Intelligent life beyond Earth might not be as dim a hope as many scientists think, according to a new study challenging a widely held anti-ET argument.
Many skeptics tout an idea called the anthropic argument that claims extraterrestrial intelligence must be very rare because the time it takes for intelligent life to evolve is, on the average, much longer than the portion of a star’s existence that is conducive to such life.
But now astrobiologist Milan M. Cirkovic and colleagues say they’ve found a flaw in that reasoning.
The anthropic argument, proposed by astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1983, following on his pioneering work on anthropic principles in 1970s, is built on the assumption that the two timescales – the lifecycle of a star and the time required for evolution of living and intelligent creatures – are completely independent. If this is true, Carter argued, it’s extremely unlikely that these two windows of possibility would last roughly the same amount of time, and would occur at the same time.
But that mode of thinking is outdated, Cirkovic claims. In fact, he says the relevant timescales are not independent; they are deeply entwined.
[...]
“The speed of evolution is very variable,” Cirkovic said. “There is no reason to think that life on Earth has only one single origin. It is quite possible that there were several beginnings of life on Earth.”Cirkovic also notes that the evolution of intelligent life could occur slower or faster in different settings, and need not follow the astrobiological history of the Milky Way.
This provides more ammunition against the anti-evolutionists.
#19 “None if them transmit any radio? None are so advanced they can’t move stars around , build
Dyson spheres ,’ringworlds’ or anything obvious?”
They are aliens. They might not transmit on radio. It is possible their technology branch came up with something different. Maybe they invented fiber optics (or some alien tech) before over the air transmission had time to develop a niche. Maybe they live underwater. In that case radio would never be developed since it wouldn’t work. Maybe they broadcast their TV shows and talk radio via sonar broadcasts. They might only have achieved the technical equivalence of the iron age. No radio there. Or it might be possible there are no aliens.
#19 Nancy Disgrace
The search for radio waves is a waste of time, since modern calculations show that after about 8 light years of travel our general purpose radio signals get so small that they just fade into the background RF noise. Since there us hardly anything within 8 light years of earth, the likelyhood that we would receive anything is virtually nil. So wish as we may, our old transmissions of “Three’s Company” will never be enjoyed by extraterrestrial civilizations.
We could setup a ‘beam’ of radio waves and aim it very specifically in one direction, but then it would still fade out before it reached 1000 light years of travel, which in cosmic measurements is nothing… and it would have to be aimed very precisely at one star that we were trying to communicate with.
Since there is little or no intelligent life on this planet, why would anyone expect to find it on other worlds?
#15 Rtaylor
Yes it is.
#19 NancyDisgrace & #22 Awake
Either there are no aliens, because it is incredibly unlikely for a species to evolve intelligence *AND* to develop technology or they’re all hiding and we should do the same.
um..we’re searching in the wrong spectrum/wave type.
-great for soaking up funding dollars though..:p
that aside, with all the recent releases of UFO data by governments,
makes you kinda wonder what they are warming us up for. -or more likely, why they are desensitizing us to the possibility of other intelligent life forms.
-s
IMHO, guessing the odds on this is mental masturbation at the moment. We don’t even know the odds of simple life being wherever it can be yet. Until we know about life on Europa and Titan and other places where there may be liquid water in our solar system, how can we gauge the odds of even simple life, let alone complex intelligent life elsewhere.
For astrobiology, a science without a single study object as yet, I’m prepared to be fascinated by the answers to simpler questions closer to home for the time being. For example:
Is there life on Europa?
If so, is it DNA based?
Questions such as these may give us a lot more real data to go on, if we can get to the point of answering them.
Note that to answer them requires first answering how the hell to get a probe there without infecting the globe with earth-based life.
As yet, we do not know how to make any ship biologically sterile, even if we expose it and the entire contents to the vacuum of space during transit.
#26
What can I say, but well put!
“This provides more ammunition against the anti-evolutionists”, is a grammatical double negative. Maybe should be, “This physics supports evolution”? I’m annoying first thing in the morning.
There’s plenty of sentient alien life alright. The thing is, that all of them thought their LHC supercolliders were safe and um, well, they were wrong.
BTW, I should add that I don’t see this as evidence of any kind one way or the other.
Evolution has an enormous boatload of evidence for it.
Creationism (even with the lipstick of intelligent design) has no evidence at all. It is either based on a work of fiction that declares itself to be non-fiction and claims this declaration to be some form of proof rather than circular illogic or is based on a god-of-the-gaps argument that is also illogic.
Evolution has made predictions about fossil finds that have come true. Evolution has formed the basis for all of modern medicine (else we would not test on rats, pigs, monkeys, and apes as the results would be irrelevant). Evolution has even been observed in the wild. Evolution is as much a fact as gravity.
Natural selection, the theory that explains the mechanism for evolution, is one of the most tried and proven theories we have. However, natural selection is a theory in that it is an explanation of a fact. That fact is evolution.
Could we find that our fact is mistaken? Yes. We could find the proverbial pre-cambrian rabbit. Could we find that gravity is incorrect? Yes. the ball could fail to fall tomorrow.
Would I jump off a bridge to test gravity? No.
Would I rely on prayer rather than insulin for my diabetes treatment? No.
Either would be suicidally stupid (or just suicidal in the case of the truly disturbed but not stupid). That some people jump off bridges and others pray instead of taking insulin does not disprove gravity or evolution, respectively … at least until they fail to fall or die.
#7–Pop==your post is totally bounded by the SciFi you watched as a kiddie.
I don’t think you realize how “big” space is. How far apart the galaxies/systems/stars are. Nor how much energy it takes to approach light speed.
Without doubt, the odds suggest there is intelligent communicating life out there somewhere. The importance of it equals the same as if it were not.
We are functionally/pragmatically on our own.
#31 – bobbo,
We are functionally/pragmatically on our own.
Yes. Especially if the other intelligences in the universe want nothing to do with us.
http://tinyurl.com/n2g9mz
Just to add another little quirk to this thread, there are a significant number of people on this planet who are very interested in sentiences elsewhere while simultaneously ignoring the other sentiences with whom we share this insignificant little rock.
How many of you knew there are chimps who have started making and using spears to hunt?
How many of you are aware that dolphins are able to understand a significant number of our requests, even including such complex concepts as “be creative and think up a new trick”?
Did you also know that dolphins can interpret the two dimensional pixilated images on a television screen correctly as being images of humans and can even understand requests made of them by such projected images?
It’s amusing that they can understand moderately complex concepts from us … and we understand precisely zero of what they say.
How many of you knew that prairie dogs (yes, rodents hardly known for their intelligence) actually have different calls for human and human with gun? Also, they recognize individual humans that once walked by with a gun and give the human with gun call even when said human does not have a gun. Can you recognize individual prairie dogs? They can recognize you.
Did you know that crows make and use tools? When they make a particularly good one, they cache it away for later reuse. Bird brains indeed!
I’m not saying I’d reduce funding for SETI. I’m merely saying that we might want to concentrate some more resources on studying the other sentiences right here at home.
I’d love to know, for example, what a sperm whale thinks with that 18 pound brain, the largest on the planet, even if not the highest EQ. That’s an awful lot of brain.
They mess with us for fun. But, then they always run and hide.
They don’t want get on our radar screen, literally or figuratively, because they figure we’ll always want to borrow things, sponge off of them, and basically become a huge pain in their ass.
But, they can’t resist messing with us.
# 19 NancyDisgrace said, “With all the SETI work not a blip!
None if them transmit any radio? None are so advanced they can’t move stars around , build
Dyson spheres ,”ringworlds” or anything obvious?”
A race that builds ‘Dyson’ spheres might conceivably have thought up something slightly more efficient than radio waves. A race that moves stars around might not watch ‘Friends’ reruns.
# 9 Benjamin said, “Christ’s death in Jerusalem on Earth would be sufficient to cover any hypothetical alien’s sin…”etc.
This is absolutely the most egocentric and unfathomable biblical BS I have ever heard. I am totally astonished. Do you also believe the sun orbits the earth?
#35 Unfathomable biblical BS??? Do you know any Christian Orthodox Theology or are you just trolling??
#36 – Animby probably has it right. I know of no mention of aliens in the bible, nor any mention of life elsewhere in the universe. In fact, to think that the bible applies here is BS. To think that it applies elsewhere in a universe far more vast and complex than anything envisioned by the authors of the bible is unfathomable BS.
And if the Author of the Bible created the universe you would think he would have mentioned aliens in it in some way.
# 26 Misanthropic Scott:
“As yet, we do not know how to make any ship biologically sterile…”
Actually, I don’t think that’s correct — I seem to recall reading that the Viking Mars landers were sterilized before launch and kept sterile until they landed on Mars. (After that, who knows?)
In any case, I think if we find no life on Mars, Europa, Titan or any other likely places, we should seed each of them with assorted colonies of organisms that seem to have a good chance to survive in each place.