The Community
General Category => Matters of Life and The Universe => Topic started by: Vyn on November 26, 2025, 07:04:26 PM
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I ran across this video, scientists placed a "robot" orangutan in the jungle to see how real ones interacted with it. Unrelated, they included a bit about soap.I didn't know they used soap and washed their hands!
The robot is very well done, however it can't move around. One day, when we are advanced enough, we'll be able to create a better orangutan robot.
[Cue Twilight Zone music]
What if an advanced alien society has created human robots and placed them among us...to study how we react to different behaviors they exhibit?
What if this has been going on for a thousand years?
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:lol:
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Then there could literally be aliens among us and we wouldn't even know it!
Honestly though...it might not be such an impossible idea...
If a race is advanced enough the could just do that...
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Or...
What if...
The silence of space is dominant and we are a lone exception to the universal rule of silence?
Which is the more comforting thought, that there are aliens among us or that there are no non-microscopic life forms apart from what we have here?
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^^^
Well that would be a mathematical impossibility so not really worth a thought...
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^^^
Well that would be a mathematical impossibility so not really worth a thought...
True. The universe is just too large and too vast for us to be alone.
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But we are *effectively* alone right now. There's the matter about the rarity of our system, which rarity includes factors deemed significant in allowing intelligent life to flourish... Discussion starts at 1:43 for those interested.
Short version, we're about to know by the early 2030s about how unique systems like ours are and that will provide some insight into the question of the galactic silence. Namely, it could be quiet due to the rarity of systems where conditions are sufficient to produce life capable of intelligence and outreach.
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It's pretty easy to say it's rare if all we do is look at our solar system and look for life like ours...in conditions like ours...that is what I call pseudo science done by closed minded individuals.
But ours is just one of billions of possible ways life could be.
The conditions HERE were RIGHT for OUR kind of life to evolve the way it did.
But in the scale of the WHOLE universe that means absolutely nothing. There are billions of other ways and other kinds of solar systems that could provide life.
Even IF (and this is a big IF already) life would be extremely rare...as in one in a billion shot...there would still be countless MILLIONS of planets in the universe with life...and even IF only 1% of those would evolve into intelligent life that would still make tens of thousands of civilizations in the whole of the universe...
And those numbers are on the low spectrum of possibilities. Most likely the numbers are much much much bigger.
Right now it is estimated that in the Milky Way galaxy there are anywhere between 5 and 20 intelligent civilizations between the age of 10000-100000 years...but honestly I believe that is a very low number...also who's to say there could be a billion year old civilization out there watching and observing us right now and we couldn't even identify or see them as they'd be so far ahead of us in every possible way.
Yes...this is my kind of topic!
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Well, then, let us... ENGAGE! :)
If we can find either evidence of multicellular life on other worlds in our solar system, it certainly points toward life being plentiful and everywhere. But we don't have that. We do have some evidence of possible single-cell life on Mars, and that is quite exciting, but that goes to show that single-cell life is likely plentiful and everywhere. Adding to that is evidence that life appeared on Earth pretty much as soon as it could appear. Both those point towards single-cell life being something the universe can make pretty much all the time, any time. It's even a possibility that life on Earth originated on Mars and traveled here by way of lithospermia - life taking a ride on rocks that got knocked off of one planet and then transported to another.
But the complexity of intelligent life? That requires an evolutionary run-up that possibly other planets can't sustain. The onset of single-cell life itself can change a global ecosystem to where it becomes toxic to the organisms that brought it into being, and could be one of the contributing factors to Mars' loss of atmosphere, along with loss of core heating and magnetosphere.
And while we could consider other forms of life, I think they'd all pretty much come down to being carbon-based, as it's the most accommodating atom for complicated molecular structures necessary to create things like amino acids, the building blocks of life. We simply don't see that kind of thing happening with silicon or other atoms with an outer shell of electrons in the same column as carbon. Carbon is just right for getting life going.
The more we study our own solar system, the more "Goldilocks" features we discover that, had they been off a bit this way or that, we wouldn't have an environment conducive for sustaining life. Each of these "just right" features adds to the odds of bringing life around - one in a billion is, in my mind, far too low a ratio, given all the things needed to be in place to give rise to complicated life.
It's not just in the arrangement of planets and moons, it's also in the deposition of elements necessary for life by passing through the right aftermaths of supernovae and getting bombarded with those elements, but then passing into a "quiet" stretch of the galaxy so the bombardment stops and life can take root and grow. The sun's path around the galaxy is such that it moves "just right" with relation to the spiral arms, and we are in between the arms right now, enjoying not being bombarded and making use of all the stuff we were blasted with last time we were in a spiral arm. If the earth were much closer to the center, it would have too-frequent bombardments. Further out, not enough bombardment events - once again, we're in the right band of stars with relation to the galactic center to enjoy elemental enrichment at the right time and quiet times afterwards.
Rather than the Earth being a typical planet around a typical star in a typical galaxy, we find an increasing number of unique factors in our circumstances, giving weight to a rare earth hypothesis. It may be that only 5% of stars in our galaxy are in the right band of distance from the center. Only 7% of galaxies are like ours with the spiral arms that can give rise to bombardment and safe spaces at the right intervals. Then we get to how our galaxy has apparently had fewer galactic collisions than other galaxies have endured and also enjoys a central black hole with "just right" levels of activity. The Sun is highly stable - another rarity in the universe. And on and on, each condition reducing the prevalence of complex, intelligent life more and more.
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^^^^^^
The list of circumstances you sight does indeed make it very difficult for intelligent life to come about. There would need to be an incredible number of planets, each one having the opportunity for all those things to occur. But we do have an awful lot, for it is estimated by astrophysicists that there is a sextillion planets in the entire universe.
This is what a sextillion looks like --> 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
I'd still say that intelligent life exists elsewhere.
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We'll know for sure it's intelligent life if they don't have local blackout rules for sporting event broadcasts. :lol:
So a thought on the local observer... we choose to interact with orangutans because they are similar to us. What if the observant alien is more attuned to, say, a termite mound? The chemical language of termites is fascinating stuff, and what if that was of great interest to the observers in some sort of observer-centric view of the universe?
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I just know that we are not alone in this universe
What that other life looks like is a very interesting intellectual question 🤔
Is it like us or is it something that is completely different from what we understand as life
Are there any other civilizations and do they travel in space perhaps in ships that can travel faster than light
Or are we alone 😔
I just know that us being unique is a limited view of this infinite universe
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I just know that us being unique is a limited view of this infinite universe
It is a difficult bias to get over.
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I just know that we are not alone in this universe
I would agree. But I also believe that making contact with any other life form, or any other life form making contact with us, is darn near impossible. The distances are too great for space travel. And sending signals, such as radio waves, hoping some thing can receive them and understand them, is extremely unlikely as well. I don't think I'm being too negative here, just realistic.
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I agree, it's realistic to know of the extremely slim chances of contacting another set of life forms, even if they're given to space-faring.
Add to that the question of whether it's wise to make a signal or to respond to one - how does one know the intentions of the other life forms? Is it safer to just be quiet and not draw attention - or to seek out potential destroyers?
Is the Great Silence... intentional?
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... it may well be, as I just dealt with a potential spam call. I need to pick up the phone when it rings because of my job. But I don't say hello if I don't recognize or expect the number. I wait for the other party to do so. Gen Z is right to answer calls with silence, cuts down on the spam/scam interactions.
SCI-FI story idea: a civilization discovers many signals of other civilizations, but makes no response because of their history... they still shudder as they remember The Great Spamming of millennia ago, when they contacted another civilization that proceeded to bombard them with advertising, scams, and crypto schemes. Never again, they vow... never again...
And what if the aliens *do* walk among us, collecting marketing info for a beverage they make that they want to compete head-to-head with Coca-Cola? Yikes!
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I agree, it's realistic to know of the extremely slim chances of contacting another set of life forms, even if they're given to space-faring.
Add to that the question of whether it's wise to make a signal or to respond to one - how does one know the intentions of the other life forms? Is it safer to just be quiet and not draw attention - or to seek out potential destroyers?
Is the Great Silence... intentional?
I hadn't thought of that angle. Although, I've never been all that concerned about there existing another intelligent life form having the ability to dominate the human race. Sure it's possible, but I think most of those ideas stem from paranoid imaginations.
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"paranoid imaginations" - I'd like to plug Phil K. Dick's novella, "Clans of the Alphane Moon" for a fun twist on paranoia and other mental disorders and how they save a colony. Except depression. That one doesn't do much saving... not much of a spoiler, that one...
The "intentional Great Silence" line of thinking comes out of a bit of game theory. Assume a civilization that can master time and space and is capable of things that stagger us as much as calculus is incomprehensible to a kindergartener. Does this advanced civilization see other intelligent life as potential competition that should be destroyed? If that's a possibility, then one would have to assume that exists as a possible strategy in a game of contact and that not revealing one's civilization to such a power would improve one's own civilization's chances of long-term survival.
One such scenario is brought forward in the Berserker series of sci-fi stories that Fred Saberhagen kicked off and gave permission for other authors to use the concept, characters, and milieu in their works. Phil Dick did his own take on killer robots in his story "Second Variety" that's a real chiller of a tale.