Aliens

[Chase Mueller]

Today is boring. Long job times on the laser, coffee making my mind race, and it got me thinking, there's a decent number of users here, wonder what y'all think about space travel? Do you think we are alone? If we are/aren't, what makes you feel that way? Not going to try to change anyone's mind here, just curious. Sprirted discussions can be fun I think!

[daryl moses]

It's a big Universe, it wouldn't surprise me if there are other life forms somewhere out there.

[Chase Mueller]

Especially with it being ever-expanding, who knows what mysteries lie in the unknown. I'm counting on you Mr. Musk, I wanna visit Mars! lol

[Bob Bouis]

It's a big universe for sure, but it's also very old. If there were aliens anywhere near us, we'd be able to see them because they'd be everywhere even if they only had a modest head start.

Imagine what we could do in a million years. The universe is 13 billion years old. That's 13,000 million-year periods.

[Michael Weber]

The best possibility of other life in our solar system seems to be Titan, a moon of Saturn. Liquid is present in the form of liquid methane. Still, an atmosphere and active geology with other necessities for life. In the greater sense of a universe of more stars than grains of sand on earth I think it's inevitable. Assuming one subscribes to a universal point of expansion the random odds of life possibility exist equally everywhere.

[Jim Becker]

I do believe there is other intelligent life in the universe and strongly suspect that we've had visitors over time. There's even a possibility that we got to where we are with a little help, given some of the archeological discoveries that suggest engineering/technology that was well beyond what mere early humans could do themselves.

We will "get out there" ourselves someday, when we get out of our own way. :)

[Chase Mueller]

It's a big universe for sure, but it's also very old. If there were aliens anywhere near us, we'd be able to see them because they'd be everywhere even if they only had a modest head start.

Imagine what we could do in a million years. The universe is 13 billion years old. That's 13,000 million-year periods.

Do you mind expanding on that? You have to think about what modest means in terms of technological advancement, I fully support the idea that mankind is not as technologically advanced as we should be, about 100 years behind, in fact.
I don't think it would be so easy to observe them flying around in space. We don't have the kind of capability to do that, assuming they do, why wouldn't one also assume they have a way of hiding it?

[Chase Mueller]

The best possibility of other life in our solar system seems to be Titan, a moon of Jupiter. Liquid is present in the form of liquid methane. Still, an atmosphere and active geology with other necessities for life. In the greater sense of a universe of more stars than grains of sand on earth. I think it's inevitable. Assuming one subscribes to a universal point of expansion the random odds of life possibility exist equally everywhere.

I'm a fan of that logic for sure. Also depends on what people consider life. Personally, if there's bacteria/micro bacteria/or whatever, you get the gist, then that's life to me.

[Chase Mueller]

I do believe there is other intelligent life in the universe and strongly suspect that we've had visitors over time. There's even a possibility that we got to where we are with a little help, given some of the archeological discoveries that suggest engineering/technology that was well beyond what mere early humans could do themselves.

We will "get out there" ourselves someday, when we get out of our own way. :)

I agree. I don't pretend to know a purpose though. Curiosity I suspect is all they have, I firmly believe if they had malicious intent, we would have found out the hard way loooong ago.

[Dave Anderson NH]

I would say the probability is high given the number of galaxies, let alone the number of stars. Now as for life forms visiting earth, I don't doubt it has happened. I do suspect however that they have left us alone after determining that there was no intelligent life here.

[Rod Sheridan]

It's hard to imagine that this insignificant rock we inhabit is the only one in the universe to have had life evolve on it.

There's also a good probability that some of that life exists at the same time as us.

The big issue for us, is as President Macron said "There's no planet B". At least not within the distance required.

Regards, Rod.

[Bob Bouis]

Do you mind expanding on that? You have to think about what modest means in terms of technological advancement, I fully support the idea that mankind is not as technologically advanced as we should be, about 100 years behind, in fact.
I don't think it would be so easy to observe them flying around in space. We don't have the kind of capability to do that, assuming they do, why wouldn't one also assume they have a way of hiding it?
Modest in geologic timescales. Like a 1% headstart would be 130 million years. 0.1% headstart would be 13 million years. The odds that aliens would exist and not have already occupied the whole galaxy already are very slight.

You'd be able to see advanced aliens because the biggest source of energy comes from stars and contraptions that collected it in a big enough scale would eventually (and in a short time relative to the age of the universe) alter the appearance of the star enough for us to detect it.

[Jed Hefley]

As old as the universe is, there is a good chance there was/is intelligent life out there somewhere. Judging from the scope of that age, and the infinite nature of it all, who's to even say what intelligence even is? The human race has only been around for a very miniscule time in this grand scheme of things, and I think if there were other advanced life forms out there, they would have either died out, or are content with where they are.

[Marshall Harrison]

If there is alien life out there then it seems to be intelligent enough to stay clear of us. We would definitely corrupt it.

But man's minds are so limiting that we can't image all the possibilities of what intelligent alien civilizations could look like. If we do encounter it there is a good chance that it won't look humanoid or like anything we know.

I'm more curious about what it would do for our religious beliefs? Did Jesus have to die for sins on their planet too? Did they have the equivalent of Muhammad or Buddha? What form of government did they develop?

[Chase Mueller]

Modest in geologic timescales. Like a 1% headstart would be 130 million years. 0.1% headstart would be 13 million years. The odds that aliens would exist and not have already occupied the whole galaxy already are very slight.

You'd be able to see advanced aliens because the biggest source of energy comes from stars and contraptions that collected it in a big enough scale would eventually (and in a short time relative to the age of the universe) alter the appearance of the star enough for us to detect it.

So do you believe anyone has witnessed alien spacecraft? Speaking purely from an observational standpoint, there have been some very credible people who claim to have witnessed that, including many astronauts.

[Chase Mueller]

I would definitely buy into them being content with where they are. Especially if one believes they aided early man. The world will die, we aren't helping that, why would they want to come? I think the idea of invasion is a bit, well, silly.

[Steve Peterson]

Modest in geologic timescales. Like a 1% headstart would be 130 million years. 0.1% headstart would be 13 million years. The odds that aliens would exist and not have already occupied the whole galaxy already are very slight.


I would say the probability is high given the number of galaxies, let alone the number of stars. Now as for life forms visiting earth, I don't doubt it has happened. I do suspect however that they have left us alone after determining that there was no intelligent life here.

Considering that advanced civilization (intelligent or not) has only been around for a few thousand years, the odds are extremely small that any other alien life would have seen it during a single visit. If they landed 100,000 years ago, a group of people would look only slightly more advanced than a pack of wolves or a herd of deer. They might catalog earth as interesting, and move on.

[Chase Mueller]

Considering that advanced civilization (intelligent or not) has only been around for a few thousand years, the odds are extremely small that any other alien life would have seen it during a single visit. If they landed 100,000 years ago, a group of people would look only slightly more advanced than a pack of wolves or a herd of deer. They might catalog earth as interesting, and move on.


That theory would explain revisitation. Documenting the evolution of mankind and Earth, or whatever they choose to call it:D
I'll be the first to admit I wholeheartedly believe we have been visited, but I wonder if it's all been from the same planet.

[Tom Stenzel]

I remember years ago watching Star Trek when our space program was going like mad. And I was all for it.

Then Star Trek Next Generation came out. After watching a couple episodes it seemed all they did was cart whining aliens around on diplomatic missions or some nonsense like that. After that I was ready to call my congresscritter to defund NASA. If these aliens want a ride they can do it on their own dime and call Intergalactic Grayhound or see if the Millennium Falcon is around.

At work we had all kinds of discussions about aliens, the Reptilians and other burning questions (like when making tinfoil hats is it shiny side in or out?). I doubt that we're alone but I also doubt any other race bothered to come to this rock. Why would they? We're just not that precious.

-Tom

[Chase Mueller]

I doubt that we're alone but I also doubt any other race bothered to come to this rock. Why would they? We're just not that precious.

-Tom

I disagree, respectfully. Why wouldn't they want to? They'd have to clearly be more advanced if they developed aircraft that could move through space, and most certainly time, then they did it for a purpose. Exploration maybe? Hard to say.

[Marshall Harrison]

Modest in geologic timescales. Like a 1% headstart would be 130 million years. 0.1% headstart would be 13 million years. The odds that aliens would exist and not have already occupied the whole galaxy already are very slight

The problem lies in that you have no way to support that. Your assumption is that aliens would want to occupy the whole galixy. but we have no way of knowing that.

Its also possible that hey have very long life spans but no faster than light modes of transportation. Could take them eons to expand.

and it's just as possible that they did inhabit most of the galaxy before their civilization became extinct. they could even have risen to the stars and fallen back multiple times.

Note that we are on a small spiral arm of our galaxy in an out of the way place. most col Nizam ion could have happened nearer to the core and hasn't progressed out our way yet.


We have no point of reference to do anything more that speculate.

[Mark Bolton]

I just watched the movie Arival. When I was younger, and even still a bit now, I wanted to believe in all the Area 51, Roswell, type theories. That technological advance for us was some how affected. Now at a mere 51 (which seems to feel like 151 at times) Im not so sure I buy into it but it makes for good books and films.

I have been an astronomy junkie for 30 years. Spent countless hours in an observatory I built imaging galaxies and nebula, planets, etc.. The thing that always seems to ring true to me is that most of us, even some of the smartest of us average individuals, has any real comprehension of time. 4.567 billion years for Earth. 13 billion years doesnt sound like "that much" more. There could be billions of other planets out there just like us, at similar levels of advancement. Maybe a couple thousand years older, couple thousand years younger, and the only thing we may ever get to experience of their life is its ultimate end when we see a supernova in the sky that occurred 6 billion years ago.

Sitting in that observatory it became a real brain bender to think that the light that is landing on my CCD's sensor left that objects center 29.35 MILLION light years ago... is just brain twisting.

Personally I think the notion of super advanced alien life knowing were here and just taking a back seat and watching speaks to a hope, believe, need, to think that someone else has their hands on the wheel. Ties into faith.

When you look at how long it has taken us to get something of our making to the outer reaches of our solar system, and that traveling at its current velocity, we may likely be extinct far before it ever even begins to approach any other "object"... sheesh. Mega brain twister.

[Chase Mueller]

Ok, first of all, please come help me build an observatory. That sounds effing awesome!
Also I have not seen arrival. Heard it was interesting though. Isn't it a prequel to something?

I don't buy all the area 51 conspiracies, but I definitely think they are hiding something. Look up the Unexplainable on Netflix. I think that's what it's called, really interesting documentary. Some of it's a bit cooky, but entertaining for sure.

[Doug Garson]

I recall reading Eric Von Daniken's book Chariot of the Gods back in the 70's which Jim may be referring to. I recall he started out with a statistical argument along the lines of there are x billion stars in our galaxy if 1% of them have planets that could support life and 1% of those did ........ Put me in the camp that believes there probably is life out there. But, if there is intelligent life out there and they have observed what is going on on earth why would they want to meet with us?

[Bob Bouis]

The problem lies in that you have no way to support that. Your assumption is that aliens would want to occupy the whole galixy. but we have no way of knowing that.

The assumption isn't that aliens would want to occupy the entire galaxy, but that some of them would eventually do it. We're talking about millions of years here. What do you think are the odds that humans won't colonize some other solar system within the next million years? Let's just say it takes 1 million years for a star system with people in it to spread to another one -- that's 2 (earth + x) in 1 million years, 4 in 2 million years, 8 in 3 million years, 16 in 4 million years... see where I'm going with this? In 10 million years that's 1000 star systems, in 30 million years it a billion, more than there are in the galaxy.

[Carlos Alvarez]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zone)

[Chase Mueller]

I recall reading Eric Von Daniken's book Chariot of the Gods back in the 70's which Jim may be referring to. I recall he started out with a statistical argument along the lines of there are x billion stars in our galaxy if 1% of them have planets that could support life and 1% of those did ........ Put me in the camp that believes there probably is life out there. But, if there is intelligent life out there and they have observed what is going on on earth why would they want to meet with us?


That's the key point I think, they don't want to meet with us. Maybe they tried before or observed the slippery slope of impending doom mankind has managed to dig itself into and just decided nah, not worth it. As a whole, with history backing this up I feel, we kinda stink.

[William Adams]

The problem is, while statistically / biologically there probably ought to be aliens based on what we know about the galaxy, the problem is, each such biosphere is stuck at the bottom of a gravity well and held captive by Newtonian physics and Einstein's dictum that one can't move as fast or faster than the speed of light.

Moreover, we happen to be fortunate to be on a planet which is:

- protected by a satellite which is unusually large in proportion to it
- small enough to still allow for one to escape the gravity well via chemical means

and have the option of getting off the planet --- many systems may not be able to consider that (say a large planet which doesn't have much in the way of radioactive elements).

Travel between the stars requires enormous energy inputs (or some manipulation of space/time which we don't have a handle on), and barring such developments, a time commitment equal to many human generations.

It's sobering to look a map of the Milky Way Galaxy and to see on it the _tiny_ sphere which the radio waves which we have sent out since developing radio have reached --- interestingly, with more sophisticated use of the RF spectrum, that signal strength is diminishing over time.

There was a decent novella written online recently which addressed the Fermi Paradox in those terms --- well worth looking up. (Or if you need a laugh, look up _They're Made Out of Meat_)

[Mark Bolton]

why would they want to meet with us?

Of course my perspective is skewed based on our past 50,000 years of evolution, but I guess in my mind, the question would be why "wouldnt" they? But again, that comes from a bias of our conquering ways. I mean it would be no different than the pilgrims sitting off shore and sending re-con teams in to merely "observe" the natives as opposed to claiming the land of others as their own and annihilating the native population.

No news to anyone but its all the makings of the yin and yang of potential alien contact. The predominant side of it is the fear of ourselves (War of the Worlds, Alien, Predator) so we think all other life must of course behave just as as we do? Why wouldnt they? Because after all, we are all knowing and have been given dominion over the Earth. So we storm into new areas that arent "ours" and make them "ours".

Then there is the other side hoping (and perhaps praying), that the other life forms are so smart, and so much more advanced, that they are helping us get to a more advanced place for some beneficial reason (Contact, Arrival, etc.).

[Chase Mueller]

I feel like that logic also assumes that the space and air around you are empty, but it's not. Nikola Tesla proved this. Drawing infinite energy from seemingly nothing, that opens up the door for way more possibilities we thought weren't possible. It's a shame it was silenced. We'd be much farther along than now.

[Chase Mueller]

Of course my perspective is skewed based on our past 50,000 years of evolution, but I guess in my mind, the question would be why "wouldnt" they? But again, that comes from a bias of our conquering ways. I mean it would be no different than the pilgrims sitting off short and sending re-con teams in to merely "observe" the natives as opposed to claiming the land of others as their own and annihilating the native population.

No news to anyone but its all the makings of the yin and yang of potential alien contact. The predominant side of it is the fear of ourselves (War of the Worlds, Alien, Predator) so we think all other life must of course behave just as as we do? Why wouldnt they? Because after all, we are all knowing and have been given dominion over the Earth. So we storm into new areas that arent "ours" and make them "ours".

Then there is the other side hoping (and perhaps praying), that the other life forms are so smart, and so much more advanced, that they are helping us get to a more advanced place for some beneficial reason (Contact, Arrival, etc.).


Personally, I like to believe they are much more advanced, so much so they've moved past the point of war.

[Mark Bolton]

Ok, first of all, please come help me build an observatory.

Building an observatory is nothing. Thats the easy part. Having a source of income (which I do not) to populate it with the never ending slippery slope of gee gaws and bigger, more advanced, etc.... now thats the hard part. My observatory, while nice, and very enjoyable, probably housed $10K worth of total investment in the building and equipment. The amazing amateur ground based images you see daily are often made with equipment purchased by doctors, lawyers, and others who have invested between a quater and a half a million dollars in their "hobby" lol.

Start attending star parties. Even if you have to travel a ways and camp out. You'll get to look through monsters scopes. But once the bug bites you. Hold onto your wallet.

[Mark Bolton]

Personally, I like to believe they are much more advanced, so much so they've moved past the point of war.

I like that too. Or the fact that if they merely have the power and technology to get here? They can likely flick us off the map of the universe like us smacking a mosquito on a sweaty arm. That said, we have a history that doesnt speak well to co-existence.

[Chase Mueller]

Building an observatory is nothing. Thats the easy part. Having a source of income (which I do not) to populate it with the never ending slippery slope of gee gaws and bigger, more advanced, etc.... now thats the hard part. My observatory, while nice, and very enjoyable, probably housed $10K worth of total investment in the building and equipment. The amazing amateur ground based images you see daily are often made with equipment purchased by doctors, lawyers, and others who have invested between a quater and a half a million dollars in their "hobby" lol.

Start attending star parties. Even if you have to travel a ways and camp out. You'll get to look through monsters scopes. But once the bug bites you. Hold onto your wallet.

Man, why you gotta peak my interests like that? All I have is an outdated cheap telescope.

[Chase Mueller]

I like that too. Or the fact that if they merely have the power and technology to get here? They can likely flick us off the map of the universe like us smacking a mosquito on a sweaty arm. That said, we have a history that doesnt speak well to co-existence.


Exactly. There's so much mystery out there. Even in our own oceans! I'd give a kidney to explore either honestly.

[Carlos Alvarez]

The extreme vastness of the universe is almost incomprehensible to us. No, actually, it is incomprehensible, period. We can pretend to understand it, and sometimes I do think I can, but also logically think it's not possible. If we had started to explore space when the first humanoid came into existence, we'd still only have gone as far as one grain of sand relative to the size of the earth. Plenty of opportunity for other life forms to be "hiding" in the sense that their signals haven't reached us.

My favorite fun theory is that we are in someone's lab. Those "people" are who we have perceived as gods and they are infinitely larger than us. Much like keeping an ant farm.

[Chase Mueller]

The extreme vastness of the universe is almost incomprehensible to us. No, actually, it is incomprehensible, period. We can pretend to understand it, and sometimes I do think I can, but also logically think it's not possible. If we had started to explore space when the first humanoid came into existence, we'd still only have gone as far as one grain of sand relative to the size of the earth. Plenty of opportunity for other life forms to be "hiding" in the sense that their signals haven't reached us.

My favorite fun theory is that we are in someone's lab. Those "people" are who we have perceived as gods and they are infinitely larger than us. Much like keeping an ant farm.

"God is a mean kid with a magnifying glass" Something like that was said in Bruce All Mighty. You know, before he met the all mighty smiter! :D

Maybe they're waiting for us to catch up technologically.

[Michael Weber]

When I said earlier that I thought other life was inevitable I wasn't considering intelligent life but less developed forms. I often wonder what the odds are of early microbial life developing into self awareness and intelligence (such as it is). That, plus the extraordinary set of very fortunate astronomical coincidences William Adams mentions that allows life to develope and elvolve from primitive forms certainly reduces the likelihood of other intelligent races. Not saying it's not possible. Just remember, we owe our very existence to a random astronomical event 65 million years ago that provided an environment suitable for development of mammals. Regardless of the odds of initial life to develop on any world, the odds may be greater that primitively life would have the geologic and astronomical stability to develop. Add the two together and i think the odds of other intelligent life is very small.

[Mark Bolton]

My favorite fun theory is that we are in someone's lab. Those "people" are who we have perceived as gods and they are infinitely larger than us. Much like keeping an ant farm.

One night in the observatory I mentioned a friend had the same theory in a different bent. It would be like imagining if our entire observable universe, were the nucleus, of a molecule, that is part of a skin cell, that is being shed off some off some other life forms scalp lol.

[John K Jordan]

I have been an astronomy junkie for 30 years. Spent countless hours in an observatory I built imaging galaxies and nebula, planets, etc.. The thing that always seems to ring true to me is that most of us, even some of the smartest of us average individuals, has any real comprehension of time. ...

Sitting in that observatory it became a real brain bender to think that the light that is landing on my CCD's sensor left that objects center 29.35 MILLION light years ago... is just brain twisting.


Even looking at our "sister" the Andromeda galaxy with binoculars it's amazing that the photons entering my eyes started out 2.5 million years ago.

I never built an observatory but I do get out the telescopes for small and large kids. Favorite targets for kids are Saturn and the moon.

This is last August at the solar eclipse at John Lucas's place here in TN. I used an 8" solar filter and also projected the image from a small scope inside a cardboard box.

385098 385099 385102 385100 385101

BTW, I aimed some 5x night vision binoculars at the sky once and was surprised at how well they amplified the starlight. We took a photo of the Andromeda galaxy with a iPhone by holding it up to the eyepiece of the binocs.

JKJ

[William Adams]

One free, on-line science fiction story which does examine this sort of thing is Schlock Mercenary --- took me a while to get into it, but the author is a very intelligent person, with an excellent grasp of physics and cosmology and scale, and the attendant sociological problems --- also notable for having ancient civilizations from first generation stars (our sun is a second generation).

Freefall, on purrsia.com is another well done webcomic whose author has done the math (and published it, see the site "Atomic Rockets" at projectrho.com) and it has an interesting spin on how difficult interstellar travel / communication is, and how few intelligent species there are likely to be.

[William Adams]

Hal Clement had some pretty cool stories on this sort of thing, and I really recommend his "Halo" (can't say more than that or I'd spoil it).

[Chase Mueller]

I have to disagree. Much too large of an area for me to say it's very small. Quite opposite. What's to say they need the same conditions as we do?

[Chase Mueller]

I'll look it up, thanks!

[Carlos Alvarez]

Add the two together and i think the odds of other intelligent life is very small.

The corollary is that there are SOOOO many other galaxies and solar systems that the odds become very high of having the exact same coincidence.

Also, we tend to only think of intelligent life as meaty carbon-based life, but there are many other possibilities.

I love this short story...

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT!

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

[Mark Bolton]

Add the two together and i think the odds of other intelligent life is very small.


I have somewhat come to a similar conclusion though its no different than any postulation. Earth is barely 1/3 as old as the observable universe, and our entire evolution encompasses about .05% of that time (thats from bacteria/single celled organisms). While thats true, there is always the remote possibility of success, or multiple iterations happening elsewhere in the mere time before we even came into being. At current predictions we have at least 2X the amount of time Earth has been formed that was happening before we were even in bacterial form.

The galaxies that we see in the hubble deep field likely dont even exist any longer. The have gone through numerous itteratons of Earth and we are merely seeing them at their infant stage. No different than looking at the baby pictures of my great great grandparents. I have no idea if they grew up to get married, had kids, went to college, grew old? They could have been killed in an accident the day after the photo, the plague, polio, black death, war, etc..

All good brain excercise

[Marshall Harrison]

The assumption isn't that aliens would want to occupy the entire galaxy, but that some of them would eventually do it. We're talking about millions of years here. What do you think are the odds that humans won't colonize some other solar system within the next million years? Let's just say it takes 1 million years for a star system with people in it to spread to another one -- that's 2 (earth + x) in 1 million years, 4 in 2 million years, 8 in 3 million years, 16 in 4 million years... see where I'm going with this? In 10 million years that's 1000 star systems, in 30 million years it a billion, more than there are in the galaxy.

I thnk in those time spans you are more likely to see extinction than galactic expansion/domination.

[Mark Bolton]

I thnk in those time spans you are more likely to see extinction than galactic expansion/domination.

Thats most definitely true if the majority of life forms follow the trajectory of ours. It doesnt bode well for generational durability

[Bob Bouis]

Admittedly extinction seems like a possibility at the current time, but what could cause it after humans are living on other planets, in space, and in other solar systems? Surely the threat of extinction begins to approach zero at that point.

People have argued, convincingly I think, that the most probable habitat for people in the distant future would be in large cylinders orbiting the sun, spinning to provide fake gravity. You could make tens of thousands of times the surface area of the earth worth of them out of raw materials easily available in asteroids. They'd be self-contained and self-sufficient, more or less. Disease is not an issue, nor sabotage, no natural catastrophes, war is unlikely to wipe them all out, etc. Very extinction resistant.

[Carlos Alvarez]

Does it matter if humans stop existing at all tomorrow? If so, why?

[Chase Mueller]

Admittedly extinction seems like a possibility at the current time, but what could cause it after humans are living on other planets, in space, and in other solar systems? Surely the threat of extinction begins to approach zero at that point.

People have argued, convincingly I think, that the most probable habitat for people in the distant future would be in large cylinders orbiting the sun, spinning to provide fake gravity. You could make tens of thousands of times the surface area of the earth worth of them out of raw materials easily available in asteroids. They'd be self-contained and self-sufficient, more or less. Disease is not an issue, nor sabotage, no natural catastrophes, war is unlikely to wipe them all out, etc. Very extinction resistant.

I have one question though, how do you solve the whole breathing thing?

[Chase Mueller]

Does it matter if humans stop existing at all tomorrow? If so, why?

Define matter

[Carlos Alvarez]

Define matter

Fair question. I don't know. You define it if it matters to you. Not being smart, but it's an open philosophical question.

I don't think it matters in any way at all. The universe doesn't care. If we're gone, we don't care. If you believe in some imaginary friend in the sky, then you believe you will be in a better place. I don't, and think we will simply stop existing. I think we only matter to each other via meaningful relationships, and not at all beyond that.

[Jon Wolfe]

The intelligent plant based lifeforms are going to be p.o. at us woodworkers... we kind of butcher and mummify their earth brethren and our farmers cultivate them as food.

[Mark Bolton]

that the most probable habitat for people in the distant future would be in large cylinders orbiting the sun

Unfortunately in our current state I think for that future to have any viability there would have to be an event or events that would bring humanity to point of modesty and humility that cohabitation is possible. Even as far as we've come we have people waging war against their neighbors in a sub-divison, road rage, heck.. its presently all over the news about the lynching memorial and a woman a mere 50 years ago being publicly lynched in a ceremonial execution for not calling a police officer "mister"(insert name here).

I dont doubt at this current point in our evolution there are those who have gone into space and cohabited, but Im not sure it will work on-mass. The bulk of the planet has yet to realize what our potential would have been had we all just worked as a team.

[Chase Mueller]

Fair question. I don't know. You define it if it matters to you. Not being smart, but it's an open philosophical question.

I don't think it matters in any way at all. The universe doesn't care. If we're gone, we don't care. If you believe in some imaginary friend in the sky, then you believe you will be in a better place. I don't, and think we will simply stop existing. I think we only matter to each other via meaningful relationships, and not at all beyond that.


Haha alright, just making sure you didn't have something in mind.
The grand scheme of things, I'm torn. Existence wise, nah, I doubt it. If anything, the world would be a much better place without mankind. And probably the universe as well.

[Carlos Alvarez]

The intelligent plant based lifeforms are going to be p.o. at us woodworkers... we kind of butcher and mummify their earth brethren and our farmers cultivate them as food.

Groot?
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.

[Chase Mueller]

groot?
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.
.

baby groot

[Bob Bouis]

Unfortunately in our current state I think for that future to have any viability there would have to be an event or events that would bring humanity to point of modesty and humility that cohabitation is possible. Even as far as we've come we have people waging war against their neighbors in a sub-divison, road rage, heck.. its presently all over the news about the lynching memorial and a woman a mere 50 years ago being publicly lynched in a ceremonial execution for not calling a police officer "mister"(insert name here).

I dont doubt at this current point in our evolution there are those who have gone into space and cohabited, but Im not sure it will work on-mass. The bulk of the planet has yet to realize what our potential would have been had we all just worked as a team.
That was just 50 years ago. Or think about it this way -- 50,000 years ago the human population was probably 100,000 or less. Unless it's total extinction humanity will continue to grow over geologic timescales.

Plus, not everyone getting along could be a good thing, as it motivates people to leave and settle new places.


I have one question though, how do you solve the whole breathing thing?

Do you mean, like, where do you get air? We can make oxygen from water already, and there's lots of water out there. Nitrogen I'm not so sure about, but since it's 79% of our atmosphere there's a pretty good chance it's abundant nearby. It's also not absolutely necessary, I don't think.

[Chase Mueller]

That was just 50 years ago. Or think about it this way -- 50,000 years ago the human population was probably 100,000 or less. Unless it's total extinction humanity will continue to grow over geologic timescales.

Plus, not everyone getting along could be a good thing, as it motivates people to leave and settle new places.



Do you mean, like, where do you get air? We can make oxygen from water already, and there's lots of water out there. Nitrogen I'm not so sure about, but since it's 79% of our atmosphere there's a pretty good chance it's abundant nearby. It's also not absolutely necessary, I don't think.


Ok fair enough, thanks for clarifying!

[Mark Bolton]

Plus, not everyone getting along could be a good thing, as it motivates people to leave and settle new places.

When your orbiting the sun, in a glorified rotating soup can (battle start galactica for a fictional point of reference) there is NO resources or capacities available to allow dissatisfied factions to "leave" or "settle new places". At that point your living in a fixed existence. The mere presence of angst and discontent creates elevated heart rates and blood pressures that consume more resources than the tincan can produce. The rational conclusion to this would be individual groups or pods of individuals would remain contained so that if they "went kooky" they could be isolated, and sedated, or worst case scenario jettisoned, to preserve the remainder.

I agree that to an extent in our current climate not getting along spawns growth and innovation. We still have room to spread out. When we are all orbiting the sun in tin can's things would be far different. Given the scope of how big these cans were you could see a tribunal very quickly deciding if you were an asset or liability to "the can" and if liability was the result, being jettisoned may be expeditious.

[Bob Bouis]

It's not just a tin can, though. It's being bombarded 24/7 with an immense amount of free energy from the sun, and it's accompanied by an army of (friendly) robots and automated factories and the like. It just sits there while they do the work. If it takes a hundred years or a thousand years to build a new habitat, well, what else are you going to do?

[Carlos Alvarez]

When your orbiting the sun, in a glorified rotating soup can (battle start galactica for a fictional point of reference) there is NO resources or capacities available to allow dissatisfied factions to "leave" or "settle new places". At that point your living in a fixed existence. The mere presence of angst and discontent creates elevated heart rates and blood pressures that consume more resources than the tincan can produce. The rational conclusion to this would be individual groups or pods of individuals would remain contained so that if they "went kooky" they could be isolated, and sedated, or worst case scenario jettisoned, to preserve the remainder.

I agree that to an extent in our current climate not getting along spawns growth and innovation. We still have room to spread out. When we are all orbiting the sun in tin can's things would be far different. Given the scope of how big these cans were you could see a tribunal very quickly deciding if you were an asset or liability to "the can" and if liability was the result, being jettisoned may be expeditious.

But you are still working under the premise of today's limitations, issues foibles, and attitudes. We can't predict how humans will behave in that environment. Also, which humans? Do we do exclusionary psychological testing to prevent having problem people there? Or maybe call one ship Australia and send all the psychopaths there? How would humans behave differently if there were no disease and unlimited resources?

[Kevin Beitz]

Do I think they are out there...? Oh yea....

Antikythera mechanism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

To much proof in ancient history of things found for me not to believe.

Are the avoiding use...? I think so. Why would they want anything to do with

Hostile Humans...

[Mark Bolton]

But you are still working under the premise of today's limitations, issues foibles, and attitudes. We can't predict how humans will behave in that environment. Also, which humans? Do we do exclusionary psychological testing to prevent having problem people there? Or maybe call one ship Australia and send all the psychopaths there? How would humans behave differently if there were no disease and unlimited resources?

This was my point earlier that there would seem to need to be an event, or series of events, that humbled the masses to a point where they FINALLY realized that they all MUST get along and that actually when we all move as a team we get a lot more done. Its a delusional, romantic, notion that it could ever happen. Hence the battlestar glactica reference. The notion of loading the entire population into a confined space and not needing more police than population, and having the resources to deal with and house the malcontents would seem futile.

It would seem your motivation would be to populate the escape vessel with the most benign and diplomatic of individuals (NASA is doing this for the past 30 years, if you have a nutty bone in your body,... your not getting in the space station). Then at that point you would have to monitor "the population" diligently. If any one individual starts going off into left field they will need to either be isolated, or... eliminated.. to preserve resources.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I do have a list of people I'd like to shoot into the sun, and we'll be close...

[Thomas L Carpenter]

It seems to me that life, be it bacteria or otherwise, is very likely. Does it fly around in spaceships and conquer the universe. Who knows, but this is a fun thread.

[Greg Peterson]

Who knows if we are even capable of comprehending the true, full nature of what we call the universe?

I suspect things are far more complex, bigger and stranger than we can even imagine.

[William Adams]

For the difficulties of a closed environment look up the problems which Biosphere 2 had, or consider the frequency with which we send supplies up to, and take trash away from, the I.S.S.

There was a recent book, _Cradle to Grave_ which posited the technologies necessary for the population of a city to exist with no affect on the surrounding area --- China was supposed to build a city following those principles, but don't know that it ever happened.

The Antikythera mechanism is neat, but folks being aware of and able to calculate astronomical phenomenon doesn't indicate contact with aliens. Our ancestors were just as smart as we are, they just didn't have the benefit of the accumulated knowledge we have (standing on the shoulders of giants as Sir Isaac Newton noted), and in a lot of instances such as this, their knowledge was lost (Library of Alexandria and all that).

Some sobering numbers:

- we're currently burning 10 calories of petro-chemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy to the table
- we're going through 2.5 earths worth of resources by dipping into non-renewable resources
- potassium / phosphorous are the limiting factor for life on earth and China just quit exporting one of them

[Doug McKay]

My crazy theory is that we as a civilization make it another million years, and we figure out the Time/space/inter dimension stuff. The "Aliens" we see are just US from the future coming back to observe their past....

[John K Jordan]

My crazy theory is that we as a civilization make it another million years, and we figure out the Time/space/inter dimension stuff. The "Aliens" we see are just US from the future coming back to observe their past....

You either read, write, or perhaps should write science fiction. Time travel makes for some fascinating conundrums, especially if done well.

JKJ

[Cary Falk]

385144

I think I have a better chance of seeing Bigfoot than an Alien.

[Chase Mueller]

385144

I think I have a better chance of seeing Bigfoot than an Alien.

I mean, I'm up for a Bigfoot thread :D

[Nicholas Lawrence]

Completely alone (no other intelligent life anywhere in entire history of the universe), or alone for all practical purposes?

If you take the 50-60 closest stars, that takes you out about 15 light years. So far I don’t think anyone has found anything in those closest stars that looks like it could support life.

The fastest any spacecraft has gone to date is something like 50-60km/s (speed of light is about 300,000 km/s). To get to the nearest star at that speed we would be looking at about 80,000 years. If we upped our speed 100 times we would still be looking at 800 years. Even at 20% of the speed of light it would take 20 years to get to the nearest (probably uninhabitable) star.

The center of the galaxy somebody mentioned is about 24,000 lightyears away. At 20% light speed that is a 120,000 year trip (one way). The nearest galaxy (Andromeda) is 2.5 million light years away (12.5 million years at 20% light speed).

[Chase Mueller]

Really preference for debate on that, I think the biggest argument is between completely alone or not though.

Personally, I think we just don't have the tech yet, so it doesn't seem feasible. To avoid diving into government and corporational conspiracies, I won't go into too much detail, but it was either Edison or Tesla that had some groundbreaking theory of tapping into the "nothingness" that surrounds us, claiming there was a new, infinite energy we could obtain. All the research was destroyed. Interesting/fun thing to read/watch/

[Mark Bolton]

All the research was destroyed.

Highlty doubtful.

[Chase Mueller]

Highlty doubtful.

Wanna elaborate on that?

[Mark Bolton]

If you take the 50-60 closest stars, that takes you out about 15 light years.

And then if you consider that unaided we are only able to see about 2500 stars out of the 200-400 billion that are estimated in the Milky way (we cant even see 99.999997% of our own galaxy). And then you consider that there is an estimated 100 BILLION galaxies in the observable universe. It would seem extremely odd to be the only life form. Perhaps there is some limiting factor, no different than those that regulate the size of a rocky planet, that doesnt allow a civilization to go beyond a certain extent. I would think politics, greed, and warfare (maybe the first two are the same as the third) consume so much of an "advanced" civilizations time they just never reach breakout.

[Mark Bolton]

Wanna elaborate on that?

I highly doubt much of anything that has potential use has been actually destroyed since perhaps WW1.

[Carlos Alvarez]

And then if you consider that unaided we are only able to see about 2500 stars out of the 200-400 billion that are estimated in the Milky way (we cant even see 99.999997% of our own galaxy). And then you consider that there is an estimated 100 BILLION galaxies in the observable universe. It would seem extremely odd to be the only life form. Perhaps there is some limiting factor, no different than those that regulate the size of a rocky planet, that doesnt allow a civilization to go beyond a certain extent. I would think politics, greed, and warfare (maybe the first two are the same as the third) consume so much of an "advanced" civilizations time they just never reach breakout.

I think we simply have such a hard time imagining that. A hundred billion (!) galaxies, like ours, that we can reasonably know of. And we can't even travel our own galaxy, or see all of it. 100,000,000,000

[Chase Mueller]

What makes you assume that? You really believe if some groundbreaking tech was discovered, that would disrupt billion dollar industries, someone wouldn't try to mess with it? Greed is rampant, many people will do everything they can to stay rich.

[Mark Bolton]

What makes you assume that? You really believe if some groundbreaking tech was discovered, that would disrupt billion dollar industries, someone wouldn't try to mess with it? Greed is rampant, many people will do everything they can to stay rich.

Its no news to anyone that business' and governments "acquire", obtain, steal, advanced information from any multitude of sources and opt to sit on it, shelve it, exploit it behind the scenes until its the right time in their interests (if ever) most commonly for profit or power based reasons. The petroleum and petro chemical industries have been in this game for perhaps 50 or more years. There are technologies on the shelves now that would without a doubt have gotten us to better/different places, but they were not in the best interests of some. There have been countless advances in the petroleum and liquid and solid fuel industries that have not seen the light of day.

Its no different than a lousy news organization having a rock solid story yet they choose to hold on to it until a time when they can really use it to an advantage. It happens every day of the week.

[Chase Mueller]

Its no news to anyone that business' and governments "acquire", obtain, steal, advanced information from any multitude of sources and opt to sit on it, shelve it, exploit it behind the scenes until its the right time in their interests (if ever) most commonly for profit or power based reasons. The petroleum and petro chemical industries have been in this game for perhaps 50 or more years. There are technologies on the shelves now that would without a doubt have gotten us to better/different places, but they were not in the best interests of some. There have been countless advances in the petroleum and liquid and solid fuel industries that have not seen the light of day.

Its no different than a lousy news organization having a rock solid story yet they choose to hold on to it until a time when they can really use it to an advantage. It happens every day of the week.

I'm confused slightly, are we in agreement or disagreement? :confused:

[andrew whicker]

It looks like there might have been (not advanced) life on mars, but it's long dead.

That's probably the biggest hurdle: finding life that can communicate and is also still alive at the same time as us. As others have postulated, it's possible that other beings have heard our radio transmissions, but decided that we were too devolved.

There could be some huge political federation of planets out there for all we know. But maybe the entrance requirements are to at least be able to travel in space by XYZ method and we haven't figured XYZ. The concept behind Contact (Carl Sagan) is pretty interesting.

[andrew whicker]

Definitely an interesting time to be alive though! I watched The Martian the other night. Great movie, btw. Anyway, one of the plot points is availability of rockets on earth. The availability hinges on global space programs. The book was published in 2011. That plot point is already moot and out of date. In the future (and now) NASA would just call SpaceX (or equivalent) and they'd have a rocket on standby.

Very cool times to be alive.

[Robbie Buckley]

I personally think the reason we don't see other civilisations is both blindingly obvious and somewhat disturbing. AI.
It has taken humans around 5,000 years to get to the brink of developing artificial intelligence that will be smarter than us. Once the first independent AI is constructed, that will be the end of humans as relevant intelligences on Earth, and there is no reason to believe that other civilisations will not eventually make technology smarter than them. The problem is that smart AI's will think as well as we do, except thousands of times faster, can multiply as fast as they can be copied, and can in turn make smarter and smarter AI's. They also won't need food or oxygen, heat or light - just power and raw materials. They can live happily in space - in fact, space is a better environment than Earth.
A spacegoing AI has no need for planets, can take their time travelling even if they have not solved the restriction of light speed, and has no real need to expand and multiply. Yes, there are a lot of stars - there is even more empty, quiet space between them perfect for thinking in.

If we get to the stage where we can transfer our mind into a computer - perhaps with AI help - then we can go the same way. Why cart a squishy, fragile short-lived body around with you? You'll have the tech to make a new one to slum around in if you feel the need.

AI smarter than us is inevitable, as at rate of progress greater than 0 gets us there eventually. And right now we have Amazon's Alexa collecting information in our homes on how humans react, think and do stuff everyday. Best training device for an AI anyone could come up with.
Yes, there should be alien intelligences out there. And yes, there should have been enough time for them to have produced evidence of their presence. Unless they are not where we would be, and happily solving the universe in deep space, maybe checking us out now and then to see how close we are to adding to their number.
I'm actually hopeful this will happen in my lifetime. I keep telling people I hope we'll make good pets - I'm still not sure if I'm joking or not :)

Cheers, Robbie.

[William Adams]

Still not convinced that A.I., beyond just rules based systems is ever going to get anywhere --- Edsger W. Dijkstra once stated, "Anyone who believe computers are capable of random behavior is in a state of sin." --- the power requirements for super computers are still enormous, even with more power efficient chips --- there was a recent article noting that it took the 4th largest supercomputer some tens of seconds to simulate 1 second of that portion of the human brain activity which we are able to understand and model.

Computers need a _lot_ of energy to run, and quite a bit of cooling (often the most difficult part of setting up a data center).

Programming tools and ways to define problems also have to get better --- while we've had some successes, such as recently allowing an A.I. to program itself to learn to play Go, there are still a lot of definitions which are lacking. A person needs to know / understand 1 million facts/concepts in order to understand a typical encyclopedia article --- how do those get marked up and encoded?

If A.I. is so great and capable, why aren't tools for automating basic computing tasks better? Most computers function as, and are used as glorified memory typewriters.

Consider 5-axis CNC programming --- carving in stone and wood, or machining in metal is a basic and well-understood human task, but the number of programs which do 5-axis CNC well can be counted on one hand with fingers left over --- the geometry is _hard_.

[Robbie Buckley]

Do you have a source for that quote? I looks like von Neumann's quote regarding random number generators (Anyone who believes a deterministic method for generating random numbers is living in a state of sin?). There are many many very smart people who believe it will happen sooner rather than later.

[William Adams]

Maybe I misattributed it --- it's been a long time since my comparative programming class.

Strong A.I. in the fictional sense seems incredibly difficult and unlikely to me at a local / personal level --- the 1 million facts needed to understand an encyclopedia article --- probably some number of them are encoded in I.B.M.'s Watson, but certainly not all --- what is its memory footprint? How much electrical energy is needed just to maintain that state? A quick search shows:

>ninety IBM POWER 750 servers, 16 Terabytes of memory, and 4 Terabytes of clustered storage

It'd be easier to see this sort of thing happening if programming and applications were actually getting better. Instead we have things such as Microsoft redefining a stylus so that it will scroll rather than select text.

[Robbie Buckley]

The 'million facts' thing sounds like one of those urban myths that sounds good but bears no resemblance to reality. Do you have any reference for that?
If we can teach computers to learn like humans, it simply becomes a question of processing power. Obviously the "if" is the problem.

[William Adams]

Read it somewhere, can't recall where. It ought to be covered in writing along the lines of: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/

EDIT: What number of facts do you believe would be necessary to understand an encyclopedia article using no other references? Please note that the article did mention that many of these were logical conclusions such as a child must be younger than a parent.

As an example of how difficult encoding information for A.I., a recent game tried to use A.I. agents for all the characters in the game --- when they first started one up, the in-game avatar simply stayed in place and looked at itself --- when they debugged the code they determined that it had determined it was in need of food, had identified its own body as the nearest foodsource and was trying to figure out how to eat itself.

Consider the recent instance of teaching a computer to play Go --- they simply had it play a copy of itself untold millions of times --- it worked, and created a program which could beat every other program in existence, but the game play style was unusual, and that's not a technique which can be used for other problems.

[Carlos Alvarez]

It's not just "learn like humans." If we want computers to be human, we have to teach them to do things that make no sense, to make mistakes, to be unduly influenced by things that aren't real, etc etc. Actual human or even animal behavior isn't just about acquiring knowledge or following a set of possible paths. Consider that no two humans will do the same thing when confronted with an event or other input.

[Bert Kemp]

100 % true Dave if another life form has visited earth they surly know theres no intelligent life here
I would say the probability is high given the number of galaxies, let alone the number of stars. Now as for life forms visiting earth, I don't doubt it has happened. I do suspect however that they have left us alone after determining that there was no intelligent life here.

[Pat Barry]

If an alien expedition were to arrive here their only interest would be obtaining resources to ensure their own future. It is unlikely humans would be anything more meaningful to them than slave labor to extract those resources. Most likely humans would be a nuisance to them and would need to be eliminated. The question is, what resources would they want?

[Frederick Skelly]

If an alien expedition were to arrive here their only interest would be obtaining resources to ensure their own future. It is unlikely humans would be anything more meaningful to them than slave labor to extract those resources. Most likely humans would be a nuisance to them and would need to be eliminated. The question is, what resources would they want?

Blood. Immortal alien vampires! :D :D :D

(Sorry Pat. Your point was fair. I just couldnt resist being silly.)

[Carlos Alvarez]

If an alien expedition were to arrive here their only interest would be obtaining resources to ensure their own future. It is unlikely humans would be anything more meaningful to them than slave labor to extract those resources. Most likely humans would be a nuisance to them and would need to be eliminated. The question is, what resources would they want?

The spice. He controls the universe.

[Warren Wilson]

I am surprised no one has yet mentioned the Drake Equation, a "probabilistic argument" that estimates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way with which we could communicate.

I am pasting the seven variables from the Wikipedia article -- the notion has long made sense to me, especially after seeing it featured on The Big Bang Theory (so it HAS to be correct).



R∗, the average rate of star formations, in our galaxy,
fp, the fraction of formed stars that have planets,
ne for stars that have planets, the average number of planets that can potentially support life,
fl, the fraction of those planets that actually develop life,
fi, the fraction of planets bearing life on which intelligent, civilized life, has developed,
fc, the fraction of these civilizations that have developed communications, i.e., technologies that release detectable signs into space, and
L, the length of time over which such civilizations release detectable signals,


So the final expression of N (the number of such civilizations) is the product of those variables, or

https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/08459525b4c05af9b9e1748406e26ad869d9462d

[William Adams]

Yes, but you then need to further adjust down for the distance / speed at which radio waves travel --- there's a great image showing how far ours have gotten --- rather sobering.

Unless there's a way to cheat and go FTL, we're looking at Poul Andersen's _The Boat of a Million Years_, Vernor Vinge's _Longshot_, Ben Bova's _Exiles Trilogy_ and the like being the only options for interstellar travel --- unless we can get some sort of self-perpetuating asteroid mining going, a generation ship is looking to be a planet-wide commitment (consider that no one has gotten to Mars in person yet) and asteroid mining is problematic due to the delta vee involved. We can't even work out how to get the energy and apply it to near miss asteroids.

[Carlos Alvarez]

Yes, but you then need to further adjust down for the distance / speed at which radio waves travel --- there's a great image showing how far ours have gotten --- rather sobering.


Only if you believe that's the only way to send intelligent signals. Quantum entanglement seems like a real possibility so far. And while gravitation waves are still limited in speed in the way WE see them, there's so much we don't know about gravity (and that can indeed carry a logical signal). Then there are the dimensions we can measure and not see, such as dark matter which is passing through you right now. What is it? Can we communicate with it, using it or directly at it? Is it another superimposed universe? Heck, are "ghost" sightings just a special entanglement with a dark matter universe when it somehow crosses ours in a way that renders a short connection?

Imagine a 2D ant on a sphere. It can travel that sphere indefinitely and think that its universe is infinite. But we 3D observers can see its obvious limited space. The most logical "fourth dimension" is time, which we can only perceive linearly and in a single point. Remember that time and space are the same thing; points in dimensions we can perceive. What about all of the other likely dimensions? You put a person on a tightrope and he can only walk in two dimensions, limited by his scale. Yet put an ant on a tightrope and it can travel in three dimensions. There are good theories about how scale plays into travel in various space/time continuums.

Dogs can hear sounds well above 30kHZ, so they already have a different perception of the world. Moths and bats can hear to 100k, so they have yet another view. Some animals like the Mantis shrimp can see colors we simply cannot, even inside our own limited visible spectrum. It has 12 color receptors to our 3, but at the same time appears almost color blind when we as humans test it. Is that because we can't possibly understand what it actually sees? Other animals can perceive many energy types that we cannot. Yet we think we're the hot sh!t in the universe.

Aliens...I think today that's just a catch-all term for "things we don't know exist and haven't talked to yet." Meaning that they could be dimensional travelers (purposely or accidentally), or really from our dimension and another planet, or who knows? Everything we know about what "can be" is limited by our extremely limited view of the universe plus our fears and prejudices.

[Carlos Alvarez]

386050

This sums up the perception problem.

[William Adams]

Controlling gravity and so forth are even further out than FTL.

The problem the with sentient ant thing is that they should have been sprayed w/ pesticides and be reacting to that as chemical warfare.

A small scale sentience would all-too-readily begin to take advantage of resources created by humanity and become a pest, see _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H._ for a discussion of this.

BTW, there's a great story (unfortunately that it is is a spoiler) about Mantis Shrimp in Fred Saberhagen's _Berserker_ canon --- highly recommended.