Do you believe we are alone in the universe?

The universe is far, far, far too big and ancient a place to reasonably rule out life elsewhere. Even if the galaxy is currently lacking intelligent life other than our own (and I'm not convinced it is - our expectations of what intelligent life should be doing with itself is, obviously, prejudiced toward our own ideals), I don't think it was nor will be. I'm also much more optimistic about FTL.

 

[Kaodi]

For aliens to be survivalist loners interstellar travel has to be possible. Otherwise there is no material downside to communicating other than the energy used.

I am not sure about scarcity either. If life itself is scarce then most mineral resources are effectively abundant. Looks at how incredibly shallow our mines are compared to the width of the planet. With decent propulsion and effectively unlimited energy over time you really do a number on asteroids and other planets.

As an aside if we ever to establish intermittent communications with aliens I suggest that when we are waiting for replies our communications arrays repeat to us the Internet dialtone sound for years at a time, .

 

[Ovinomancer]

For aliens to be survivalist loners interstellar travel has to be possible. Otherwise there is no material downside to communicating other than the energy used.

Exceot you cannot say that other aliens aren't capable of interstellar travel because of the technology advancement curve. It's unlikely we can ever conclusively rule out FTL travel. If we can't, why should they?

I am not sure about scarcity either. If life itself is scarce then most mineral resources are effectively abundant. Looks at how incredibly shallow our mines are compared to the width of the planet. With decent propulsion and effectively unlimited energy over time you really do a number on asteroids and other planets.

Life spreads to consume available resources. If we progess to occupy the whole solar system, we will eventually consume available resources. Fir any given level of technology, resources are finite even in an infinite universe. Frex, as you mention, are current technology affords access to only the barest sliver of crust one this one planet. The available resources at our disposal are finite without technological improvement, at which point the limit moves. It never disappears.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I was talking to Zardnaar about the phrase “only a theory”. Calm down.

Yeah, my bad. I followed a quote and it opened that post, didn't double check the name.

 

[MoonSong]

Or Europe. Really, most of the political crap is denial of science, not squashing or preventing it from happening. Science is marching on.

Politics get in the way of proper funding and access to peer reviewed publication -some fields of study get more or less of either depending on what is popular in the government and academia, but the itty gritty details are best left off this site-. Those are key to have the scienting done.

We are already starting to understand more. Who's to say that there aren't other ways around that law that we don't yet know of?

https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/...lain-dark-matter-dark-energy-and-the-big-bang

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40594387

^o^ wiii!! someone found a practical use for quantum entanglement. We truly are living in the future.

Just note that neither of these truly meant FTL is possible. Quantum entanglement can transmit information quite fast, but it's just data, you cannot do it with people and things that already exist. And these Tachyons -if they truly exist- are in the realm of exotic particles, so nothing you can built a spaceship with -and since an antimatter collision could mean the death of this universe, I would say they are out of the question as a power source-.

And how many times has that happened in just the last 100 years? Look, I'm not saying that it's not most likely true, but it's actual hubris to think that we really know that right now. It may change on the next step up of colliders. It may not. The assumption that we're absolutely right with what we know right now is not scientific.

What we know right now is hella useful and has good predictive power (well, most things we think we know). But Newtonian physics did a great job until we found out that it was an approximation only. We still haven't a theory that adequately combines special relativity with general relativity. Assuming that we know that light is absolutely as fast as you can go is hubristic belief we know everything about that already.

I'm not saying we know everything, but if you can truly accelerate stuff with actual mass beyond the speed of light using finite energy, then everything we know is wrong and only works out of sheer dumb luck. Also notice that the last 50 years have been less revolutionary in our understanding of physics than the 50 years before that.

(But of course I've only had a couple of undergrad courses in physics, so I'm far from an expert)

And back to the topic, in order for the stuff in the sky to be alien devices we need that at least one other planet out there has had the conditions for life, that it has actually developed life, that one of these lifeforms actually got complex and intelligent enough to be considered sentient, that that species has managed to build a way more advanced technological society than us before us, that the have found us out of the millions and millions of planets out there, and that everything we know about physics is essentially wrong. Somehow I find the outright supernatural explanation more likely, or at least more honest. I mean I find the alien explanation no less of a fantasy.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not saying we know everything, but if you can truly accelerate stuff with actual mass beyond the speed of light using finite energy, then everything we know is wrong and only works out of sheer dumb luck. Also notice that the last 50 years have been less revolutionary in our understanding of physics than the 50 years before that.

Not necessarily. There's a few possibilities. We may not need to accelerate to lightspeed normally, bypassing what appears to be a hard limit. Wormholes may suffice. Higher dimensional space exploitation may provide a way. Directly manipulating quantum effects as well.

This is what I mean about technology stagnation, though. If we truly believe we've found everything possible but haven't, we will not progress except by accident. Accident is a poorly predictable circumstance.

 

[Maxperson]

^o^ wiii!! someone found a practical use for quantum entanglement. We truly are living in the future.

Just note that neither of these truly meant FTL is possible. Quantum entanglement can transmit information quite fast, but it's just data, you cannot do it with people and things that already exist. And these Tachyons -if they truly exist- are in the realm of exotic particles, so nothing you can built a spaceship with -and since an antimatter collision could mean the death of this universe, I would say they are out of the question as a power source-.

The point is that we are progressing very quickly and learning new things. Things which alter how we understand the universe. Things which seem impossible to us now, might seem easy to accomplish 100 years from now. The laws that we know might be incomplete and there may be aspects we haven't discovered about them that allow us to create a work-around. There may be other laws not yet discovered that allow work-arounds.

 

[Zardnaar]

I was talking to Zardnaar about the phrase “only a theory”. Calm down.

I also did not reference the theory of relativity. I meant things that turn up in sci fi/quantum physics. Zero point energy, anti matter, fusion power, tachyon whatever things like that.

 

[Hussar]

Exceot you cannot say that other aliens aren't capable of interstellar travel because of the technology advancement curve. It's unlikely we can ever conclusively rule out FTL travel. If we can't, why should they?[\quote]

Well, at the moment we can conclusively rule out FTL travel.

Again, we have to be completley wrong in our understanding of physics for that to be true.

I also did not reference the theory of relativity. I meant things that turn up in sci fi/quantum physics. Zero point energy, anti matter, fusion power, tachyon whatever things like that.

IOW, magic.

 

[Zardnaar]

Exceot you cannot say that other aliens aren't capable of interstellar travel because of the technology advancement curve. It's unlikely we can ever conclusively rule out FTL travel. If we can't, why should they?[\quote]

Well, at the moment we can conclusively rule out FTL travel.

Again, we have to be completley wrong in our understanding of physics for that to be true.



IOW, magic.

Yeah pretty much. Faster than light is basically impossible due to energy requirements.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, at the moment we can conclusively rule out FTL travel.

No, we cannot.

Again, we have to be completley wrong in our understanding of physics for that to be true.

No, we wouldn't. Take Newtonian physics, for example. It's not right -- it doesn't do relatively -- but it's still extremely useful and oft used. You still learn it in school and in college (most of Phys I and II are Newtonian). But, it is still wrong. It's just so minorly wrong at non-relativistic speeds that it usually doesn't matter. Sometimes, though, that wrongness is critical. Take GPS, for example, as it's already mentioned in thread. You can do satelittes without relativity, and we had and still mostly do. But the extremely precise timing of GPS failed, even at relatively (heh) low orbital speeds, due to the very small error in Newtonian physics caused by lack of relativity. That was corrected for, and niw you get ads on your phone when you're near Starbucks. Ain't technology grand?

We can be almost entirely right and still allow FTL travel. I grant that, with our current understanding, it's highly unlikely. The only absolute in science is "this is wrong," though.

IOW, magic.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology...."