Where Is Everybody? Where Are The Aliens?

[james bond]

Again, your silly argument has already been refuted in the threads that I've linked. Do I really have to copy and paste the rebuttals from them?

Avoiding my questions does make it suspicious, but I'm talking about the evidence of no alien contact and no evidence for aliens vs the probabilities of inhabitable planets. It's a simple question. Where are they?

If we take the high value of inhabitable planets from the link I posted in the OP, then it's 690,983 with a SD of 53. Mid value would be 684,399 with SD of 2. Low value would be 80,090 with a SD of 22. Even the low value exceeds what I thought of hundreds or thousands of planets. Thus, out of some of these inhabitable planets, we should have found aliens based on evolution. I'm talking evolution now and not Christianity. So, why no contact? Where is everybody?

I don't expect an answer from you so suffice it to say Fermi had a good point.

 

[james bond]

How do you quantify that statement?
What is "enough time" to you?
Why do you think that?

Given the expanse that needs to be searched, the limitations of our vision, and the often-overlooked necessity for civilizations to coexist and have evolved to the same point at the same period in history makes the overall prospect of actually running into a contemporary civilization incredibly slim...

I disagree with you conclusions because of what I linked in the OP, and I'm going by 200K years of modern man.

I'm going by the Cornell study (quantify inhabitable planets) and what Fermi deduced (time in 1961, technology available back then, etc.). He's known to be able to come up with good estimates for probability of what seems like difficult to answer events. His brain is able to figure out the parameters such as what Drake did and do the calculations. The following explains more about what Fermi thought.

Fermi's Paradox

The way I see it, a probe is better to deduce answers to the Fermi paradox.

>>j: Given the expanse that needs to be searched, the limitations of our vision, and the often-overlooked necessity for civilizations to coexist and have evolved to the same point at the same period in history makes the overall prospect of actually running into a contemporary civilization incredibly slim...<<

Where are you getting your conclusion, i.e. last paragraph, from?

Hint: Even SETI accepts the Fermi paradox and has their own answers if you read the next few pages past the one I linked in the OP.

 

[james bond]

We have only one point of reference concerning life, especially sapient life. And our understanding of life is really primitive and murky.

So it seems very premature to start extrapolating from a lack of data. Maybe "Life as we know it" is a freakish outlier caused by Earth's weirdly stable surface temperature, that happens to fluctuate within a few degrees of the liquid form of a powerful solvent the earth happens to have a lot of.

Maybe most life originated in places more like Venus, and is composed entirely of gases. We would have no way to even recognize such life, at this point in time.
But that doesn't mean it can't happen in the future.
Tom

So, you're admitting that our understanding of evolution is really primitive and murky? Or it doesn't apply to planets outside our own? You think the lack of aliens is due to us being an outlier? That sounds more like what the creation scientists have been saying.

In closing, you say you think life originated elsewhere such as Venus. It sounds like panspermia. It's not mainstream evolution. Life happened here. That's what creation scientists and most atheists scientists agree on (until they can't find how it exactly started, i.e. the murky part).

evolution.berkeley.edu
How did life originate?

 

[james bond]

Nope. That's a gross mischaracterization of biology.


Again, nope.


One isn't trying to...
One needs only understand the basics of Biology to know this.


Again, nope.

Getting a math problem wrong doesn't make Astrologers more right...


You mean, regular extinction?


No. Distance and Time are everything.

Imagine throwing a baseball. If you're off by a tiny amount when you first release, you have no chance of hitting the mitt, right?
Now, expand that principle to 100 miles...
1,000 miles...
6 Trillion Miles...
If you're off even the slightest amount, then over time and distance the inaccuracy will only compound.


You should read more than one article before posting things on the internet.

I would trust my investigative powers and instincts and SETI and Fermi than someone who concludes we've already had life on Mars. Yet, you conclude that SETI and Fermi has no smoking gun. It's a bit disingenuous of you to criticize my research and not your own.

 

[Polymath257]

Seriously?

Yes, seriously. Knowing that there are more planets by a couple of orders of magnitude, than what was known 13 years ago is quite relevant to questions concerning the rarity of the Earth. Knowing that there are other planets in the 'Goldilocks Zone' for their stars is even more relevant, especially since our detection methods for such are poor enough that we don't expect to catch more than a fraction of a percent of the ones out there.

That seems to be directly dealing with the claim.

There are two main issues in the link you pointed to.

1. The cores of spiral galaxies are the locations that are metal poor, not the edges. So both stability and metalicity point to planets away from the core (and, I might add, not in elliptical galaxies).

2. Planets are MUCH more common than thought 15 years ago. Our detection methods are still not great, but we know now that planets are common and at a variety of distances from the parent star. We also know that systems with more than one planet are common.

Both of these directly undercut the idea that the Earth is 'special' in terms of basic environment.

 

[Polymath257]

Avoiding my questions does make it suspicious, but I'm talking about the evidence of no alien contact and no evidence for aliens vs the probabilities of inhabitable planets. It's a simple question. Where are they?

If we take the high value of inhabitable planets from the link I posted in the OP, then it's 690,983 with a SD of 53. Mid value would be 684,399 with SD of 2. Low value would be 80,090 with a SD of 22. Even the low value exceeds what I thought of hundreds or thousands of planets. Thus, out of some of these inhabitable planets, we should have found aliens based on evolution. I'm talking evolution now and not Christianity. So, why no contact? Where is everybody?

I don't expect an answer from you so suffice it to say Fermi had a good point.

Why would you expect a signal? For example, even on Earth, where there has been life for almost 4 billion years, we have only produced radio waves for about 100 years.

Even if your estimate of the number of inhabitable planets is correct, that says nothing about what type of life inhabits them. For most of the history of life on Earth, the life was single celled. Only in the last 700 million years has it been more than that. And I doubt that dinosaurs sent out any space probes.

Now, how many of those planets have we actually explored? None. Zilch. Zero. They are too far away for any type of reasonable detection, especially with our current technology.

And, if the life on a different (inhabited) planet is at the level of dinosaurs, or Miocene mammals, there is nothing we would detect unless we actually went there. That isn't going to happen in the next few thousand years.

So why would you expect a detection?

 

[james bond]

Nope, the failed fine tuning argument does not get a boost. That life evolved is a fact. You are merely using an extremely poor argument. I can't really answer poorly asked questions, why don't you try again?

Your opinion is horribly skewed. Fine tuning and the anthropic principle explains our universe very well. We are carbon life forms and no other type of life forms has been observed. Even if evolution thinking was right, it can't go beyond what we have discovered. All the claims of atheist Stephen Hawking with his multiverses, spontaneous creation and even abiolgenesis is pseudoscientific babble which you seem to gravitate toward with no hard evidence.

 

[james bond]

Why would you expect a signal? For example, even on Earth, where there has been life for almost 4 billion years, we have only produced radio waves for about 100 years.

Even if your estimate of the number of inhabitable planets is correct, that says nothing about what type of life inhabits them. For most of the history of life on Earth, the life was single celled. Only in the last 700 million years has it been more than that. And I doubt that dinosaurs sent out any space probes.

Now, how many of those planets have we actually explored? None. Zilch. Zero. They are too far away for any type of reasonable detection, especially with our current technology.

And, if the life on a different (inhabited) planet is at the level of dinosaurs, or Miocene mammals, there is nothing we would detect unless we actually went there. That isn't going to happen in the next few thousand years.

So why would you expect a detection?

I would expect a detection because we live in this universe and life should exist as we know it such as other carbon life forms. Most scientists go by what we have observed and not go into fantastical explanations of other universes, different type of life forms and abiogenesis. A universe does not happen from nothing. There are no multiverses. Thus, with the number of inhabitable planets, there should be intelligent aliens who have "evolved" like us. This is why some atheist science people end up using circular reasoning to explain things they do not have an adequate explanation for. It's bad heuristics that is a waste of our time. Let's go by what the universe gives us instead of far out theories like life already existed on Mars. We can't go gallivanting off into every other theory that people come up with just to support their worldview.

 

[james bond]

Yes, seriously. Knowing that there are more planets by a couple of orders of magnitude, than what was known 13 years ago is quite relevant to questions concerning the rarity of the Earth. Knowing that there are other planets in the 'Goldilocks Zone' for their stars is even more relevant, especially since our detection methods for such are poor enough that we don't expect to catch more than a fraction of a percent of the ones out there.

That seems to be directly dealing with the claim.

There are two main issues in the link you pointed to.

1. The cores of spiral galaxies are the locations that are metal poor, not the edges. So both stability and metalicity point to planets away from the core (and, I might add, not in elliptical galaxies).

2. Planets are MUCH more common than thought 15 years ago. Our detection methods are still not great, but we know now that planets are common and at a variety of distances from the parent star. We also know that systems with more than one planet are common.

Both of these directly undercut the idea that the Earth is 'special' in terms of basic environment.

I've read this argument, too, that the earth is not special. If other systems like our solar system or earth's position with the sun exist and have a habitable zone, then why no contact? I would think Enrico Fermi thought the same thing and had in mind what you described. We are assuming the same factors when I wear my atheist science cap -- that there are other systems like the earth and that it's not special. Carl Sagan thought the same thing and he never discovered aliens despite his efforts. We'll probably end up the same way unless one knows they can live another 40 - 60 years by your previous post.

>>PM: I thought the idea was that any intelligent alien species would inevitably colonise the galaxy given enough time. Why doesn't that apply to humans too?<<

I'm putting on my science cap and not my Christian cap. For one, if we're not alive to see it, then does it matter? Many people wants us to be multiplanetary, but the actual logistics, cost and finding a close enough planet to support our cabon based life is slim. Toxins can get in the way. The need for water and oxygen can get in the way. The temperature or density of the atmosphere can get in the way. Gravity can become an obstacle. The skeptics think there will be an extinction event before then, too, such as global warming or gamma ray bursts.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Your opinion is horribly skewed. Fine tuning and the anthropic principle explains our universe very well. We are carbon life forms and no other type of life forms has been observed. Even if evolution thinking was right, it can't go beyond what we have discovered. All the claims of atheist Stephen Hawking with his multiverses, spontaneous creation and even abiolgenesis is pseudoscientific babble which you seem to gravitate toward with no hard evidence.

That does not help your claim at all. Do you even know what the fine tuning argument is?

 

[james bond]

Why would you expect a signal? For example, even on Earth, where there has been life for almost 4 billion years, we have only produced radio waves for about 100 years.

If the aliens were more advanced than us, then they would have had radio waves for a longer time. Since they are further out from us, their civilizations would have existed for a longer time.

 

[james bond]

That does not help your claim at all. Do you even know what the fine tuning argument is?

Yes, I do, and it helps my Christian argument greatly which is why you are against it. Fine-tuning gives us physical constants of nature such as the strength of gravity and electromagnetism must be in a narrow range of values for the life in the universe to form. Atheist Stephen Hawking has said that the size of the charge of an electron or the ratio of protons to electrons have to be in a remarkably precise range for life to exist. To explain the present state of the universe, scientific theories require precise values of density and temperature. Hawking was one of people who found fine tuning.

Here's what Hawking said in his Grand Design book,

"The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some to the idea that this grand design has a Grand Designer…True, the laws of the universe seem tailor made for humans.”

*“Many improbable occurrences conspire to create Earth’s human friendly design… We need liquid water to exist, and if the earth were too close (to the sun) it would all but boil off; if it is too far it would freeze…(or) even a small disturbance in gravity…would send the planet off it’s orbit and cause it to spiral into or away from the sun.”

* “It is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seems oddly conducive to the development of human life, but also the characteristics of our entire universe-and its laws. They appear to have a design that is both tailor made to support us and if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration…The forces of nature had to be such that heavier elements- especially carbon could be produced and remain stable…Even that is not enough: The dynamics of the stars had to be such that some would eventually explode, precisely in a way that could disperse the heavier elements through space.”

* “(At the atomic level) if protons were just 0.2% heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms, again of course making all life impossible…(So) most of the…laws of nature appear fine tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amount, the universe would be…unsuitable for the development of life…The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine tuned.”

 

[Father Heathen]

Avoiding my questions does make it suspicious, but I'm talking about the evidence of no alien contact and no evidence for aliens vs the probabilities of inhabitable planets. It's a simple question. Where are they?

If we take the high value of inhabitable planets from the link I posted in the OP, then it's 690,983 with a SD of 53. Mid value would be 684,399 with SD of 2. Low value would be 80,090 with a SD of 22. Even the low value exceeds what I thought of hundreds or thousands of planets. Thus, out of some of these inhabitable planets, we should have found aliens based on evolution. I'm talking evolution now and not Christianity. So, why no contact? Where is everybody?

I don't expect an answer from you so suffice it to say Fermi had a good point.

We're not avoiding your questions. You're avoiding our answers. Again, everything was already addressed in those previous threads that were linked to.

 

[james bond]

Ross 128b, latest of many earth like planet discovered. Keplar has discovered thousands of planets, many are earth like.

Why are you timing the evolution of possible alien civilisations to be in sync with ours, that is a very egotistical attitude.

200k years? I really didn't think radio astronomy was that old? You learn something new every day eh?

How does it back up the bible again? I missed it first time you explained it. What i did see was some wild leaps of faith but no actual evidence.

What is this fine tuning theory? Is that the one debunked by facts that a/ there is no theory of quantum gravity and b/ there is no theory of everything, c/ we know no other universe to how can anyone tell if ours is fine tuned or just the norm? And d/ none of the myriad universal constants are infinitely accurate, in that error there are infinite quantity of values that could be required for infinite other universes. Meaning that ours is nothing special. All of which destroy fine tuning theory

D'oh!!! Do you think that humans could not live in habitats on the moon? Sure there would be problems with radiation exposure and bone loss but people are by nature, explorers.

Not sure about the moon but cellular experiments have been done on skylab
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentSearch.do?spacecraft=Skylab

You don't seem to understand, the parameters of the drake equation cannot be realistic until we actually know the values and untill interstellar travel is possible those variables will remain unknown or best guess.

Yes i know carl sagans story, what is your point in that last little diversion? You want another one, richard dawkins isn't an atheist either and guess what, that helps your argument just as much as the carl sagasn diversion does... Not at all

You're missing an important point in that advanced alien civilizations would have been around longer than us. And atheist scientists say that we are a mediocre planet and not in any prominent position. Thus, putting my atheist science cap on, we would be a lesser civilization to the advanced ones. Notice I didn't argue against one poster claiming why would aliens want to visit or contact us since we are so backward? It not likely because we send off probes to find microbes on Mars, but it could be one reason.

Modern humans are that old. Were you asleep that day in evolution class? And why does it mean that radio astronomy the only way to contact a mediocre, but intelligent civilization? Advanced aliens would figure it out. Fermi must've thought this, as well. Why do you discredit Fermi?

Those Skylab experiments appear to be inside the space craft. Not outside or on a moon or planet.

Yes, I do. I even said that Drake didn't have the plausible values. However, the link I posted corrected it and used the Monte Carlo method to boot. C'mon this is Cornell U where Carl Sagan went.

Speaking of Sagan, he backs up what I have been saying about more advanced aliens and their technology.

"So, if you postulate the existence of highly technical civilizations, thousands, much less millions of years in our future, unless the hypothesis strongly contradicts known laws of physics, I think you have to say it's possible (alien abductions). So, travel at very high speeds between the stars, that's by no means out of the question."

Carl Sagan on Alien Abduction — NOVA | PBS

Carl Sagan was a liberal, but also a pantheist. Much of the media reported him as atheist which is wrong. This guy was an alien believer, but never got to find one.

""Every now and then, when I am working or I am shaving or something like that, I hear—as clear as a bell—one of them saying my name: `Carl,' just like that.... It's unmistakable. I know whose voice it is.... I turn around before I can do any cerebration on it.... [Memory of their voices] has to be in many different parts of my brain. And it's not surprising that my brain would sort of, you know, play it back ... every now and then."

When Sagan repeated this story publicly, parapsychology buffs misunderstood his meaning. They excitedly spread the rumor (in words to this effect): "Carl Sagan, the king of skeptics, is in psychic contact with his dead parents!" Pseudoscientists and occultists were always misunderstanding Sagan. He was the best-known scientist of his time, and they yearned to convert him to their various causes. And it is true that throughout his life, Sagan proposed many unusual ideas, some so unusual that his more conventional colleagues scorned him as a sensationalist, a headline grabber. But for all his fancies, Sagan was too good a scientist to be fooled by his brain's neurological mirages; he was too confident an atheist to think he would ever see or hear his parents again, no matter how much he loved and missed them. The skeptic inside him—the "Rachel" inside him—knew better."

Carl Sagan

 

[Darkstorn]

If the aliens were more advanced than us, then they would have had radio waves for a longer time. Since they are further out from us, their civilizations would have existed for a longer time.

That's a lot of assumptions. Who says they would be more advanced than us? I feel you literally quote people who address your inane points, and you simply ignore their answer and invent a ridiculous non-sequitur that supposedly counters a much more well thought out reply...

I think it's fair to say that if this is an argument for God, like you're trying it to be, then you have failed. You lost.

I mean, many people have told you that the distances involved are massive. You are constantly ignoring this. You simply think that if there is an advanced civilization somewhere in the universe, we would magically get detection on it. Sure, but what if the civilization is 100,000 light years away? Hm?

/E: I seem to remember something that would make this even more futile. Don't you believe the Earth to be 6000 years old? I saw you say that in another thread. So, i'm guessing you think the universe is pretty tiny.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Yes, seriously. Knowing that there are more planets by a couple of orders of magnitude, ...

... would certainly increase the number of planets on which life may exist. I, for one, presume life to be ubiquitous. But, again, Mayr (if I correctly recall the Mayr-Sagan debate) did not question such ubiquity. What he did challenge was what he saw as significant naïveté underlying many, if not most, estimates of fi by those viewing SETI through the lens of The Planet of the Apes Hypothesis.

 

[Revoltingest]

I would expect a detection because we live in this universe and life should exist as we know it such as other carbon life forms. Most scientists go by what we have observed and not go into fantastical explanations of other universes, different type of life forms and abiogenesis. A universe does not happen from nothing. There are no multiverses. Thus, with the number of inhabitable planets, there should be intelligent aliens who have "evolved" like us. This is why some atheist science people end up using circular reasoning to explain things they do not have an adequate explanation for. It's bad heuristics that is a waste of our time. Let's go by what the universe gives us instead of far out theories like life already existed on Mars. We can't go gallivanting off into every other theory that people come up with just to support their worldview.

Consider that another civilization might've also started sending out radio waves 100 years ago.
Given the distances involved, those signals might take hundreds or thousands of years to reach here.
Could we even detect something so faint amid all the background noise?

 

[Polymath257]

I would expect a detection because we live in this universe and life should exist as we know it such as other carbon life forms. Most scientists go by what we have observed and not go into fantastical explanations of other universes, different type of life forms and abiogenesis. A universe does not happen from nothing. There are no multiverses. Thus, with the number of inhabitable planets, there should be intelligent aliens who have "evolved" like us. This is why some atheist science people end up using circular reasoning to explain things they do not have an adequate explanation for. It's bad heuristics that is a waste of our time. Let's go by what the universe gives us instead of far out theories like life already existed on Mars. We can't go gallivanting off into every other theory that people come up with just to support their worldview.

I didn't say a thing about other universes. I was talking about the constraints in *this* universe. Finding planets around other stars has only been possible recently. When I was a kid, we didn't know if there were any other stars with planets. Now we know of thousands of planets close by (within 300 light years).

But detection of those planets is still difficult. Our methods of detection involve either the wobble their gravity makes on the parent star (which is biased towards large planets orbiting close to their star) or where the orbit is edge-on to us and we can watch the light decrease when the planet goes in front of th star (a very small decrease).

Detecting *life* on other planets is, at this point, not possible with our technology. And, if other civilizations die out in a few thousand years, before getting to the stars, the likelihood we are around at the same time as another is small. That would not allow for contact or even detection.

 

[Revoltingest]

I didn't say a thing about other universes. I was talking about the constraints in *this* universe. Finding planets around other stars has only been possible recently. When I was a kid, we didn't know if there were any other stars with planets. Now we know of thousands of planets close by (within 300 light years).

But detection of those planets is still difficult. Our methods of detection involve either the wobble their gravity makes on the parent star (which is biased towards large planets orbiting close to their star) or where the orbit is edge-on to us and we can watch the light decrease when the planet goes in front of th star (a very small decrease).

Detecting *life* on other planets is, at this point, not possible with our technology. And, if other civilizations die out in a few thousand years, before getting to the stars, the likelihood we are around at the same time as another is small. That would not allow for contact or even detection.

Reading your post is like watching "How The Universe Works".
I imagine that you look like Mike Rowe, & sound like Morgan Freeman.

 

[Polymath257]

Consider that another civilization might've also started sending out radio waves 100 years ago.
Given the distances involved, those signals might take hundreds or thousands of years to reach here.
Could we even detect something so faint amid all the background noise?

Probably not even if it was only 100 light years away.