Did we miss the Golden Age of Contact?

When you listen to the arguments back and forth between UFO proponents and debunkers, one issue that inevitably arises is one of galactic/interplanetary scale. By the I mean the old debunker argument of, "they can't get here from there". The counter to this is usually something along the lines of, "we can't now, but give us a few hundred years and we'll figure it out", and pointing to the prospect of faster than light travel, worm holes, etc.

But what if we're wrong, Einstein was right all along and there really is no way to go faster than the speed of light?

Astronomers tell us that we're part of a unique era in universal development, that we're lucky because we've come along soon enough after the beginning of the universe to be able to directly observe the afterglow of the big bang and it's visible edge, moments after creation. That billions of years from now, the cosmic microwave background will have completely cooled and universal expansion will have increased to the point where the first moments of the universe are no longer visible. This means that in billions of years, civilizations will evolve high technology and no matter how advanced they become, will never know about the big bang or how the universe came to be, all that knowledge will be lost forever.

What if we missed a similarly unique epoch, where communication with, and travel to, other civilizations has come and gone forever?

Billions of years ago, galaxies, and stars within galaxies, were much, much closer together. Looking up at the sky during this time, stars would totally fill your field of vision. Even during the day you could see the sky filled with them, day and night probably wouldn't be so dissimilar. Civilizations would evolve essentially at one another's doorstep, probably less than a lightyear in any direction there could be dozens of them.

Maybe we're just too late to make contact with numerous other species in our galaxy. Perhaps the only species with the luxury of really exploring the cosmos are the ones who were first on the scene, when the universe was much younger, and much smaller. It's possible that those species are still around, it could be that after exploring and colonizing a smaller, younger universe, they've now stranded themselves all over and have evolved independently.

Thoughts?

We may never know how many extraplanetary civilizations have risen and fallen while I even type this. What we miss every moment in incalculable.
Imagine, if you will, that all the alleged alien species that have visited earth are only the local varieties. There may be such exotic and far flung lifeforms that even if we were face to face with them we would have no frame of reference to even communicate with them. Imagine planetary sized lifeforms, microscopic intelligent life, or maybe somethings wholly unfathomable.

reply to post by ZombieOctopus


Not sure what you meant by, 'missing the Golden age of contact.'

We have just entered the Golden Age and we are on the brink of making contact.....graduating, and moving onto another classroom of higher learning...... the 'big bang theory' has nothing to do with it..

Maybe I'm missing something....(I read the OP twice)..

PEACE and LOVE...

if I'm not mistaken the milky way isn't expanding. sure galaxies are expanding away from each other (except that ours is on a collision course with another), but all the stars in our galaxy are more or less the same distance they have been since birth and will be until death. So its just as likely that our sun and another star in our galaxy were the same distance apart 1 billion years ago as now...right?

reply to post by Totalstranger


Stars are formed in massive nebulae of gas and dust, in clusters. They begin very densely packed, and slowly drift apart. Our galaxy has been around long enough that the stars within it are fairly evenly distributed, it's true they only drift so far apart. I'm not saying that the galaxy is expanding.

We orbit the centre of the galaxy, so 1 billion years ago different stars were much closer to us than the current closest stars, and the stars that are our current neighbours were more distant. Stars don't stay in fixed positions relative to one another. When our galaxy was young, everything was much closer together, and other galaxies were much closer to our own. Now intergalactic travel seems absurd, even with faster than light technology, but it wasn't always.

Its almost impossible that our scientists are right about what laws in the universe can be circumvented considering our limited intelligence and experience.

People - including scientists - felt the Earth was flat once, and that the Earth was the center of the universe.

We think there is no connection between physical matter and consciousness for example, yet we can measure in quantum physics that the simple act of observing something physical changes its behavior.

Trust me, we know nothing yet. Distance dont matter in a universe where physical laws only apply within 1 dimension.



[edit on 29-11-2009 by Copernicus]

No, we haven't missed anything of value. It's all coming to us. Trust me. Just like a Pink Floyd documentary I saw many years ago. It's not about drugs. It's not about what you own. It's not about who you own. Yeah, hee hee, trust me. It's about YOU! Your life, your spirit, your world, will never pass you by. All will be there when you decide to partake of it. The universe doesn't "pass you by". It might leave you in its wake, but it comes around again. It's your choice to grab hold of it. There is no "golden age" of this world nor the universe that you or anyone else might "miss". It's all golden. We all, of us, progress at our own pace. You and your reality is golden, always. Seriously, do you think that you will eventually find an end to all this? That would suck, IMHO. I guess I would just end up dying if that was the case. Crap, and then I would miss more interesitng things. Ask me about this when you are dead and I am dead. Heh. It won't happen.

reply to post by ZombieOctopus

What if we missed a similarly unique epoch, where communication with, and travel to, other civilizations has come and gone forever?

Billions of years ago, galaxies, and stars within galaxies, were much, much closer together. Looking up at the sky during this time, stars would totally fill your field of vision. Even during the day you could see the sky filled with them, day and night probably wouldn't be so dissimilar. Civilizations would evolve essentially at one another's doorstep, probably less than a lightyear in any direction there could be dozens of them.

Yes I think if older spirals are now more loosely wound, then civilisations would be further apart in older spirals. Can spiral arms become more tightly wound-up thru' galaxy collisions, or by some other means? (It would have to depend on which direction each spiral arm is rotating and if they are in the same direction as well). If so, it still leaves us with less tightly wound spirals than in the universe's early days, and we are still left stuck in our old barred spiral galaxy.

It may be a good thing if we aren't too close to too many civilisations - it gives us a chance as a hatchling to run and escape to cover before we get eaten!

Alternatively you could say that we've missed out on the age of survival of the fittest species in your galactic neighbourhood, and everyone is now too far apart to carry on with the fighting!

It's an interesting point and there's probably many things that nobody has yet considered - and that we have missed out on as a discovery because the universe has become too large for us to detect it with the largest of telescopes, and also similar to background radiation cooling. But how are we to ever know what these are, if by definition it's now longer impossible for us to detect it?

I find it interesting how we look back in time when we look at distant galaxies, and as far as we know now these galaxies no longer exist or have mutated into a giant space-spaghetti monster!

It's probably pure luck if we are near any other civilisations in our galaxy and only time will tell - but wormholes, extradimensions & multiverses and probably other crazy conceptions can not yet be discounted. And these may open unseen doors.

[edit on 29-11-2009 by john124]

isn't the andromeda galaxy getting closer? and wont we collide with it in the future? that'll bring us closer to a whole new, bigger galaxy of potential beings

Originally posted by ZombieOctopus
one issue that inevitably arises is one of galactic/interplanetary scale.

Ah that old chestnut. These people are talking about travel duration relative to their departure point rather than travel duration relative to the travellers.

Even with a constant acceleration/decceleration of only 1g (good for simulating Earths gravity) and staying under the speed of light a traveller could reach the edge of the visibile universe, about 13 billion light years away, within a lifetime. With much greater acceleration and a way of negating its effects for the traveller we could travel wherever we wanted so long as you didn't want to return home to the same 'time'.

NewScientist


[edit on 29/11/2009 by LightFantastic]

Iv not even red the thread just the title and my answer is no. We did not missed any golden age of Contact since contact always been on personal level. Massive contact "amount" still is not up for grasp.