True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
I figure there probably is. My main doubts is whether FTL travel will ever be possible and therefore the possibility of meeting intelligent life elsewhere is all but impossible because of that unless we can find a way to become effectively immortal.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
There's a very good chance there is. FTL travel is not impossible, but whether or not a civilization can survive long enough to develop it remains to be seen.
Probably--the universe is a big place. That said, the reason why they don't see us is probably: a.) there's no reason to suppose they have space travel, radio towers, or any other technology we have, b.) they're probably too far away anyway.
I watched some interesting videos on this recently - this guy suggested that, if we had an advanced enough AI-controlled ship, it could maybe carry human embryos to another planet if 1% of light speed could be achieved. But if the planet couldn't support life right away, the ship would also have to have the means of fixing that, and probably need to carry a lot of materials the whole way too. Not to mention a way of raising the embryos.
He also has a video speculating as to why we might not have heard from advanced alien life if it exists.
Considering the hundreds of billions of other galaxies in the universe then it's pretty much guaranteed there is life elsewhere. Even if they are way more advanced than us we're still gonna be pretty difficult to locate considering how many other options they have to choose from.
So yeah, it's pretty much certain though we'll probably never ever know about them.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
Yep, it's out there somewhere, and if they ftl travel, they're hopefully smart enough to stay away from us. Can't imagine we're the model of a well adjusted global population.
Last edited by Chibi Youkai; 05-09-2018 at 04:52 PM. Reason: spelling
I guess a follow up question I should ask for everyone who said yes is whether you believe intelligence to build a technologically/cultural driven society is inevitable as long as there is life on a planet? Does evolution always result in intelligent beings?
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
I think that’s a very difficult question to answer considering that the only empirical data we have to go on comes from exactly one planet. Not exactly enough to corroborate data.
I'd say it's not inevitable honestly. It'd be the height of hubris to consider human intelligence to be some epitome of evolution after all. Now intelligence is useful for survival to be sure, and societies are also generally great for survival as well. But an intelligent society that builds technology and explores the universe the way we do? It might not happen that often. I mean to the best of our knowledge we're the only life to ever go that route barring a few now extinct evolutionary cousins and siblings. And we haven't even been here that long. Maybe a hundred thousand years out of hundreds of millions of years that were sure life previously existed on earth. There's also the fact that supporting the sort of intelligence we possess is a massive energy sink. It takes all kinds of food, time to develop (there are reasons we're utterly useless when we're born and for years after but most other animals aren't). I could imagine places where there just might not be enough raw materials and energy input into an ecosystem to support that kind of evolution.
So out of hundreds of millions of years on a planet replete with life and energy from both the sun and the earth itself, we're the only ones who became this intelligent and it comes with a lot of vulnerabilities that every other species that we know has come close never overcame and they became extinct. I'd honestly have to guess that when it comes to survival, we got lucky and made it through all the awkward phases where the downsides of our intelligence could have easily outweighed the benefits and we easily could have died out.
Now given the sheer size of the universe I'd bet money on there being a lot of species out there that are intelligent and capable of scientific pursuits and technological invention. But I would also guess that they're among the rarer forms of life out there all things considered. There are simply a lot of barriers to developing that kind of intelligence and evolution really doesn't give a trout how intelligent you are. Natural selection only drives the development of traits that help life survive and thrive. It doesn't tend to give a trout if the thing letting you survive is intelligence, sheer size and brutality, or laser eyes. Survival is survival no matter how you get there.
The idea of us being the most benevolent is fairly terrifying. We're pretty good at destroying each other, and finding ever-increasingly creative ways to do so.