Celestia Forums

Hi,

Anybody knows something about newer from 1.00 version of ET counter?

It`s great program! its using extended Drake`s equation and gives
impressive results!
From the data i`ve inputed it counted:

avarage distance betwen neighboring civilisations: 66 ly
number of civ. in milky way: 120 000 000 (or sth.)
In entire universe: 12 trillion!

CU

Here i am again!


Here is the link to d/l this stuff:

http://www.sf-soft.de

This equation only strenghten Fermis Paradox: if there are so many intelligent civilizations out there; where are they, and why havnt we made contact with them for many tousand years ago?

I tend to belive in Arthur C. Clarkes explenation to it: that we are actually in some kind of quarantine, or that we are quite simply downstraight ignored by other species.
Ah well; I guess we will make contact one day; I just hope that will happen in our lifetime.

Thanks for the link, by the way.
I'll take a look at the program when I get time.


Stargazer.

Actually I wouldn't be too happy ... better don't have aliens contact us, they may be hostile, and the possibility that they are is simply too high.

They can be friendly too, but this may have many consequences, that are cannot be foreseen. Maybe they are simply friendly and have a prime directive like in startrek :D

Im willing to bet they look at us as ignorant monkey creatures who have a tendency to destroy ourselves and have squandered our technological abilities on soda pop windmills and diet pills...

I dont think aliens are hostile, at least not all of them if they exist.
If a species has become so advanced that they can travel interstellar; they must have built up some morals for not having destroyed themselfs long time ago.

Why should aliens have any interest in Earth; when space is full of resources and materials?
Earth is but a tiny drop in a infinet comsic ocean, and so is (I hope) the human speices themselfs.


Stargazer.

Perhaps occam's razor is applicable when it comes to questions of extraterrestrial intelligences. We have not yet encountered any such creatures, nor indeed any solid evidence of extraterrestrial life--perhaps life is much more unique and rare than some people think?
If there are twelve trilliion civilizations in the cosmos, where are they? No, life is rare and perhaps unique...

baby_beluga wrote:Perhaps occam's razor is applicable when it comes to questions of extraterrestrial intelligences. We have not yet encountered any such creatures, nor indeed any solid evidence of extraterrestrial life--perhaps life is much more unique and rare than some people think?
If there are twelve trilliion civilizations in the cosmos, where are they? No, life is rare and perhaps unique...

it's really too bad poor occam is so misunderstood so often lately. from the most common definition, i could apply occam's razor to either side of this argument. either it'd be ridiculous to assume we're so special and unique and construct all kinds of neat little crystal spheres that surround us, or it'd be illogical to assume there are other intelligent creatures out there without any evidence there is even life out there. no, occam's razor is just simply the advice not to make problems bigger than they already are. when applied to aliens, if you say life is a rarity in the universe, you have to come up with some kind of explanation why we're so special that we exist seemingly against the odds. now, suddenly, you're faced with all new problems to explain such a statistical anomaly. on the other hand, if you say there definitely are aliens, then you have to come up with weird explanations for why we haven't been visited yet, like inventing the alien prime directive . occams says, if you don't know, don't think about it until proof falls into your lap, it's easier that way .

And most hopefully, we will have that proof within our lifetime. I dont know about you others, but I look at the first contact with extra-terrestial civilizations with great entusiasm.
But then again; we should aliens have any interest in us, if there are several trillions of more advanced and sentient beings out there?
Let me just say it this way: would you stop for a minute to take a look at a small insect crawling across the street? Or would you simply ignore it?



Stargazer.

The Earth-Moon system is unusual compared to the rest of the Solar System, the Solar System is unusual compared to known extrasolar systems, our position in the Milky Way is unusual compared to most other stars. We just don't have enough examples yet, but the little we do know, coupled with the paucity of ET signals (read: none) does suggest that we could be a rare occurrence. We'll just have to wait for more astronomical data. Eventually there will be that moment, similar to when Galileo first gazed upon Jupiter's moons, when we discover irrevicable proof of ET. It may not actually be a communication signal.

I seem to recall an article on SETI that mentioned surveying stars with abnormally high infrared emission, which could be evidence of advanced civilisations which have harnessed their stars' power more efficiently, through the use of Dyson Spheres or the like. Has anyone heard of such a survey actually being done?

I've never heard it mentioned before, but the data from an alien civilisation that I'm most looking forward to is their Hipparcos and Principal Galaxy catalogues. In an Einsteinian universe, this could be our only way to ever accurately chart its 3D structure.

Paul,

At least 3 searches for the infrared signatures of Dyson Spheres have been made.

See the last section on the Web page http://www.d.kth.se/~nv91-asa/dysonFAQ.html

Who was it, and what did he say properly, something about an advanced civilizations transmissions would be totaly random (no discernable patterns etc) due to complete compression and encryption?

Okay, so perhaps I am wrong about Occam's razor, though I understood it to mean that, of two explanations for one set of data, the simpler or more elegant of the two is the more likely to be true, as, for example, in the case of the Ptolemaic Crystal Celestial Spheres vs. the current model.
If one argues, with guesswork statistics (if one star in a thousand evolves life, and if one star in a thousand from those stars evolves intelligent life...) that there are billions, perhaps trillions of intelligent cultures in the cosmos, then surely there must be some evidence for them somewhere. Maybe a billion socieities would be using perfect encryption and compression in their broadcasts, but there's still billions more by this count to use plain old noisy radio like we do, to be heard by anyone who cares to listen.
Also, positing that there are billions of alien societies and that we are simply quarantined for our psychotic and degenerate behavior at the species level is a less elegant explanation for the silence than plain emptiness itself.
The Ptolemaic cosmos is one that places mankind in the center of the universe. For Ptolemy, this was his starting assumption due to his culture and his own personal beliefs and desires. This is what allowed him to watch and chart the stars his whole life, creating ever more complicated theories to explain the data which did not fit his personal belief and desire.
The aliens that mankind has imagined throughout history show all the signs of being a plain figment of the human imagination, a kind of wish fulfillment--the aliens of the cold war were creeping communist monsters, while Carl Sagan's aliens might as well be a kind and loving, beneficient God. People decide how they feel about the idea of aliens, they see what kinds of emotional needs are met by positing a universe that is throbbing with life rather then empty and dead as it appears to be, and they argue their cases from there.
I am not, however, arguing that extraterrestrial life is impossible, because I would love to meet an alien myself. I think it is possible, but it must be incredibly rare. I would suggest a bit of reading, Stanislaw Lem's World of Cataclysm, for an example of what I am talking about. Lem argues that the very fine particulars of our stellar and planetary evolution, the slightest, perfect concfluence of conditions existed to create and harbor life. I don't think the article is supposed to be accurate, but I feel that the thinking behind it is correct: Lem argues that a bottle can, for example, fall from a third-story window. It probably will break, but there is the slightest chance that it will land just right and bounce. THis all makes sense, according to the laws of physics. This is all legal, if unusual. Yet a bottle can also fall and get knocked into a second story window, where it will land unbroken in a fish tank, and the fish will splash out into the frying-pan that happened to be right there, where the owner will discover the fish when it is nicely browned. This is all possible, all legal according to physics, but it is terribly unlikely or unusual, hence, to world as cataclysm. Perhaps galactic shock-waves, relative neighborhood star density, the timing of local suernovae all played a direct part in our fragile development.
Now come on, really. We're all amateur scientists here, let's think about logic and epistemology now. Let us use Occam's Razor. We are faced with one set of negative data concerning the existence of technological alien cultures. This runs counter to our hypothesis, which would predict such cultures in the billions. So what do we do? We are faced with two options in this hypothesis--either life is everywhere, and all of it is hiding from us, or we are unique in a world of strict physical laws. Both of these possibilities stretch credulity. The most elegant solution to this difficulty is to accept that perhaps life is far more rare and precious than one had thought before.

I tend to lean more towards Carl Sagan's ideas of advanced civilisations...

Quote from Cosmos...

It is possible that at some later time with third and higher orders of colonies developing new worlds, another independent expanding civilization would be discovered. Very likely mutual contact would already have been made by radio or some other remote means. The new arrivals might be different sort of colonial society. Conceivably two expanding civilizations with different planetary requirements would ignore each other, thier filigree patterns of expansion intertwining, but not conflicting. They might cooperate in the exploration of a province of the Galaxy. Even nearby civilizations could spend millions of years in such seperate or colonial ventures without ever stumbling upon our obscure solar system...

Sagan even went on to say no advanced civilization is alike...in fact if we were to find another alien race they would be very much different than us...maybe more so than we could ever imagine...

There may be millions of alien races, but the extreme distances make contact very unlikely. Life is NOT rare- it evolved at the bottom of the ocean and inside the ice of glaciers and almost everywhere there is water.
Distance and numbers, the sheer size of the galaxy is the limiting factor!

If you enjoy Carl Sagan, then you've probably read his excellent novel, Contact. I would have to suggest getting a copy of His master's voice by Stanislaw Lem, the most famed science fiction writer of Europe. The story begins with the same premise: a signal is coming from space, ostensibly from an intelligent, technological, culture, but it breaks from there, Lem giving an account of a failure to translate the message. For people interested in very deep thought about this issue, Lem cannot be beat.

I loved the book Contact, a very realitsic scenario, methinks.


Stargazer.