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I’m certain there is intelligent life in the universe, but I’m also nearly certain that we will never interact with it.
There is intelligent life out there, they just think it’s for the best not to interact with us.
Not alone, but I’m of the opinion that we are very “early” in the lifespan of the universe. There’s a very decent chance we’re among the first to develop to this point or beyond. This by itself could be a possible explanation for the fermi paradox; we can’t see other civilisations yet because they’re roughly at our own level and still lack the abilities to communicate or travel these distances, just like us.
You think so? Earth and the Sun are only about 5 billion years old, or 1/3 the age of the universe. Life is estimated to have appeared on Earth about 4 billion years ago.
Under the law of averages, life could have independently developed and reached comparable maturity to Earth at least two other, non-concurrent times. We’re third generation at best.
Our solar system is built out of the remnants of former stars. The earliest solar systems were comprised hydrogen and helium and created the heavier elements we expect life to require.
Perhaps it’s possible for life forms to be hydrogen based but would we be able to recognize them?
There’s also the thought that future life will be formed out of even heavier base elements the do not exists in proper quantities at this stage.
If we assume the hypothesis of heat death of the universe is how this all ends, we’re still in the first one percent of the universe’s existence.
That’s still comparatively early in the grand scheme of things. I kind of like the idea of us being among the first, but not first.
I think when you consider the rate of advancement of any technological species, “roughly the same level as us” basically implies that they got started at exactly the same time. Even an extra thousand years of technological advancement would put them far ahead of us. A million years would put them unimaginably far ahead.
On a cosmic scale, that’s nothing. That’s a tight window and given the like 8 billion years that planets with the required elements have had to form, I would doubt that no other species had a chance to surpass us.
I kinda hope we are in some ways, mainly because I’d hate to inflict us on others.
Is it really something to be worried about?
Scifi aside, inter-stellar space travel seems to be basically almost non-viable.
I think we can find solace in the idea that space is so unimaginably gigantic that the distance between us and anything else like us is way too vast for any vehicle to traverse in any “reasonable” time.
I personally think it’s practically impossible for there to not be something else intelligent out there, I just don’t think they’re even remotely close enough to ever even detect us or us detect them.
To be fair, the universe is also so old as to allow quite a bit of it to have reached us by now even limited to “unreasonable” timeframes.
But also so old that it could have reached us before humans ever evolved.
In every bit of fiction with “hostile” aliens, the aliens were quite blatantly a stand-in for humanity itself. Most of them focus on one or two specific negative human traits or aspects, but their motivations are almost always very human.
I’d hate to inflict you on others
Alone as in the only life across the entire universe ? Absolutely not.
Alone as in the only intelligent life form across the universe?
A lot more plausible but still unlikely.Excluding a mass cataclysm (nuclear war, a hyper destructive pathogen), I think we’ll find evidence of extra-terrestrial life (if not life itself) in our own solar system in the next ~100 years.
I would think somewhere out in the universe there is (was?) intelligent life.
We’ve only confirmed exoplanets in the last ~40 years and the information we have is minimal (and biased towards gas giant type planets).
There has to be intelligent life somewhere in the universe.
We live on an entire life filled planet. We are not alone.
That’s question is about if earth-based life is alone or is there other non-earth based life.
But you knew that already
Its a stupid ass mindset.
I’d say no shot!
Yes. But, much like us, the true “great filter” will turn out to be greed in one way or another.
I don’t think we, as a species, are ever leaving the solar system. And I don’t believe any other intelligent species would either. Exploration is high and noble, but the people who pay for it always expect a return on their investment. Finding the new world was about power, wealth and resources for those footing the bill. The exploration of the Arctic was a search for faster access to markets on the opposite side of the world.
There’s no profit in doing something “just because it’s there”.
My belief is that we’ll get into the solar system. We’ll harvest its resources. And that’s where we’ll stop. When we think about the size of the solar system, the resources available to us will effectively be infinite. One species would never use them all up before the sun expands and goes nova. It’s impossible.
So what is the return on investment to go to another star system? What’s the return on investment to making all that effort?
I think we’re in a universe that is filled with single-system species that just stay in their neighbourhood.
Are we the Ferengi?
I think it’s pretty clear from current events that that is exactly who we are.
Wormholes, Warp drives, fusion drives or light printing. What else we don’t got?
I think this was covered in some old school scifi, maybe Asimov or Clark? I vaguely remember one of their (non-mainline?) novels speculating that civilizations that didn’t eventually attempt interstellar travel enter a terminal decline of some sort (on a multi-thousand year scale post industrialization). I really wish I remembered who wrote this.
And if we we are able to harvest resources on system-level scale, we will most definitely attempt to send probes to the nearest systems (which are not all that far).
I think the book you are referring to should be Isaac Asimov’s End of eternity. Oh boy what I would like to give to be able to read it again for the first time.
It may have been End of Eternity.
I actually remember most of End of Eternity reltively well, it was my first Asmov book as a kid. Read it again many times of course. Excellent and unique book.
Although for whatever reason, I can’t 100% say if that “space exploration as a global driver of advanced civilization” idea was from End of Eternity.
