How did they find us.!?, And how did they get here.!?

[hazzard]

Ok, I tried this at another forum, now, lets see what we can come up with here.


-------------------- ALIENS ON EARTH!?


Lets set aside the question of whether advanced galactic societies would have the slightest interest in our wars, WMD, our pollution problems, our reproductive systems or our cows butts.

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

There is only one way, as far as I can see, that they can tell from interstellar distance that intelligent creatures inhabit this planet....RADIO.

Our radio signals travel at the speed of light, and this means that even with infinitely fast spacecraft, the aliens cant be much farther off than 15 light-years to have reached our lovely planet by 1947,(Rosswell). The number of star systems within 15 light-years is about three dozen. There would have to be 10 billion technically sophisticated societies in the Galaxy to have a reasonable chance of finding one camped out among the nearest three dozen stars. Thats optimism of a high level indeed.

What about warp drive? Lightspeed? Maybe the aliens can create wormholes and get here in essentially no time?

It doesnt matter. Ill worry about how they got here once Im convinced that theyve really made the scene.

To get here they need to know were we are.

Approximately half the U.S. population suspects that extraterrestrials have come to our planet. This is such a controversial (and emotional) topic that its mere mention guarantees a storm of Web chat and high-voltage PMs. In the end, of course, the matter of alien visitation will be decided by the evidence, not by the intensity of opinion.

While I certainly expect that the Galaxy is home to many advanced societies, the quality of the evidence has so far failed to convince me that any of them have emissaries on our planet.

[Dragon Star]

Ok, I tried this at another forum...

GLP?

...

Nah...

[hazzard]

Nop, but GLP is a good way to work on our debating tec. Thats how I met Lance, doing the chemtrail dance with the loonies.



Back on topic....Anyone?

[Мастер]

Well, obviously, extraterrestials have an extensive monitoring network, where they preposition monitoring stations throughout the entire universe, in case signs of intelligent life nearby are detected. Then a visit can occur pretty quickly, and a confirmation is sent back to their civilisation using hyper-dimensional technology that is faster than the speed of light.

[hippietrekx]

I don't think we're interesting enough to visit. I mean, if we destroy ourselves, what are we going to do to... er... "guests"?

[Lance]

I believe it will be possible for us to detect planets with a potential for life, at great distances, within a decade. That doesn't mean life actually exists on those planets, just the potential. If life proves to exist where ever it can, which evidence up until now supports, then you just go to the oldest planets you find and look for signs of intelligence, or at least evolution towards it.

The Earth could have been observed hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago and been known to support life.

[Enzo]

Talk about debate tactics... What exactly are you asking? DO you want to know if anyone here actually thinks ET is HERE ON EARTH? I don't.

Or are you asking for a roundup of theories here? Sorry, hypotheses?

If we can measure light through a far planet atmosphere we could detect oxygen. Free oxygen woulod be an interesting indicator of potential life. And that could be done from farther than our radio radius.

ET doesn't have to find us by being his destination, he could happen by on his way elsewhere. He doesn't need to know we are here. We can just be a bonus on a planet otherwise interesting only for its nitrogen atmosphere. (The sulphur cliff people like the nitrogen, it makes their crystals grow better.)

ET might not exist.

ET might exist, but closest approach is 100k LY, and we'll never know of each other.

And that final line is my own personal view on the issue - this galaxy is a mighty big place and so even if ET does exist, we won't likely ever know.


I don't buy the they are not interested because we kill ourselves argument. If humanity vanished tomorrow, colonies of ants would still war, chimp bands would fight, lions would still be out looking for good gnus. I sit here in the middle of the USA - a typical a place as any for ET to land. How far must ET travel on this earth to find a war? We got bank robberies, sure. Down in Central America there might be some armed battles. How many wars are there in Russia or CHina? True there are areas of chaos, but there are many more areas where chaos is not the operative factor. In SOME places SOME of us are killing SOME others of us. But MOST of us are NOT.

CLaiming in BT style that mankind is not intelligent or that ET won't want to know us because we kill each other is just a conceit, we get to overtly spank ourselves. A form of political correctness. Foo. If ET is out there, I don't care how much of a redneck asshole he might be, I am not so self-righteous and pretentious that I say, "Oh sail right past HIM Nigel, he's not up to our standards." We would get excited at slime molds on MArs - even if they were at war. ET would love to see us.

[umop ap!sdn]

I was actually going to say something real similar: as far as we know, only certain kinds of stars can support (native) intelligent life. We can identify these up to at least a couple hundred light years away; extraterrestrials might have done this and sent generational starships out to a list of candidate stars, includng ours.

Incidentally, the number of stars of the right type within 15 l.y. is less than half a dozen, and that includes one that's too young (eps Eri) and one that has a lot of asteroids and therefore probably few or no large planets (tau Cet).

[Lance]

We would get excited at slime molds on Mars - even if they were at war. ET would love to see us.

Unless life is common. Then we just might not be a big deal. We could be quite primitive by galactic standards. Perhaps there is something like the "Prime Directive" in play.

[Enzo]

Life is common right here on earth, yet we have entire university departments dedicated to exploring for new types of it. I mean if we went to Alphe Centauri and found litle rodents on a planet there, we wouldn't just say, "Hmmph, just some lower life forms there, we got them at home. Forget it Ed, let's move on." What would it take to make life worth stopping for then if it were so common that ET wouldn't care about us? For that matter, if ET were that jaded, why would he be out looking around at all?

[Lance]

That's not my point. If we found little rodents on 762 of the 1000 inhabited planets we'd visited so far, maybe the next one isn't a show stopper.

[umop ap!sdn]

What about plain ol' scientific curiosity? I mean personally, I'd be interested to know whether the rodent phylogenic tree on Alpha Centauri looks anything like what we have here on Earth. Sure, we're talking about nonhuman minds here (the alien visitors I mean) and it's anybody's guess how they'd think, but if they didn't have at least a few individuals geeky enough to devote all their time to the study of the most trivial aspects of science, would they even have developed spaceflight to begin with?

[Lance]

Good points.

And I like to state clearly that I am just trying to play Devil's Advocate here. I am certainly not trying to make a case.

[hazzard]

We dont know much about the average lifetime of technological societies, other than the fact that ours has, so far, managed to survive for a century or so.

We also dont know at what rate sentient societies spring up in the Galaxy. But we do know that this rate is surely tied to the frequency with which stars are born. Clearly, a greater flux of new stars will ultimately produce a larger number of planets with thinking beings.

What is the star formation rate?

Well, there are roughly 300 billion stars in the Milky Way, and that means that the average rate over the last 13 billion years has been about 15 new stars per year. Anyone whos used a radio telescope to study galaxies knows that when you examine a big spiral like the Milky Way, you find that the total amount of interstellar gas is typically a few percent of the mass of all the stars.

Since interstellar gas is the stuff from which stars are built, its obvious that theres little material around today for constructing new ones. Clearly, this must affect the number members for our club of intelligent beings.

And not to the possitive.

And about this NASA "cover up" BS.

It is dismaying that many people assume proof that were not alone would cause governments to cover up the facts.

Consider the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. Some Americans mistook the fictional Martian invasion for news, and fled their homes. Would a real discovery of extraterrestrials occasion a breakdown in public order?

This seems highly unlikely. Picking up a signal from space is different from watching aggressive aliens land in the pastures. Its difficult to imagine galactic beings would ever charge across the dark deserts between the stars merely to harass the inhabitants of a small planet.

To detect a signal from other worlds would be wondrous. It would show that the appearance of life on this world and its slow, uncertain path to us - creatures that can comprehend their own existence - is not some improbable miracle, but a frequent occurrence.

In the 17th century, when early telescopes were revealing great clouds of stars, French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote that the enormity of space terrified him......

Space is enormous. To learn that others are out there would be a comfort.

I think that most of us would agree.

[hippietrekx]

CLaiming in BT style that mankind is not intelligent or that ET won't want to know us because we kill each other is just a conceit, we get to overtly spank ourselves.

Did you just call me BT?

Craps, BT wouldn't have put "I think" in the front of the musing. He would have called ETL infedels or something and then claim to be all knowing and then find a few dozen pennies.

--hippie... or is that... BT?

[hazzard]

The first life on Earth was anaerobic bacteria - bacteria that could live without oxygen. These bacteria pumped large amounts of methane into our planets atmosphere, changing it in detectable ways.

If similar bacteria exist on another planet, future missions like TPF and Darwin could detect their "fingerprint" in the atmosphere.

And for those of you that keep talking about that ATOMIC FINGER PRINT I ask you this.....Why do do think that a "small" atomic explosion on our blue little dot in space would mean anything, when our sun, and every star in the universe is doing the same thing, ALL THE TIME. Surley drowning out anything that we can think of.

And like I said when I started this thread, humans have been making their presence known to the universe only for the last 70 years or so.( radio, the atom bomb).

It means that even if, after receiving an earthly transmission, the aliens can immediately scramble their spacecraft and fly to Earth at the speed of light, they cant be farther than 8 light-years away to have arrived by 1947. (Roswell).

There would have to be 10 billion technically sophisticated societies in the Galaxy to have a reasonable chance of finding one camped out among the nearest three dozen stars. Thats optimism of a high level indeed.

[hazzard]

Ok , first there was life on Earth, the anaerobic bacteria - bacteria that could live without oxygen.

These bacteria pumped large amounts of methane into our planets atmosphere, changing it in detectable ways.

If similar bacteria exist on another planet, future missions like TPF and Darwin could detect their "fingerprint" in the atmosphere.

-------------------

And for those of you that keep talking about that detecting the ATOMIC BOMB FINGER PRINT I ask you this.....Why do do think that a "small" atomic explosion on our blue little dot in space would mean anything, when our sun, and every star in the universe is doing the same thing, ALL THE TIME.

Surley drowning out anything that we can think of.

And like I said when I started this thread, humans have been making their presence known to the universe only for the last 70 years or so.( radio, the atom bomb).

It means that even if, after receiving an earthly transmission, the aliens can immediately scramble their spacecraft and fly to Earth at the speed of light, they cant be farther than 8 light-years away to have arrived by 1947. (Roswell).

There would have to be 10 billion technically sophisticated societies in the Galaxy to have a reasonable chance of finding one camped out among the nearest three dozen stars. Thats optimism of a high level indeed.