Alien Civilizations May Number In The Trillions, New Study Says

originally posted by: Kandinsky
You're right

Hypothetically we could have two dozen similar civilisations at greater distances than, say, 80ly away. If the maximum extent of their technological abilities is close to ours, we wouldn't be able to see them yet. If any were at pre-Industrial Age levels, they'll be invisible until our ability to analyse their atmospheres improves. This is optimism talking

Drake's Equation has always attracted unrealistic attention. Sometimes it's cited as *proof* of gazilions of advanced worlds and others use it to say no life out there. As you know, it's a fine attempt to rationalize the possibilities and probabilities and his equation has stayed relevant. Sure, some have added/removed values, but it's still his and still is a useful tool.

Three problems... Time, distance and species...

Time: We have about 9 billion years from the start of when the universe started to have suns with planets, the normal thing we see today. The earth is 1/2 that time and within 4.5 billion years one species has made it to the moon...not very good odds on a lot of space faring species.

Distance: We say lot's of space..endless in fact, but we fail to truly understand what endless space means... We invent things things Star Trek warp drive/transporter without really thinking about the feasibility of it all. This makes our endless universe much smaller and that is never the case.

Species: If we come in contact with an alien race it will be a machine of a race long expired. If a race makes it to the point that they can produce replicating machines that can go forth throughout the universe then it would take about 2 billion years for those machines to map it all and find us. Think about it, we see little lights like machines and call them UFOs...like we think real aliens are on them...why not machines on a billion(s) year path? Species come and go but life continues... species are like 500,000 years at best, machines can be forever.

a reply to: Xtrozero

I think the first problem is...we're the first and don't have enough samples to compare. The period of time it's taken for us to arise might not be the same if life had another shot elsewhere.

Distance? It's the thorniest problem we have and currently represents a 'Road Ahead Closed' for Earthlings.

Species? I generally agree there. A Type 1 civ could already be at the point of consciousness being isolated by technology and bound by nothing more than the speed of light. Not so sure about the time spans of travel although I've read the rationale several times before. We can't take into account the intelligence behind their search for life. For instance, we've got our 'Goldilocks Zone' and they would undoubtedly have a more sophisticated matrix of points to identify likely worlds for life. Likewise we don't know how near, or far, they could be.

It seems very unlikely (knowing what we do now) that we'll be meeting flesh and blood visitors based on the distance and species arguments. We're in agreement on most things there

originally posted by: Xtrozero

*snip*

Three problems... Time, distance and species...

Time: We have about 9 billion years from the start of when the universe started to have suns with planets, the normal thing we see today. The earth is 1/2 that time and within 4.5 billion years one species has made it to the moon...not very good odds on a lot of space faring species.
*snip*

This is turning out not to be true:
www.astrobio.net - How Old are the First Planets? - Astrobiology Magazine...

Until recently, we didn't think so. The prevailing wisdom had been that the magic of stellar alchemy didn't produce enough useful "star-stuff" to build terrestrial worlds until at least six or seven billion years after the Big Bang. Initial studies of exoplanets backed this up, finding worlds around stars with a "metallicity" (i.e. a heavy element abundance) equal to or greater than our Sun. However, it turns out that the biases that affected our early planet hunting also skewed our understanding of the types of stars that could form planets. Until 2009 and the launch of NASA's Kepler mission, the vast majority of exoplanets known to exist were gas giants close to their stars, simply because these were the easiest to detect. These planets seemed to prefer higher metallicity stars.

Note 13.8-(6 or 7) is 2 or 3-plus billion years.. So even if conventional thought had been right, there was still a window for preceding alien civilzations to form from similar circumstances long before us.

In my prior post I knew population I stars started occuring about 5 billion years after the big bang. These're sun-like. However, I assumed they had planets and they were similar. That's now corrected here.

This my be nothing, but I'll repost (it has been threaded on ATS already):
setiathome.berkeley.edu - 234 Stars May Be Signaling us With Light Pulses, Astronomers Say...

a reply to: 727Sky

It could also be zero.

originally posted by: jonnywhite


In my prior post I knew population I stars started occuring about 5 billion years after the big bang. These're sun-like. However, I assumed they had planets and they were similar. That's now corrected here.

Under the assumption that all the matter in our universe started out as Hydrogen with small amounts of Helium the 5 billion years was used to make the other 91 natural elements within extremely vast in size short lived stars going super nova. So when I say the universe we see today I'm thinking more along the lines of our universe that is past this element making stage.

Life in general seems to be a rather common event when conditions are right. Life started on earth within a very short time span after earth cooled, so one can assume that life will happen. Life has been wiped a few times on earth too just to see it come back in full. We saw this with Snowball earth about 600 million years ago that basically reset life and what we see today with planets animals etc they are all related back to that reset.

To create a space faring species there is a lot that would go into that mix for it to happen, and as I said earth with all its abundance created only one possible species in 4.5 billion years that at least went to the moon. Not very good odds even with one sample point.

There also seems to be many factors involved that are needed for life to advance past simple levels. When we look at earth such things as the moon was needed to stabilize the seasons and large planets like Jupiter/Saturn are needed to vacuum space to reduce the time between life resets.

In the end I can say life in general and assume very common or I can add discriminators to what type of life and that greatly reduces the chances. As example a 9000 lbs purple flying hippo with 5 eyes is most likely rather rare in the universe just as an intelligent, physically capable, able to build, able to travel etc etc life would also be rather rare just due to so many discriminators associated with what type of life it is.

Life as we know it has to have a reason. . Call it god , or wisdom , or what you will. Animal, veggie , or "other" , may exist in many places, but how many have a will to always go beyond the basic needs to survive?

Now if we only had some clue about consciousness.

VF

originally posted by: frenchfries
Still no official contact so what do we conclude ?

They don't like using the official channels ?

a reply to: UnderKingsPeak

Well official channels tell us everything don't they

originally posted by: Xtrozero

*snip*

To create a space faring species there is a lot that would go into that mix for it to happen, and as I said earth with all its abundance created only one possible species in 4.5 billion years that at least went to the moon. Not very good odds even with one sample point.

I stand corrected. I now realize what were saying. I thought you meant star systems like this one weren't existing for 9 billion years after the big bang. What you actually said was this has been possible for 9 billion years. That's about right and 6.8 billion years is maybe the worst case scenario, but new evidence shows planets like Earth might have formed 2 billion years after the big bang. With gas giants being found around heavy-metal poor stars, this opens up new questions about life and the early universe.

4.5 billion years to be where we're is indeed a long time. That's what you were saying, I'm sorry I missed that. I've read before some scientists were mystified life on this planet evolved so quickly. If life required 4.5 billion years to get where it's at for us, how long will it be for others?

One thing to keep in mind is our own star is supposed to stay in the main sequence for about 5 billion more years. That's about 9.5 or 10 billion years total. After 5 billion years, our sun starts growing for 1.4 billion years until it's a red giant. After that, it has about a billion years left before it's essentially over. Only many milliions of years are left before it sheds most of its mass and becomes a white dwarf. SO the lesson in all this?

Given population I stars started occuring 8.8 billion years ago, most stars like this one haven't yet exited the main sequence. This could be a good thing, bolstering their survival potentially billions of years ahead of us, assuming they don't become extinct by other means.

But who knows where life is best formed? An example:
www.space.com - Extraterrestrial Life May be Common Around Binary Stars...

originally posted by: jonnywhite

4.5 billion years to be where we're is indeed a long time. That's what you were saying, I'm sorry I missed that. I've read before some scientists were mystified life on this planet evolved so quickly. If life required 4.5 billion years to get where it's at for us, how long will it be for others?

I don't think it takes that long. If we look at life today the vast majority is related back to 600 million years after snowball earth. So we could say it took life 600 million years to get us, but even that is incorrect if we look at reptiles and about when mammals started to enter the picture at about 60 million years ago. So in about 60 million we went from the very basic mammal to what we see today. Humans in general are what less than a million?

I think the bigger thing is all the needed requirements that would go into a life form that is capable in mind and body, is around long enough to be able and lastly willing to go into space and beyond.

I don't remember what factor the equation uses for the number of technology intelligent species. In the future, it might be decided that this planet has more than one intelligent species. It might be several.
I remember reading I thought that Dolphins were very intelligent and that their brains were as large as human brains. Dolphins haven't developed technology but they might be included as an intelligent species. Other species might develop technology if humans aren't dominating the planet. I'm thinking about Planet of the Apes.
I heard a long time ago that if humans go extinct because of nuclear war, cockroaches might become the next dominant species. Cockroaches can survive something like 100,000 times the radiation a human can take before death if I remember correctly. I believe I read cockroaches would need almost a direct hit by a nuke to get enough radiation to kill it. I hate thinking the roaches could take over if humans die off but this one planet could generate several intelligent species over time.

I saw on a tv show a hammer imbedded in rock that was over 100 million years old. The hammer had changes in the wood that require millions of years to pass. They called it an artifact out of place. One possibility is that an intelligent species was here on Earth over a 100 million years before humans. Another is that our primitive ancestors were here a lot longer than anyone thinks. Another possibility is that time travel gets invented sometime in the history of the universe and someone dropped a hammer. Anyway I'm just pointing out the history of our own planet is unknown. We humans might have occupied this planet only for a tiny fraction of the planet's history. If we've been here a long time, we might have blown ourselves up or caused global destruction so many times that it's a wonder we still exist.

originally posted by: orionthehunter
I don't remember what factor the equation uses for the number of technology intelligent species. In the future, it might be decided that this planet has more than one intelligent species. It might be several.
I remember reading I thought that Dolphins were very intelligent and that their brains were as large as human brains. Dolphins haven't developed technology but they might be included as an intelligent species. Other species might develop technology if humans aren't dominating the planet. I'm thinking about Planet of the Apes.
I heard a long time ago that if humans go extinct because of nuclear war, cockroaches might become the next dominant species. Cockroaches can survive something like 100,000 times the radiation a human can take before death if I remember correctly. I believe I read cockroaches would need almost a direct hit by a nuke to get enough radiation to kill it. I hate thinking the roaches could take over if humans die off but this one planet could generate several intelligent species over time.

*snip*

I like your way of thinking. It makes sense to me there can only be one or maybe two intelligent species at once, competing for the top spot. It requires a massive input of energy and this means massive hunting/foraging and eventually agriculture and widespread civilization. There just simply isn't enough area on the planet for more than a few species vying for the top spot. Here on Earth at least it seems only the primates dominated. Killer whales managed to spread in the oceans worldwide, but just haven't developed tools or written language that we know of. Dolphins are notable too.

(They're finding out our hominin ancestors figured out fire over a million years ago and stone tools possibly two or three million years ago.)
www.bbc.com - Oldest stone tools pre-date earliest humans...
discovermagazine.com - Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Humans Cooking With Fire...

I'm not sure I believe our Earth ever created an intelligent species comparable to humans before humans. The biggest extinction event before the current Holocene was ~66 million years ago I think. Given what evolutionary science knows, where's the evidence an intelligent species ever existed? Doesn't make sense. Also it seems evolution follows a timeline from one feature to the next, slowing building up. However, it might not be THAT linear:
en.wikipedia.org - Evolution of biological complexity...

Some used to believe that evolution was progressive and had a direction that led towards so-called "higher organisms," despite a lack of evidence for this viewpoint.[5] This idea of "progression" and "higher organisms" in evolution is now regarded as misleading, with natural selection having no intrinsic direction and organisms selected for either increased or decreased complexity in response to local environmental conditions.[6] Although there has been an increase in the maximum level of complexity over the history of life, there has always been a large majority of small and simple organisms and the most common level of complexity (the mode) appears to have remained relatively constant.

This is an interesting theory to explain the "purpose" of life:
www.quantamagazine.org - A New Physics Theory of Life...

This principle would apply to inanimate matter as well. “It is very tempting to speculate about what phenomena in nature we can now fit under this big tent of dissipation-driven adaptive organization,” England said. “Many examples could just be right under our nose, but because we haven’t been looking for them we haven’t noticed them.”

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
a reply to: 727Sky

It could also be zero.

I have been accused of being to trusting.... which may be the case..... However with all the eye witness reports that have transpired over the ages I do believe something Alien is here ... The newest hot topic in this field seems to be the creation of human hybrids as the focus has shifted from trying to prove to the doubters they are here to they are here and creating people more or less just like us..
youtu.be...

youtu.be...

Could be or

Scripture comments God made a place special for us....where the sky is blue and the place has stars.....but the sky turns clear for that......cool, a place where the extreme nice blue sky switchs on its own.......for stars

The moon and sun doing their trick when covering each other would be mathematically unique in the system.....kinda personalized special.......

1 in 100 billion stars is far more pessimistic than I would have thought. Also, the headline makes it seem like the universe is teaming with intelligent life. But, using that math there is about 4 intelligent societies in the Milky Way, which is less than the 10 Carl Sagan guessed a generation ago. That makes the Fermi Paradox and this guess still both plausible, they are there, but, they are scattered so far and wide, the probability of mutual detection is infinitely small. The headline may be right, but the conclusion to be drawn is that the changes of finding other intelligent life are less not greater as a result of this headline.

While it may be arrogant for us to think that FTL travel may never be solvable, from a practical perspective, it is probably true. First, only items with no mass, light photon are known to be able to travel at that speed. The observation of mind boggling energy massive black holes that cannot bend space sufficiently to create FTL travel makes it hard to fathom beings, any beings, being able to harness larger energy masses. The potential danger related to handling such massive quantities of energy makes the danger of atomic bombs pale in comparison. Finally, energy tends to kill biological beings. The hurdles to making this happen are mind boggling.

The best hope is to build larger and larger telescopes to map out our galaxy such that we know where every star is located that has potential life signals. Then, start with small probes that may be able to travel a substantial fraction of light and are capable of sending back more details. By the time those details arrive back, hopefully we are far enough alone to send humans to the 50 or so most promising places. But, we are talking about a process here that will likely take 1,000 to 10,000 years unless we are lucky enough to find a planet within 100 light years or so in the next couple decades. But, based on the 1 in 100 billion odds, that is unlikely.

a reply to: Discotech

What actually changed was the realization just how many galaxies there really is. Still only amounts to 2 or 3 species in an entire galaxy. Meaning most if these have no chance of ever meeting. In fact this report is very dishartening because it goes to show the unlikely hood of aliens visiting us.

originally posted by: dragonridr
a reply to: Discotech

What actually changed was the realization just how many galaxies there really is. Still only amounts to 2 or 3 species in an entire galaxy. Meaning most if these have no chance of ever meeting. In fact this report is very dishartening because it goes to show the unlikely hood of aliens visiting us.

Yes; space is big.

To quote the late Douglas Adams:

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

So even in a finite but -H U G E- universe, though there may be billions or trillions of intelligent alien civilizations out there, as you mention the universe is so vast that the density of those civilizations may be very very sparse indeed. It may be difficult for them (intelligent ET species) not only to know that Earth is home to a civilization, but to even make contact with us if they did know.

a reply to: 727Sky

Why would a species so advanced need to abduct humans? They could take DNA or simply breed us. Makes no sense.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Even a trillion civilisations across ~infinite time and space could leave us alone in this time and in our space. Disheartening if there are ever civilised civilisations and worth popping a bottle of best champagne if they tend to be warlike and colonial.

There are ways to contact "the others" .... I think it's still against T&C to discuss it...

They aren't confined by time and space. They just ARE.