Would E.T. Just Set Off On A Journey And Hope To Find Life ?

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: SolAquarius

I like the self replicating idea. I can even imagine some "probes" actually being 3D printing stations which simply print additional types of probes. Mixed with nanotechnology, their printed probes may be no larger than a coin. And at that size, they'd only need to find small deposits of the correct minerals to have their building supplies.

Yeah that is kind of what I was going for with the idea but way more advanced then any 3d printer we have made or nano tech that we have made.

I dunno.. space repeaters? Our signals are out there.. we've been broadcasting for 80 years into space. The 5 million watts is not enough to reach neighbors and be clear.. but heck, a space repeater could strengthen our signal and move it right along. : )

But honestly.. we are just now beginning to scrape the surface of the basics of detecting life or signals or habitable worlds.. and we can already do so much. Knowing that, is it really a leap of logic to believe a civilization with 1k.. 10k years of experience on us, can possibly know exactly what worlds are inhabited? I think it's not far-fetched at all.

We have no real way of knowing how many E.T species have come to Earth.

Now about them finding Earth,, Knowing they're super advanced to even travel light years they'd have a "super computer" of sorts telling them what planets are habitable and what aren't over vast distances, I'm guessing they use some type of scout ships to look over planets with life... Very possible in my view.

a reply to: Sansanoy

There's much that's good, too. Let us not in our disillusionment forget that.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Thanks. I finally got around to listening to it. Those are the types of scenarios I like to talk about! Though it also made the prospects seem bleak of actually being able to find a probe of that type, especially if it's already landed on an asteroid or other planet. Even if one had previously landed in what is now the Sahara Desert, Antarctica, or in our ocean depths, we'd probably never find it (and that's assuming they were made of materials that wouldn't have corroded over time).

a reply to: enlightenedservant

Glad you enjoyed it. They've done some great shows and I'd love to see Paul Carr et al get the push into being syndicated.

The bleakness is the heavy dose of reality that does us good. Still, there's always the possibility that something akin to Bracewell probes have been watching over us for thousands of years. It's an idea that fires the synapses.

I've sometimes wondered about the mutations that would occur in the replication processes. Increasing replication should introduce errors in the data and faults in the builds. Pitch the minuscule error rate across vast tracts of time and it opens speculation for technological speciation.

Kinda like the Khalil Gibran verses about children being the arrows we send into the future, but the future is not ours; it's theirs.

Have you read about the Kepler Space Telescope?

en.wikipedia.org...(spacecraft)

Basically a planet hunter telescope launched by Nasa. It does an amazing job of finding them. That's within the limits of what limited ability humanity has right now.

Just imagine if we had better propulsion technology, and could bigger satellites out? We could narrow down candidate systems for exploration further and further. Determine definitively which ones have life, before we send any probes at all.

Next we send a few probes to areas of the galaxy that had a lot of good possible life bearing planets, each equipped with its own telescopes to further study the surrounding area. (Like if there are 10 planets in a 50 light year diameter area, one probe could check them all out, looking for signs of technology.)