Why Life On Mars May Foretell Our Doom 431
Hugh Pickens writes "Nick Bostrom has an interesting interpretation on why the failure of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) for the past half-century is good news and why the discovery of life on Mars could foretell our doom. Bostrom postulates a 'Great Filter,' which can be thought of as a probability barrier and consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems."
Life on Mars? (Score:3)
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As for the doom foretold by finding any or by the success of SETI? Come on. The aliens are already here.
The problem is that they have surrounded Earth with the cosmic equivalent of yellow tape. Hence the strange activities of those aliens which have been spotted.
Some of them are CSI detectives trying to figure out what's wrong with the lifeforms on this planet. The rest are teenagers sneaking across the line on a dare to m
Ignores possibility of the Singularity (Score:5, Insightful)
After all our own civilization has pretty much lost interest in anything beyond putting up more geostationary TV transmitters.
What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities. What if many simply don't bother leaving their own solar system because the speed of light proves to be unbreakable and they aren't interested in planting colonies that will have little or no contact or impact on their own civilization?
Or what if we just got lucky and got a galaxy to ourselves?
Re:Ignores possibility of the Singularity (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, the whole article (what I read of it before my eyes glazed over and I passed out) seems to revolve around this whole idea of the existence of a "Great Filter" event that makes technologically advanced species highly unlikely. He bases this on the statistical probabilities of such a species existing but not contacting us, but offers no really convincing arguments that such a filter event must exist.
However, I would argue that with the number of planets out there (many millions probably, since we've managed to find some around lots of stars, and we can't even detect the Earth-sized ones yet) and the vast distances involved, the chances of some interstellar-traveling species coming upon our particular little planet is pretty slim, no matter what sci-fi would have you believe. If the civilization lives, say, 200 million light years away, it could have been making a beeline for us since the beginning of mankind and still not be anywhere near reaching us.
Much of our fantasizing about extraterrestrial life has assumed that there is some way to travel faster than light and we just haven't discovered it yet. However, what if there really isn't? What if physics simply won't allow faster than light travel? In that case, unless the advanced civilization was extraordinarily close to us, it's virtually impossible for them to have encountered us by now, even if they had been out landing on other planets for thousands or millions of years.
My theory (hypothesis really, since it's not particularly testable) is that it's impossible to know or even meaningfully speculate on the existence of extraterrestrial life given the limits of our current knowledge of the Universe. We are a flea on an elephant's back trying to understand the entirety of the elephant using nothing but a magnifying glass. It's probably impossible to really get the whole picture, and even if it isn't it will take a really long time.
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If the civilization lives, say, 200 million light years away, it could have been making a beeline for us since the beginning of mankind and still not be anywhere near reaching us.
Most of TFA surrounded life in our galaxy. 200 million light years away is VASTLY bigger than our galaxy. It is a region of space that contains perhaps 1000 galaxies. Our galaxy, in contrast is about 100,000 light years wide.
On the other hand I do disagree with TFA that intergalactic colonization will ever be possible, essentially for the argument you may have inadvertently expressed above. Intergalactically the distances are too vast. But galactically not so much on the time scales he's talking about.
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Re:Ignores possibility of the Singularity (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for the assumption of a Great Filter comes out of the Fermi Paradox. If you start by looking at the Drake Equation and the assumption that Earth like planets with intelligent civilizations are not that uncommon, you very quickly come to the conclusion that there should be a whole lot of intelligent species in just our own galaxy. Further, since there are billions of stars which existed well before our own (talking billions of years before) one would expect that there should be at least a few advanced civilizations which have had time to colonize our galaxy. Even with slow generation ships this should only take on the order of a couple hundred million years. If they only started out while our planet was cooling, they should have found us by now, known that this planet was going to be Earth-like and setup shop back when they could go hunting Dinosaurs.
So, where the hell are they?
However, I would argue that with the number of planets out there (many millions probably, since we've managed to find some around lots of stars, and we can't even detect the Earth-sized ones yet) and the vast distances involved, the chances of some interstellar-traveling species coming upon our particular little planet is pretty slim, no matter what sci-fi would have you believe.
Much of our fantasizing about extraterrestrial life has assumed that there is some way to travel faster than light and we just haven't discovered it yet. However, what if there really isn't? What if physics simply won't allow faster than light travel? In that case, unless the advanced civilization was extraordinarily close to us, it's virtually impossible for them to have encountered us by now, even if they had been out landing on other planets for thousands or millions of years.
Yes, but in the amount of time in which the Milky Way is known to have existed; and assuming that space faring civilizations are not ridiculously uncommon; they've had plenty of time to map this galaxy.
The oldest known star in our galaxy is about 13 billion years old, so the galaxy is at least that old, if not close to the actual age of the Universe itself (current estimates put it around 13.7 billion years). So, let's try to make some reasonable assumptions. For example, let us assume that it took our galaxy half of it's life to produce the first space faring civilization which felt the need to expand. If we call the formation of the galaxy year 0 and go forward, this civilization would have set out to colonize the universe at year 6.5 billion. Our very own solar system was still about 1.96 billion years from forming. At about 250 billion stars in our galaxy, it means that they would have needed to map an average of 128 stars a year to know about the Earth when it was forming. And then they had another 4 billion plus years before humans decided to show up, reducing the mapping load to 42 stars a year on average. And they probably wouldn't need to visit every star. Even with the technology we have now, we can get a good idea of what a star is like and know where it is. Our ability to detect exoplanets is getting better and better; it is quite possible that we will reach a point where we can detect Earth-like planets without the need to go there. So the mapping need would really amount to only visiting stars with likely planets. The problem is that, they should have had billions of years to be finding planets, not just the paltry millions you are giving them.
So again, where the hell are they?
There are only a few possible logical conclusions:
A) They're hiding - For whatev
Re:Ignores possibility of the Singularity (Score:5, Insightful)
1) What if they already mapped our solar system a billion years ago, and it just wasn't to their taste. You assume there is something great about our solar system that they'd want to hang around. What if they like 7G's of gravity with a methane atmosphere and liquid water surface? We don't might not have any planets that are to their particular taste, so they moved on from this wasteland of a solar system.
2) What if they mapped it out, but it wasn't quite right then? Maybe they dropped off seeds to kick off life on earth. Maybe they started some 'terraforming' on some planet, say Mars, that has changed it's atmosphere, but they just haven't come back yet to move in to the changed digs?
3) Maybe it takes a hell of a lot of resources to make a generation ship needed for travel, and they take much longer to produce than you think, or aren't made at a lot of the 'destination' planets because it would use too much resources. In any case, exploration may take a lot longer than you think it should for them.
4) We've likely only been 'advanced' enough to be interesting to talk to (if we actually are yet) for maybe a few thousand years. That's a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of time on the galactic scale. If their nearest inhabited planet is a few hundred light years away, why would they waste resources sending a ship to say hi to some funny looking monkeys?
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1) What if they already mapped our solar system a billion years ago, and it just wasn't to their taste. You assume there is something great about our solar system that they'd want to hang around. What if they like 7G's of gravity with a methane atmosphere and liquid water surface? We don't might not have any planets that are to their particular taste, so they moved on from this wasteland of a solar system.
Sure, that might explain why a particular spacefaring civilization hasn't shown up in our neighborhood.
But the question we have to ask isn't "Why hasn't spacefaring civilization X set up shop in our neighborhood?"
The question is "Why is it that, out of the hundreds of billions of solar systems that exist or have existed since the beginning of the Milky Way, not a single one has produced a spacefaring civilization with a detectable presence in our corner of the galaxy?" Are all spacefaring civilizations in
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1) What if they already mapped our solar system a billion years ago...
This is my main sticking point here. Surely a civilisation advanced enough to travel interstellar distances would be advanced enough to scan a planet from orbit rather than requiring a landing party? Human history is so incredibly short compared to the timespans we're talking here that even if an alien species DID land on Earth sometime more than, say, 5000 years ago, we'd probably never know unless they left empty Alpha-Zorp-Cola cans everywhere when they left. And if they simply orbited once or twice, sa
Re:Ignores possibility of the Singularity (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you get to the technological development where we are now, the destructive capability available to an individual increases exponentially. There comes a point where a few individuals obtain the power to destroy all life on Earth (i.e. the US President's football). Eventually more and more individuals obtain that power through biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc. At some point in the next few hundred years, that capability will probably be about as common or as easy to obtain as an automatic pistol is now. If a civilization gets to that point and hasn't figured out how to deal with excessive economic inequalities, tribal or national rivalries, mental illness, even bullying, then the result of a Columbine-style freak-out (let alone the stuff going on in Africa and the Middle-East) can be the end of the human race.
Now if you're a galactic civilization, the last thing you're going to do is be stupid enough to get yourself mixed up in that kind of a mess. All intelligent species would evolve with very strong competitive instincts. Humans wouldn't be very happy with an external civilization imposing their values on us and tinkering with our genes and institutions to "help" us through this transition. Right now, there would almost certainly be groups with libertarian leanings that would lead a strong xenophobic backlash (I mean, just look at how we're dealing with the implications of Climate Change). A few unsuccessful attempts that led to massive death tolls among galactics and required the genocide of species that lashed out in xenophobic paranoia would provide a strong warning against further meddling and ample motivation to avoid detection.
It's probably going to take us some close calls and brushes with extinction before we get enough motivation to develop protocols and institutions to help identify high risk individuals and dangerous memetic systems. Note that a dictatorial police state would not be a stable long term solution to this problem; my gut feel is there's a good chance it will require genetic tinkering.
So in my mind, the filter we have to go through is a race between the democratization of the power of extinction with the development of non-tyrannical institutions to prevent that. In that sense, the humbling of the USA "superpower" in its attempt to establish imperialist control of oil resources in Iraq is a useful lesson that takes us part of the way down that path. But it's one that will probably need to be reiterated quite a few more times over the next centuries before it sticks. Until it does, any galactic civilisations will be wise to extensively record the results for any young races that might be stupid enough to think intervention is possible. They'll bring out the popcorn, sit it out, and just watch until we can show we've matured as a species to the point where ALL of us are safe enough to contact (either as self-controlled individuals or as self-inflicted piles of bones).
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From my days as a physics major (before I hit the brick wall of Quantum Mechanics), I remember that the problem isn't going faster than the speed of light. You can do that. You just can't speed up from sub-light speeds, pass the speed of light, and then go faster than light. You could start out faster than light, but then you would be unable to slow down to sub-light speeds again.
As far as the chances of there being intelligent life out there ve
He ignores DISTANCE. (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the trilobites couldn't find a way to get to the sweet Earth oceans before Mars dried up on them. And, therefore, there is a "Great Filter" that prevents us from colonizing the galaxy.
WTF ?!?
The "Great Filter" is DISTANCE. It takes a LONG TIME and a LOT OF ENERGY to travel from one solar system to the next. Extrapolating our demise from the failure of a bunch of imaginary trilobites' space program is
The galaxy is HUGE. Even if
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"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program." -Larry Niven
Also... The Galaxy is 100,000 light years across.
So if a civilization is able to travel at 1/10th the speed of light, they can get to one side of the other in a million years. Sounds like a long time, but cosmologically a million years
I can explain the flaw easier. (Score:4, Insightful)
So his theory is flawed.
Now, whether a million years is significant or not
It is not in the entire history of Life.
It is VERY significant in the history of any single species.
You assume that such civilization would instantly launch a ship to each and every star and that none of those ships would have problems in the million year long flight. Although many ships would have to cross our galactic core.
Rather, a civilization would colonize the area around it
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Now, whether a million years is significant or not ...
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It is VERY significant in the history of any single species.
That's an absurd statement. It depends on how long that species has existed. A specie could, for example have reached space-colonization state for, lets say 100 million years ago. They go ahead and start colonizing. Let's say it takes them about 1000 years to travel and settle (that is a long time) and for the new colony to start colonizing. Assume that the mother planet and all colonies start 10 colonization expeditions every 1000 years. After 100 million years (today) they would have colonized the vast
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Not really, it just means that they have been hiding from us this whole time, and life is common. He accepts that whatever aliens exist could be hoodwinking us, but it's not worth considering. If they are, they are doing a damn good job of it and we aren't likely to fi
You're still thinking on the planetary scale. (Score:3, Insightful)
That is correct. But when you're talking inter-stellar distances, it is meaningless.
... your great-great-grandkids MIGHT see the resupply ship. You are on your own.
Our previous colonies could look forward to resupplies within a couple of years (at the most). A colony in another solar system
And THAT is even considering that you're on an Earth-clone planet. If you're on a space station (the way I believe it
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So if you simply planet hopped to all planets closet to your planet and then colonized and then repeated the process you could colonize the galaxy a lot faster than it took for evolution to go from single cell creatures to mammals... Heck... You could do it before amphibian and dinosaurs show up.
There is a third possible answer - that the ecological niches in the galaxy tend to be already filled with entities that are hostile to such exponential growth. (As, indeed, are the ecological niches on Earth.) That suggests that the Great Silence may be a defensive mechanism, which would have very worrying implications for us, as we sit here broadcasting away the fact of our existence.
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He's got Sagan-itis, the irrational fear that because he failed to get ET to call us, every civilization is doomed. Actually it wouldn't surprise me to learn that manned spaceflight is basically impractical. So far we've gotten to our moon, but we haven't been there long enough to live through one magnetosphere passage, let's talk about lunar colonies after we're sure one day doesn't include an ant-bully with a magnifying glass frying us. Next on the agenda is Mars, yet the radiation doses in the six month
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The time it would take to cross the galaxy is chump change compared to evolutionary timescales.
How big is the Milky Way ? 100 000 light years across.
Assuming we sent out our fastest ship to date back when the mammoth walked around Michigan, we would not even been to our nearest star system by now. The universe is BIG place. Even if the very first human somehow built and launched a ship that could travel half the speed of light, he would not have made it across the milky way by now!
Re:He ignores DISTANCE. (Score:4, Interesting)
And don't forget that our Sun is a second-generation star. The lack of heavy elements makes developing technology on a planet orbiting a first-generation star, but a civilisation evolving around one that didn't kill itself off by now would have had a few billion years head start on us by now. If our rate of technological progress continues linearly (which would involve quite a slow-down) then a million years is enough time for us to colonise the entire galaxy, decide it was a bad idea, clean up all evidence of our existence and go off somewhere else.
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If we take the view that intelligent life has the same rules of evolution then one is eventually bound to evolve like a bacteria and spread to every planet possible. Even if there are millions of intelligent civilizations in the universe quite content to never leave their solar system, all it takes one species hellbent on galactic colonization before they are on every
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ascended Ancients have rules that say they can't c (Score:2)
Re:Ignores possibility of the Singularity (Score:4, Informative)
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Evolution describes the mechanism that underlies the observed differences in physical form between related animals or plants. There is simply no "exit" from the physical form predicted by evolutionary theory, that would be like asking if some players in a basket ball game might swim to the basket.
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Sigh. Stop worshiping at the altar of Darwin for a few minutes. Evolution only holds when discussing the development of life in the ABSENCE OF INTELLIGENT DIRECTION. Once H. Sapiens crossed the line into sentience Darwin went right the hell out of the window because whether or not "Intelligent Design" is part of our past doesn't matter because it IS our future.
We already live in a world where most of the organisms we see are the products of design... genetic e
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Sorry, I can't quite figure out if you're just making fun, or actually believe that last stuff you wrote.
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We already live in a world where most of the organisms we see are the products of design ... genetic engineered by US to serve OUR needs
While our presence has undoubtedly impacted on nearly every creature on earth one way or another, this does not make them designed by us. One could say that creatures have co-evolved with us, and some creatures (especially farm related things) have been artificially selected by us, but its been only very recently that we have begun to play with proper genetic engineering (i.e. proper design).
For one I hope that we do change our own na
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I'm not saying that, say, NASA has our best interests in mind, but if you can develop the space elevator in a close time scale, then it makes sense to put all available and useful effort into that right now, because it trumps pretty much every non-imaginary means of getting to orbit.
That's unpossible (Score:3, Informative)
What if most evolve beyond physical forms?
There is no such thing as "beyond physical." Everything we know of has a basis in physical reality. Even ideas. Unless you're positing some kind of transcendental disembodied magic, everything has a physical existence.
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The guy dismisses the possibility that most civilizations evolve in some direction other than midlessly colonizing every star they can reach.
Actually, that wouldn't be mindless at all, and any intelligent species will try to colonize space eventually. They have no choice. Anything else would be suicidal.
Where the article goes wrong is where it assumes that there is some trait we can evolve towards that is the "Great Filter", and that therefore, the Great Filter for life on Mars is in any way relevant for Earth. That is an absurd idea.
The Filter will vary from planet to planet and from species to species. On Mars it was probably (if there w
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What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities.
A civilization losing itself in virtual realities ala Matrix would be an instance of a "great filter" the author is talking about. But you make a good point about the speed of light being unbreakable after all. That would certainly dampen interest in inter-stellar exploration.
I suspect that any future FTL travel will be in the form of "stargates" constructed via sub-light automatic probes. That scenario makes the "they are there but not contacting us" option much more likely. A stargate could be sittin
What about the opposite of the Singularity? (Score:3, Interesting)
The most interesting scenario he pointed out is one in which exponential technological progress is a temporary phase, like a 13-year-old's growth spurt, and the curve of development goes S-shaped and reaches a high but stationary plateau.
Vinge pointed out a book called "The Coming of the Golden Age -- a View of the End of Pr
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R'd T F A (Score:2)
Re:R'd T F A (Score:4, Insightful)
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No doubt. Of course, there's nothing about the concept of "ethic" that implies "We'll let you live out your pathetic lives peacefully on your planet, instead of building an Interstellar Bypass through it."
Remember, the Azteca had Ethics too.
"ethic" != "nice"
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> include something past our current tech level..
Except most instances of the Drake Equation I have seen ialready included the possibility of blowing up.
About the only real insight this guy has is instead of pondering the implications of the Drake Equation regarding little green men he is asking what the implications of the size of the various improbabilities might mean for US.
But like all attempts to make sense of the Drake Equation it
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Another possibility that your wording excluded (perhaps inadvertently) is that the filter might be between the origin of life and the origin of intelligent life... or multicellular life. Either of those steps might be very unlikely; we don't really have any way of knowing. Perhaps the galaxy is teeming with the equivalent of blue-green algae.
Web server's "great filter" (Score:2)
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Or... (Score:2)
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And SETI is searching a narrow range because the frequencies outside that range get garbled in the interstellar noise.
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If true, then they wouldn't matter since we wouldn't be able to interact anyway.
Fermi Paradox (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [wikipedia.org]
The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.
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1. Our estimates are off because we are opperating with faulty data.
2. Life evolves into intelligent life nearly 100% of the time, and nearly 100% of intelligent life actively disguises itself from detection.
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Sometimes I'm glad we haven't found anything. How embarrassing it would be, like having guests show up during a ugly fight with your spouse. (hehe, that episode of Office was painful!)
I'm not sure we deserve to meet an advanced alien race. Humans pretty much suck, we'd prolly figure out a way to try to war with them anyway.
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It's a bit early to make that statement. We've merely avoided all-out nuclear war for about 50 years. The opportunities are still all-too present.
IMHO it's simple: The energies required for an interplanetary civilization, let alone an interstellar civilization, are SO great that if a species has more than the slightest tendency to make war with itself, it will extinguish either itself or its technol
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IMHO it's simple: The energies required for an interplanetary civilization, let alone an interstellar civilization, are SO great that if a species has more than the slightest tendency to make war with itself, it will extinguish either itself or its technological base.
I disagree. We have no idea whether or not war based on that level of power will yield the total destruction of the species. It's never happened, so any statement on the matter probably has more to do with a person's view of humanity than reality.
Our own drive to nuclear weaponry was accompanied by underground bunkers, improved food preservation techniques, massive and long term archiving of information, etc. Who knows how far we are from being able to create sustainable bases on the moon or Mars? There
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I'd wait until the human race grows up a little before I came knocking on the door...that is, if I didn't already live here myself.
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Did the Conquistadors show up pretending to Aztecs?
If the Aliens are there and undetected they are quiet cruel for letter us suffer with our ignorance with death and disease. At least the conquistadors thought they were doing the Aztecs a favor by giving them Christianity albeit small pox.
If there are Aliens out there they obviously don't care about other sentient life
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Why do people have this need to elevate aliens to near godlike status.
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What if "they" do come here? What if there are lots of sightings? What if people who report sightings are dismissed as lunatics?
Gamesters of Triskelion (Score:2)
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The universe is estimated to be at least 93 billion light years across.
Assuming that special relativity* is mostly correct, if a civilization evolves at the opposite end of the universe, it will take us at least 93 billion years to find out.
*Special relativity: Nothing travels faster than light in a vacuum. No exceptions.
As a point of comparison, the Earth is about 3.9 billion years old, with the oldest meteorite
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****
I think it's simpler than this, even. Any communication traveling at the speed of light(tm) would be a very weak signal that would be pointed at a specific location, much like our space probes currently are. Voyager 1 isn't even a significant distance to the nearest star and it's already almost too faint to pick up.
As such, the need to develop faster than li
Easy (Score:2)
Real shame about the 'flaming skulls' incident..real shame.
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Why Doesn't Bostrom Work on A Chicken Farm? (Score:2)
The Great Filter? WOW! (Score:2, Funny)
Cripes, I known fellers like that.
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Rough Neighborhood (Score:2)
The Earth isn't going to be habitable for much longer. Solar output increases with the age of the Sun, which will eventually tip the Earth into thermal runaway.
The problem with aliens (Score:2)
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As far as mode of communication, SETI is blind to that -- it's independent of *how* such communication is done, only that the aliens are sending some kind of EM energy at that frequency. (It is again by necessity that they look for signals above the background level.
The most interesting part of the article (Score:2)
In other words, even if the universe is infinite, it is finite to us! And, it must always be finite. Period. End of story. I'd never heard that expressed before. It
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Nick Bostrom (Score:2)
He seems here to be pulling the same kind of statistical trick as he did in the simulation argument: estimating the probability of what is in our experience a necessarily singular event by considering many thousands or millions of like events. This is anti-scientific in the highest
Because they can, so they will (Score:2)
I think there is a final great filter, and that it is ahead of us. Technology increases power, and people use power. Ultimately it is likely that the power to destroy all life on earth, or at least all intelligent life, will exist, and someone will use that power. Will we leave e
Great Filter - bah! (Score:2)
Unfounded premise (Score:2)
Consider, for example that in our present physics the low edge of space-time scale is a
Any life on Mars in also on Earth (Score:3, Insightful)
So, there is is likely to be life on Mars, and it is likely to be pretty similar to some life on Earth, proving nothing on the big question of where is everybody.
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We have found meteorites from Mars that have not been severely shocked. (By shocked, I mean have been metamorphosed by high velocity shock waves passing through the material, which would kill any bacteria.) This was a surprise when found, but now numerical modeling shows that the shock waves from a very large meteor strike (the kind that makes 100 km sized craters) will reflect off the internal structure in the planet, lifting large amounts of material "gently" into space. Of tha
Space Marines (Score:2)
One bad misassumption... (Score:2)
Another explanation for no visible signs of life (Score:2)
There's another reason we don't see extra-terrestrial civilizations: time and distance.
As the article notes, we can't actually see extra-terrestrial planets. All our looking for ET civilizations is done by watching for indirect signs of them passing Earth, primarily radio waves. Here on Earth, though, it's only been in the last 2 centuries that we've been putting out any radio signature at all, and we're rapidly moving towards putting out less and less of a signature. Communications systems that broadcast
Where to begin..... (Score:2)
Let's start here: "The oldest confirmed microfossils date from approximately 3.5 billion years ago, and there is tentative evidence that life might have existed a few hundred million years before that; but there is no evidence of life before 3.8 billion years ago."
Life began on Earth not too long (in geological terms) after the conditions for supporting life as we know it were available. The Earth is thought to be roughly
Good article, but... (Score:2)
Just as we only have one example of a life-supporting planet, we only have one example of an intelligent species. There is a tacit assumption in science fiction that other species would stumble onto language, mathematics, and advanced technology, even if their brains were organized in a m
Slashdotted (Score:2)
Technology Review - Published by MITMay/June 2008
Where Are They?
Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.
By Nick Bostrom
People got very excited in 2004 when NASA's rover Opportunity discovered evidence that Mars had once been wet. Where there is water, there may be life. After more than 40 years of human exploration, culminating in the ongoing Mars Exploration Rover mission, scientists are planning still more missions to study the plane
That wasn't Life on Mars (Score:2)
alternative theory from countless sci-fi novels... (Score:3, Funny)
With two such crazies, even the aggressors would hide lest they meet their doom in a kinetic fireball. Planets and space habitats are just too easy a target.
This fits with UFO observations too. We see their ships, but not their home worlds. Ships are mobile and hyperspace travel may be untraceable. Additionally, why would they communicate with us when we're broadcasting everything into space? That's crazy talk. It's only a matter of time before the Zurgs find us, drop some comets in our oceans and turn Earth into an algae farm or just bust it up and leave us for dead.
Hell, it may have happened before. We have an asteroid belt that some propose was formerly a planet. Our Moon was supposedly formed through some sort of cataclysmic collision between Earth and some other large planetoid.
We need ships. Lots of them. We're sitting ducks out here.
The CmdrTaco Law (Score:2)
Translated to the possibility of intelligent civilisations in our universe (or galaxy) the most probable likleyhood is that there is neither an all encompassing galactic civilisation nor is there an utter dearth of intelligent civilisations. Ther
What if interstellar travel IS the great filter? (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be, for example, that a minimal interstellar expedition costs 20 years production of the entire civilization.
That's a lot of effort to put into finding out that the neighboring star system consists of dead rocks, and even if we're lucky and find a habitable planet, it's our great-to-the-nth grandchildren who will reap the benefit.
Can you really see any human civilization taking such an enormous gamble? What politician is going to tell the people "You'll have to pay 20% more tax for the next 100 years, because I want to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, which is probably a dead rock, but our great-great-great-great grandchildren will be very interested in the result" ?
If a lunatic dictator did embark on such a folly, would his successor, and his successor, share his monomania?
It only takes one politician in a century tp see some advantage in offering the people a huge tax cut, and the project would lapse.
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Mature enough? Wouldn't it suck to be the last human who dies of war and disease and then the aliens show up and say "Ok. The rest of you get FTL space travel, a cure for cancer, and eternal youth!"
If there was a benevolent alien race the first thing it would do is find sentient life and enlighten it or exterminate it depending its views of what constitutes suffering.
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If there was a benevolent alien race the first thing it would do is find sentient life and enlighten it or exterminate it depending its views of what constitutes suffering.
Why are those the only two options? This seems to be a very Western/Christian view on the whole issue. They'll either be door-knockers with pamphlets on the 'Good News' or they'll be 'convert or die' types.
What if they're more like Buddhists? Content having reached their present level of enlightenment, yet unwilling to go out and explain their beliefs/knowledge to others unless they come and ask about it.
I realize that by bringing religion into this, I'm heading for flamewar territory, but the simil
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There's intelligent life on Earth? Where? Certainly there isn't much intelligence among the misnamed species H. sapiens. Oh we like to THINK we're intelligent, as if pulling sticky black stuff out of the ground and burning it or covering the earth with it was intelligent, or continually breeding without regards to our finite resources was intelligent, or our occasional fits of mass murder when we slaughter millions of our own for ideals which a mere couple gene
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