Where Is Everybody? Where Are The Aliens?

[james bond]

One of my arguments for evidence of God is aliens or the lack of extraterrestrial life. In other words, the Bible does not state that God created aliens.

Most of us know about Drake's Equation when discussing aliens. Yet, even if we acknowledge that Drake did not make his parameters correct in his equation, there has been enough time for SETI to have made extraterrestrial contact or aliens to have made contact with SETI. If there are intelligent alien civilizations and other planets like earth in the universe, then they would have the power to be able to fly and colonize the universe as we would. They should have been here if they possessed superior technology to ours. This lack of contact by extraterrestrials led Dr. Enrico Fermi to suddenly exclaim, "Where is Everybody?" during a lunch he was having with distinguished scientist colleagues in 1961 after a discussion about ETs.

A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence
[0810.2222] A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence

"Our Galaxy Should Be Teeming With Civilizations, But Where Are They?

Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy? Enrico Fermi thought so -- and he was a pretty smart guy. Might he have been right?

It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)

The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.

Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"

Fermi Paradox | SETI Institute

Thus, the Fermi Paradox provides more evidence of God.

In addition to this, we have found that fine tuning prohibits life on other planets unless they are finely tuned like earth. Has there been experiments done where they take earth creatures to see if they can survive on the moon? We already know they can survive in outer space, but can they survive and thrive on the moon? If they can't, then it's more evidence for the fine tuning theory.

 

[Darkstorn]

Thus, the Fermi Paradox provides more evidence of God.

No it doesn't, and the Fermi Paradox is not a true paradox. It's a presupposition.

How about i give you one: Perhaps we have no evidence of any alien life because of relativity and the massive distances involved.

Which leads to my favourite explanation:

Human beings have not existed long enough.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

One of my arguments for evidence of God is aliens or the lack of extraterrestrial life. In other words, the Bible does not state that God created aliens.

How is that evidence of God?

Thus, the Fermi Paradox provides more evidence of God.

How?

In addition to this, we have found that fine tuning prohibits life on other planets unless they are finely tuned like earth.

False. We know the conditions required for the form of life found on earth to arise, but we do not know (and cannot assume) that said conditions are the only conditions under which life of any form can emerge. The fine-tuning argument falls apart the moment you realize that life arises from the conditions it is in, rather than conditions existing to facilitate life.

Has there been experiments done where they take earth creatures to see if they can survive on the moon? We already know they can survive in outer space, but can they survive and thrive on the moon? If they can't, then it's more evidence for the fine tuning theory.

Again, how? If anything, it's proof positive that the Universe was not specifically designed for the purpose of fostering life.

 

[HonestJoe]

Thus, the Fermi Paradox provides more evidence of God.

No it doesn’t. Assuming it is correct, it only provides evidence for a lack (though not necessarily complete absence) of intelligent lifeforms elsewhere in the universe. It doesn’t provide evidence for any form creator, let alone a specifically defined one.

In addition to this, we have found that fine tuning prohibits life on other planets unless they are finely tuned like earth.

No we haven’t. Scientists make some informed assumptions about the factors we think would be necessary for life to be able to develop on a planet, which in an element of which informs the Drake equation. We can’t test those assumptions and so can’t say whether they’re correct or not.

If they can't, then it's more evidence for the fine tuning theory.

No it wouldn’t. The “fine tuning theory" relates to the ability of life to independently develop within a given environment, not the ability of life which developed in one environment to survive in another.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

One of my arguments for evidence of God is aliens or the lack of extraterrestrial life. In other words, the Bible does not state that God created aliens.

Most of us know about Drake's Equation when discussing aliens. ...

And most utterly fail to understand it. See, for example, Wiki: Rare Earth Hypothesis.

 

[columbus]

One of my arguments for evidence of God is aliens or the lack of extraterrestrial life.

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

 

[Guy Threepwood]

One of my arguments for evidence of God is aliens or the lack of extraterrestrial life. In other words, the Bible does not state that God created aliens.

Most of us know about Drake's Equation when discussing aliens. Yet, even if we acknowledge that Drake did not make his parameters correct in his equation, there has been enough time for SETI to have made extraterrestrial contact or aliens to have made contact with SETI. If there are intelligent alien civilizations and other planets like earth in the universe, then they would have the power to be able to fly and colonize the universe as we would. They should have been here if they possessed superior technology to ours. This lack of contact by extraterrestrials led Dr. Enrico Fermi to suddenly exclaim, "Where is Everybody?" during a lunch he was having with distinguished scientist colleagues in 1961 after a discussion about ETs.

A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence
[0810.2222] A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence

"Our Galaxy Should Be Teeming With Civilizations, But Where Are They?

Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy? Enrico Fermi thought so -- and he was a pretty smart guy. Might he have been right?

It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)

The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.

Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"

Fermi Paradox | SETI Institute

Thus, the Fermi Paradox provides more evidence of God.

In addition to this, we have found that fine tuning prohibits life on other planets unless they are finely tuned like earth. Has there been experiments done where they take earth creatures to see if they can survive on the moon? We already know they can survive in outer space, but can they survive and thrive on the moon? If they can't, then it's more evidence for the fine tuning theory.

Back in the days of Poe, Verne, H.G. Wells, we wondered what sort of folks lived on the moon, because we took it for granted, that we found some sort of life everywhere we looked.

Now we would be fascinated with a fossilized microbe on Mars. The more we learn, the more we appreciate how special Earth is. ET is looking ever more improbable, I think the universe would need to be much much larger than we currently understand, to make another planet like Earth likely, far less with intelligent life on it.

 

[Darkstorn]

Back in the days of Poe, Verne, H.G. Wells, we wondered what sort of folks lived on the moon, because we took it for granted, that we found some sort of life everywhere we looked.

Now we would be fascinated with a fossilized microbe on Mars. The more we learn, the more we appreciate how special Earth is. ET is looking ever more improbable, I think the universe would need to be much much larger than we currently understand, to make another planet like Earth likely, far less with intelligent life on it.

I think your usage of an argument from incredulity as the core of your point helps bring attention to the fact that other posters have managed to debunk JB's claims better than you have. You are merely using an equal argument as JB did.

"Oh but i'm special, and if there were aliens, i wouldn't feel so special anymore."

Can you please, for the validity of your stance, stop posting arguments from incredulity? You're smarter than that. I find it disrespectful that you consider us incapable of picking that up EVERY single time you use it.

And i am saying this as a person who believes that us finding evidence for "intelligent" life are slim in our lifetime. Or ever. Or even that we're intelligent to begin with.

/E: And this is just silly: "think the universe would need to be much much larger than we currently understand, to make another planet like Earth likely, far less with intelligent life on it."

So, it's too small to support another planet like Earth, but too big for us to be able to observe to its entire extent. Which means you have two arguments from incredulity in one post.

 

[Polymath257]

Maybe civilizations destroy themselves before they get to the stars.

 

[columbus]

Or even that we're intelligent to begin with.

This ^^^.
It's entirely possible that a truly intelligent super sapience would view us much as we would view a Martian algae. In fact, I think that extremely likely.
For the same reason, I find ancient stories about a God who cares enough to meddle with the Laws of Nature and stuff quite implausible as well. As a result, I don't believe in religious stories about such a God.

No, @james bond , I see this as evidence that whatever the Truth might be, we won't find It in Scripture.
Tom

 

[jonathan180iq]

Yet, even if we acknowledge that Drake did not make his parameters correct in his equation, there has been enough time for SETI to have made extraterrestrial contact or aliens to have made contact with SETI

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...

 

[jonathan180iq]

Things in Space are REALLY far apart, right? So far apart, in fact, that bumping into each other (assuming there are others to bump into) would be a ridiculously rare occurrence. Even if we imagine that all supposed extra terrestrial species took an evolutionary path similar to ours, how long would it take them to reach a point in their History where they would have the ability or desire to search for life outside of their home planet? If our timelines don't add up, and we aren't in close astronomical proximity to these supposed ET species, then the very opportunity to even have a chance to communicate would be completely lost.

Let's use Alpha Centauri as the example, since it's a very close Star System and it's known to contain at least one terrestrial planet, just slightly larger than the Earth. So let's assume Alpha Centrauri Bb has life on it. Then what...?

• In our fastest Spaceship, Alpha Centauri is like a 73,000 year car ride... So we aren't going to be going there anytime soon.
• If we use radio telescopes, sending messages while searching as well, turnaround time for each message would take 9 years. (Let's not forget that this is our closest neighbor.)
• Scanning for broadcasts that appear intelligent is a great idea. But if you're scanning before, or after, a Civilization is capable of broadcasting their presence, either directly or indirectly, then what good is it?
• If there is life on Bb but it's not advanced enough for extraplanetary communication, does that mean they don't exist?
• If we Humans received signals before our species had a Space program, how would we know?

My point is, it is just as probable that the Universe is, was, and has been teeming with life, but our timelines simply haven't overlapped at a time when we were looking in the right place. The further out we look, the less likely it is that our periods will contact one another.

We've been broadcasting our presence for something like 70 years... So, outside of a 70 Light Year wide bubble, it's impossible to communicate. And even at the furthest reaches of our view, it'll take at least another 70 years for there for be a response... This kind of research will take GENERATIONS to occur, if it does. Expectations need to tempered with reality.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Another possibility is we humans are not using transmission methods capable of receiving alien signals, and vice versa. Relatively speaking, we may still be using messenger pigeons while the aliens have moved beyond satellite and fiber optics. Or maybe they themselves are just discovering and utilizing AM signals, something most people here wouldn't pick up because we don't much use it anymore. And of course there is having everything pointed at the right place at the right time. "Finding a needle in a haystack" doesn't even begin to describe the difficulty of searching for alien life.

 

[columbus]

Maybe civilizations destroy themselves before they get to the stars.

But maybe other civilizations arose from circumstances less brutal than the "red in tooth and claw" circumstances found here on Earth.

Maybe we are the freaks doomed like an anencephalitic fetus.
Tom

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Why does everyone always have this idealized perception of what alien life might be like? Here are some points that could easily explain why alien life isn't out strolling the galaxy and saying "hi":

• Alien life is limited to sub-humanoid intelligence levels
• Higher-level intelligent life may lack physiological coordination devices - like opposable thumbs - making even tool-crafting difficult to impossible
• Intelligent aliens have as many social/political problems as we do, and space-travel may not be top priority on their list
• By the time their world may be falling apart, and space-travel does become top-priority, the real priority is finding the closest possible place to recolonize - not investigating the far reaches of the galactic/intergalactic "neighborhood"

Just imagine our issues as the issues that plague a species when it reaches or exceeds some intelligence threshold where abstract-thought becomes the norm. Imagine other intelligent races with our host of issues (prejudiced/judgmental/elitist/conceited/low-attention-span) and it is also easy to imagine that no intelligent life actually gets very far. And combine the above bullet-list of possibilities with a pinch of that human-nature, and you have a very-probable, mediocre soup of under-achievers in the space-travel department.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Another side note - we don't need to contact an advanced Alien Civilization in order to posit that life exists elsewhere in the Universe... There's enough evidence from the ancient lake beds and hot springs on Mars that I don't have a problem saying that former life has already been discovered.

The evidence is just too overwhelming to deny at this point. They broader scientific community will wait for a "smoking gun" because people like pictures more than they like spectrometry... But that part of the conversation is over as far as I'm concerned.

How that relates in response to the OP should be pretty clear. An assumption based in Science fiction, by a guy at lunch in 1961, shouldn't be the basis for one's faith in a deity...

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Why does everyone always have this idealized perception of what alien life might be like? Here are some points that could easily explain why alien life isn't out strolling the galaxy and saying "hi":

• Alien life is limited to sub-humanoid intelligence levels
• Higher-level intelligent life may lack physiological coordination devices - like opposable thumbs - making even tool-crafting difficult to impossible
• Intelligent aliens have as many social/political problems as we do, and space-travel may not be top priority on their list
• By the time their world may be falling apart, and space-travel does become top-priority, the real priority is finding the closest possible place to recolonize - not investigating the far reaches of the galactic/intergalactic "neighborhood"

Just imagine our issues as the issues that plague a species when it reaches or exceeds some intelligence threshold where abstract-thought becomes the norm. Imagine other intelligent races with our host of issues (prejudiced/judgmental/elitist/conceited/low-attention-span) and it is also easy to imagine that no intelligent life actually gets very far. And combine the above bullet-list of possibilities with a pinch of that human-nature, and you have a very-probable, mediocre soup of under-achievers in the space-travel department.

Yet with all our flaws, perhaps because of them, we put a man on the moon, have spacecraft travelling beyond the solar system, and are examining exo-planets for habitability.. barely a lifetime after first getting off the ground with powered flight.

If even we terribly flawed beings can do that in a single generation, it's tricky to prohibit any advanced civilization from ever getting much further in the hundreds of millions, even billions of years available.. more likely perhaps that they never existed at all?

 

[Subduction Zone]

So many misconceptions in the OP. Life may be widespread in the universe. In fact it probably is widespread. That does not mean that intelligent life is widespread. Take our one planet as an example. Life here took over three billion years to advance past single celled life. It very well could be that even if life can be found on other planets that the vast majority of it will be very simple life that has not even evolved beyond the colony stage of single celled life. And then even after complex life evolved here it took at least another 600 million years for intelligence to evolve. For our one example intelligent life has existed for a very small percentage of our history. Then there is the assumption that somehow the aliens would be able to or would even care to announce their existence to the rest of the universe. I doubt if you could decipher any I Love Lucy episodes by the time the signal even gets as far as Alpha Centauri. How are we to detect life from what may be a very short spurt of radio noise before they advance to better ways to transmit ideas to each other? And space travel between the stars may not even be feasible. Complaining about a lack of visitors proves less than nothing about the existence of a god, but it does tell us about the lack of education of the person making the complaint.

 

[Twilight Hue]

One of my arguments for evidence of God is aliens or the lack of extraterrestrial life. In other words, the Bible does not state that God created aliens.

Most of us know about Drake's Equation when discussing aliens. Yet, even if we acknowledge that Drake did not make his parameters correct in his equation, there has been enough time for SETI to have made extraterrestrial contact or aliens to have made contact with SETI. If there are intelligent alien civilizations and other planets like earth in the universe, then they would have the power to be able to fly and colonize the universe as we would. They should have been here if they possessed superior technology to ours. This lack of contact by extraterrestrials led Dr. Enrico Fermi to suddenly exclaim, "Where is Everybody?" during a lunch he was having with distinguished scientist colleagues in 1961 after a discussion about ETs.

A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence
[0810.2222] A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence

"Our Galaxy Should Be Teeming With Civilizations, But Where Are They?

Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy? Enrico Fermi thought so -- and he was a pretty smart guy. Might he have been right?

It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)

The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.

Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"

Fermi Paradox | SETI Institute

Thus, the Fermi Paradox provides more evidence of God.

In addition to this, we have found that fine tuning prohibits life on other planets unless they are finely tuned like earth. Has there been experiments done where they take earth creatures to see if they can survive on the moon? We already know they can survive in outer space, but can they survive and thrive on the moon? If they can't, then it's more evidence for the fine tuning theory.

Given the insane unfathomable distances between systems, it comes as no surprise that we seem to be alone.

As already mentioned,

There's a lot of factors that could be considered, first we are maybe in a "rural" area of the Galaxy, also development of other worlds may or may not exceed ours when you consider the passage of time and when the Big Bang occured. Levels of technology and capabilities could be considerably on par or subpar to what our technology is for a greater extent.

It's worth considering as well that we are conceivably the advanced aliens in our little neck of the woods.

I think there could be more advanced civilizations than ours elsewhere in the universe, but whether they're far ahead or not would depend upon those places where life erupted first and had more time to evolve.

Essentially since the Big Bang occurred, this is where we are now ourselves. I would say most life would be on the level where we are now at best although there is the possibility there could be super civilizations somewhere.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Yet with all our flaws, perhaps because of them, we put a man on the moon, have spacecraft travelling beyond the solar system, and are examining exo-planets for habitability.. barely a lifetime after first getting off the ground with powered flight.

If even we terribly flawed beings can do that in a single generation, it's tricky to prohibit any advanced civilization from ever getting much further in the hundreds of millions, even billions of years available.. more likely perhaps that they never existed at all?

As others have stated (and that was the reason I didn't include it in my bullet points) the incredibly vast reaches of space mean that, pointing a probe in a particular direction would have it detectable only to a completely insignificant portion of the universe. To the point that, yes, we can see better into the depths of space with our own probe, but the chances that it will come within detectable range of an alien civilization advanced enough to do such detecting is horribly, horribly minuscule. And so it would be the same with any other alien civilization having sent out similar probing devices. They would have basically had to have accidentally pointed it in EXACTLY the right direction, accounting for the movement of the Earth itself within the solar-system, gravitational effects from large-scale bodies, movement of solar-system-scale and even galactic-scale bodies, etc. There could have been 1,000 such alien probes in the past - having moved past the earth within a million mile radius and we would have had no idea. And even passing within THAT vast a range would be INCREDIBLY amazing luck on the part of the alien civilization who launched them considering the launch trajectory would have been set from however many millions of lightyears away.

I think many people allow their underestimation of just how unbelievably huge the universe is to cloud their judgment in such matters.