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Fermi's Paradox, the Great Filter and the...


I'mConvinced

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Great thread....fun to read, and I think all the good points have already been made by several members above . Like others I think distance and the scarcity of space faring aliens probably are the main reasons.

But........is it possible 'they' were already here in man's distant past and gave rise to our legends of gods, etc...? Maybe they were careful not to leave any hard evidence of their visit.

Perhaps we were just too primitive for them to consider open contact and they simply left. This is of course.....just speculation.   

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I’ll try to respond to this as if I don’t know the story behind what we’re dealing with, and instead focus on just the idea of extraterrestrials;

Our written record of history doesn’t go back more than several thousands of years. Even if an extraterrestrial vehicle was sent here and got here after many years, the arrival could have been many millions of years ago. And, even if a vehicle did get here, it wouldn’t necessarily be here for species settlement.

Psychic ability is very important to factor in as well. If that’s sufficiently developed, they’re not going to need to access the Earth to make observations of life here, unless they want to physically manipulate the life here in some way, Also, if manipulating life on other planets is somehow against their moral philosophy, then they obviously won’t do such a thing.

 

Edited by OntarioSquatch
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I've always thought it's possible the big bang is the result of the previous universe collapsing; an infinite cycle.

IF this is the case then our universe may be in its infant stage & we are the first, or among the first to become sentient & get to this level of technology...

This could be why we've had no contact with other life forms? Someone has to be the first- it could be us:o

Edited by Dejarma
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44 minutes ago, doctor wu said:

is it possible 'they' were already here in man's distant past and gave rise to our legends of gods, etc...?

Ancient aliens show surely makes amusing stories but, good romantic stories aside, it is unrealistic bmo and for exact same reasons noted earlier, mainly distances. Civilization is relatively young when compared with history of life on our planet and, nearest stars to our Sun aside, for anyone to travel from more distant ones it would take more than a lifespan of civilization on Earth to get here. Milky Way is some 100,000LY in size. So let's assume that there is advanced alien civilization on far end of Milky Way, it would take them tens of thousands of years to get to the Earth if they travel with light speed.

I just can't believe in such visits and if aliens were able to travel in some other way which allow for faster travel i believe we would known more about them.

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1 hour ago, Sir Smoke aLot said:

Ancient aliens show surely makes amusing stories but, good romantic stories aside, it is unrealistic bmo and for exact same reasons noted earlier, mainly distances. Civilization is relatively young when compared with history of life on our planet and, nearest stars to our Sun aside, for anyone to travel from more distant ones it would take more than a lifespan of civilization on Earth to get here. Milky Way is some 100,000LY in size. So let's assume that there is advanced alien civilization on far end of Milky Way, it would take them tens of thousands of years to get to the Earth if they travel with light speed.

I just can't believe in such visits and if aliens were able to travel in some other way which allow for faster travel i believe we would known more about them.

The problem with speculating about aliens is that they are ..well.... alien. We really don't know what their motivations might be. The distances involved certainly are formidable and would be a huge factor in any race traveling among the stars. If they did have some type of FTL travel who's to say they couldn't have come and gone without leaving any real  indication they were ever here. ?

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On 10/4/2017 at 7:11 PM, doctor wu said:

The problem with speculating about aliens is that they are ..well.... alien. We really don't know what their motivations might be. The distances involved certainly are formidable and would be a huge factor in any race traveling among the stars. If they did have some type of FTL travel who's to say they couldn't have come and gone without leaving any real  indication they were ever here. ?

Even FTL travel doesn't mean that they had pointed their starship towards the Earth. Radio waves from our planet are traveling the space for relatively short time and speed of light didn't allow for them to break barriers and 'pollute' whole galaxy, actually, 'pollution' is local in terms of astronomical distances ( the Milky Way is some 100.000LY in size as mentioned already ).

Than, we would see some effect of such travels in our Solar System with so many probes keeping track of large space around the Earth. And we had not, so far.

If they were here thousands of years ago ( as proposed in Stargate, i loved that series ) maybe we could not find clue today.

Maybe they were here, maybe they ( aliens ) keep coming every once in a while, maybe they even live among us... But all we can do is speculate and both sides of this story are right in a way, as we can reason for both views and we still can't go far in understanding. Not without more advances in technology which would make it possible to send probes further and 'see' further with more details. 

From our point of view tho, technically, it's impossible but we might not be even close to the level of some other civilization from other planet. At least we have interesting things to think about in our lives :)

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What about religion? When I was young religion seemed to be on the way out. But it is still with us. What if a worldwide theocracy is created in which people believe God created everything, and life began only here on Earth? If so, no one will want to look beyond the Earth for life because they don't believe it exists elsewhere. If that is the fate of all civilizations throughout the galaxy, then perhaps they are out there but have no desire to contact anyone because they don't believe anyone else exists.

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6 minutes ago, Derek Willis said:

What about religion? When I was young religion seemed to be on the way out. But it is still with us. What if a worldwide theocracy is created in which people believe God created everything, and life began only here on Earth? If so, no one will want to look beyond the Earth for life because they don't believe it exists elsewhere. If that is the fate of all civilizations throughout the galaxy, then perhaps they are out there but have no desire to contact anyone because they don't believe anyone else exists.

Religion doesn't oppose science and should not ever come even close to that, not anymore that is :) Great minds were already imprisoned or killed because their findings opposed teachings. Even in mythology or religion there are many worlds mentioned, things like 7 dimensions ( 7 worlds ). For me, personally, religion accepts God's creations all over the universe, aliens and humans, animals, afterall God has created everything, as written in scriptures.

I believe that curiosity would find the way, if civilization was cappable technologically. If we assume that curiosity is imprinted in every advanced life. We would share the same question of who we are, where are we and why are we here.

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53 minutes ago, Sir Smoke aLot said:

Religion doesn't oppose science and should not ever come even close to that, not anymore that is :) Great minds were already imprisoned or killed because their findings opposed teachings. Even in mythology or religion there are many worlds mentioned, things like 7 dimensions ( 7 worlds ). For me, personally, religion accepts God's creations all over the universe, aliens and humans, animals, afterall God has created everything, as written in scriptures.

I believe that curiosity would find the way, if civilization was cappable technologically. If we assume that curiosity is imprinted in every advanced life. We would share the same question of who we are, where are we and why are we here.

Well, I was thinking in terms of fundamentalists such as creationists. My understanding is that people such as Ken Ham do not believe life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, because if it did this would be stated in the Bible. Were fundamentalists ever to gain political control - and in the US they do have significant influence - it would not be long before their view of the universe became compulsory. A dogma that attempts to use "science" to show the universe is only 6,000 years old would have no trouble in dismissing the existence of extraterrestrial life.

I think a worldwide theocracy is just as likely as a scenario where humans are rendered extinct by the artificial intelligence they have created. Either outcome is horrible to contemplate.

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4 minutes ago, Derek Willis said:

Well, I was thinking in terms of fundamentalists such as creationists. My understanding is that people such as Ken Ham do not believe life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, because if it did this would be stated in the Bible. Were fundamentalists ever to gain political control - and in the US they do have significant influence - it would not be long before their view of the universe became compulsory. A dogma that attempts to use "science" to show the universe is only 6,000 years old would have no trouble in dismissing the existence of extraterrestrial life.

I think a worldwide theocracy is just as likely as a scenario where humans are rendered extinct by the artificial intelligence they have created. Either outcome is horrible to contemplate.

I was thinking more generally, thanks for explanation. All in all, there will always be all kinds of interpretations of religion, many bad ideologies will arise from it and if it will be what will own our future i can't say, but sure that there is such possibility. Only thing which will prevent it is our ability to get propper education and think critically while applying both moral and legal judgement when it comes to important things. Else, one can only hope that there wont be one big theocracy, thematic worked through in many SciFi works and movies and usually it's bad as hell :)

 

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To quote one of a few folks in this thread who posted about how common life should be...

Quote

Current science leads us to believe life was created from the chemistry of the Earth and so, given the huge number of Earth-like planets we are discovering, life should be common place.

That doesn't necessarily follow at all, in fact I would argue (and most scientists in this field would agree, I think! see link below) that what we see on earth tells us that life is not just very rare, but *incredibly* rare.  The general consensus (we can't be 100% sure as we weren't there.. :D ) is that*all* life emanated from just one single 'outbreak'.  In other words, in the entire history of our planet, only at one particular time, at one particular place, with one set of particular chemicals, at one particular temperature, at one particular pressure, and likely one particular combination of irradiation (cosmic and solar), that something capable of reproducing fluked itself into existence.

Never, since then, has another 'life outbreak' sprang into being, as far as we can tell.  Nor have any of our best efforts to reproduce those conditions and start our own new life, ever got beyond amino acids..

AND, add that to the particular circumstances that meant that some of the until-then entirely water-bound life got stranded by the Moon's tides yet managed to survive and then move onto land.

AND add to that the millennia before one little branch started to get too clever for it's own footprints, where every other life form was satisfied to just graze, without needing mobile phones...

 

If life was not incredibly rare, we would see multiple starting points in the evolutionary tree.  We don't.  It all seems to point back to just one tiny little organism.

Everything, including the fact we see no other signs of life on our nearby, goldilockish-zone planets.. it all points to the odds of life arising as virtually zero, let alone intelligent life that adopts technology.  

It's not just me who thinks this, look up "LUCA" or start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent

 

Edited by ChrLzs
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Nature never does anything for nothing... to paraphrase a line from the movie 'Contact' if it's just us it's an awful waste of space. Or something similar. Looking at the sheer numbers of stars... most of which it seems have planets going around them, they have to be out there somewhere.

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2 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

That doesn't necessarily follow at all, in fact I would argue (and most scientists in this field would agree, I think! see link below) that what we see on earth tells us that life is not just very rare, but *incredibly* rare.

It is a profound situation. As of now, because we haven't discovered life elsewhere, it may be that life did spring up only once. On the other hand, if we can find one other example relatively nearby - on Mars, on one of the moons of the gas giants, or in a fairly near star system - then life is likely to be reasonably common throughout the universe.

Apparently, this is the theme of the latest Dan Brown novel, so a great mind has now been applied to the subject!

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On 10/2/2017 at 11:13 AM, taniwha said:

The mystery is how did life come to be in the first place.  Then is it possible it can be replicated anywhere else in the universe in the second place.

Perhaps Earth is a freak of nature.

Not that much of a mystery when thermodynamics comes into it. The earth is constantly trying to reach thermal equilibrium, but can't because of the sun. Life is better at redistributing energy than non-life, so it makes sense that anywhere with a suitable energy source and the basic building blocks will eventually see life spread.

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