Aliens

[marharth]

This is worth posting:

There are a number of flaws with the drake equation though.

 

I didn't watch the video since I can't stand Carl Sagens voice. Don't know what it is, could never stand to listen to him. Just the way his voice sounds.

[draconix]

There are a number of flaws with the drake equation though.

 

I didn't watch the video since I can't stand Carl Sagens voice. Don't know what it is, could never stand to listen to him. Just the way his voice sounds.

 

Might be flawed, I'm not sure how, but it does a pretty good job at illustrating the importance of controlling ourselves. Carl Sagan is the man, I think his voice is awesome. Better than that Hawking guy...

Edited August 5, 2011 by draconix

[marharth]

Might be flawed, I'm not sure how, but it does a pretty good job at illustrating the importance of controlling ourselves. Carl Sagan is the man, I think his voice is awesome. Better than that Hawking guy...

It does do a good job at putting things into perspective. Carl Sagen is a lot better then Hawking's imo, but his voice still annoys me for some unexplained reason.

[Jopo1980]

Looking at the size of the galaxy let alone the size of the universe and the infinite other universes in the multiverse leads me to conclude that there probably is life out there and some life may be advanced, even more advanced than we are. As human history has shown that once a species has achieved a sufficient level of intelligence, it starts to evolve very rapidly, at an ever increasing pace. This suggests that a civilization need only be a few hundred or thousand years older to have advanced way past our current level. Not to mention that human advancement has been hampered by wars etc.

 

But how far is the human race to building its first interstellar starship and taking the leap to the stars? How far are we from developing faster-than-light capability?

 

If aliens were visiting Earth, could they make themselves invisible to all our known methods of observation? We already have stealth technology and are developing active camouflage to mask us from visual observation, so a more advanced civilization could very well visit us and not be seen if they wished so.

 

I also think that they would consider us a bit more than just ants, after all we have intelligence and are shaping the earth although probably by comparison with primitive methods.

[draconix]

I think it was Carl Sagan who said that we would probably have a tough time seeing an interstellar ship, but that what we might look for is the expulsion of a lot of heat, without any visible light. This is because he predicts that an advanced civilization would harness all of the light-energy of a sun by building a sphere around it of solar panels of some sort. That would deliver an unimaginable amount of energy, but they would likely have heat issues, so ventilating out the heat would be necessary, and thus the expulsion of heat and no light source.

 

This video also raises another point of interest:

. Basically, technology is progressing at such a rate that it's not unlikely in my opinion that we will have self-aware technology much sooner than most think. And shortly after that, technological singularity, which if it doesn't destroy us, will make interstellar travel possible. I give all of this less than 1000 years, maybe less.