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Space Science

Winning the E.T. Lottery 80

Consul writes "Space.com has a cute story about the statistical probabilities that we have been visited by an alien civilzation. He seems to make a convincing argument."
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Winning the E.T. Lottery

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  • I'd counter with two initial questions:

    1. What's the probability that primitive life evolved?
    2. What's the probability that intelligent life evolved?


    The probabilities for either event are infinitesimal, at least in my opinion, yet here we are. Even if you discount the above two occurences and bring up intelligent design or pure creation you're faced with yet one more improbability:

    1. What's the probability of the spontaneous existance of a supreme being?


    If you look at any of the probabilities they seem to point to a vanishingly small probability that even the simplest forms of life exist, let alone any intelligent life. Yet we're here.
    • What are the probabilities that if ETLF(s) were to visit the earth, that there is a single thing we could/should/would do about it? This argument is mute. This guys is just looking for some short lived publisity, and even talks about it in the beginning of his artical. His points are silly at best, and down right retarded in all cases. If I have to pick three points to prove alians have never landed, all three that he used would be tied into one. While I appreciate the idea behind his artical, it was week, confusing, and misleading.
    • by TwP ( 149780 ) on Thursday June 27, 2002 @01:33PM (#3780829) Homepage
      You have a quarter in your pocket and decide to flip it in the air. It lands with the heads side facing up. You repeat this procedure, and without fail the heads side is always facing up after the quarter lands. You do this ... oh ... 10,000,000 times and every time the heads side is facing up. What is the probability that on the next throw the heads side will be facing up?

      Are you ready for the answer? ... 50%

      The existence of intelligent life on this planet does not necessarily imply the existence of intelligent life on other plantes. Just because a quarter lands heads up 10 million times does not imply that the next toss will produce the same result.

      The existence of life on any planet must be taken as an individual probability just as each individual quarter toss must be taken as an individual probability.

      QED
      • Your argument is wrong, at least if you subscribe to evolution. There's a sequence of coin flips that have to take place. You don't just go from nothing to humanity in one probabilistic orgy. Each step along the way is a seperate coin toss, with the probability skewed highly towards an outcome of failure. I'm not even saying we've been visited or that its probably that we've been visisted. I don't think there's any evidence at all saying that we have been visited and probably a lot more that says we haven't.

        But the article itself dismisses the likelyhood of us having been visited based on a series of statistical arguments. My point is that applying those same statistics says that we don't exist.
      • by nusuth ( 520833 )
        You should better evaluate whether your hypothesis about coin being fair is true much earlier than 10000000 tosses. Suppose that your "quarter" actually has two heads side, and you would notice such an oddity with 0.9999999999 probability. Also there is 0.000000000001 probability that coin is rigged in some other way. What can be said about outcome of next toss? p(Heads)=1. With an unlimited precision maths library you can have a lot of 9s, after "0." instead of a boring "1", if you are so inclined.
      • My quarter landed on edge! Must be some kind of alien technology.
      • >>Are you ready for the answer? ... 50%

        50% NOT - because probability is based on the facts - how a certain entity has behaved in the past and not on how *you* think it should behave.
      • A probability this complex can only be observed, not computed. Observed probabilities are meaningless with a sample size of one.
    • 1. What's the probability that primitive life evolved?
      2. What's the probability that intelligent life evolved?


      Dispite the probability, I think a more interresting question would be if they are able to recieve signals from us, since all signals and transmitions degrade in power over distance.

      And if the are within this distance do they have the technology to detect the signals.
    • 1. What's the probability that primitive life evolved?

      One.

      2. What's the probability that intelligent life evolved?

      Somewhere between zero and one. We're still waiting to see.

      3. What's the probability of the spontaneous existance of a supreme being?

      I'll let you know when it happens :)

      Note that your statement of the chances being infinitesimally small are your opinion, without any supporting evidence.

      I on the other hand subscribe to "there are probably quite a number of earth-type planets out there, somewhere, so the chances are pretty good". Of course, it also includes that any societies are likely to miss each other by millions or billions of years - I think the chances of such civilisations encountering each other are infinitesimally small.

      But I don't have any evidence to back either view.
    • Never heard of selection bias, did you? Those probabilities about life and intelligent life are not infinitesmall, infact at least one of them seems to be just 1 (probability of primitive life.) For a non-zero probability of evolution of those primitive beings into intelligent life, selection bias kicks in, and we are destined to be "here", for we can't wonder about probability of intelligent lifes if we are not already an intelligent life form.

    • 1. What's the probability that primitive life evolved?
      2. What's the probability that intelligent life evolved?

      The probabilities for either event are infinitesimal, at least in my opinion.

      Well your opinion is wrong, the probability of both is 1, since as you quaintly put it 'here we are'.

  • You can get rid of all of this probability crap by just accepting that aliens actually started life on this planet. Say million and millions of years ago, some aliens were joy riding through the galaxy and saw a nicely forming planet and decided to start up their own personal "ant farm". They spice up our water/air/primordial-soup with some pre-life cake mix and then fly away. They tell all their friends to come and visit when they get the chance, you know, just to look in and see how things are going. Well, then we get visited by aliens for the next few billions years (assume they have long life spans, or collective memories).

    Seems this scenario gets rid of all of his improbable probabilities. They started everything off, so they KNEW where to come to find us (well, not us, but whatever did come of their little project).

    Heck, he convinced me, if aliens have visited us then aliens must have started life here. Everything else is just too unbelievable.
    • Are you describing aliens or God? :-)
    • Or perhaps the aliens sent life-creating probes to thousands or even millions of star systems.

      Imagine if we found that life is unique to Earth, but there are tons of planets out there capable of supporting life. Now we build a probe that will go to one such system. This probe determines what planet in the system has the best chance of supporting life, and it goes into orbit around it. Over time, it launches capsules with increasingly more complex life forms. This is done in conjunction with monitoring of the planet's atmosphere to encourage Earth-like development. We mass-produce said probes, and launch one to each of our neighboring star systems, expanding our definition of "neighboring" as we continue to produce the probes.

      Now when we get around to colonizing the stars, we have planets ready for us.
    • They spice up our water/air/primordial-soup with some pre-life cake mix and then fly away. They tell all their friends to come and visit when they get the chance, you know, just to look in and see how things are going. Well, then we get visited by aliens for the next few billions years (assume they have long life spans, or collective memories).

      Seems this scenario gets rid of all of his improbable probabilities.


      ...And instead gives the improbable scenario of aliens stopping by tens or hundreds of millions of times over the Earth's history. This would take a significant expenditure of resources, to little end (especially since the hypothetical ant-farm alien could have seeded a barren world in their own system or otherwise closer to home for convenient visiting). It would also require lots and lots of patience and dedication that would probably be more entertainingly spent elsewhere.

      In summary, I'm doubtful of this scenario.
      • ...And instead gives the improbable scenario of aliens stopping by tens or hundreds of millions of times over the Earth's history. This would take a significant expenditure of resources, to little end

        Why not just drop a probe in orbit after they dump the cake mix? E.T. phone home...

        It's a heck of a lot easier, plus NORAD probably can't even detect them today. Heck, we can barely find grazing asteroids. Stick one at a LaGrange point, and I doubt we'd ever see it.
    • If the aliens put life here, where did the aliens come from? There's just no answereing these chicken and egg questions, unless you send me your money, then I'll tell you the answers!
  • by dschuetz ( 10924 ) <david&dasnet,org> on Thursday June 27, 2002 @12:24PM (#3780235)
    ...is that, either:

    1) Faster-than-light (FTL, warp, whatever) travel is possible, and nobody's invaded us because there's some overarching federation of planets that's keeping us protected from outside influence until we're ready, and that's way cool.

    or

    2) FTL travel is not possible, and so nobody's coming here 'cause it's just not worth the trip. And that's depressing as hell.

    Am I missing anything?
    • It appears, depressingly, that modern physics is telling us that FTL travel is not possible, and never will be.

      I think that is the most likely explanation. No civilizations make routine interstellar trips simply because it is so expensive.

      -- Bob (hoping for another revolution in physics...)

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • What is 'time' (Score:2, Interesting)

        by hackwrench ( 573697 )
        If aliens exist and perfected something similar to cryo-freeze, and had extremely long lifespans to boot, I'm sure nearly all of them that fit into that category would eventually hit Earth on their tour of the Universe.

        Pioneer [animelyrics.com]
      • FTL travel. (Score:3, Insightful)

        It appears, depressingly, that modern physics is telling us that FTL travel is not possible, and never will be.

        Actually, our existing understanding of physics suggests several interesting possible approaches to FTL travel. These are already being studied to some extent; time will show whether they're practical or not.

        We also have enough gaps in our understanding to leave room for potential methods of FTL travel. We just know that it isn't terribly easy, if it is possible.

        I think that is the most likely explanation. No civilizations make routine interstellar trips simply because it is so expensive.

        That's one possibility.

        Another is that life is uncommon enough that even frequent-FTL-travelling civilizations wouldn't be near enough to us to have found us.

        Another is that the active lifetime of civilizations tends to be short enough that nobody happened to be alive (or at least interested in contacting people) during our history to contact us.

        Or a combination of the above.

        It will be interesting when we finally have enough information to be reasonably sure which is the case.
      • Apparently gravity travels much faster than the speed of light.

        A href=http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity / peed_limit.asp>The Speed of Gravity

        Way cool stuff.
        • way to click preview. (kicks self)

          Speed of Gravity [metaresearch.org]
        • He's a nut job that doesn't understand GR.

          gravity propogates at the speed of light but contains velocity and acceleration dependent terms (as it would have to to satisfy relativity)
          • Gravity does not propogate at the speed of light. If the sun winks out it takes Jupiter (for example) so many minute to see this. Any EM waves traveling at light speed from the sun take time to "wink-out" so Jupiter remains "ignorant" of the suns disappearance for awhile. Except for gravity. Jupiter knows instantly that it has nothing to orbit (or at minimum 20 billion times faster than it knows there is no more EM energy coming from the sun). If you introduce a delay in the propogation of gravity - slow it down to light speed - the solar system would fall apart. Check it out

            The most amazing thing I was taught as a graduate student of celestial mechanics at Yale in the 1960s was that all gravitational interactions between bodies in all dynamical systems had to be taken as instantaneous. This seemed unacceptable on two counts. In the first place, it seemed to be a form of "action at a distance". Perhaps no one has so elegantly expressed the objection to such a concept better than Sir Isaac Newton: "That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to the other, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it." (See Hoffman, 1983.) But mediation requires propagation, and finite bodies should be incapable of propagate at infinite speeds since that would require infinite energy. So instantaneous gravity seemed to have an element of magic to it.

            The second objection was that we had all been taught that Einstein's special relativity (SR), an experimentally well established theory, proved that nothing could propagate in forward time at a speed greater than that of light in a vacuum. Indeed, as astronomers we were taught to calculate orbits using instantaneous forces; then extract the position of some body along its orbit at a time of interest, and calculate where that position would appear as seen from Earth by allowing for the finite propagation speed of light from there to here. It seemed incongruous to allow for the finite speed of light from the body to the Earth, but to take the effect of Earth's gravity on that same body as propagating from here to there instantaneously. Yet that was the required procedure to get the correct answers.

            These objections were certainly not new when I raised them. They have been raised and answered thousands of times in dozens of different ways over the years since general relativity (GR) was set forth in 1916. Even today in discussions of gravity in USENET newsgroups on the Internet, the most frequently asked question and debated topic is "What is the speed of gravity?" It is only heard less often in the classroom because many teachers and most textbooks head off the question by hastily assuring students that gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light, leaving the firm impression, whether intended or not, that the question of gravity's propagation speed has already been answered.

            Yet, anyone with a computer and orbit computation or numerical integration software can verify the consequences of introducing a delay into gravitational interactions. The effect on computed orbits is usually disastrous because conservation of angular momentum is destroyed. Expressed less technically by Sir Arthur Eddington, this means: "If the Sun attracts Jupiter towards its present position S, and Jupiter attracts the Sun towards its present position J, the two forces are in the same line and balance. But if the Sun attracts Jupiter toward its previous position S', and Jupiter attracts the Sun towards its previous position J', when the force of attraction started out to cross the gulf, then the two forces give a couple. This couple will tend to increase the angular momentum of the system, and, acting cumulatively, will soon cause an appreciable change of period, disagreeing with observations if the speed is at all comparable with that of light." (Eddington, 1920, p.94) See Figure 1.


            www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gravity.as p [metaresearch.org]

            Crazy stuff.
      • That's because the DOJ refuses to prosecute FTL Inc. for unfair competition of a monopoly corporation. Once we have some market competition, the price of round trip interstellar tickets should drop dramatically.
    • If you read the article, you'd notice that he mentioned it really does not matter at what speed they would travel to us. In order to notice that our planet is generating signals, they would still have to notice and intercept our broadcast trasmissions, which have only been travelling at the speed of light.

      Anyone can come up with all sorts of a sci-fi explanations to dispute this (let me try - aliens put a space beacon on any planet, which activates when there is life created, so that's how they knew about us so soon), but overall, the article makes several well-stated and well-supported points.
      • In order to notice that our planet is generating signals, [aliens] would still have to notice and intercept our broadcast trasmissions, which have only been travelling at the speed of light.
        ...
        Anyone can come up with all sorts of a sci-fi explanations to dispute this

        I assume, basically, that if FTL travel is possible, then at least one of these advanced civilizations will eventually wander by us, sometime, somehow. Maybe an annual (for some interplanetary definition of the word) survey of systems with life-supporting planets. Remember, I'm assuming very low cost for the travel on that survey.

        So, I suppose there's a third possibility -- FTL travel is possible, but nobody's invaded us because nobody's noticed us yet. So, hopefully, by the time we *get* noticed, we'll have developed sufficient shielding to withstand the Romulan onslaught. But if they're nearby, we'll be wiped out and/or enslaved, which is also really depressing.

        So, then, my modified conjecture points to a 67% requirement for depression when thinking about FTL travel and aliens visiting us.

        Dang. I gotta stop posting from work.

    • I go for your #1, because of what I call the Bombs-to-starships gap.

      Even today with the paltry stuff we practice, space travel is horribly energy-intensive. While it's believable that we'll get more efficient, we still don't have much interplanetary travel, much less interstellar. We will have to acquire the ability to control more energy.

      My premise: If a species has more than the slightest tendancy to use weapons against itself, it will not survive to build starships. That includes us. We have the next few centuries to burn some of our most terrible aggressiveness out of ourselves, or else we'll use that same energy to blow ourselves up. Actually, the Cold War was a great success story, since we *did* develop a survival mechanism that held us through half a century. We've more work to do, because greater energies are on their way, with more chance for abuse. Moreover we've got to improve the common man, as rather common men turned relatively safe transportation devices into bombs last year.

      One hole in the theory - alien psychology such as a highly xenophobic hive-mind.
  • by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Thursday June 27, 2002 @12:27PM (#3780256)
    The problem with this is that analysis like this are simply interesting reading and speculation. Nothing more. Barely science and really not past the hypothesis stage (there is no evidence he is correct).

    I can find good arguments for both why or why not other worlds may have life or intelligent life.

    -Sean
  • Bit unimaginative. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fweeky ( 41046 ) on Thursday June 27, 2002 @12:29PM (#3780266) Homepage
    All it takes is for someone, somewhere to build an intelligent(ish) self-replicating machine programmed to spread throughout the galaxy - one per interesting star system.

    Such a system could cover the entire galaxy in a couple of million years easily (and cheaply after initial design/construction cost). They can do whatever you like; sit and watch, make contact, try to destroy any competitors (The Forge of God [gregbear.com] style; soon to become a set of movies [gregbear.com], yay), and call home (since you end up with a network of them; sure, it'll take a while to get back home, but it's one hell of a cheap way to learn an awful lot about the galaxy).

    Given that it only takes one civilization to have done this, and given that our solar system is probably quite interesting given it's layout, I wouldn't put too high odds on there NOT being such a device hanging around near here.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • ...or maybe we're just the result of a virus of intergalactic scale that some teenage cthulhu accidentally released from his basement.
    • Given that it only takes one civilization to have done this, and given that our solar system is probably quite interesting given it's layout, I wouldn't put too high odds on there NOT being such a device hanging around near here.

      There is, unfortunately it's buried under a ton of asteroid dust on the far side of the moon. We need to send another moon mission to dig it up. It should be rather easy to find, since its such a large magnetic anomaly.

    • We've had intelligent, self-replicating human beings around for quite a while and we haven't accomplished squat, cosmically speaking.
      • "We've had intelligent, self-replicating human beings around for quite a while and we haven't accomplished squat, cosmically speaking."

        Self-replicating? Yes.

        Intelligent? I'm yet to see any evidence of this.
    • Well, since we have yet to discover what exactly makes us sentient, and therefore don't know all of what that brings along with it, perhaps it is an inherent trait of all intelligent life to develop highly inefficient and overly beaurocratic systems of government, such that nothing useful or interesting ever actually gets done, unless it's by a total wacko who then gets locked up in a mental hospital. In which case, even if they're millions of years older than us, they're probably not much farther along, and don't have those probes. ;}
      • Well, since we have yet to discover what exactly makes us sentient

        This is not strictly speaking true evolutionary science has a pretty good hypothesis.

        Evoloution is a balance between Natural Selection (survival) and Sex Selection (propagation). When a species achieves top carnivore status it is no longer predated it become possible to seek out alternative strategies. Natural selection become relatively less important than sexual selection. One such strategy is the development of intelligence, communications ability, even altruism. In the same way that Natural Selection can cause an arms race, Sex Selection drives a similar race in intelligence, communications ability and altruism.

        A similar features appear in many top carnivores, Whales and African Wild Dogs for two examples exhibit a very high intelligence, unusual communication abilites and altruism.
    • All it takes is for someone, somewhere to build an intelligent(ish) self-replicating machine programmed to spread throughout the galaxy - one per interesting star system.

      You mean like God when he made man? Or maybe it was the monolith ;-)

  • It should be pointed out that if extraterrestrials are visiting earth, it is highly probable that they have some means of travel that exceeds the speed of light (wormholes or something?). I won't speculate on how this is done, since I'm not a physicist.

    However, if they do have the resources to do this, then it would be reasonable for them to be able to set up monitoring stations all over the galaxy (in the space of a few million years) to listen for the radio signature of a new intelligent civilization popping into existance (ours, sadly, was Adolf Hitler). Said monitoring station would use whatever technology allows them to exceed the speed of light, and send a message back to their home base letting them know that somebody just invented television.

    After that, the aliens hop into their little flying saucers, head for earth, abduct people, and probe their nether regions.

    At any rate, the article is bunk, because the assumptions it takes are a bit too selective, and it fails to explore some very obvious possibilities.
  • Wrong numbers... (Score:2, Interesting)

    According to the most popular view of this matter, extraterrestrial craft have been flitting across our skies since 1947.

    I thought the most popular view was that they have been visiting for thousands of years... depicted in writing and art all throughout history...

    That's 55 years in a planetary history of 4,600,000,000 years.

    What about their planet's history? It's possible that they havent been able to travel to other planets for that entire time... more like a couple thousand years? Then the ratio is more realistic. (I just love misleading journalists...)

    it implies that there have been millions of expeditions to Earth! We may send the occasional anthropological research team to Borneo, but we don't send millions.

    Think ratio and intrest... first, it doesn't emply millions (how long have they been able to get here? ...not for billions of years)... maybe thousands, but not millions. The ratio part: A few dozen to us may be .000000002% of our population, but a couple thousand of them might be the same percentage... Who cares about boreno? Earth probably holds a great intrest to them... more than borneo to us.

    And it's a lot easier to get to Borneo than to traverse hundreds or thousands of light-years.

    Before our technology developed, we couldn't even get across the damn ocean... so boreno would be a pretty hard place to get to for us thousands of years ago (...from the US). It's probably pretty easy for them to traverse "hundreds of thousands of light-years".... if they even have to go that far. I doubt they come from the other side of the galaxy...

    Let's set aside the question of whether advanced galactic societies would have the slightest interest in our wars, our pollution problems, or our reproductive systems.

    Why do you think humans research organisims on our own planet? We even hold a great interest in organisims at the bottom of the sea where we thought that life couldn't exist... We're different from them, and they have a hunger for knowledge...

    The real question is, how would they know about us at all?

    ...telescopes? Passing by one day? Sub-atomic microtransponder galactic scanners that they have and we havent even imagined up yet? There are plenty of ways to find us...

    I'd comment on the microwave signals we've sent out and your opinion on that... but there are other ways of them knowing we're here... (that takes care of about 3 paragraphs)

    One sided journalism gets to me... so now I had to go and balance it out...
    • Re:Wrong numbers... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mt._Honkey ( 514673 )
      > That's 55 years in a planetary history of 4,600,000,000 years.

      What about their planet's history? It's possible that they haven't been able to travel to other planets for that entire time... more like a couple thousand years? Then the ratio is more realistic. (I just love misleading journalists...)


      How do you know that there are any appreciable number of space-faring civilizations that have developed in the past few thousand years. Our sun is probably a second, maybe third or more, generation star. Many billions of years have gone by. After the first few billion, one would expect life to start reaching towards our level of complexity. That makes the chance of near-by systems developing high speed space travel nearly synchronized with our own technological revolution highly unlikely. This isn't like Star Trek where hundreds of civilizations all start developing warp drive around the same time. What you are saying is just as unlikely as the point the article was trying to make. Read Contact, that one is more likely.
      • Yes... the situation in contact is what I was looking for, but the main point was that it is HIGHLY unlikely that the same aliens have been visiting us for 4.6 billion years...

        Having civilizations grow up and be technologically off by a couple thousand years isn't that far fetched. Take nebulas (the "great pillar" nebula that is starting to fade because planets/stars are forming). The solar systems within there are forming within the same time frame... there have to be star systems that are about the same age as eachother and are pretty close by...

        Even getting to the "micro" evolution of the planets... we (or a different organism on this planet) could have had technology to launch ourselves into space millions of years ago (which would throw off the "millions of years" timeframe from Contact to a couple thousand...) if the dino's didn't go extinct (assuming that evolution would continue and form a sentient being)...

        Of course it is possible that other civilizations have looked at earth billions of years ago, but how likely is it that the same civilization is still around, doing the same old thing? The author assumed in his "numbers" that it was the same... but new ones could be popping up every thousand years or so...
      • Our solar system is a member of the first generation stars that can support life. That doesn't mean our sun and all such first generation stars came into being at the same time. Rather they have emerged, and continue to emerge, after a certain number of generations of stars have lived and died (which is only first and second generation of stars, IIRC) in their neighbourhood. And of those life supportable generation stars, our sun is one of the first (...few billion). It is reasonable to assume we are among the first intelligent lifeforms and even though we probably are not the first, no civilization is much older (deltaAge>3billion years) than us.

        Ofcourse this assumes complex chemistry is required for life. I think this is a fairly good assumption.

  • Statistical Probabilities = 1
    Actual Cold, Hard Evidence = 0

    Math Nerds REJOICE!

    Science Geeks LAUGH!
  • Sometimes I feel as though one should need a license to practise maths.

    It makes little sense to calculate the probability of something that has already occurred. If we have been visited (and as a self-described space nut, I'll admit I find the possibility positively knee-weakening), then that stands as evidence on its own that our being visited is possible.

    I have heard similar arguments for why the end of the human race is very near. The reasoning goes, that since the human population is always growing, it is more probable that I would be born in the 20th century than in any century prior. But wouldn't it then be even more probable if I were born in the 25th century? In fact, the chances of my being born in the 20th century would be vanishingly small. Therefore, it is safe to assume that there will be no people in the 25th century.

    You can prove nearly any crazy idea with this kind of "thinking."
    • The reasoning goes, that since the human population is always growing, it is more probable that I would be born in the 20th century than in any century prior.

      The probability that you were born in the 20th century is either 0 or 1, since that particular event has already occured, so we should introduce a randomly selected human into the dialogue.

      If a person (let's call him X) is chosen at random from the set of all people who have ever or will ever live on the earth, the probability that X was born in the 20th century is greater than the probability that he was born in any particular earlier century, since the 20th century saw more births than any previous century.

      But wouldn't it then be even more probable if I were born in the 25th century?

      Assuming that the 25th century will have more births than any previous century, X would have a higher probability of being born in the 25th than in any previous century.

      In fact, the chances of my being born in the 20th century would be vanishingly small.

      Hmmm. The problem goes back to the premise that the human population is always growing. This cannot continue to be true forever. It will eventually have to level off because the Earth only has enough resources, space, etc to support a finite number of people (which also limits the number of births possible in a given century). Also note that the number of centuries that humans will populate the earth (call it N) is finite.

      This implies some important stuff about the probability distribution of which century X was born in. The probability distribution is discrete. Thus each century has a positive probability of being the century of X's birth.
      If N is large enough for the population to level off, then the probability distribution must level off too. Although the probability that X was born in the 20th century could be made arbitrarily small, the proportion

      (Probability X is born in 20th century)/(Probability X is born in nth century)

      where n is any century in the distant future has a positive bound. In other words, the probability that X is born in the 20th century isn't so much smaller than the probability that x is bron in the 25th that it can be discounted.
  • Along with the other holes pointed out in the article, one big one is that the author has apparently never read 2001.

    Perhaps "They" visited us some time ago, and decided the planet was interesting. This decision may have occurred millions of years ago; scientific optimism aside, I have a hard time swallowing the idea that Earth is a perfectly normal, usual planet with nothing exceptional about that fact that it is teeming with billions of varieties of life. So they leave themselves a probe that can be triggered by something, probably the same radio signals that everyone points out. (Detectable, and much easier to be certain of intelligent origination then nuclear blasts, which can look an awful lot like asteroid strikes from far away. You can do signal analysis on the radio...)

    Then they pushed a grant through the Galatic Science Foundation, hopped into their FTL spacecraft, came here, and started anally probing lots and lots of drunk and mentally distrubed people.

    Don't believe in aliens myself, but this scenario is a major gaping hole in the article. In fact, any intelligence half as curious as us would need some good reason not to leave a probe around something as interesting as Earth...
    • Well, it could be that you're just very egotistical and/or anthropocentric. Not that everyone else isn't, but why exactly is Earth interesting? Maybe there are hundreds of worlds like ours, and the Aliens already know about a bunch of them, and they just dismiss us as another boring statistic.
      • Like I said, I can't accept that planets like Earth are as common as dust. Perhaps life is, but I think there's good reason to think that advanced multi-celluar life, with millions or billions of species, is a bit more rare. Consult one of many tables of "Things we need to live"; large moon, proximity in the past but not present to supernovas, a certain element mix, relatively placid position in the galaxy (a recent article suggested as little as 10% of our galaxy may be habitable in the long term, as too many stars routinely pass through excessively active areas), high elements, perhaps a routine asteroid cleansing, the list goes on. It's by no means a done deal that Earth is uninteresting.

        And even if it is perfectly common... so what? An advanced civilization would still leave a probe, just to see if anything interesting happens. It's not like a probe is very expensive on their terms.

        Think like a scientist... Earth doesn't have to be interesting, just potentially be interesting at some point in the future. That's why I say it could have happened millions of years ago.
  • This [lanl.gov] tries to give the answer - almost. For those to lazy to read the whole paper, these Australien scientists conclude that:
    It is sometimes assumed that the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe. Here we critically examine the assumptions inherent in this if-life-evolved-rapidly-life-must-be-common argument. We use the observational constraints on the rapidity of biogenesis on Earth to infer the probability of biogenesis on terrestrial planets with the same unknown probability of biogenesis as the Earth. We find that on such planets, older than ~ 1 Gyr, the probability of biogenesis is > 33% at the 95% confidence level. This quantifies an important term in the Drake Equation but does not necessarily mean that life is common in the Universe.
    Warning: uses math heavily, and thus can be derided as simply theoretic. Hah-hah.
  • Aliens visit us all the time. Those nasty grays are always letting their El Chupacabras run loose.
    One in California bred with a dog, and a Chupa pup is wreaking havoc in Massachusetts.

    http://www.uncoveror.com/chupa.htm
    http://www.u ncoveror.com/chupa2.htm
    http://www.uncoveror.com/ chupa3.htm
    http://www.uncoveror.com/chupa4.htm

    They have attacked us with Solaranite.
    http://www.uncoveror.com/invaders.htm

    The Air Force and NASA know it, and are covering it up!
    http://www.uncoveror.com/ufos.htm
    http://www.un coveror.com/martians.htm
    http://www.uncoveror.com /mars2.htm
    http://www.uncoveror.com/zhtitikofft.h tm

    And we got UNIX from the computers on the Roswell UFO! Microsoft has even used this alien technology.

    http://www.uncoveror.com/aliens.htm
    http://www. uncoveror.com/microunix.htm

    We report this stuff on The Uncoveror all the time, but people still don't seem to know about it!
    (music)It's my website, ans I'll deep-link if I want to!(/music)
  • How about this scenario? We've only been 'civilized' for about 10,000 years, and already we're on the cusp of medical, computer, nanotechnology, and other breakthrus that will transcend us far beyond being mere humans. That means the window of 'pre-advanced' civilization is extremely small. Intelligent life basically goes from nothing to beyond everything in a very short time. This means if an advanced civilization should accidently happen upon us while we're in that 'pre-advanced' state, we would be VERY VERY interesting to them. They would try not to interefere, so they could continue to study us, but just couldn't help sending as many researchers as possible. I think it's a great explanation for why we never really are able to prove we've been visited, but why bumpkins in the backwoods keep reporting lots of encounters.

  • Leave it to an article on alien visitations to bring out the most hilarious and illogical opinions on everything from probability to theology. I have been studying, nonacademically admittedly, the idea of the presence of nonhuman intelligence on Earth for a good 40 years, and no-one ever seems to really get the point. There is only one set of primary conditions that would lead to such a reality:

    1) Detection--there must be a way, not necessarily technical, to determine from afar that Earth is of some interest to visit--random discovery just doesn't cut it in terms of a very large universe, and

    2) Means--it must be possible to get here from there. This implies a way around special relativity or its disproval, or it implies close physical proximity, a case ignored by most researchers since Donald Keyhoe claimed there were aliens based under the surface of Mars.

    Those two conditions are both necessary and sufficient to guarantee the presence of aliens on Earth. Everything else is just blowing smoke rings.
    • It seems pretty unlikely that aliens frequent our modest little sphere. I just can't see what they would get from a field trip, that they can't get from our broadcasts for free. To say nothing of what they might think of the broadcasts that deal with the what ifs surrounding our discovery of their excursions.

      I suppose I wonder what void does this willingness to believe in E.T. fill? Does God seem remote and unbelievible to some, and they have this need to believe in something greater? Or does it flow from our secret belief that we are infinitely fascinating and deserving of attention? Now that we know our tiny blue home isn't the geographic center of the universe are some people trying to reinvent it as the social center?
  • The author's calculation is completely spurious. Rather than an elaborate technical explanation, think about it: the same would apply to people traveling to the moon, or even explorers traveling to Antarctica. Both the moon and Antarctica have been around for a long time, what is "the probability that people would actually go there"?

    The age of the earth doesn't matter for this kind of calculation. What matters is the propensity for space travel of aliens, the duration of trips, the prevalence of earth-like planets, the expected lifetime of spacefaring civilizations, and the ability of aliens to detect earth-like planets.

    • Both the moon and Antarctica have been around for a long time, what is "the probability that people would actually go there"


      We didn't visit the moon right at the same time a moon-sivilisation started to use electric signals and the like.

      The whole point of the article was, that the aliens apparently visited us within the last 55 years, when we got technically adept.

      (But then, as someone else pointed out, yes, the aliens could have vizitied 25 milion years ago, and left a probe, that started sending signals when man evolved)

      • We didn't visit the moon right at the same time a moon-sivilisation started to use electric signals and the like. The whole point of the article was, that the aliens apparently visited us within the last 55 years, when we got technically adept.

        Yes, and the whole point of the article was wrong. If aliens visit at random, they are a Poisson process, and the number of visits you see depends only on length you observe. Civilization, using electricity, etc., enhances the probability of visits over the past 55 years.

  • If aliens visit us at random, their visits are distributed according to a Poisson process. The number of visits you see depends only how long you watch, not how long the process has been going on.

    It is true, of course, that if we see, say, 1 visit per year (the same spacecraft flying around the planet a few times, resulting in many sightings), there must have been 1 million visits over the last million years, but so what? A million years is a long time.

    Of course, more likely, aliens pick planets to visit based on whether they might harbor interesting life forms, which means that the frequency of visits probably has increased greatly over the last hundreds of millions of years.

"If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in the cigarettes?" -- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970

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