A newly published study suggests the Milky Way galaxy could contain alien civilisations, though there's a strong possibility most of them are already dead.
On a sunny day (Thu, 24 Dec 2020 04:39:45 -0800 (PST)) it happened Fred Bloggs wrote in :
The thought that re-occurs to me is that perhaps the much written and talked about 'microwave background' is simply the sum of all the alien civilization TV and radio transmissions.. Our modern transmission systems emit a spectrum that is very much like white noise. Randomizer is for example part of DVB-S (our satellite TV system). When I reluctantly boarded the vlaaing cup and saucer aliens do not exist > beep revolution!
Our ability to make and use tools is nothing special, crows do it too, we just happened to stumble upon electrickety after a long long time.... Some animals use it directly: electric eels do that... Anyways in listening for alien radio an TV we should focus on 'decoding' the 'randomness' in what we receive. The 'them using Morse' time window is likely prohibitive small to find any that do.
That would be highly unlikely since it looks exactly like a thermally emitting black body redshifted by a huge amount.
The main thing about artificial signals (that want to be seen) is that they typically have a very narrow band carrier wave modulated somehow.
Looking for anything that is non-thermal polarised radiation with a very strong carrier wave at a non-astrophysical wavelength would be the most likely way that we will find something. Most such nuisance detections prove to be false alarms caused by local interference. The odd one remains unexplained or found to be an interesting astronomical object.
The pulsar surveys continue to push the boundaries in terms of time resolution and signal to noise. Sadly one of their big dishes is no more.
-- Regards, Martin Brown
That site publishes some great science research:
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc The best designs are necessarily accidental.
This study wasn't peer reviewed, but I liked how they squeezed in Climate Change as one of the potential dooms for our planet.
Its been much hotter with much higher CO2 in the atmosphere and somehow life went on, so while climate change is, of course, perfectly real - life on this planet is used to it and will adapt as it always has.
As for quicker changes, how about those Mayans? What did they do to change the rain patterns? Forget to make the correct sacrifices?
John ;-#)#
That's politically correct. Did they include coronavirus? White supremacy?
An "expanded version of the famous Drake Equation" just piles nonsense on nonsense.
Drake is the product of seven factors, most of which are wild conjecture, each not known to 50:1. An expanded version must be worse.
They didn't go extinct. There are lots of Mayan descendents around now.
We tax the crap out of various "sin" categories. Maybe we should do something to earmark some of the tax money to pay for science. Cosmetics is a multi-billion dollar market. A 1% tax could pay for a lot of Arecibos.
-- Rick C. - Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging - Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
Yes, I know, but their economy collapsed primarily due to their climate changing - and I'm sure other factors played a part. Probably had too many lawyers per 100,000 capita or some such factor...(Lets pick on the lawyers, eh? They aren't engineers! Or sort-of engineers like me.)
John :-#)#
It wasn't the same life as we know it. Lots of stuff went extinct. So, sure, life will go on, but it won't be recognizable to any of us.
Doesn't sound so much like science as just regular-ol' speculation, to me.
Science fiction authors have been writing about humans finding dead alien civilizations for decades.
You can muck with the Drake Equation any way you like but with a real-world population size of exactly zero to examine there is finally no science of alien civilizations, there is only the "science" of alien civilizations.
There are lots of things which may, or may not, exist.
And do you know what it would cost to push all those buildings and highways etc. in all those cities back to accommodate a 1 meter sea level rise even if that were the only effect? Is any of this free? Are you some kind of communist?
You are! You a communist! You're going to let a thousand trillion dollars of beachfront property get destroyed to start some back-to-nature communist society with no lawyers.
ien civilisations, though there's a strong possibility most of them are alr eady dead.
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That seems like a BS way of looking at it. Every field of science started with speculation and some crude equations. With there being billions and b illions of stars in our own galaxy, it seems rather absurd to think our env ironment is such a happy coincidence that there aren't millions of similar planets to Earth. If you consider that life is not just a random assemblag e of elements into active organic compounds, but a pathway for the ever inc reasing organization of improved replication, it would seem that it would b e inevitable rather than fortunate.
It is also very likely for there to be life forms with vastly different che mical organizations. Just as we have life based on RNA and DNA coding for proteins, there can likely be other life based on other organizations.
Sure, it is speculative, but by applying rational thought and knowledge of science we can learn more about what is possible while we wait for a clear sign of life other than on Earth. That doesn't make it Voodoo.
-- Rick C. + Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging + Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
That's very helpful. But what about the rest?
Yes, Newtonian physics apocryphally started with apples and trees, and there was a lot of speculation on what the "nature" of apples falling from trees was before anyone described it mathematically in a way that seemed to hold for making predictions.
Black holes were predicted before they were observed, but there was solid mathematical reason to predict them, because Einstein's equations seemed to be a congruent model of spacetime otherwise, and they said that they should.
Alien civilizations are a bit different than these examples because at least AFAIK every other field of human science started with examples to study. Yeah humans didn't know what a "star" was exactly for a long time but they had one nearby they could study.
Trouble with making predictions about alien life is that we don't really have the same understanding of how life forms from non-life, or intelligent life forms from life, as we do of how spacetime seems to behave. We know it's happened at least once, but by precisely what mechanism we're unsure.
That's the biggest uncertainty in the Drake equation and the elephant in the room. You can make the equation say anything by putting in whatever figure for that and there's no good evidence any one figure is any better than any other, unlike data about the average lifetime of stars and such. We could be the first. We could be the last. By the Copernican principle that would seem unlikely but IMO it's premature to even leverage the Copernican principle here.
If you had some equation that showed that life from non life was fairly common and intelligent life from life was fairly common too you could leverage the Copernican principle immediately to say that statistically human civilization is probably a fairly average civilization at a fairly average point in its history, and much less probable that it's exceptional, despite not having any other examples, same as black holes. But the Copernican principle only applies in the domains it applies also and I don't think it applies in a set of one without some further justification.
Intuitively it seems unlikely we're the only ones that ever were, are, or will be. But it's finally still just intuition and not really the same fashion of intuition Isaac Newton was applying. No it's not voodoo but it's more like meta-science, talking scientifically about what kind of science you could do, if you could.
Guess what I'm trying to say is that the Drake equation as-written predicts infinite possibilities. Without a rigorous understanding of the process of how life or technological civilizations arise, or any other examples of such civilizations to study, what you can do with it as other kinds types of information becomes available is restrict its outputs to strictly smaller sets of infinite possibilities than you had before. It is science of a sort.
alien civilisations, though there's a strong possibility most of them are a lready dead.
me.
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ed with speculation and some crude equations. With there being billions and billions of stars in our own galaxy, it seems rather absurd to think our e nvironment is such a happy coincidence that there aren't millions of simila r planets to Earth. If you consider that life is not just a random assembla ge of elements into active organic compounds, but a pathway for the ever in creasing organization of improved replication, it would seem that it would be inevitable rather than fortunate.
chemical organizations. Just as we have life based on RNA and DNA coding f or proteins, there can likely be other life based on other organizations.
of science we can learn more about what is possible while we wait for a cl ear sign of life other than on Earth. That doesn't make it Voodoo.
Nothing you have written actually shows the futility of studying the possib ilities of life elsewhere in the universe.
Then you compound your errors by relying on "intuition".
You are sounding more and more like Larkin.
-- Rick C. -- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging -- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
Why just cosmetics? Cigarettes are taxed heavily to discourage smoking and to help pay for those smokers who are hospitalized and can't pay. What about horse racing, bingo, gambling? I can see a lot of avenues where funding could be available.
alien civilisations, though there's a strong possibility most of them are a lready dead.
me.
n
ed with speculation and some crude equations. With there being billions and billions of stars in our own galaxy, it seems rather absurd to think our e nvironment is such a happy coincidence that there aren't millions of simila r planets to Earth. If you consider that life is not just a random assembla ge of elements into active organic compounds, but a pathway for the ever in creasing organization of improved replication, it would seem that it would be inevitable rather than fortunate.
chemical organizations. Just as we have life based on RNA and DNA coding f or proteins, there can likely be other life based on other organizations.
of science we can learn more about what is possible while we wait for a cl ear sign of life other than on Earth. That doesn't make it Voodoo.
An infinite possibilities. Yes, just like every integral I've ever seen.
-- Rick C. -+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging -+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
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