Top Ten Scientific Facts : Evolution is False and Impossible.

Originally posted by la2
No evolution over 2000 years, a bit strange.

There has been evolution amoung the human population in 2,000 years. Just look at any genetic study of populations from that time.

ghost
You just boosted your credibility in my book

Why? Because he knows 4 phds? Whats that matter? I mean, Esoteric was asked, and he gave an honest answer, but why would that make him more credible (not saying he is or isn't credible btw)? Its pretty irrelevant. Even when discussing something with someone, their degrees only go so far to establish credibility, and its allways best to just check what the person is saying, rather than be concerned about authority.

Originally posted by edsinger
((Scientific Facts Proving Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution is Wrong, False and Impossible))

Scientific Fact No. 1 - Birds Prove Natural Selection is Naturally Wrong


How is this fact or even science? You don't understand either word. At best it would be a Hypothesis. If you actually had any facts, perhaps it would be possible for you to form a theory. Possible, now that’s funny!_javascript:icon('

')
_javascript:icon('

')

Note: The Theory of Evolution was around long before Darwin.

Theories are based on facts. By saying "The Theory of Evolution..." you are saying you believe in all it's facts. The purpose of a theory is what you really miss. It is supposed to be attacked and proven wrong, by facts. Until anyone can provide facts, not media based hype or a multi-translated myth, it is as certain as the fact that there is life in space. (Microbes, they live almost everywhere we look. At the volcanic ocean riffs, in the geysers of Yellowstone Park, in sulfur pockets deep in the earths crust and yes all over space. On planets and meteors. They are called extreamaphobes they are life). If evolution has any flaws and you could provide even the smallest fact to show this, you would be the most famous person in the world, the richest too. (that's a fact)

Perhaps a winged animal developed into a bird. (dinosaur topic)

Fact: Turkeys have wings.
Fact: Turkeys don't fly
Millions of years to develop dark meat
So why do turkeys have wings?
Fact: Wings are not only used to fly.

Fact: There are fish that fly (glide)
Fact: There are frogs that fly (glide, they don't even have wings,.....yet)
Fact: Insects can be used as bait to catch fish
Fact: Frogs eat insects
Fact: Many birds eat fish
Fact: The sankehead fish can live for days on dry land
Fact: Snakehead fish eat insects
Fact: Penguins are birds
Fact: Penguins don't fly
Fact: Penguins swim
Fact: Penguins generally eat fish
Fact: Penguins use their "useless" wings to swim
Fact: This bird has existed for millions of years developing short densely packed feathers forming a water proof coat. Penguins bones are solid and heavy to aid in their underwater diving. Penguins have a layer of fat (or blubber) to minimize heat loss in icy water. (they adapted to their preferred environment)
Fact: a Pochard is a duck
Fact: Ducks fly
Fact: A Pochard dives into the water to get food

I don't have the names of the birds that existed in between the penguin and the Pochard but, that is not a gap in evolution. It is a gap in education and resources. Obviously I would need to provide a lot more facts to present a theory about why a fish developed wings over millions of years. Or how a fish can live out of water and eat insects or how a bird can swim underwater and eat fish. Or why a bird would develop stub wings to swim. Or why a bird would retain wings that don't allow flight. The reality is that the facts of evolution are there; all you have to do is look. The fossil record does not have gaps, There are only so many fossils to go around but, there are always more being found. Since your schooling was insufficient in this area, you will have to do the research on your own. The facts are readily available, understanding them is a different issue. Only the knowledge that creationists retain has gaps and thus so does their arguments.

There are an overwhelming amount of creatures that are "cross overs" if you will, from one type of animal to the next. Simply because we don't have recognizable common names for them all doesn't mean they don't or didn't exist. It certainly does not discredit natural selection or the theory of evolution. It simply means that you don't know the whole story or are incapable of understanding the obvious cause and effect

Visit the natural history museum in London or the museum of natural history in Washington DC. There you can see the facts without the gaps that support the theory of evolution.

Fact: There are squirrels that fly but don't have wings
Fact: Squires look very similar to rats with bushy tails
Fact: Rats look like big mice
Fact: Bats look like mice
Fact: The membrane of the flying squirrel is similar to the membrane of a bat's wing
Fact: Bats fly
Fact: The bat's upper arm is part of their wing
Fact: Bats have thumbs
Fact: Squirrels have thumbs
Fact: The order of bats is called Chiroptera, Greek for "hand-wing."
Fact: flying squirrels and bats are nocturnal
Fact: flying squirrels eat insects (among other things)

Hypothesis: Flying squirrels are evolving into rat like bats

Given some time and money and real science this could become a theory or even a fact.

Scientific Fact No. 2 - Species Without a Link Proves Evolution is Wrong


Once again you have made is clear that you have large gaps in your understanding of things. This is an example of poor comprehension not science, not fact. Did you have science in school? Do all of your classmates lack this knowledge as well? ('')
There are not “hundreds of species of extinct monkeys and apes”. This is a deceptive statement or a lie, very common from a creationist. Clearly needed to support your mythological thinking. Evolutionists do not do what you have stated, “…line up pictures of similar looking species and claim they evolved one to another.” If this is what was taught to you then your textbook was wrong. That is a huge problem. There are too many instructors that are unqualified to teach any of this. What evolutionists do is they gather the facts. Such as apes appear similar to humans. Apes can walk upright on two legs. Apes have the ability to learn to use tools (To clarify because otherwise you wont understand this, simple tools not modern tools, tools such as a stick to knock down food from a shelf.). So then there is a hypothesis that humans evolved from apes. This needs to be clearly demonstrated in order to become a theory. It has not been demonstrated. This in no way supports what you are saying. This is not the evolutionist theory; it was a scientific hypothesis that was up to be disproven. The actual hypothesis here is that the apes and the humans evolved from a similar animal. The fact that primitive humans or humanoids looked similar to primitive apes does not prove we are descendants of apes, it proves that humans and apes have BOTH EVOLVED! It also does not mean that the creature apes and humans evolved from looked like either (apes or humans). When this stuff was being taught to you, you were expected to question it. That is the process of learning, participation. I am uncertain what you mean by “make-believe creatures to fit the picture”, do you mean god? This procedure can be done with humans and apes because we have plenty of “skulls and bones” and fossils of both apes and humans. They are identifiably different. We also have chromosomes and genes. A closer look at these in comparison with other animals such as pigs provides more evidence to support evolution. Pigs are similar to humans in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology and pharmacology. Now to the non-scientist (creationist) they think that evolutionist is saying that we are descendents of pigs. Once again the creationists would be demonstrating gaps in their knowledge and understanding of the facts. What this shows is that pigs have also evolved from an animal similar to the one that humans evolved from. The similarity of all the species in different fields of study supports the scientific approach of empirical facts and hypothesis’. Together, when proven, they support the theory of evolution. The fact that you need to every single step of the process explained discredits your ability to understand science. That’s a fact.

I just stumbled across this thread, found it interesting.
If you don't mind, I would like to share my observations and ask some questions.

The difficulty I am having is with the "information". It seems to be tainted by presupposition, definition, and perspective.

From the Creationists, I wonder if your chosen path, or however you wish to describe it, alters your perspective? Perhaps if both sides were to provide a list of definitions that both would agree is accurate, then both sides could come to an agreement of some kind.

From the Scientists, same question about perspective. The Creationist offerred several "evidence in fact" as presented by the Scientists (or should I go ahead here for the sake of argument and say "Evolutionists") where your response was "we don't know yet". How can you then present your case as stronger than the Creationist?

When one side offers "proof", the other changes the definition, or makes an assumption, and it is obvious that presupposition skews the conclusion.

I have observed oversimplification in order to avoid a direct answer, so let's try that. At least we can view the flaws in this type of argument.

If a magnet, in near proximity to an attracted element, will add that material to itself. is that life? It is adding material, isn't it? Well, technically no, if you define self on the basis of molecular sharing. But wait, over time, under observation, it will come to share a common bond of material. Yes, but not in a vacuum. I thought we defined vacuum as not truly being complete emptiness, only to the point that we can observe the emptiness, or nothingness if you prefer that term.

Do you see where this gets confusing?

What about logic? Doesn't logic depend on presupposition? Ok, we have addressed at least one element of disagreement, so we can get closer.

I will address the evolutionists side first, and only because they appear to be in the majority here. Am I allowed to use the term "Naturalism", so as to avoid definition problems with the Creationists?

Naturalism holds that only the physical world exists and physical laws determine all events. This would include all mental events. However, anyone who argues that something physical determines our thoughts suggests determinism (by way of causal determinism, is it agreed that this is scientific?). Here we will need to address direct observation, but can we ignore,then, the presupposition of free will or reason? It is not an observation of all life, only of "some life". Is that a true statement?
The logic?
(1) A determinist insists that both determinists and non-determinists are determined to believe what they believe.
(2) Determinists believe non-determinists are wrong and ought to change their view.
(3) The inclusion of "ought to change' implies they are free to change, which is contrary to determinism.
(4) Naturalistic, complete determinism is irrational (merely by definition)
(5) For determinism to be true there would have to be a rational basis for their thought.
(6) If determinism is true, then there is no rational basis for thought, since all is determined by non-rational forces.
(7) If determinism claims to be true then it must be false.

A logical statment based on the presupposition and standards of modality and contingency.
Now, let's flip to the other side. As I structure the logic based on these premises, I will now admit that the logic is pulling me towards "something else". I thought I should add that, so that it may be considered as a possilble presupposition. But then, presupposition is the case for our logic. That wouldn't be a paradox or conflict, would you agree?

Now, to the Creationist. I am going to use the term "necessary being" , as opposed to contingent beings, if we can agree on definition.
Is this a true statement?
(1) The proposition that there is a unique necessary being who brought about the existence of everything other than itself by willing that the other beings should exist, would, if true, explain why there are contingent beings.
(2) There is a possible explanation of the fact that there are contingent beings.
(3) There is no proposition consistent with the claim that there are only contingent beings which, if true, would explain why there are contingent beings.
(4) Any possible explanation of the fact that there are contingent beings entails that there is a necessary being.
Therefore
(5): It is reasonable to believe that there is a necessary being.

It holds up to the contingent facts, and the modal logic follows traditional lines of logic, so definition is the only thing left, but I tried to cover that.

Now, I expect to hear responses addressing defintion, so please supply the definition in question, and I will attempt to restructure.

I had no intention of being this long winded, so please forgive me.

I read this and i have to disagree. If evoulution did not happen, why are there simple human fossils and why are dinosaurs not alive?

Then there is forced evolution, otherwise known as adaption. Moths in Alaska were white to blend in with the snow. when settlers moved in and they created homes and fires, soot filled the air. the moths that live in the area downwind from the soot changed color to blend in with the soot. a.k.a. forced evolution on a minute scale.

So that's it? Smart people win over religous people? One would think the religous people would at least attempt to lie about evolution to counter all the evidence the smart people brought. Is this how the debate is going to die? The religous run away ignoring the defeat while the smart people let them run away and ignore the defeat?

Scientific Fact No. 3 - Single Cell Complexity Proves Evolution is Wrong


You need to step off of your soapbox and get a correct understanding of the information you falsely claim to be fact. You have no problem spewing out garbage and saying that it is fact. If you actually understood the topics, which you bring up, you would not be a creationist. Unfortunately you will not be educated here, as you don’t have the basic understanding needed to advance to the next level. A theory is the result of a proven hypothesis. A hypothesis is developed from fact. Fact: not all scientists are correct. There is no theory that lightning hit a pond of water that “by chance resulted in a living cell” There may have been a hypothesis but, since it has not been successfully demonstrated it is definitely not a theory. What has been demonstrated is RNA from neucleotides although it was very short lived it has been done. This makes a hypothesis stronger. With more studies it may become a theory. There is no proof when life actually started or where. This is a presumption that many people make. For scientists it is a hypothesis, which is being tested. For the creationist this proves god? Fact: there is life in space. Fact: there is life in space in the form of microbes, they land on the face of the planet every year. Fact: many of them are still alive. There is no laboratory that I know of that is trying to create a living cell from anything other than the building blocks of life. You have completely ignored the fact that you need to crawl before you can walk. This is why you can’t understand evolution; you are ignorant to what the first steps are. Evolutionists know that creation is a waste of time because every creationist ignores so many facts that absolutely prove the basis of their reasoning wrong. Once the basis of you reasoning is wrong the evolutionist does want to hear the rest of your skewed thinking, because you don’t have a reasonable foundation of knowledge. Seams to be the requirement to be creationist. Before you can get a living replicating cell you need the building blocks like DNA, before you can get DNA to replicate you need more building blocks like RNA. Before you can get RNA you need the building blocks like nucleotides, ribozymes, proteins and enzymes. At this point the evolutionist is clearly beyond the educational ability of the creationist. So why bother, you missed it in school, you are not going to learn the details here.
Lightning passed through a cloud of gases to make amino acids. (users.rcn.com...) These can be used to make the proteins, Purines, and Pyrimidines, which can be used to make nucleic acid. This just keeps going on and on into more detail. These details are parts of many proven hypothesises that make up the theory of evolution. These facts prove that you don’t understand how things work so you claim these things as false to prove your educational gap in science. You have proven that your thinking is so immature to the degree of being ridiculous.
What do you consider the most modern laboratory? Why would you make such a ridiculous claim about a left-hand protein molecule? Yes the left-hand protein molecule (aka L-amino acid) has been created. No it was not in a lab by scientist, it was in space, a non-sterile environment full of magnetism, radio waves and polarized light (among other unique environmental qualities) that have a biological effect on amino acids. Circular polarized light from the Orion nebula has the ability to imprint the left-handedness on any organic molecule. Thus when the Murchison meteorite landed in Australia in 1969 a theory was formed. That life on earth did not start on earth. The meteorite was full of organic compounds and L-amino acids. The environment that was needed to start the process was in different parts of our universe. At all times this life is being scattered around the universe looking for a place to grow. At one time the sun was much bigger and brighter and Mars may have had the needed qualities for life to evolve there, but the habitability of the planet was not nearly as long as the length of time of habitability that the earth has provided. The only reason that the most modern lab has not produced this protein is because there currently is no lab that I know of on earth that happens to have synchrotron radiation from a neutron star handy. www.ast.cam.ac.uk...

What happened to make the living cell on earth from these building blocks is a much larger story; so don’t go there either. I have very much oversimplified the evidence and facts but you get the idea. Single cell complexity does not prove evolution wrong it proves it right. It proves that you don’t understand molecular biology.
www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk...

Welcome to the board, grav. I enjoyed your fascinating viewpoints concerning abiogenesis - I encourage you to stop by Abiogenesis: Hypothetical Origins of Life - The Real Enemy of Creationism some time. I particularly enjoyed this page. I always kind of struggle with statements that accuse our "finest scientists" of being unable to reproduce abiogenetic processes in laboratories. I think some people find it difficult to realize that for all of our motorcars and microprocessors, real science is a young discipline and laboratories have financial and physical limits.

Additionally, I never really understood the assumption among creationists that abiogenesis was a product of an "accidental" event. I mean to explore this thesis in an upcoming thread.

If I may offer a suggestion, I think that your post may be easier on the eyes if you put spaces between your paragraphs. I also think it might be easier on the ole' egos if you weren't so damn harsh.

Zip

Thanks to nygdan, slank and FredT for their seminar on evolution here. Besides being persuasive, I've learned a lot.

If scientists from a different field were to present the kind of weak arguments the ID people do, they'd be laughed out of the room. The only reason we're even discussing this is because it is allied with a certain recent sect of Christianity that is intent on becoming dominant in all areas of human endeavor.

I have a simple question for the orginal poster here: If your "10 points" that evolution are "impossible" could be refuted to your satisfaction, would you abandon your religious belief? If an experiment could be devised that disproved your assertions regarding an Intelligent Designer, would you stop believing? If not, you have no business presenting your religious beliefs in a scientific arena.

And if such an experiment can NOT be devised, then ID can never qualify as science. Capisce?

Scientific Fact No. 4 - Human Egg and Sperm Proves Evolution is Wrong

This really makes no sense. You have ignored what happens when and why. There are plenty of things that directly affect the female egg. Specifically there are drugs, radiation, disease, and sperm!! Not that all of these are providing beneficial information (or are they?) they are changing the outcome of her offspring. The opportunity for the egg to be fertilized in the first place to even have a chance at producing offspring is effected by her appearance, her location (among fertile males), her choice of mates, promiscuity, alcohol, disease, race, drugs, dorm life, etc. If she doesn’t have sex she won’t have offspring. Isn’t that the environmental experience of the female?

One of the things you have overlooked is the fact that the womb is an environment. It is the environmental experience of the pregnant female effecting the environment of her daughter’s eggs. The conditions that the mother is in effects the condition of the womb. So when the fetus is forming, and the eggs are forming, they are being effected on by environmental factors. Things such as the nourishment from the mother, drugs, radiation, temperature, gravity, sound, blood flow, the effectives of the placenta, etc.

It almost seams that you are saying that every single egg in the female is identical. So are you also saying that every single gene in each of these eggs is identical? So when the male with millions of identical sperm fertilizes the eggs of the same female, each of their kids will be identical? Do you look just like your brother or sister? Coming from the same parents the things that make the offspring different are the environmental factors affecting the combining of the chromosomes (23+23) and genes and the environmental factors affect the growth of that offspring right through birth.

What about the sperm? The ability of the genes to combine varies the offspring. This is why brothers and sisters are different within the same family. The mother and the father both provide the same genetic makeup to all of their children but they are all different depending on how the chromosomes and genes combine. There are over 23,000 genes that need to be arranged to produce a child. The children of one family can differ in strength, beauty, intelligence, endurance, disease resistance, adaptability, personality, size, etc. These factors will determine their future success and the likelihood of their reproducing.

If you have a classroom of 6-year-old children each bake a cake with the very same instructions using the same ingredients I guaranty not all of the cakes will be exactly the same. Some will bake longer, some will use bad equipment and measure wrong, some might have double yoke eggs, the power might go out in the middle of baking, it may be a very humid day, Some might be baking up in the high mountains and some at sea level, someone might slam the door and some cakes near the door will fall, some may have a bad oven, some may accidentally get bumped and add extra sugar or vanilla or shortening and their cake may be better because of that mistake. Then they might tell others what happened to make that improvement. A by chance environmental effect that caused an improvement

Fact: the single fertilized egg can split to produce identical twins. Fact: identical twins are not identical. For one thing they have different fingerprints. They can be different birth weights, one could be under trauma when the other is not, each could have received different amounts of blood flow because of their developmental position, i.e. their environment. (Ever see the movie “Twins” with Danny D. and Arnold S.?:lol If they are female these things will affect the production of their eggs while in the womb.

It would seam that if a mother develops antibodies for a disease variation just before pregnancy. Those antibodies could be transferred into her fetus. This could make her children (or just one child) immune to this disease. That would be a very intelligent change. Perhaps that feature is carried to her children’s children. It would improve the success of her offspring and her offspring’s offspring. Perhaps her daughters could only successfully mate with intelligent men.

The Human Egg and Sperm Proves Evolution is Right. :shk:


Note: for alligators and some turtles sex is determined by environmental factors.

I guess we will all find out when we die hmmm??

? No, we don't have to, anymore than we have to wait til we die to see if angels are pushing the planets around, rather than gravity.

Ed, your post is ridiculous.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet, but evolution is defined as a change in allelic frequency over time in a population. You seem to think this is equal to natural selection, which is false. Natural selection is basically defined as the occurrence of heritable adaptations that allows individuals with the adaptations to reproduce more successfully than those without the adaptations.

I can't blame you for not understanding NS, as it is a bit trickier to grasp than evolution. What you must understand is that NS, along with such mechanisms as mutation, are ways that evolution occurs.

Well, that's my understanding on the subject. But be warned, I am not an expert on evolution.

BTW, gravity is "just" a theory too, but why do you believe in it???

I'm taking # 6 since it is so simple and the assumption of fundies is so inept it should be easy even for you to see the error. I am counting on an honest appraisal fom you. "Time, whatever that is, will tell" if I get it.
The Second law of T D has not one but two parts. Fundies ignoe the second and qualifying postulation related to ambient atmosphere and glom onto a misunderstanding of the first part. Your assumption is simply bad science. If people bend confirmed scientific theory to their own interprettion what we have is not science...but religion. Bend all you want because misunderstanding and ignorance changes only the safety of innocents but they do not change reality.
Evolution, by the way is a proven theory and therefore also a fact.
You appear to think the word theory is synonymous with opinion, idea, belief, or assumption and get this.....it ain't! Theory has a definition so find out what it means and you will stop abusing it. That will make your quest seem less rediculous. This because even if you don't understand the Laws of Thermodynamics ya won't be a soundin so uninformed.
skep

Evolution, by the way is a proven theory and therefore also a fact.

Evolution is not a proven theory, and even if it was, it'd never become a fact. A hypothesis can 'graduate' into being a Theory, if it hasn't been refuted and is widely accepted, but thats semantics. The theory never becomes fact. Darwin's idea that evolution occurs through a mechanism of natural selection will allways be a theory.

The 'fact' of evolution, that populations of organisms change through time, was never a theory, its a factual observation.

Originally posted by Nygdan
Evolution is not a proven theory, and even if it was, it'd never become a fact.

Nygdan....

If I could vote you WATS, I would.

I must say though... I am a little disappointed in your use of an avatar. For some reason I always envisioned you as the 'avatar-less mod,' like it was extremely noble or something. I don't think you were using one when I disappeared for a number of months recently.

Originally posted by skep
I'm taking # 6 since it is so simple and the assumption of fundies is so inept it should be easy even for you to see the error. I am counting on an honest appraisal fom you. "Time, whatever that is, will tell" if I get it.
The Second law of T D has not one but two parts. Fundies ignoe the second and qualifying postulation related to ambient atmosphere and glom onto a misunderstanding of the first part. Your assumption is simply bad science. If people bend confirmed scientific theory to their own interprettion what we have is not science...but religion. Bend all you want because misunderstanding and ignorance changes only the safety of innocents but they do not change reality.

Interesting... I read a lot of fluff here about the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but don't see a bit of discussion with respect to the actual equations and theories. What exactly does an 'ambient atmosphere' have to do with Entropy? Perhaps you can enlighten us all with respect to both the enthalpic and entropic constraints that surround abiogenesis... that is if your so confident in your understanding of thermodynamics.

Zipdot and I have a similar discussion in another thread... but we might as well discuss it here.

Your move.

[Edit by mattison0922 to insert link]

[edit on 2-12-2005 by mattison0922]

it doesn't matter if there's a hole in the fossil record because specific conditions are required for fossilization. we're never going to have a complete fossil record because:

:quote: The occurrence of a fossil depends on the occurrence of a sufficiently convoluted series of events that the likelihood of fossilization per dead individual is low. :quote:

according to college course material

i think it kind of speaks for itself

Originally posted by edsinger
Scientific Fact No. 10 - Radio Silence from Space Proves Evolution is Wrong

Mars is not the only place that shows no signs of life. The entire universe lacks any sign of life. There are no radio signals that can be related to intelligent life forms. None of the billions of galaxies has been found to emit any intelligent radio signals. Scientists have been pointing every type of radio telescope possible into space for several decades in hopes of finding an intelligent signal. No signs of life beyond Earth have been found. We are alone.

Statistically there are a ton of planets in our galaxy that have life on them. We have yet to cross the barrier of deep space travel so we have yet to find physical evidence, and the only thing we can rely on are incoming radio signals broadcasted from other planets of other intelligent life forms. That being said:

Visiting another civilization on a distant world would be fascinating, but at present is beyond human capabilities (see Project Orion and Project Daedalus for some attempted solutions).

However, it is perfectly within reach to develop a communications system using a powerful transmitter and a sensitive receiver, and use it to search the sky for extraterrestrial worlds whose citizens have a similar inclination as terrestrials. A basic assumption of SETI is the that of "Mediocrity" [1]: the idea that humanity is not exotic in the Cosmos but in a sense "typical" or "medium" when compared with other intelligent species. This would mean that humanity have enough similarity with other intelligent beings that communications will be mutally desirable and understandable. If this basic assumption of Mediocrity is correct and other intelligent species are present in any number in the galaxy at our technological level or above, then communications between the two worlds should be inevitable.

SETI is still no trivial task. The Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across, and contains a hundred billion stars. Searching the entire sky for some far-away and faint signal is an exhausting exercise.

Some further simplifying assumptions beyond Mediocrity are useful to reduce the size of the task. One is to assume that the vast majority of life-forms in the galaxy are based on carbon chemistries, as are all life-forms on Earth. While it is possible that life could be based around atoms other than carbon, carbon is well known for the unusually wide variety of molecules that can be formed around it.

The presence of liquid water is also a useful assumption, as it is a common molecule and provides an excellent environment for the formation of complicated carbon-based molecules that could eventually lead to the emergence of life.

A third assumption is to focus on Sun-like stars. Very big stars have relatively short lifetimes, meaning that intelligent life would not likely have time to evolve on planets orbiting them. Very small stars provide so little heat and warmth that only planets in very close orbits around them would not be frozen solid, and in such close orbits these planets would be tidally "locked" to the star, with one side of the planet perpetually baked and the other perpetually frozen.

About 10% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy are Sun-like, and there are about a thousand such stars within 100 light-years of the Sun. These stars would be useful primary targets for interstellar listening. However, we know of only one planet where life exists, our own. There is no way to know if any of the simplifying assumptions are correct, and so as a second priority the entire sky must be searched.

Many of the planets in our galaxy have the conditions required for single celled organisms to form. There's about a thousand planets within listening range. Now, think about the scale of evolution and the huge time frames required for the infintisimally small probability that everything will work out perfectly for the first self replicating protein to randomly form. That's a VERY long time waiting for that to occur, but it does occur. The evolution of that first single cell into a multiple cell organism and eventually into complex multicelled organism (animals) is much shorter than the wait for that first spark of life but still is a very long time. The rise of intelligent and self aware beings from animals is even shorter than single celled to animals. And the rise of industry and technology is exponentially faster. As soon as a species begins the empirical study of nature (science) and abandons the purely philosophical and untested method of explaining the universe and the world around us through spiritual dialogue (or in some cases monologue) their timeframe of advancing technology accelerates. Some prime examples of what I'm talking about are the philosophical theory that all things are made up of a combination of the four elements (earth, wind, fire, water), or the beleif that witches can swim (so to test it you throw em in the water)...

Science, once it takes off fills the sphere of knowledge at an exponential rate. It's debatable when the birth of Modern Science occured, I put it at the last four hundred years or so. In the last century we just barely managed to begin limited space travel above our planet's atmosphere and to our moon, we just recently developed computer science and genetics, and most importantly we just got the bomb. An important fact of the way the universe is put together is that Hydrogen, Uranium, and Plutonium are elements on the periodic table. Which means that any civilization that is warlike (Omnivorous species) will one day face the Nuclear hurdle. The stars which are within listening distace from us are within 100 light years away, whcih means at most the information we would be receiving was broadcasted 100 years ago. And if the species was anything like us, would probably eradicate itself before crossing the threshold for deep space travel technology. WE have only been broadcasting for less than a century. What's to say everyone doesn't launch all their nukes tomorrow and completely wipe out the human race?

My point is the window of catching a transmission from outer space is incredibly small, as is the probability that species on planets within 100 light years of us are at the same level of technological development or even at the same level of evolution. And when they get to our same level of technological development there is a very huge chance they'll wipe themselves out before they go any further.

Also, actually receiving a signal is very difficult:

Searching the entire sky is bad enough. To find a radio transmission from an alien civilization, we also have to search through most of the useful radio spectrum, as there is no way to know what frequencies aliens might be using. Trying to transmit a powerful signal over a wide range of wavelengths is impractical, and so it is likely that such a signal would be transmitted on a relatively narrow band. This means that a wide range of frequencies must be searched at every spatial coordinate of the sky.

There is also the problem of knowing what to listen for, as we have no idea how a signal sent by aliens might be modulated, and how the data transmitted by it might be encoded. Narrow-bandwidth signals that are stronger than background noise and constant in intensity are obviously interesting, and if they have a regular and complex pulse pattern are likely to be artificial.

However, while studies have been performed on how to send a signal that could be easily decoded, there is no way to know if the assumptions of those studies are valid, and deciphering the information from an alien signal could be very difficult.

There is yet another problem in listening for interstellar radio signals. Cosmic and receiver noise sources impose a threshold to power of signals that we can detect. For us to detect an alien civilization 100 light-years away that is broadcasting "omnidirectionally", that is, in all directions, the aliens would have to be using a transmitter power equivalent to several thousand times the entire current power-generating capacity of the entire Earth, ruining their own planet by doing so.

It is much more effective in terms of communication to generate a narrow-beam signal whose "effective radiated power" is very high along the path of the beam, but negligible everywhere else. This places the transmitter power within reasonable ranges, the problem being now of having the good luck to coincide with the path of the beam, with the possibility approaching to zero as distance increases.

Such a beam might be very hard to detect, not only because it is very narrow, but because it could be blocked by interstellar dust clouds or garbled by "multipath effects", the same phenomenon that causes "ghosted" TV images. Such ghosts occur when TV transmissions are bounced off a mountain or other large object, while also arriving at our TV antenna by a shorter, direct route, with the TV picking up two signals separated by a delay.

Similarly, interstellar narrow-beam communications could be bent or "refracted" by interstellar clouds to produce multipath effects that could obscure the signal. If interstellar signals are being transmitted on narrow beams, there is nothing we can do at this end to deal with this problem other than to be alert.

en.wikipedia.org...

Good post, ShakyaHeir. Most people have no clue how large the universe is, or what the chances are of being able to intercept signals from another world. We've only been looking for a few decades, and it's a big sky. Plus, we've only been sending out radio waves for the past 70-odd years. That equates to a bubble of light, so to speak, with a radius of 70 light years from Earth. That's a tiny percentage of this part of the spiral arm.