Reason we've never found aliens: humans are already going extinct

[omfgreally]

The most certain sign that there is intelligent life beyond Earth, is that no-one has contacted us.

I just love when people say that...

Hi, we are trying to contact you, but we showed up around the time of a great world war that hasn't ended but say for a few short years but everytime we try to get close you chase us away with armed missiles and sonic jets that can't even catch us. So we'll just stand back and watch from afar.......................

Oh and so you know if they haven't tried to make contact, then the black triangle that came out of the woods and silently hovered 30 feet above me at night on my patio for 10 minutes before being ran off by a nighthawk that came screaming out of the local AFB is government tech or some other private tech.

It would be best used to upgrade the planes and jets we have now and no more needless crashes and meaningless deaths of men, women and children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aybB0uleyXY

But OH we don't have anything like THAT, no we just fly them around at night and park above country people for the LOLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ because there is no such thing as aliens, no, nah, no ways. just the lolz.

But hey, the government knows best, right? and I'm just a crazy person that just happened to see and feel something that isn't real. totally not real at all, not even the weight that it used to push downwards and it was heavy on my shoulders, chest and forehead that I almost fell down being under it, totally not real at all... oh and also the other people that where with me, just happened to see the same not real same crazy person idea just between different people all at the same time.

It's funny how that works, am I right?

Oh and yeah it's funny how a few people can just all experience something that isn't real doing something that isn't real and moved the same direction that isn't real and not see a very expensive jet that wasn't there and I guess those different people also didn't see a made up and expensive jet go the same direction and circle around and lost his target, no totally not real at all. just crazy people with their crazy made up same things.

nope. no sir. we are just all alone on this planet with our god. just all alone. that's it.

Some faceless people, who's job it is to lie are totally fool proof, whatever they say KAPPA! you're right. yep no nothing ever happened, totally right..................

Just keep thinking the world is flat and a man in the sky watches you day and night and if you do something he doesn't like he will sent you to a worse place that this hell, but he loves you. yeah, totally dude. and the world isn't getting hotter because everyone needs a raising canes and starbucks concrete building built on every corner, nope just gotta pay them money and pay carbon taxes, that'll fix it :P.

Nothing to do with the large buildings popping up every week, more roads, all of this heat holding stuff, slowly turning everything into a desert, nope. just the politics and money can fix that.

Sorry I've been boiling on that for awhile.

[Powerogue]

Isn't the most obvious reason the extreme improbability of the sort of faster-than-light travel that would be necessary to reach any of those planets? Even traveling to a planet with a fully self-sustained spaceship moving at lightspeed for millions of years, IF we somehow got to a planet that, when we looked at it, it appeared to be inhabited by intelligent life by our super awesome high-res telescopes on earth, we saw the planet as it was millions of years ago, then took millions of years to travel, and by the time we get there they might all be dead!

That's the optimistic route where we somehow accomplish ships that can travel at lightspeed without liquifying their passengers and somehow survive renewably in the dead of space for longer than civilization has existed.

With some quick googling, the visible universe is around 93 billion lightyears across. Mars, the furthest we've sent things to so far, is 54.6 million kilometers. A lightyear, for reference, is around 9.5 quadrillion meters. I don't even know how many zeroes that is. Mars is like a brisk walk down to your neighborhood grocery store compared to the distances we're dealing with here.

[Torgent]

If we use earth as a guide, life might be common, but nothing in evolution puch the intelligence to human level, A big brain demand loot more engergy, so the evulution find the "sweat spot" no need to waist engergy on a better brain then the current animal intelligence brain work fin.

I can't tell if the horrendous spelling in this post is intentional or not.

OT: Can we stop calling things related to "Why we haven't found aliens" theories? They're not theories. They are just random statements that can't be tested.

[unbound]

There are a few problems that don't get discussed well with Fermi's Paradox. Let's start with the Drake equation (part of the argument in Fermi's Paradox).

Drake's equation is:

N = R * fp *ne *fl * fi *fc *L

Where R = rate of formation of stars suitable for the development of intelligent life
fp = fraction of those stars with planetary systems
ne = number of planets with an environment suitable for life
fl = fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears
fi = fraction of life bearing planets on which intelligent life appears
fc = fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L - the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space

R and fp are known at this point. ne can be reasonable guessed. But the last ones are huge problems and subject to nothing more than pulling numbers out from where the sun don't shine.

We don't know if fl is 1 in 10 or 1 in 1 trillion (or worse). We suspect that basic life may be fairly common, so 1 in 10 would be reasonable fair.

Now it gets very questionable. There are 8 known major transitions in evolution to get from basic life to intelligent life that we know of (compartments of molecules, chromosomes, dna and enzymes, prokaryotes->eukaryotes, sexual populations, multicellular organisms, colonies, society and language). Some of those would appear to be fairly easy...but others may be exceptionally rare (e.g. prokaryotes to eukaryotes has only happened once on Earth and was a critical step to form complex life).

So for fi, it is likely to be closer to 1 in a million (or substantially less). Most discussions try to pin this variable as closer to 1% which is just absurd on the face of it once you start digging into the history of life on Earth.

At this point, it seems likely that once something becomes intelligent, probably a reasonably small percentage of those creatures will eventually send signals into space one way or another...probably call that 1 in 100. L at that point can be safely said to be something like 10,000.

Now, if we put in the reasonable estimates, we have:

R = 10, fp = 0.5, ne = 2, fl = 0.1, fi = 0.000001, fc = 0.01, L = 10,000

That comes out to be 0.0001 broadcasting civilizations at any given time in our galaxy (there is pretty much zero chance of receiving any transmissions from any other galaxy).

So why all the clamor about Fermi's Paradox? Because unrealistic numbers are put into some of those values...fi most especially. 1 in a million may be too high...but even if it is 1 in 10,000, the number only gets to 0.01. Additionally, if L is 1,000,000 as well as fi being 1 in 10,000, then the number only gets to 1.

And if there is a civilization that is millions of years further along than us, they may view us no differently that we view ants (if that highly). Ants create structures, and we don't spend any serious effort trying to communicate with them. They may see communications using electromagnetic spectrums as even more primitive than grunts used by apes.

[Beardless Man]

Humanity is going extinct? Finally.

Now when will that happen?

[Ifeanychukwu]

I'm not entirely sure travel to distant stars is even possible. Even at the highest speeds attainable by spacecraft that is still only theorized it would take anywhere from decades to thousands of years to reach them. Even if you can achieve the speeds necessary to travel those kinds of distances there's a bunch of other problems we'd have to overcome as well. If you're travelling at a percentage of the speed of light, a collision with even a tiny piece of debris would pretty much destroy any spacecraft we could build. Then there's the fact that we can't slow down or negate the effects of aging so that by the time we reached our destination we would either be dead or there would be completely different people reaching the destination. Then there's the effects of being in space, we can hardly handle even a year without gravity without numerous health problems that can become even worse when you eventually do reenter an atmosphere.

I sort of feel like when we're thinking of humans on the galactic scale we may as well still be apes flinging shit at each other and playing sticks. We're still burning shit to launch rockets into space, propel our vehicles and power our cities. Unless there's some serious technological advancements in the near future that defy physics I kind of doubt humans will ever travel much further than our own solar system. Either that or we merge with machines and completely rid ourselves of the limitations of mortality and age which seems much more realistic to me than means of travel that we haven't even been able to imagine yet.

[McFuu]

Statistically, there probably is intelligent Alien life. But the universe is so large we will never become aware of each other. In order for Alien species to communicate with each other in some effective form, they'd have to be relative galactic neighbors. And be very advanced. Lets say Mars was actually populated with intelligent Alien life that developed relatively close to our level of technology. Even now it would be unlikely that we would have made it there, at least not with a guaranteed method of return. I would say knowing we had such a close galactic neighbor would push us to get there faster, but still the proper technology has existed for a short short amount of time. Place an actual inhabited planet orbiting the nearest star to our Sun. We would have only become aware that the planet was there and inhabitable within the past 20-30 years. We are still hundreds of years from getting there and it would definitely be one way.

I think the biggest step in a civilizations advancement is when it turns inward, not outward. Forget looking out past the solar system, and stay home. Improve what is here. Advanced civilizations probably don't even look out at the stars anymore, science just doesn't support interstellar travel. We would sooner prove, and travel between alternate dimension Earth's before we would even get out of the Solar System in a manned craft.

[Tailswipe]

It may very well be that there is no way of FTL travel or FTL communication. If that is the case, it's quite likely that the distances between populated worlds alone are enough to effectively isolate them for the entire life cycle of any civilization.

This what I was thinking as well. There are probably loads of aliens all stuck in their own solar systems.

[Fargus]

technology and magic are two different things try not to get them mixed up with each other thx

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke.

Show someone 100 years ago your smartphone, they'll think it's a magic trick.

The assumption that we've somehow reached the limits of knowledge is incredibly arrogant.

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I'm not entirely sure travel to distant stars is even possible. Even at the highest speeds attainable by spacecraft that is still only theorized it would take anywhere from decades to thousands of years to reach them.

Thousands of years doesn't matter if you're biologically immortal, or have perfected suspended animation. Or if you're an AI entity. Etc.

Even if you can achieve the speeds necessary to travel those kinds of distances there's a bunch of other problems we'd have to overcome as well. If you're travelling at a percentage of the speed of light, a collision with even a tiny piece of debris would pretty much destroy any spacecraft we could build.

With current material? Sure. There is material, however, that can withstand such pressures. We just haven't found a way to mass-produce it cheaply yet.

Then there's the fact that we can't slow down or negate the effects of aging so that by the time we reached our destination we would either be dead or there would be completely different people reaching the destination.

We've slowed down the effects of aging in the past 100 years. Moreso on experimental animals. Why can't we further slow it down in the next 100?

Then there's the effects of being in space, we can hardly handle even a year without gravity without numerous health problems that can become even worse when you eventually do reenter an atmosphere.

Artificial gravity isn't science-fiction any more.

Unless there's some serious technological advancements in the near future that defy physics I kind of doubt humans will ever travel much further than our own solar system. Either that or we merge with machines and completely rid ourselves of the limitations of mortality and age which seems much more realistic to me than means of travel that we haven't even been able to imagine yet.

Oh ye of little faith.

I reckon 200 years ago you would have said the same thing for an instantaneous global communication system.

What we really need is the next Tesla - with improvements to education, QoL, life expectancy and the ability to share information at the touch of a fingertip... advancements will come a lot quicker because Tesla-like people will be allowed to blossom.

[ItachiZaku]

I think the main reason, if we haven't, is that we really aren't that intelligent of a species.

[Akka]

- The configuration of the Sol system can be unique, offering us protection and in turn giving us time for complex life to evolve.

This one can be safely ignored.

there are many, many more.

Yes. Contrary to the movie cliché, scientists are actually smart and have provided extremely imaginative possible explanations (some very believable, other pretty stretched, but there really is a TON of them).

One I find especially compelling is simply that high intelligence coupled with the ability to manipulate the environment has a very low chance of happening - and considering it happened seemingly only once during the 3000 million years life existed on Earth, it seems to be a pretty good one.

[GennGreymane]

Why haven't we met aliens?

Do you inspect every ant hill you see? Do you observe any worm on the ground you come across?

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

if any of them have any interest in us whatsoever they're waiting for us to break light speed.

i fully believe that is the status quo of the universe, light speed or at least being able to open and close worm holes.

[Frogguh]

Humanity was doing just fine when people were growing crops on Greenland, and humanity will be doing just fine when this happens again. Article was a bunch of alarmist gibberish.

[Akka]

With current material? Sure. There is material, however, that can withstand such pressures. We just haven't found a way to mass-produce it cheaply yet.

Err...
No there isn't.
Unless you can technologically alter the very laws of physics (which might be possible), but we're not in DragonBall Z where matter is arbitrarily as strong as the plot demand, or in Star Wars with magic science.

[Pengekaer]

Or it may simply have to do with distance.

Aliens transmitting signals into the Universe may simply appear as little more than background noise. After all, even an extremely powerful transmitter is nothing compared to a pulsar, a star or a supernova in terms of signal strength. They yield signals literally millions of times more intense (and, if i am not mistaken, on a wide array of frequencies too).

As signal roughly speaking fades off with the square of the distance (inverse square law), it is not hard to imagine that a signal from a radio-mast that has travelled many lightyears through space will be extremely weak compared to other signal sources like stars, cosmic events etc.

[Fargus]

Err...
No there isn't.
Unless you can technologically alter the very laws of physics (which might be possible), but we're not in DragonBall Z where matter is arbitrarily as strong as the plot demand, or in Star Wars with magic science.

Err, yes there is. It's called Carbyne, and it would be able to withstand immense physical pressures. Place a shield of the stuff in front of the ship and it won't get destroyed if the ship is going 10% the speed of light.

[Kathandira]

In my opinion, the only way our species is going to find alien life, is if we either sit and wait and hope that we get visited. Or we get started on a colony ship. Yeah, it would take hundreds of generations before reaching another star system. But currently we don't have the tech for anything better than that.

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Why haven't we met aliens?

Do you inspect every ant hill you see? Do you observe any worm on the ground you come across?

I don't think that is a fair question. The question makes it sound like there is an assumption that there is an entire alien race who is dedicated to space travel and exploration.

We have entomologists who do in fact study every ant and worm they see. They travel to each end of the world to find new species and behaviors. Just as there could be an alien civilization who has people who do the same thing, in a larger scale. But I wouldn't assume their entire race are space explorers.

Sorry, I know that is more attacking the questions than anything else, but I just wanted to give my $0.02 on it.

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Err, yes there is. It's called Carbyne, and it would be able to withstand immense physical pressures. Place a shield of the stuff in front of the ship and it won't get destroyed if the ship is going 10% the speed of light.

Additionally, we are still discovering new construction formations which increase the strength of structures. That paired with the use of stronger materials can really improve the durability of things we make.

[Fargus]

Additionally, we are still discovering new construction formations which increase the strength of structures. That paired with the use of stronger materials can really improve the durability of things we make.

And they're much lighter too, so it'd be a lot cheaper to launch into space and the energy requirements to accelerate to 10% of c are a lot less.

[Mad_Murdock]

Humanity is going extinct? Finally.

Now when will that happen?

According to a recent article I read, inside of 100 years. It's a pretty gloomy read, stating the damage is already done, nothing we can do to fix it. We're dead men walking!