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Author Topic: There's no one out there!  (Read 81500 times)

Colin Bishop

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #325 on: October 28, 2010, 08:34:46 pm »

And I'm just a tentative stirring in the primaeval slime, so don't take any notice....
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justboatonic

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #326 on: October 28, 2010, 08:38:17 pm »

And I'm just a tentative stirring in the primaeval slime, so don't take any notice....

LOL! I dont believe that for one minute  {-)
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dodgy geezer

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #327 on: October 29, 2010, 02:14:07 am »


From now on, I'll ignore your rather borish (sic) attempts to prove yourself superior and shout down any and every opinion that does not meet yours.



Whether or not intelligent life exists elsewhere can only be the subject of opinion at the moment, and I have no difficulty with people holding any view on this subject. Though I would not claim, as you have, that Occam's Razor suggests that our null hypothesis should be that it does not exist. The idea that we are alone, and the idea that we are not, are both equally staggering, as Arthur Clarke once commented.

What I do have a difficulty with are attempts to read more into a scientific finding than it is capable of bearing. We are embarking on a process of discovery in space exploration which will undoubtedly continue for many lifetimes, and yet your position seems to be that we have looked and not seen anything, so there must be nothing there.

In fact, we have just started to look. We are looking at the limits of our technology, and, as it gets better, we are starting to discover things. You do not seem to appreciate some of the difficulties involved - a few posts ago you remarked that if there was a civilisation using radio like us within 50 light years we would detect their general radio use - we could not do this with our current technology at 5 light years, nor with any technology we will have in the foreseeable future. Neither do you seem to appreciate the importance of negative results in science - as we look and do not find things in a given direction at a given resolution this enables us to tune our further investigations more profitably than we could have done if we had not undertaken the first investigation. 

We will continue to look, and we will get better at it. But that improvement will not occur in a vacuum - it will be based on the work that had gone before, and it could not happen without that work.
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dreadnought72

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #328 on: October 29, 2010, 11:46:14 am »

However, its not all sweetness and light. The proposition is based on extrapolation so the calculation could be wildly out of kilter with fact.

"This extrapolation is the least certain part of our analysis. The true answer might be one in eight or one in two - but we know that it isn't one in 100,"

Thing is, extrapolation when used in astronomy for things like the number-of-stars-relative-to-their-mass is just about faultless. You get a constant line. There are lots of dim, light-mass red stars, fewer middling yellow ones, and fewer still of the heavier blue-white ones. Since planets are similarly "just a collection of stuff" there's simply NO technical reason NOT to expect that similar extrapolation will work for bodies of planetary size.

I suspect in the report any problems with extrapolation boils down to "not enough data points" to generate a good rule.

...Yet.

Andy

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justboatonic

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #329 on: October 29, 2010, 06:06:04 pm »

This from the telegraph today http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8095368/Nasa-uncovers-new-life-on-Mars-evidence-after-rover-got-stuck-in-the-mud.html

Researchers at the American space agency made the discovery after the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became stuck in wet ground on the red planet earlier this year.

Astronomers have become excited by the latest discovery, which they say proves that water favourable for life formed on the red planet more recently than previously thought.
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justboatonic

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #330 on: May 18, 2011, 08:04:46 pm »

Well, just finished reading Paul Davies' "The Eerie Silence."

A very good read and complemented the short talks he gave on the same subject. I found his summing up enlightening. As a scientist (the words he uses in his book) he says this about life in the galaxy "my answer is that we are probably the only intelligent beings in the observable universe, and I would not be very surprised if the solar system contains the only life in the observable universe."

Seems Im not alone in that thought after all!
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Roadrunner

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #331 on: May 18, 2011, 09:05:01 pm »

You ever think that maybe we are the only civilisation in the universe, and in the far distant future once we have finished nuking each other and end up colonising other worlds (which is going to happen one way or the other) eventually we will evolve into different races, making new species of intelligent life!

Of course this will take another 100, million years for that side of evolution to take place but its worth thinking about.

And here's one for some of you... when a UFO is spotted and its claimed its an alien, you ever think it could be a visitor from another time zone (yup time travel) or parallel universe's checking in on our progress of evolution, ok i watch to much star trec but still it make more sense then some one saying were not alone or wait are we, look around the world we have, how many species of animals are there, to many to count i imagine and were still discovering new ones daily, and the ocean is still a majority mystery!. Perhaps there are millions of intelligibly civilisations out there, just there all on this planet, maybe its not intelligence in the way we think, for all we know dolphins may think were primitive!

                                                                                                 ''So long & Thank's For All The Fish!''
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justboatonic

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #332 on: May 22, 2011, 03:09:05 pm »

You ever think that maybe we are the only civilisation in the universe, and in the far distant future once we have finished nuking each other and end up colonising other worlds (which is going to happen one way or the other) eventually we will evolve into different races, making new species of intelligent life!

Of course this will take another 100, million years for that side of evolution to take place but its worth thinking about.

And here's one for some of you... when a UFO is spotted and its claimed its an alien, you ever think it could be a visitor from another time zone (yup time travel) or parallel universe's checking in on our progress of evolution, ok i watch to much star trec but still it make more sense then some one saying were not alone or wait are we, look around the world we have, how many species of animals are there, to many to count i imagine and were still discovering new ones daily, and the ocean is still a majority mystery!. Perhaps there are millions of intelligibly civilisations out there, just there all on this planet, maybe its not intelligence in the way we think, for all we know dolphins may think were primitive!

                                                                                                 ''So long & Thank's For All The Fish!''

I think there is an important distinction to be drawn here. Intelligent life in the Galaxy and intelligent life in the Universe.

It wouldnt surprise me that there is no other intelliegent civilisation in our Galaxy right now. It wouldnt surprise me if there are no more than one or two intelligent civilisations co existing at any one time in any other galaxies right now.

In other words, I dont think our Galaxy has any other intelligent civilisations except us right now.

Whether we get to colonise the Galaxy and evolve into different species depends whether the so called 'great filter' is in our past or our future. If the filter is in our past, it could happen. However, if it's in our future.............................

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regiment

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #333 on: May 22, 2011, 04:56:31 pm »

what future some one in the USA SAID THE WORLD ENDED YESTERDAY as of this morning cornwall is still where iit  was yesterday so much for fortune tellers
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malcolmfrary

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Re: There's no one out there!
« Reply #334 on: May 23, 2011, 11:31:39 am »

what future some one in the USA SAID THE WORLD ENDED YESTERDAY as of this morning cornwall is still where iit  was yesterday so much for fortune tellers
Perhaps they should have had a farewell camping holiday on the upper slopes of Grimsvoetn.  The world would have ended as far as they were concerned, complete with an appropriate amount of fire and brimstone, we wouldn't have noticed, everyone's a winner.
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