a complex chemistry run
A) How are we going to hold a conversation with an extraterrestrial species when we still believe that humans are the only terrestrial species with speech? Biologists are just now realising that vocal animals do in fact communicate with each other.
B) A radically alien environment is going to evolve radical alien organisms. Starfish have no heads, like I said. Mammals have no eggs, lizards don't have milk. Snake eyes and cat eyes have a different pupil than other reptiles and mammals.
sentient amorphous blobs
I've often wondered if an ant were an animal, or if the ant colony was the actual animal?
almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA
I wonder if extraterrestrial life would necessarily be dependant on DNA?
any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs
Which may or may not be the same as our senses. Sight nay be in the radar band yet be blind to visible light. They may even have evolved senses that earth creatures lack.
So now we have a mouth on that "head" too
You wouldn't need a head to have a mouth, eyes, or antennae.
And liberation? Whose fault is it that the people of the world suffer tyrants and murderers ruling them, really? If all the people go together we could overthrow them without too much difficulty. But then, we'd have to overthrow the new tyrants who led the last revolution, and so on.
I'll have you know that I, as an enlightened being, have been liberating lesser beings for years. I have personally liberated hundreds if not thousands of civilizations of ants. I've also liberated civilizations of bees, wasps and hornets. I'll tell you... the totalitarianism they were subjected to would make a civilized person weep.
They must have been captives, because once I slew their rulers and set them free, they all left and I never saw them again. But I'm sure they were singing my praises, whatever happened to them.
we should be sure of two things. one, is it friendly? and two, are they willing to share in their probably vast knowledge? if the first is no, then it would have been better to not have found life in the first place. if the second question is no, then we need to prove that we are not as violent as we really are. if the second one is yes, then we should take great care not to turn on them.
This attitude comes straight out of reading too much science fiction. Whether it's 'friendly' or not paints wayyy to sim
I think any advanced race would be one of two ways.
1) Independence Day types, which go around trying to use the resources of other planets, and probably destroying other races so that those races won't even become a threat.
2) Loners who don't care about us, and are doing their own thing (probably something we can't fathom as this stage in our scientific understanding).
I figure if a race is evolved enough to fly all the way to our planet, if they wanted something they would not just do a "fair trade" th
I would presume any such Prime Directive would ultimately be abused/ignored like it has been on Star Trek. International Law is only arbitrarily enforced. Let's first get a grip on how we treat our own people and the other species which inhabit our planet, then maybe we could think about how we would treat extra-terrestrial life forms (if in fact there are any). The only downside to idealism is reality.
I don't know what this Prime Dircetive actually says but if it's something along the lines of
1) Subjugate and conquer any species you encounter against which you can prevail with military might. 2) Use diplomacy and survelliance/espionage techinques to undermine any species against whom you are not guaranteed to prevail to bring about their downfall and leave you in control of their resources. 3) Attempt to avoid or form favourable alliances with anything you come across which is stronger than you. 4)... 5) Profit
Nonsense.
An unknown computer genius would write a virus for their vast computer system after three days of exposure to it, and then upload it by way of a MacBook, crippling their defenses and allowing a ragtag band of fighter pilots (very few of whom have actually flown the planes they've been given) to take down the invader's superweapons.
Technology's got nothing on good old corporate-sponsored flag-waving feel-good heroic ingenuity.
But that gets really annoying, and you have to spend a whole episode explaining how you're not, and you might need to get shot with primitive weapons to prove your mortality.
I don't see why Fermi's paradox is in any way a good argument. By his argument, there are no lobsters at all. I know this because last night I left my door open and waited for one to crawl in.
Put another way - we (humanity) went from fairly small mammals to now in about 65 million years. If the dinosaurs hadn't fallen victim to $extinctionLevelEvent, they could easily have become as evolved as we are now - just a whole lot earlier. So, if intelligent/sentient life could have evolved here 60 million years ago, why wouldn't that be the case in another solar system?
For all we know, it's entirely possible that 15,000 light years away there's a planet with a civilization that is EXACTLY as evolved as we are. Why haven't we heard from them yet? Physics - would take 15,000 years for any signal to reach us. Hell, 200 light years away would suffice for that argument, and in both cases Fermi would look like an idiot.
As an aside, I see his paradox along the lines of creationism - after all, we can't prove that something doesn't exist. Only that it does.
Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hawking has said this before earlier as well. Just because he makes the same statement again instantly makes this news??
Come on the Drake Equation has been around for a long time now guys.
But...but... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:But...but... (Score:5, Informative)
Justin.
* "sending signals too far into the depths of space" - see 'inverse square law' and 'size of solar system', not to mention 'microwave background'
Parent
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:5, Informative)
What this means is that in an infinite universe that has totally random initial conditions, every possible state will be realized somewhere. That means that somewhere in the universe, conditions very similar to our local conditions will be realized. Not only does this mathematically guarantee that life exists somwhere, but also that "copies" of Earth and you and me exist somewhere. All possible variants of matter organization are realized somewhere in the infinite universe (and in fact may be repeated over and over). Of course, the distances over which you will see a repeat may be fantastically large (much, much larger than the observable universe, for instance). Also, life-forms in causally-disconnected volumes can never communicate with each other. (So you may say... who cares?)
In any case, it's not known with certainty that the universe is infinite (or that the big bang was ergodic)... but our current theories allow for models where the multiple emergence of life (and all physically reasonable variants) is in fact mathematically guaranteed. Kinda interesting.
Parent
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:5, Funny)
But we'll have goatees.
Parent
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Funny)
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
Parent
Re:Why is this newsworthy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
No begging (Score:4, Informative)
No, it doesn't [begthequestion.info]. There. Got that out of the way.
Re:No begging (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only does the old usage hardly exist anymore, but when you try to use it people have no idea what you are talking about.
Language changes.
Re:No begging (Score:5, Insightful)
The view that language is good enough as long as it is fairly likely to get the point across is - even putting aside that it is usually harder to parse incorrect, intelligible writing than correct prose - antithetical to the "standards" culture espoused on Slashdot. It is the permissive, lackadaisical Internet Explorer approach to HTML. And it is born, I fear, of the average nerd's mediocre ability in his own language, and his desire to change the rules to suit his own lack of interest in a discipline at least as complex, and millennia older, than his own - that of effective communication. Put down the Knuth, pick up the Fowler, and learn to express yourself as elegantly to your fellow man as you might to your computer.
Anyway, I've met no reasonably educated man who does not know the correct usage of "beg the question". A few minutes ago I was reading a book published in the last decade which employed it correctly. Had the author wished to indicate that a particular question was "raised", he would have done so. While I'm here:
Here endeth the rant.
Parent
Re:No begging (Score:4, Informative)
This usage of 'begets' was somewhat common in 18th c. English. Take a look at Hume, Enquiry, sec. XII, pgh. 2 [eserver.org]
Belloc
Parent
Re:No begging (Score:4, Funny)
You stil don't have it right. "I bought a soda for your wife, and a double shot of rum for myself, because your wife is so fugly that even drunk, she scares me!"
Parent
Re:No begging (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed that for you.
Parent
Prime Directive? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously -- if we think our technology and culture is okay for the entire planet, why should we stop here?
okk.. (Score:5, Funny)
You're absolutely right! We should definitely set hold back on all the space exploration we've been doing. Also, we should set physical limits for our transmissions to "expire" after a certain distance, so we don't send them "too far". In fact, that would be the only responsible thing to do for Masters of the Universe such as us.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
we should set physical limits for our transmissions to "expire" after a certain distance
New York - April 22, 2008 - The RIAA/MPAA today announced a new initiative targetting so-called "transmission sharing." A spokesperson for the group is quoted as saying "just because an intelligent alien signal has been put out there - illegally - in the public domain doesn't mean the recording label doesn't deserve their fair cut of the action." As with the ongoing file-sharing battle, technology will play a pivotal role in the battle against transmission sharers. Several not-for-profit SETI organizations
Directive Prime (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Hawking isn't an astrobiologist (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hawking isn't an astrobiologist (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Hawking isn't an astrobiologist (Score:4, Insightful)
Parasites and diseases which are common in household animals seldom accept human as a host. Furthermore, I have never been infected by a tree fungus. I guess they don't find me favorable for symbiosis.
Parent
Prime Directive my shiny metal ass! (Score:4, Funny)
Humans are designed to trade, travel and exploit resources. Then move on when there are too many tourists.
Frankly, I'm surprised there isn't aready a Prime Directive that reads:
"See that blue/green planet with all the space junk and EM noise? You want to leave that one well alone!"
Re:Prime Directive my shiny metal ass! (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. Two episodes of TNG come to mind and they illustrate the Prime Directive. I don't know the names of the episodes (and too lazy to look them up) but here are their descriptions.
The first involved Riker being found out while on a mission to make contact with a civilization that was beginning space exploration. The actress who played Lillith is the female doctor who realizes what he is and wants to hump him at every opportunity (no argument from me). In the end, Picard meets with their leader and is asked not to return until the people are ready for the fact that there are other beings in the universe.
The second involves Deanna's mother and her infatuation with David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester III). On his planet, when people reach a certain age, they are required to commit suicide. Deanna's mother can't come to grips with this and begs him not to go through with it. She even asks for Picard to offer him asylum. Picard refuses and things go on.
In both cases, while contact had been made, the balance of the civilizations was not upset. One could argue that in the first case, the fact that certain people knew about these visitors fundamentally changed things but since only a select few knew, the general populace went about their business none the wiser.
Personally, I think those two episodes, along with the one where Picard has to convince a group of pre-industrial people he is not a god despite his "powers", are the three episodes which best illustrate the Prime Directive and some of its permutations.
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Nope (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with Hawking's statement (Score:5, Informative)
The only problem I have with his statements at GWU is that he is focusing too much on radio waves. He is speculating that since we haven't detected any radio waves, it is unlikely that any intelligent civilization exists close to earth (and by close, I mean in astronomical measures).
In my opinion, scientists are taking too much for granted when looking for life. We assume that it is more likely to find life wherever water exists and we constantly assume that the conditions must be earth-like. And regarding the radio waves, I don't understand why an extraterrestrial civilization would even need to use such technology. It is just as likely that they communicate in entirely different ways. After all, hearing and seeing is just one way of living, but not a necessity.
I realize that radio waves occur from more than just television shows, but this is mainly the type of signals we look for since the odds of intended communications from other planets are insanely small.
Re:The problem with Hawking's statement (Score:4, Insightful)
Then it's just a matter of settling on WHICH photons to look for. Some don't work well for communications (like the visible spectrum). Some won't travel very far. We are capable of producing photons at just about any desired wavelength, and yet we've settled on a narrow range for communications.
You could argue that we don't understand the natural world completely yet, and so there could be other means of communication. This is absolutely true, but how would we look for something that we don't know about? Electromagnetic waves are so easy to detect and discover that any technologically advanced culture is bound to use them eventually.
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The Prime Directive is Evil (Score:5, Funny)
"Hello Mr. Alien. Welcome to our planet. Boy, you sure are more advanced than us!"
"Why, yes, we are, thank you. By the way, I couldn't help noticing that many of you still die from cancer."
"'Still die'? You mean you don't?"
"Oh, no, we cured that a long time ago. Same for that crooked politician thing you've got going. And war. Oh, and that thing you call 'Alzheimers', too. And global warming. We don't have any of that. They all turned out to be really simple to fix, in fact."
"Really? that's wonderful. Will you teach us how to solve these things."
"What? No, no, child, your culture isn't ready for all that. Besides, you're so cute the way you are. No, we'll just stay up in our ships and watch you figure it out. It will probably take several more generations, but that's OK, with our advanced medical technology, we will live long enough to see it... unless you wipe yourselves out in the process, that is. He he. You amuse us."
"Asshole"
Noted? (Score:4, Informative)
Ahem, I suspect he is a little more tha noted. He holds the same chair as Sir Isaac Newton did at Cambridge University, worked out how black holes work and is probably the most famous scientist in the world. Even the article [yahoo.com] says:
because the aliens compress their data stream! (Score:4, Interesting)
Plans to recognize alien signals are all based on finding redundancies in the transmission. But from the point of view of an alien signal engineer all redundancies are opportunities to save energy and transmission time by adding compression! The more compression you add, the more your signal looks like random noise. Also the aliens might be using spread spectrum techniques which make a signal even more difficult to detect.
Think of it, the FCC is already starting to require TV signals to move to digital in order to save bandwidth that can be resold to the cell phone companies. How long will it be till the FCC requires that these signals be compressed? Our signals are already becoming more difficult to detect.
Probably in the natural technical evolution of any species there is only a very small window where the species is smart enough to use radio energy for communication but not smart enough to use enough compression to make its signals look like random noise.
Thus our SETI efforts are looking for a needle in a heystack and failure only indicates that species in a transitional phase like us is very rare.
Stephen Hawking should have thought of this.
I don't care much for meeting advanced aliens (Score:4, Interesting)
And if we are more advanced than them, we will exploit them.
I think it's more likely that, in an evolutionary time-frame, we'll colonize our solar system (and beyond), and extra-terrestrial humans will evolve in different directions and become the "aliens".
Just Because They Have FTL . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
If something hard to us maybe easy to them, the oppisite may be true too.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think life forms entirely alien to earth will even have heads? Starfish have no heads, jellyfish have no heads.
I think it's a bit early to worry about TFS's "Star Trek Prime Directive". Sure, there is probably life alien to earth but face it, guys - we haven't found any. Not yet.
There are folks who think an advanced civilization from some other star has already come here to study us (Roswell), but if in fact those are aliens come to visit us, I think it more likely that it is a species descended from us come back in time to do some archaeology rather than visiting from Betelguise to work on a Wikipedia entry on us..
Travelling faster than the speed of light is, after all, just as impossible as time travel. Humans have been human for less than a million years, what will we be like in another ten million? Will we have found that time travel is as impossible as air travel was 1000 years ago?
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Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Informative)
Travelling faster than the speed of light is pretty much the same thing as time travel. If you could travel faster than the speed of light, then you could time travel.
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Actually, some things make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Or even better explained: they make sense when you
A) want an alien at least evolved enough to hold a conversation with. Bacteria are exciting for biologists, but an alien you can actually make contact with, has damn good reasons to indeed look kinda like us.
B) take evolution and RL constraints into consideration. It's easy to imagine giant amoeba creatures, or sacs of gas floating on Jupiter, but those tend to either (I) have blatant disadvantages that natural selection would discriminate against, or (II) they're bloody impossible. E.g., a cell is really just a drop of sea water in a lipid membrane, and evolved from some aminoacid chains which originally started replicating in plain sea water without a membrane. And from there it's been baby steps towards any complex organisms. It was first just bacterial films, then some "worms" which were just a toroidal bacterial film and "sponges" which were just a bacterial colony with holes in it, and so on. Most fantasy extraterestrial forms proposed, like those giant gas sacks, it's not clear how they'd evolve in the first place.
But anyway, that in mind, I'll say that, for example:
- to start with the easy part, any creature of any complexity above "bacterial colony" will have specialized cells for specialized tasks. Simply because it's a huge advantage to. Cells on your skin need to largely insulate you from the uncontrolled outside world, while cells inside need to allow a freer flow of nutrients, for example. As an added bonus, specialization also means that each cell only needs a smaller set of proteins and reactions to do its job, which reduces its energy and nutrient needs and also the number of things that can go wrong.
So basically this rules out any ideas some may have about sentient amorphous blobs.
- almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA. Your left side is largely a mirrored copy of your right side. It also has advantages like that it's easier to swim or walk when your left and right legs/fins/tentacles are the same length. And having redundant organs is an advantage by itself too.
- any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs, because again it's a great advantage to. Even some of the most primitive cells can detect changes in the environment, and react to them in one way or another. Some unicelular organisms already have light sensors. Over time some stuff will remain rather distributed, but high-bandwidth stuff like eyes, it makes sense to have a small number and complex/high-res, rather than photosensitivity all over your body. Other stuff tends to work _because_ it's a single structure instead of a widely distributed array, e.g., hearing. Etc. Basically given enough time and evolution, see the previous stuff about specialization: a lot of things will get concentrated and specialized.
- almost any complex creature will have a mouth at one end and an arse at the other end, simply because it all evolved out of some ultra-primitive worms which were just a thin tube that pushed water from one end to the other. And evolution works in baby steps, small changes to what already existed. Even the exceptions tend to be actually really built the same way. E.g., gasteropods have a funkier configuration, but start as the above described tube anyway: later a diagonal muscle twists them into an different configuration.
- neurons (or whatever the alien equivalent is), are inherently slow, compared to transistors. They're chemical things, just because they evolved out of other cells, and that's how cells work. They don't have to just transmit the signal, they actually have to produce chemicals to excite the next neuron's receptors, and then neutralize those so the next one doesn't keep firing for ever. Again, _because_ they evolved from other cells, which are just a complex chemistry run
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Re:Actually, some things make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
B) A radically alien environment is going to evolve radical alien organisms. Starfish have no heads, like I said. Mammals have no eggs, lizards don't have milk. Snake eyes and cat eyes have a different pupil than other reptiles and mammals.
sentient amorphous blobs
I've often wondered if an ant were an animal, or if the ant colony was the actual animal?
almost any creature has either bilateral or radial symmetry, simply because it saves on DNA
I wonder if extraterrestrial life would necessarily be dependant on DNA?
any complex creature will have _some_ sensory organs
Which may or may not be the same as our senses. Sight nay be in the radar band yet be blind to visible light. They may even have evolved senses that earth creatures lack.
So now we have a mouth on that "head" too
You wouldn't need a head to have a mouth, eyes, or antennae.
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Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll have you know that I, as an enlightened being, have been liberating lesser beings for years. I have personally liberated hundreds if not thousands of civilizations of ants. I've also liberated civilizations of bees, wasps and hornets. I'll tell you... the totalitarianism they were subjected to would make a civilized person weep.
They must have been captives, because once I slew their rulers and set them free, they all left and I never saw them again. But I'm sure they were singing my praises, whatever happened to them.
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Re:But The Real Question: (Score:5, Funny)
(Paraphrasing Calvin)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This attitude comes straight out of reading too much science fiction. Whether it's 'friendly' or not paints wayyy to sim
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Independence Day types, which go around trying to use the resources of other planets, and probably destroying other races so that those races won't even become a threat.
2) Loners who don't care about us, and are doing their own thing (probably something we can't fathom as this stage in our scientific understanding).
I figure if a race is evolved enough to fly all the way to our planet, if they wanted something they would not just do a "fair trade" th
Re:too much st (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:too much st (Score:5, Funny)
1) Subjugate and conquer any species you encounter against which you can prevail with military might.
2) Use diplomacy and survelliance/espionage techinques to undermine any species against whom you are not guaranteed to prevail to bring about their downfall and leave you in control of their resources.
3) Attempt to avoid or form favourable alliances with anything you come across which is stronger than you.
4)
5) Profit
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Re:too much st (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:too much st (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Fictional rules will be no help (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Some Notes on Alien Life (Score:5, Insightful)
Put another way - we (humanity) went from fairly small mammals to now in about 65 million years. If the dinosaurs hadn't fallen victim to $extinctionLevelEvent, they could easily have become as evolved as we are now - just a whole lot earlier. So, if intelligent/sentient life could have evolved here 60 million years ago, why wouldn't that be the case in another solar system?
For all we know, it's entirely possible that 15,000 light years away there's a planet with a civilization that is EXACTLY as evolved as we are. Why haven't we heard from them yet? Physics - would take 15,000 years for any signal to reach us. Hell, 200 light years away would suffice for that argument, and in both cases Fermi would look like an idiot.
As an aside, I see his paradox along the lines of creationism - after all, we can't prove that something doesn't exist. Only that it does.
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