This is interesting...

[dmwalker 604]

On 12/20/2017 at 4:49 AM, WotanUK said:

if Aliens have the ability to travel the galaxy it's kind of difficult to know what they would want from us

If we had the ability to travel the galaxy, I think the first thing we would do is start visiting all the planets found by Kepler to be potentially habitable. Maybe that is what the aliens are doing. At first, it would be out of scientific curiosity but inevitably leading to some kind of exploitation. A Star Trek equivalent might be a planet with huge deposits of Dilithium, for which the resident civilisation has not yet found a use.

As Arthur Clarke was mentioned, I was reminded of the end of Rama Revealed where we could see, over millions of years, civilisations throughout the galaxy developing space travel and spreading out to other worlds and then disappearing. In one case, an alien civilisation almost reached Earth but genetically engineered itself out of existence.

[WotanUK 289]

25 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

If we had the ability to travel the galaxy, I think the first thing we would do is start visiting all the planets found by Kepler to be potentially habitable. Maybe that is what the aliens are doing. At first, it would be out of scientific curiosity but inevitably leading to some kind of exploitation. A Star Trek equivalent might be a planet with huge deposits of Dilithium, for which the resident civilisation has not yet found a use.

This is only true because Star Trek has elements that cannot exist in nature, as you say Dilithium.  In the real Universe we already know the elements that can exist, all elements are made in stars (except the three lightest and i suppose the very heavy ones that vanish all most immediately, save of course the fabled island of stability). So it would have to be either a compound that a space fairing race would be unable to make, or something like that radiation stuff out of the execrable Star Trek IX, that again an advanced civilization was unable to duplicate.  Yeah, you are right, that would be another reason, but it's a little Earth-centric to believe that only Earth has this in a galaxy populated by billions of stars / planets.

I think that the fault in this manner of speaking is that sci-fi has set us up to believe in mono-cultures (other than Earth), the Klingon's are all brave warriors who worship Kathless, the Romulan's are all sneaky spies.  It doesn't make any sense, in reality there would be a Klingon atheist movements, the Aliens from Independence Day would have some of there own kind protesting about the treatment of the people of Earth, maybe even going rogue like happens on this planet.

[dmwalker 604]

Rather than Dilithium, one could use Uranium as an example and 16th Century Earth as a time and place. I'm just guessing but, although all of the elements are known and exist throughout the universe, I don't think they are uniformly distributed. Accessibility is a factor, too; imagine if Venus had large deposits of Rare Earth elements, with huge military electronics applications, we could never retrieve any because of the hostile atmosphere. Rather than thinking of aliens travelling across half the galaxy just to visit our little planet, just think that, if we are looking at planets in solar systems in our neighbourhood, they might just as easily be looking at us.

 

[WotanUK 289]

Of course what you have said is correct.  But again, we are not talking about us on this planet with our level of technology.  If Venus was found to be full of rare Earth elements we would have massive trouble getting them from Venus to Earth, but for a star fairing civilization it's no more difficult than pit mining for us.  We know that for example there are astronomic bodies made of diamonds (not that they are all that rare even on Earth), it's likely there are planets were Uranium is far more common than it is on Earth.  Accessibility is a big problem for us, but again, not for a civilization that can travel between the stars.

On the subject of intelligent life I tend to believe the same thing that Lister says to Rimmer in Red Dwarf, "it's just you, me and a load of smegging rocks!"

[birdguy 3,943]

Wotan, how do you know earthlike planets are rare?

If I find an anthill in my back yard but none in my neighbor's yard I can't can ant hills must be rare because I haven't looked for any beyond my yard and my neighbor's yard.

Of all the starts out there how many have we been able to examine?  Especially small stars like our own?  That's like Columbus getting to the Azores and saying, "Well, that's it.  Noting more out there."

Given the universality of natural Iaws my belief is there are probably trillions of planets like ours out there and on billions of them some stage of humanoid development; some not as far along as us and some considerably more advanced than ours.  We just don't have the science yet to know.

Noel

[WotanUK 289]

What do you even mean when you say "Earth-like", are you talking about the size, the composition, the atmosphere, life?  Gun to my head, i would say that planets that are capable of supporting intelligent life are very rare.  My guess on intelligent life is that for the most part it extinguishes itself or perhaps even scarier there is something in our future, something we discover or invent that will end us, maybe AI at the technological singularity, or the 'grey-goo' of nano-tec.

[dmwalker 604]

1 hour ago, WotanUK said:

Accessibility is a big problem for us, but again, not for a civilization that can travel between the stars.

I suppose you are correct although I think it's probably just as easy to overestimate alien capabilities as to underestimate them. Someone once said it's depressing to think that, even in the 24th century, there still isn't a cure for baldness.

Also, I think you are correct about intelligent life being rare and, even if there are billions of planets with humanoid development, as Birdguy says, they would be spread throughout the universe. The question would be how many are there within, say, 50 light years of Earth. My brain is suffering from the previously discussed quantum entanglement so I can't calculate but it might be only 5 or less.

[Orlaam 306]

A certain F/A 18 WSO says he's seen the same thing multiple times, always over the ocean off the coast.  He also said he asked many times to his fellow pilots about it out of curiosity, but was eventually told to stop asking questions.  He does know he has seen them in the same area before and heard of other pilots had as well.  It's clearly a government project of some sort is all. 

For perspective, NASA accidentally released this photo in the early 60s from an X15

It turned out to be a secret A-12 Oxcart used by the CIA and a precursor to the SR-71.

[WotanUK 289]

1 hour ago, dmwalker said:

I suppose you are correct although I think it's probably just as easy to overestimate alien capabilities as to underestimate them. Someone once said it's depressing to think that, even in the 24th century, there still isn't a cure for baldness.

Also, I think you are correct about intelligent life being rare and, even if there are billions of planets with humanoid development, as Birdguy says, they would be spread throughout the universe. The question would be how many are there within, say, 50 light years of Earth. My brain is suffering from the previously discussed quantum entanglement so I can't calculate but it might be only 5 or less.

That was a quote put to Patrick Stewart, his reply was "in the 24th century they wouldn't care".

We have been transmitting signals for around 70 years, so far we have heard nothing back so we can say that within 35 light years no civilisations exist that can reply, or that want to reply.

The difficulty is that the majority of the stars in our galaxy are at the centre, it's thought to be too active to support intelligent life, we are limited to the middle to outer edge of the galaxy. 

It really doesn't matter if the Universe is teeming with intelligent life, unless they are in our galaxy the distance means it's very unlikely we would ever know. 

[birdguy 3,943]

We have been transmitting signals for around 70 years, so far we have heard nothing back so we can say that within 35 light years no civilisations exist that can reply, or that want to reply.

Or perhaps they have but the people who know won't tell us.

Noel