Aliens

[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!

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.

eclipse_IMG_6607.jpg eclipse_IMG_6651.jpg eclipse_IMG_6662.jpg eclipse_IMG_6613.jpg eclipse-total_Charlie_es.jpg

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