extraterrestrial paradox

[vger]

I'm sure it does, I just don't understand why .

I doubt many people can. I'm nowhere near good at complex math to try and grasp it. Similar to conditions of the 'universe' pre-big bang. That just gets way too crazy.

But hey, they don't call it "quantum weirdness" for nothing.

[rtxoff]

Actually, quantum entanglement DOES work! A few weeks ago researchers at Deflt University send information over three meters. http://www.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-news/article/detail/beam-me-up-data/

To simplify the concept: When two particles are entangled if you change one from 'up' to 'down' it's counterpart will change from 'down' to 'up' no matter the distance. If 'up' represents 1 and 'down' 0 you have a method of transmitting binary code at incredible speed without any physical connection or signal loss over unlimited distance.

Back to the OP.

Soda Popinski is correct. What you're describing is the Fermi Paradox. If there are so many civilizations out there, why haven't we heard from them? The counterpart to the Drake Equation.

I'd suggest you start digging around at http://www.seti.org/ or even join Seti@Home help in the search.

The question here is how fast is the transmit of information with this method. They should do it over a very long distance to see if the information transmit's faster then light. However i highly doubt it.

[Tex_NL]

But hey, they don't call it "quantum weirdness" for nothing.

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

Richard Feynman

[rtxoff]

I doubt many people can. I'm nowhere near good at complex math to try and grasp it. Similar to conditions of the 'universe' pre-big bang. That just gets way too crazy.

But hey, they don't call it "quantum weirdness" for nothing.

Quantum weirdness is only there because we do not really understand it. We may observe the effects and learned the mechanics but we do not understand it. Our methods of gaining information from this layer of existence are getting more and more sophisticated. However it looks like there is some barrier and limit how deep we may look into it. Building ever lager colliders will come to an end at some point or maybe not?

[ThirdHorseman]

Actually, quantum entanglement DOES work!

Quantum entanglement is a proven concept, you just can't use it to transfer information from point-to-point faster than light can travel the same distance in a vacuum. If so you violate relativity and could create causality violations.

So with thousands of new exoplanets being discovered,

This is a common point that people make when suggesting that life exists somewhere besides Earth. The problem with this point is that you do not know how statistically unlikely or likely it is for life to form in the first place. There may be 5x10^22 habitable planets in the Universe, but if the chance of complex molecules coming together to form life (self-replication of DNA, etc) is some incredibly high number (a googol googol, for instance) then it doesn't matter how many planets there are. You can roll a die billions and billions of times, but no matter how many times you do it you'll never get a 7....

Until we know more about how life formed in the first place then it's silly to speculate...we are better off just assuming that this planet is all there is, and then we might get better at taking care of it...and us.

[Sirrobert]

This is a common point that people make when suggesting that life exists somewhere besides Earth. The problem with this point is that you do not know how statistically unlikely or likely it is for life to form in the first place. There may be 5x10^22 habitable planets in the Universe, but if the chance of complex molecules coming together to form life (self-replication of DNA, etc) is some incredibly high number (a googol googol, for instance) then it doesn't matter how many planets there are. You can roll a die billions and billions of times, but no matter how many times you do it you'll never get a 7....

Until we know more about how life formed in the first place then it's silly to speculate...we are better off just assuming that this planet is all there is, and then we might get better at taking care of it...and us.

It happened once, so we know it's atleast possible, even if very unlikely.

So your die example is wrong, as 7 is literally impossible, while we are the proof that it's not impossible for life to form. So I gues it'd be more like the chance to get a die to stop on a corner (like so

[Tery215]

Doesn't life have a general set of requirements to form, and no more?

--There must be an energy source (sun)

--There must be a process to generate like-life (bubbles in comets(you know, not all bubbles are life))

--Created life must be at least minimally suited to location (earth)

If so, then one can determine whether a planet can have life, but it may or may not have life and may not have life before an indeterminable time.

[Aethon]

Doesn't life have a general set of requirements to form, and no more?

What makes something alive? No scientist in the world can or will tell you.

Here's a popular definition: Life must eat. Life must excrete (waste products). Life must reproduce.

With this definition, a lit candle is alive. Life is so complex we can't reverse engineer even the simplest organism back to it's bio-genisis.

Here's an article that thinks out side the box a bit about how life on earth began. "Did life on Earth begin with autocells?"

http://www.space.com/23144-earth-life-autocells-gas-giants.html

[Tery215]

What makes something alive? No scientist in the world can or will tell you.

I'm not a scientist, but I can tell you that I was brainwashed into believing that life must follow this set of rules to be classified as life:

Life must have a lifespan.

be made of cells (???)

reproduce.

respond to the environment.

(other things on wikipedia)

By this set of rules, life barely manages to qualify itself in some forms.

Fire can't be defined as a life form because it destroys itself very much and is made of burned molecules and fuel.

I don't say that life may or may not be life, I say that the origin of life is simple and the criteria to determine whether a planet may have life depends on what we know about where life can come from, and where it can support itself sufficiently. Only science can give an answer to that.

[YNM]

As far as what I knew about life from biology, it needs to be something that can :

1. Move independently

2. Take and responds stimuli (so they are aware of their surroundings, and could communicate)

3. Respirating, Eating, Excreting (just say that they do chemical reaction - this is done mainly for energy, so in short, requires energy and have a way to produce it)

4. Able to regenerate it's kind, or to produce offsprings

The precise source ? It could be a starlight, it could be heat from somewhere else, it could be from voltage gradient, it could be done in a lot ways.

I guess the only reason why we haven't received any "signals" of their existence is either due to their "unintelligent" state (by our judgment), they don't really having anything to transmit, or simply we aren't expecting them in the way they are - we expect them to be similar to us chemically, physically, or sociologically, while they may not at all.

Or, they simply don't exist... Hey, better to think just how unique we are and how we can retain this uniqueness.

Edited June 18, 2014 by YNM

[Red Iron Crown]

As far as what I knew about life from biology, it needs to be something that can :

1. Move independently

2. Take and responds stimuli (so they are aware of their surroundings, and could communicate)

Do plants meet these two requirements?

[Rickenbacker]

The question here is how fast is the transmit of information with this method. They should do it over a very long distance to see if the information transmit's faster then light. However i highly doubt it.

I believe the actual quantum teleportation is instant, or as near as makes no difference. The problem is that in order to interpret the data you need the two regular bits, which have to be sent at good ole lightspeed. Not a problem in a computer, where distances are short, though.

[Nibb31]

There are many possible reasons we are not seeing any evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Maybe alien intelligent species are hostile. As soon as a new one emerges, it gets preemptively destroyed by the dominating species that doesn't want a challenging species to dominate them. This would be particularly easy for a species that has advanced enough to master FTL and time travel.

Or maybe the vast expanses of interstellar space are simply uncrossable because the laws of physics are the same for everybody.

Or maybe we are late to the party and a thriving interstellar federation that ruled the galaxy for thousands of years destroyed itself 200 years ago just before we invented radio.

The thing is, our space and time of existence is insignificantly small on the space and time scale of the universe. The chances of receiving a signal from another intelligent species are infinitesimal.

[YNM]

As far as what I knew about life from biology, it needs to be something that can :

1. Move independently

2. Take and responds stimuli (so they are aware of their surroundings, and could communicate)

Do plants meet these two requirements?

Yes - Taxis, Nastic, and Tropism. While not really moving (unless some single cell organism), it moves from it's initial direction.

[Red Iron Crown]

Yes - Taxis, Nastic, and Tropism. While not really moving (unless some single cell organism), it moves from it's initial direction.

Do all plants exhibit this behavior? I just ask because I haven't seen those two as part of the definition of life before.

[ThirdHorseman]

It happened once, so we know it's atleast possible, even if very unlikely.

So your die example is wrong, as 7 is literally impossible, while we are the proof that it's not impossible for life to form. So I gues it'd be more like the chance to get a die to stop on a corner...

Good point, yes the "die coming up 7" isn't a good analogy and it's more like "stopping on a corner". Thank you for the correction. It's probably closer to "rolling 100 dice together and having them all land on the same corner" but again, we just don't know how likely or unlikely it is.

Or maybe we are late to the party and a thriving interstellar federation that ruled the galaxy for thousands of years destroyed itself 200 years ago just before we invented radio.

Anything coming close to a "thriving interstellar federation" would stand out like a lighthouse on a dark shore. Even if it destroyed itself 200 years ago there would be evidence across the sky. We should see energy signatures, something! Even if they didn't use radio they must at least operate in the electromagnetic spectrum so we should see something.

If so, then one can determine whether a planet can have life, but it may or may not have life and may not have life before an indeterminable time.

Sure, we have found plenty of planets that could support some form of life, but that doesn't mean it has it. Again, we don't know how likely or unlikely it is for life to form even given the perfect set of circumstances so until we have some data it's useless to speculate.

[Soda Popinski]

Another depressing possibility is most intelligent life ends up destroying their civilization / environment giving themselves a short detection time.

[YNM]

Yes - Taxis, Nastic, and Tropism. While not really moving (unless some single cell organism), it moves from it's initial direction.

Do all plants exhibit this behavior? I just ask because I haven't seen those two as part of the definition of life before.

Yes...

1. All plant is attracted to higher level of water -> water tropism

2. All plant root is going "down" wrt Earth's surface -> geotropism

3. All plant shoot grows "up" wrt Earth's surface, and to areas that shone better by the Sun -> anti-geotropism and phototropism

4. Some plants control it's behavior by it's surrounding, ie. flower opens at certain temperatures/lighting conditions, peas open when dry, leaves closed if you touch them -> various nastic movements

5. Most single celled plants moves to places that's better shone by light -> phototaxis

6. Single celled plants moves to mate, by chemical stimuli -> chemotaxis

Point 2 & 3 are of a major interest for the effects of "lack of gravity" - hence why we send plants to space.

Edited June 18, 2014 by YNM

[Sirrobert]

Plants can also comunicate with eachother through pheromones.

It's for this reason that girafes always walk against the wind when they are eating. All trees down wind have already been alerted by pheromones, and now taste bad (to prevent being eaten)

[Nibb31]

Anything coming close to a "thriving interstellar federation" would stand out like a lighthouse on a dark shore. Even if it destroyed itself 200 years ago there would be evidence across the sky. We should see energy signatures, something! Even if they didn't use radio they must at least operate in the electromagnetic spectrum so we should see something.

The 200 year figure wasn't meant to be taken literally. They might have disappeared only half a billion years ago and the last trace of them could only be seen from Earth 200 years ago when we weren't looking... My point was that not only are interstellar distances huge, but the timeline of the universe is also huge. A civilization than exists for even 10000 years is still just a blip in the ~13 billion years that the universe has existed. And we have only been watching the skies for a few hundred years.

For an encounter to take place, you need a 4-dimensional proximity situation, not just 3-dimensional. The chance of two several-thousand year old civilizations meeting each other in the same place and at the same time are infinitesimal.

My personal hunch is that life exists out there, but that relativity prevails and FTL travel is indeed impossible, which makes interstellar travel impractical regardless of any technological advancement.

Edited June 19, 2014 by Nibb31

[78stonewobble]

Well, imho. we cannot really conclude much from our lack of contact. Other than life is not everywhere and intelligent life is neither everywhere, nor exceedingly "loud".

As nibb31 puts it space is big and interstellar travel and communication might be exceedingly hard.

I still believe though, that as a civilisation, we should attempt to colonize other planets, even around other stars and if necessary and/or possible... seed them with life.

To survive as long as we can, in the best manner we can and if we die out, make sure something else can survive. That should be our imperative. Much more so, if life is rare in the universe.

Personally I think that would be a nice combination of our existing biological imperatives (our past) and the ability to actively protect life, that intelligence allows for (the present), to guarantee a future.

[YNM]

I guess that it's not that life itself is hard to exist, but intelligent life are soo hard to form that even we only observe one... that's ourself. And that's not counting they could be in a state we don't expect (so, don't observe) at all.

If we ever found any other species or life forms to talk to us and understand what we say and can reply it, we're must be soo lucky. And so they too.

[Soda Popinski]

Here's another possibility: http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html