A
amerigoV
Guest
I think Larry the Cable Guy has it right - Aliens have been in touch with us, but they seem to have a thing for redneck fellers.
Why haven't aliens got in contact with us yet?
tomBitonti
Adventurer
It seems the question ought not to be about why we haven't been contacted. It's about finding no evidence of the presence of aliens. No stray emissions. No remnants of van Neumann probes in the asteroid belt. No biota of alien origin in an out of the way corner of the solar system.
The idea is that we are very close to being able to create at least van Neumann probes ourselves, and certainly should be able to do so in the next millennium. Then, we will be able to spread evidence of ourselves far and wide in this galaxy over several million years. A long time for us, but not in a cosmological sense.
Thx!
TomB
The idea is that we are very close to being able to create at least van Neumann probes ourselves, and certainly should be able to do so in the next millennium. Then, we will be able to spread evidence of ourselves far and wide in this galaxy over several million years. A long time for us, but not in a cosmological sense.
Thx!
TomB
MechaPilot
Explorer
At least on my part, it's not a "worth" issue. It's not a value judgement. We (i.e. humanity) certainly have it within us to be a great people. We've had moments in history where it's shown through. However, instead of a "worth" issue, it's simply a "let's not stick our hand in that hornets' nest" issue (as said from the perspective of the aliens).
Well, we've really only scratched the surface of the *in* the way corners of the solar system. We shouldn't expect to have see what could be hidden out of the way, yet.
We have had something vaguely like powered technology for *less than 300 years* (I'm thinking Jame's Watt's patent on a steam engine here - a whopping 10 horsepower). I don't see how something coming in the next *thousand* years is "very close".
Watch NASA Unexplained Files on the Sci channel, it is shocking how many signals have been picked up are unknown and hushed.
tomBitonti
Adventurer
Certainly this is one answer: We really haven't looked very hard for very long, and in not very many places.
On a cosmological time scale, 1,000 years is a blink of the eye, almost nothing. But it wouldn't matter if the time taken is 10,000 or a million years, since the probe dispersion takes millions of years with known physics. What matters is that the capability seems not unreasonably possible. That is all that is needed to fuel the paradox: If we can send out probes, and intelligence similar to us is common, then we should see probes. But we don't. Either they aren't there, or we don't know how to find them.
Thx!
TomB
They don't want to be Rick-rolled.*
Watch NASA Unexplained Files on the Sci channel, it is shocking how many signals have been picked up are unknown and hushed.
Like the WOW Signal!
[video=youtube;xrHoscethfc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrHoscethfc&sns=em[/video]
Ok...maybe not that WOW signal.
* 237,042 years from now, a multi-species intergalactic battle fleet will be launched to destroy humanity because Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" caused an Extinction Level Event by causing one species' AI to all go insane.
The battle fleet becomes lost in space as the accumulated gifs, memes, kitten/puppy vids, assorted clickbait and porn broadcast by humanity clusters all of their navcomps.
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
do you give any credence to the Alien fungus theory ie that as the spores of certain fungi can survive in space that it is possible that fungi are of extraterrestrial origin.Fungi are markedly different from other life forms - Plant, Animal, Protozoan and still defy genetic classification.
They are considered to be closer to animals than plants and do demonstrate sensitivity to the environment (sentience).
It has been suggested that the mind altering effects of certain fungus contributed to the development of human intelligence (states of conciousness) and going out even further into the weird it has been suggested that the mycelium network (by which fungus connect various plants in a ecosystem) is concious and allows the transfer of data between nodes (plants) within the network.
ie the mycelium network of fungus interacting with plants and animals is in fact an alien intelligence that humans are not currently equipped to understand.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
We can't send those Von Neumann probes yet, however. We can speculate that it might or should be possible - but maybe it is not. Or, once we know how it could be done, we realize that we might need to look in a direction we have not looked before. To actually get to a paradox we have to make some assumptions of what kind of technology is possible.
Nothing humanity has build so far actually lasted millions of years. We haven't even been building things long enough for that. But in fact, most of what we can build is lucky to last more than a few years without maintenance (and usually even then, it requires optimal conditions.) We have nothing that is self-sustaining/maintaining and/or autonomously self-replicating. I believe the best we have now is 3D Printers that can print themselves, but they are not collecting their own rare materials.
Maybe Von Neumann probes end up not very small, but very huge, because something very small can't be fitted with the necessary intelligence and mechanical capabilities to find stuff to make itself from and detect anything about alien life or the universe. Maybe a "real" Von Neuman would look suspiciously like a complete star system.
Watch NASA Unexplained Files on the Sci channel, it is shocking how many signals have been picked up are unknown and hushed.
Unknown and hushed like on a mass broadcast television show? That sounds rather known and non-hushed to me.
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