hmmmmm, kind of disheartening I think, as a species, we'd better learn to take care of the planet we know for certain is habitable. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/05/02/3995920.htm
While we can't communicate with any other species in "language" I find it difficult to believe we could ever communicate with ET, unless ET carried the "translator". Moi Cat Whisperer No
We could communicate in more fundamental ways than just verbal language. Music, mathematics, and pictographs are just a few ways besides verbal language. There's no guarantee that ET's would have verbal language in the first place. Sign language, body gestures, even aromas are just some additional forms of communication. Our best bet, I think, is to grab some interstellar modulated radios waves. We haven't, of course, so Fermi's Paradox is alive and well.
Take Back. The gorilla that knows how to do Deaf Speech Sign Language. It proved itself capable of abstract thought. Somehow ET has to be able to communicate abstract concepts to build a space ship. I don't have faith in those Carl Sagan communication forms. Moi No
Why does ET have to build a space ship? Communication is possible without direct contact. I would be surprised if "first contact" was face to face.
But then you have the Fermi paradox. Radio and Atomic fission get discovered at about the same time, because if life develops on a another planet and an intelligent species evolves and develops science, they should discover radio and atomic fission at about the same time we do. So the first billion years of life, no radio, and once they develop radio they only emit radio waves until they blow themselves to hell with atomic bombs. So the communications window is very small.....
No, the Fermi Paradox is based on Earth and our solar system being retarded in development compared to that of other solar systems. The paradox exists because such things did not develop at the same time. The communications window is only small if most of life (in the universe) is not intelligent. That's not so hard to imagine, most of life on Earth was not intelligent until relatively recently, and even then the level of intelligence is arguable. Maybe we are unique in the universe, no evidence suggests otherwise
Gorillas are our genetic cousins while aliens will probably have 0% similarity to us , i guess it will be easier to communicate with bacteria ? I don't understand article's claim about "perfect technology" . We don't have to live in planets , floating / traveling cities will do.
Learning to not trash our habitat is more important. Otherwise, I wouldn't blame an alien species annihilating us before we trash other planets.
I agree, but of course it would also be nice to have a backup in case the solar system rains asteroids down on us or something
Well, there's the new SETI Live project. They're trying to get people to help them find signals in the static.
The sun us only about 5 billion years old, with many older stars. Thus, if intelligent species develop in about the same amount of time on all planets on which it is easy for carbon based life to arise, the first civilizations in the universe should have happened about six or seven billion years ago, with an increasing number each billion years since. The chemical pathways to life are pretty straightforward, so we would expect a normal curve for evolution to produce an intelligent species. We are more likely to be near the middle of the normal curve than far out on a tail. However, even if we are out on a tail, many civilizations should have developed in the past. So the Fermi paradox - why didn't those civilizations spread throughout the galaxy - why aren't they here. It is of course possible that only predators evolve intelligence that much, and being predators, they all destroy themselves when they discover nuclear weapons, or genetic engineering of disease organisms, or if they have so much carbon available to burn that they create a runaway greenhouse effect and turn their planets into something like Venus. However, out of all those quadrillions of civilization which have already arisen, the probability that they would all destroy themselves before they developed serious space travel seems rather low. That is an arbitrary probability estimate, but still, it seems like some civilizations should survive until space travel is well developed, even if it is only one in a thousand civilizations. So why have we not found any civilizations? Perhaps they are around, but they have something like the Star Trek Prime Directive, so they don't interfere with primitive civilizations like humanity. Perhaps it is so easy to live in orbital space community vehicles that they don't want to send ships to other stars which would require many generations to get to another star. Perhaps there is somewhere to go beyond the ordinary set of dimensions of our universe, and it is so advantageous that all civilizations move out of our physical dimensions. I don't know what that somewhere to go might be, but it is a possibility to be explored. If there is something, science will eventually find it. And so forth.
If aliens were beings who would annihilate us, I don't think they would survive long enough to travel to other stars, unless faster than light travel turns out to be possible. Any species which is that much into killing will destroy itself eventually.
This is an interesting question, and it depends on what the basic laws of nature which apply to consciousness are. Our psychological knowledge is still so primitive that we can't answer that question now, but eventually, we should have enough knowledge to know. For example, it might be that consciousness can't vary all that much, though vary more than something like electrons. In that case, every mind in the universe would see a red pretty much like our red, would have concepts very much like our concepts, etc. But on the other hand, it is possible consciousness might be highly variable. In that case, only some minds in the rest of the universe would see the colors we see. Other minds would see colors we cannot and never have seen. So is the natural variability of consciousness high or low? Again, we will need to increase our knowledge about the processes in consciousness by quite a bit to be able to answer questions liike that.
Consciousness is not that important because we never let it stop us from doing what we want, we are rule breakers and probably we can only communicate with species of a similar nature .
That's merely an assumption. Also, I don't think a species has to be "that much into killing" to rid the the universe of an inf. It's more about protecting an unknown number of other species and planets from our destructive behavior. I don't have to be into killing at all in order to take down an animal that's wreaking havoc.
