This is why we had to fake the moon landing. Because we actually went, there was a massive alien city, and we couldn't use the real recordings so we needed to re-shoot it in a Hollywood studio.
And on the way back we realized that Earth was the only flat planet in the galaxy. Everything else is spherical, but not Earth. It's just a flat disk...
The Drake equation tells us in all probability, we are not unique. There are millions of other planets that are habitable. So, the unique earth theory stands basically, because we have yet to find intelligent life elsewhere. The Gaian Bottleneck theory is probably somewhat correct in that many of the civilizations that were are gone. Many others are in infant states like our own and likewise don't have the technology to reach out or maybe even receive our radio messages. The Great Filter has a good point. Any planet that would eventually host intelligent life would have to first go through hell. That likely cuts down the number that make it as Earth did. But, it seems highly improbable that the Earth would be the only one. It's quite possible more advance intelligent life would give us the silent treatment, either because we aren't worth it, or because they don't want to interfere...kind of like the prime directive in Star Trek. Though it's quite possible they have interfered to stop calamities here, and we just aren't aware of it. The Earth could be an early bird...but it seems a bit arrogant to dismiss the possibility we aren't. If we are the most advanced species in the Universe then that is crazy. I will say we advanced incomprehensibly fast over the last 100 years compared to the time before that. Did we have help? The only way I can see machines being a civization somewhere is if they overtook their biological creators. I am sure there are lifeforms out there we cannot comprehend, but I don't see machines being natural lifeforms. We definitely have a long way to go in advancing our technology to reach further into space. We haven't even reached outside of our own galaxy, let alone other galaxies.
There's a series of books that I have heard are really good, but I haven't had a chance to get to them. Three Body Problem. The Dark Forest theory is pretty scary.
Eh, we would probably be invaded already if that were the case. It could be the inverse. We are the barbarians....Aliens aren't coming here because we would attack them on sight.
Enormous distances between planets. And while life seems to develop fairly easily, a technological civilization is another matter.
It’s just a really big universe out there and that speed of light limit is a real bummer: “The itsy bitsy blue dot is how far our radio signals have travelled from Earth - a diameter of about 200 light-years. (Adam Grossman/Nick Risinger/Planetary Society) The invention of radio was the work of many great minds over the course of several decades during the 19th century, but the first transmission was made in 1895. Radio broadcasting came along a few years later. The first intentional radio transmission to space, called the Arecibo message, wasn't until 1974, but we've been leaking radio signals into space for over 100 years. Many of those are probably garbled by the ionosphere. Even those that aren't (like Earth-space communications), by the time they're 100 light-years away, are so attenuated and weak that they're basically undetectable anyway. So, if there are any intelligent aliens beyond that radius, and if they have radio technology, they probably couldn't pick up what we're putting out there.”
Estimates vary as to the number of stars in the Milky Way, the number of planets in the milky way and the number of galaxies in the universe. But using some pretty conservative estimates there would be around 21,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets, or 21 sextillion. Keep in mind that's just the visible universe. And what about Panspermia. We know of microscopic lifeforms that can survive in space for long periods of time. And what about moons? In our solar system outside of Mars the three most likely places to find simple life are on moons around Jupiter and Saturn. But focusing just on that number of planets above - to put that number in perspective, that's about 46,000,000 per second since the beginning of the universe 13.77 billion years ago. There are about 26.64 sextillion drops of water in the oceans. And all of the oceans are visible. Grains of sand? There's only about 7.5 sextillion of those on earth. So the better analogy is the number of drops in the oceans. Lets falsely assume that our first radio waves over 100 years ago haven't degraded to the point of being imperceptible from background radiation. The radius would include roughly 15,000 stars, or .000005% of the Milky Way. Assuming the galaxy has 200b stars (most estimates are between 100b-400b with some much higher), this would mean we've reached a drop inside of 1,321 gallons of water. In just our galaxy. So it's cute when people wonder why we haven't detected anything and/or bring up all the things that had to go right in order for "intelligent" life to exist on earth, and there were many. The odds of winning powerball are 1 in 292,201,338. If we want to use those completely unscientific odds, that would mean there are 71,868,254,000,000,000 planets that have/had intelligent life in the visible universe. The Hubble ultra-deep field image was taken on a very small sliver of sky. If you reach out your arm and put a grain of sand on your finger, that's the size of the area of sky. Yet even that area showed many thousands of galaxies. #nerdalert
But it would only take a million years for a technological society to spread all over the galaxy using Von Neumann probes. There has been more than enough time unless there is something that gets in the way.
Cats are aliens...their eyes are video cameras, and their purr is a transmitter...they have infiltrated humans since the beginning of time and are here as security cameras. Cats are the ancient anthropologists of the planet Earth! I suspect other aliens are two small to see with the human eye as well. Others have those cloaking devices. If we ever become truly intelligent life maybe they'll let us see them.
Not sure but I did get the concept from a science fiction book I read long long ago. The idea always stuck with me..I read it sometime in the early 70s
We have proof here on earth that intelligent life peaked a long time ago, and masquerades around here in a Ted Cruz suit.
It's a big peak, long tail sort of thing, like when a movie comes out and most of the tickets are bought in weeks 1 and 2, but a hit will have tickets bought for months in smaller theaters etc... the long tail of sales. If I recall correctly, we are about 10% of the way through the period where life as we know it can form around G-type stars (because G-type stars with enough metallicity started forming about 6 billion years ago, and will form for 150 billion more years or so), but that does mean that the first 9.99% of the time when these stars formed, there might have been a lot more opportunities than there are now.
