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Aliens off Ireland?


Carl Sagan

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4 minutes ago, RamNut said:

They usually see moving statues and visions of Our Lady.

so i guess that Our Lady has got some new wheels.

An entire airport (Knock) was built in the middle of nowhere to fly pilgrims in and out of one such site. Quite handy if you have family in Mayo, for example, or if you actually believe someone saw the virgin. Otherwise quite useless. And you have to pay a €10 catholic tax in order to get on your plane.

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Carl, was it your namesake or Arthur C Clarke who once said that without any doubt there are alien civilisations who’s form and nature we would recognise ? He went on to say though, that problem is that we are so small and the universe so large that they will probably never find us and we will never find them.

pity because I rather fancy owning an intergalactic freighter and travelling the universe

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On 15/11/2018 at 12:37, jono said:

Carl, was it your namesake or Arthur C Clarke who once said that without any doubt there are alien civilisations who’s form and nature we would recognise ? He went on to say though, that problem is that we are so small and the universe so large that they will probably never find us and we will never find them.

pity because I rather fancy owning an intergalactic freighter and travelling the universe

As it happens, three of my colleagues recently published a paper claiming we're pretty likely to be alone in the Universe. Report at https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/are-we-truly-alone-cosmos-new-study-casts-doubt-rise-ncna891286

I and others from our Institute disagree, but it's a defensible position that there are no aliens. However, I'd suggest it's more likely that a complete absence of intelligent extraterrestrials would mean we're living in a computer simulation where no one programmed in any aliens. In which case I'd hope to hack it so Derby start winning the Champions League. 

However, mainstream (but perhaps old-fashioned) science opinion is certainly that there are plenty of recognizable aliens throughout the Universe, but the Universe is a big place so we wouldn't find each other.

A problem with that is it only takes a million years for an alien civilization to colonize all the Milky Way. But our Galaxy is many billions of years years old and Earth is quite young, meaning there were billions of years for alien races to spread everywhere before our planet even formed. 

So we ask, where is everybody? That's the Fermi paradox. Perhaps they just turned up off the coast of Ireland? 

Or there's some speculation that a very odd object called Oumuamua that recently whizzed through the solar system was powered by a piece of alien technology called a solar sail, but that's probably a whole other thread... 

And I would join you on the intergalactic freighter at the drop of a hat. 

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Probably get the numbers a bit wrong  but there wasn't much time before the evolution of life on earth to evolve intelligent life.

why?

life is made of chemical elements. Those chemical elements are formed in stars. A first generation star made primarily of hydrogen has to form, burn, produce the chemical elements and explode. Those elements then need to coalesce as a second generation star surrounded by rocky planets before the environment conducive to life even exists. So how long does that take? 

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The universe 14 billions years old. It took 10 billions years to create the earth from scratch. 

and how long does it take to form intelligent technologically advanced life once the environment is set up.

2-2.5 billions years for bacteria to evolve.

another 1.5 -2bn years for complex animals.

another half a billions years for intelligent animals with advanced technology.

there wasn't really therefore much time to complete the evolution of the appropriate environment and the subsequent evolution of technologically advanced intelligent life.

furthermore, the evolution of complex life on this planet involved numerous highly improbable chance events, from collisions with other planets creating tilt, seasons and a moon which generates tides. Just the right amount of planetry mass, an atmosphere and tectonic plates. Being Just the right distance from the just the right sized star. The evolution of single cellular self-replicating bacteria is a miracle in itself involving the evolution of complex metabolism, a genetic code, and the biological machinary to translate code into proteins into life. If thats not amazing enough, then the evolution of complex cells required the an association of different types of bacteria coming together and existing as a single life form. The evolution of viruses working in conjunction with bacteria is essential. (Mrs carl sagan knows quite a bit about this).

Complex single cells need to evolve into multi-cellular life forms which then have the opportunity to specialise different cells for different functions, and really complex animals can begin to emerge. Water is probably essential. So is lots of climate change, volcanic activity, and possibly a few impacts from asteroids which forces life to undergo various transformations to emerge onto land, generate hands, eyes, and large brains, language, culture, tools and ultimately perhaps weapons and advanced technology. Maybe the animals that achieve all this are inevitably top predators -  aggressive, war mongering, and necessarily selfish.  

It is perhaps worth remembering that 99% of the way through this process on Earth the dominant intelligent predators were reptiles. It takes numerous chance events such as asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions to continually clear the decks and pave the way for the evolution of  animals with sufficient potential to be technologically advantaged. Large brains required the dominance of animals with long gestation periods and live young, which in turn required periods of dry climate, trees, climbers forced to start walking upright and collaborating etc etc etc etc.

the reason why there is a real doubt about the possibility of advanced alien life is because to achieve all of this required a huge number of seemingly chance events. Its like rolling a 6 maybe a thousand times in succession. And even if it happened twice, the window of opportunity for two technoogically advanced intelligent animals to exist at the same time is minute. How long has intelligent technologically advanced life - with the potential to launch itself into space - existed on this planet. 50years in 4.5 billion years of Earths history. And how long will that animal exist before it destroys itself. (We are already responsible for the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the planet). 

And finally even if two technologically advanced life forms ever existed at the same time, during the same tiny window of opportunity, the chances are that they are too far apart to ever meet. 

We are alone.

better start looking after this miraculous planet. 

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3 hours ago, RamNut said:

Probably get the numbers a bit wrong  but there wasn't much time before the evolution of life on earth to evolve intelligent life.

why?

... 

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The universe 14 billions years old. It took 10 billions years to create the earth from scratch. 

... 

evolution of viruses working in conjunction with bacteria is essential. (Mrs carl sagan knows quite a bit about this)

Fab stuff. You're right in many areas, and many bright people I respect use the timing argument to justify us being first, but for me that's too anthropocentric. You're right about the age of Earth and the generally accepted age of the Universe (which I'm dubious about but we should accept it here). 

What you ignore is what I mentioned that there would be billions of Earth-liked planets, with all the same chemical makeup, formed in the Milky Way starting about 6 billion years before Earth, so life elsewhere had a massive headstart on us. That's a reason why it's a paradox. 

And I do have to ask - what's Mrs Sagan been doing round your gaff? 

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6 hours ago, RamNut said:

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The universe 14 billions years old. It took 10 billions years to create the earth from scratch. 

How many universes are there??? Maybe there are billions, maybe only 1.....maybe some are billions of years older, maybe something have the headstart on us???

maybe we are not alone, I hope we aren’t. 

It makes my head hurt ? 

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7 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Fab stuff. You're right in many areas, and many bright people I respect use the timing argument to justify us being first, but for me that's too anthropocentric. You're right about the age of Earth and the generally accepted age of the Universe (which I'm dubious about but we should accept it here). 

What you ignore is what I mentioned that there would be billions of Earth-liked planets, with all the same chemical makeup, formed in the Milky Way starting about 6 billion years before Earth, so life elsewhere had a massive headstart on us. That's a reason why it's a paradox. 

And I do have to ask - what's Mrs Sagan been doing round your gaff? 

She was chatting away whilst doing the windows.

Distance to the hercules globular cluster = 22,000 light years

velocity of nasa rocket = 22,000 mph

time for nasa rocket to reach HCG = approx 60 million years.

lets assume advanced aliens can go a bit faster than us.....100x faster than a rocket?.....10,000 times faster, they would still take 6000 years to get here.....1million times faster than a nasa rocket....60 years?

interesting choice for alien astronauts. They can either spend a lifetime on a spaceship looking forward to a brief glimpse of the republic of ireland through heavy cloud, or stay on their own planet, enjoying a lifetime of basking in the warmth of their own sun, humping female aliens, and speculating on the likelihood of intelligent advanced creatures ever bothering to visit them.

 

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29 minutes ago, RamNut said:

She was chatting away whilst doing the windows.

Distance to the hercules globular cluster = 22,000 light years

velocity of nasa rocket = 22,000 mph

time for nasa rocket to reach HCG = approx 60 million years.

lets assume advanced aliens can go a bit faster than us.....100x faster than a rocket?.....10,000 times faster, they would still take 6000 years to get here.....1million times faster than a nasa rocket....60 years?

interesting choice for alien astronauts. They can either spend a lifetime on a spaceship looking forward to a brief glimpse of the republic of ireland through heavy cloud, or stay on their own planet, enjoying a lifetime of basking in the warmth of their own sun, humping female aliens, and speculating on the likelihood of intelligent advanced creatures ever bothering to visit them.

 

That’s if the science/maths as we know it it’s all there is. There are theories that time/space can be bent or you can travel through “wormholes” thus negating the exsissive distance. Therefore all our knowledge and wisdom may not be relevant for intergalactic travel.

However staying at home humping female aliens sounds much better than visiting Ireland! 

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