The More Earth-Like Planets = The Lesser the Probability of Intelligent Alien Life???

Greetings ATS Colleagues,

I haven't started a thread here on ATS in a couple of years, but I enjoy reading all of your contributions daily. Thank-you! The reason for this post is to elicit feedback. My thought process regarding intelligent life on other worlds is changing and I'd like to know your thoughts, given all the latest findings regarding Earth-Like planets...

I'm sure most of you have seen news of the startling prediction that there are at least 8.8 Billion Earth-Like planets in just the Milky Way galaxy. WOW!

For those who haven't here's one of the many media stories this week: www.foxnews.com...

Every time I read of a study that purports how many earth-like planets there are, that number increases, and my belief that there are other intelligent beings decreases.

This latest study indicating that over 8 Billion Earth-like planets are in our galaxy may have excited scientists, but it was the biggest blow yet to my belief and hope that Humans have company close by.

Even if only 1 percent of those planets have life similar to Humans, that is equally or more advanced, we should be "seeing" radio emissions and/or have solid evidence of their existence...like a UFO hovering over downtown Chicago for a few minutes with thousands of smartphone videos recorded.

I had more hope when there were just "a few" potential Earth-like planets scattered around the Milky Way. Under those circumstances, it was just a matter of luck, or time, before we picked up a signal, or one of them wandered to Earth and introduced themselves.

Now, I'm thinking that perhaps GOD really did create Humans as the only "intelligent" flesh and blood being on this plane. That's makes us extremely special and unique, like many Religions say that we are. But it also makes us very much alone... and makes one wonder why our Father didn't create brother and sister races for us to one day meet and commune (or go to war) with. Maybe God just takes care of one race to care for at a time? After we're gone, he'll create another one, in another place.

-CareWeMust (Chicago)

reply to post by carewemust


Lets do the maths shall we?

in 1999 Via hubble telescope scientists estimated that there are about 125 billion galaxies.
In 2002 a german super computer simulation estimated that number as about 500 billion galaxies.

Lets just say 100 billion galaxies (a nice round number)
and lets assume that 8 billion in each galaxy had earth like planets.
So that's 800 Billion earth like planets.

Lets just say only 0.0001% of them had life like earth.
Thats 80 million planets with life like earth.
add a few more zero's. 0.000001%
80,000.

reply to post by carewemust


From what I've read from raw translations of the Ancient Hebrew bible, they have. All speculative of course.

You need to factor in the ages of the star that supports the planet, because if it is much older than our Star, then its intelligent life could be much much older and more advanced than us. We couldn't even comprehend the possibilities of what can be achieved when we fully understand this multi-verse.

I doubt we're special. I think we were made to think we were special to keep us in check.

Plus, the Betty Hill star chart (given to her by supposed Grey aliens) seems to have mapped out stars with earth-like planets........very interesting indeed.

reply to post by DaRAGE


In addition, the Universe, and even just our galaxy itself is quite vast.
At last count, if I recall correctly, there's about 700 Billion stars in the Milky Way, our Galaxy.

If we could travel instantaneously to every single one, as well as having the ability to survey in total completion an entire system in just one single second, it'd take well over 12,000 years to survey only our galaxy.

Now, let's average about 500 Billion stars each Galaxy, and average to 500 Billion Galaxies in the KNOWN visible universe (it's really quite a monstrous degree more vast than that) and keeping the ability to travel instantaneously anywhere, it'd take hundreds of Billions of times longer than the Universe is old to survey the entire universe.

Suffice to say, there's enough room in the universe for even 100 Billion technologically advanced and sophisticated Galaxy spanning space faring civilizations to exist, all of them independent and completely unaware of any other, as well as extremely low probability for any ever coming across another.

Throw in the factor of Time in accounting for the rise, fall and demise of civilizations, and our little neighborhood could very well have harbored sophisticated space faring cultures hundreds of times over, and we'd never know until such time as we ever encounter some xenoarcheaology to muck about in.

Additionally, our own little radio bubble is quite small in having a tiny reach of some 100 light years in every direction.
If anyone or anything within that tiny speck of a bubble has heard us, it could very well be another 100 years before a reply signal comes back asking for more episodes of radio Superman serials and other such.
Higher probability rests with discovery of derelict remains and ruins of former civilizations in systems tapped out and stripped of natural resources if ever we do wind up developing warp travel and even then, that's small likelihood.

reply to post by carewemust


I would suggest that the 8.8 Billion is a conservative estimation and that it doesn't take into consideration habitable Moons that orbit giant planets .
As for radio and our failure to detect it lets not forget that we have only been broadcasting for just under 100 years and are already moving on to the next technology , if Aliens follow a similar path then the window for receiving their signal may be just as short so may explain the silence .

reply to post by carewemust


If you consider yourself intelligent, then I must ask - How many radio waves have you sent out into space? how many ufos have you flown?

Using the technology of other humans, doesn't count. Because there is no requirement for intelligent life to make a ufo or a radio.

There is no requirement for life to follow any traits that homo sapiens have. Not with appearance, mental ability, language.. they dont need eyes on their faces, or to be bipedal, or have hands..

They may live under water. And ponder the meaning of life with other coral life forms, made up of trillions of intelligent life forms..

Inteligence doesn't have to mean machines.

Earth like, doesnt imply, human like aliens.

it just means life potential. and with that, intelligence potential if the circumstances are right. And then, a rock with a brain, has no need to go to the moon to look at rocks.

reply to post by carewemust

Even if only 1 percent of those planets have life similar to Humans, that is equally or more advanced, we should be "seeing" radio emissions and/or have solid evidence of their existence...like a UFO hovering over downtown Chicago for a few minutes with thousands of smartphone videos recorded.

You're implying that intelligent species must use or generate radio signals and broadcasts?

Why...because Humans did?

That doesn't make sense, it's understandable that you would use our own development and technology paths as a basis for comparison, seeing as our experinece is all we have to compare against, but in reality a comparitive sample of just 1, isn't a particularly broad sample size is it!

Obviously we don't have knowledge of other non-terrestrial intelligence to add to the sample, so ourselves is all we have to compare other potential species by, but simply because we used and still use radio, doesn't in any way mean any other species will or do.

There's always the possibility that if another (or a million other) species did in fact use radio, they may well have used it early on in their development process...perhaps stopping using (or masking the use of) radio thousands of years ago, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years ago (or more).

If this is the case, any radio transmissions that came from them may have been in the vacinity of our planet, when we were just becoming Human...IOW, we would have missed them being unable to pick them up as we were probably too busy just surviving day to day.

The second point i quoted on regarding UFO's hanging in the sky over populated areas..i would say that this has happened, and happened quite a lot. There are millions of rational, sensible people (and many not so rational and sensible people!) that have made serious reports of just what you think isn't happening..so occams razor being what it is, and ok, although the truth of something is NOT always the most simple explanation (obviously) i'd say millions of people, similar numbers of people as there are that follow the Christian religion for example, cannot all be liars, suffering hallucinations, or mistaking Venus or swamp gas or conventional aircraft for UFOs..some yes, but there's no real chance when talking about such a huge sample of people, that all of those people are wrong..all it takes is a single solitary one of them to be right, and the subject is proven to be extraterrestrial in nature and proves that at the very least one of those Billions of Earth-like worlds, harbours advanced Earth-like life who are interested in the life (all types, not just us) on our planet.

reply to post by carewemust


I disagree OP, it just goes to show how BIG the universe/space is and who small we are. with billions of possible candidates, why would they choose us?

For all we know, we are similar to a small ant hill in a vast remote forest. Why would any explorers in that forest want to visit and make a big deal out of a small ant hill?

On the other hand, there are many many sightings reported throughout history, always in small groups. Of course we don't know their reasons but we can speculate, are they simply indexing or cataloging us in their vast collection of planets? how do they perceive us? maybe they perceive us as not worthy of them even trying to explain or make contact with us. Why would they even want to bother us? or alter our path of life. We definitely wouldn't be ready for their technology, it would take many years to fully understand their level of intelligence and technology.

Would it make sense for us humans here on earth to go find an anthill, present ourselves to them, and somehow try to make contact, show them technology, how to arm themselves, etc?

I personally found that news story very exciting news when i read it also when it came out.

My personal opinion, we need to make peace with ourselves and become one, meaning worldwide peace and united as a planet. If we cant make peace within our own race why would we be peaceful among other races?

Anyways there has been other threads speculating why they wont make themselves known and if you care to read it i had also posted some theories, again all speculation but its here...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

So they also had a Marconi on their planet to invent radios? Cool!

reply to post by carewemust

H34T533K3R
reply to post by carewemust

 

I disagree OP, it just goes to show how BIG the universe/space is and who small we are. with billions of possible candidates, why would they choose us?

Sorry y'all, but, Why in the "blue blazes" do you continue to ask this question: "why would they choose us?"

Earth is chosen because it is close, has life, and is moderately interesting. You are on the edge of interstellar travel, You have technologies equal to what ET has.

And y'all can't figure out what is so interesting about Terrestrial Humans and Earth.

Wow...go figure...

We may be more interesting to our cosmic neighbors than a remote anthill. Some of this interest could have a quite practical basis.
We can't know, of course if Dr. Harold White's work at NASA on the physical basis of a warp drive will lead anywhere, but suppose it does. With the tendency of our technology to progress so rapidly these days, who can say that in 50 or 100 years time we will not be visiting the nearer stars?
Perhaps some of those stars harbor inhabited planets. If so, and if they know anything about us, the prospect of our paying them a visit may well cause them concern. Our venturing out in stellar space could be the major impending crisis in this part of space, at the moment.
This situation would probably earn our little world a good deal of scrutiny, and any number of visits.

tanka418

H34T533K3R
reply to post by carewemust

 

I disagree OP, it just goes to show how BIG the universe/space is and who small we are. with billions of possible candidates, why would they choose us?

Sorry y'all, but, Why in the "blue blazes" do you continue to ask this question: "why would they choose us?"

Earth is chosen because it is close, has life, and is moderately interesting. You are on the edge of interstellar travel, You have technologies equal to what ET has.

And y'all can't figure out what is so interesting about Terrestrial Humans and Earth.

Wow...go figure...

Sorry to say but Earth is not chosen, at least not yet. What may seem grand to us may be small and meaningless to the next.

Why is that that we don't arm the remote tribes of the amazon with current weapons of war? why don't we give them technology that will bring them into current age? To some degree we do, but not fully. Perhaps to preserve them? to let them be?

what I meant in what you quoted me is why would they choose us to expose themselves to out of billions of other possibly similar planets. Our planet has thousands or hundreds of thousands types of species of lifeforms, how many more or less (either more interesting or less interesting) species would other similar planets in similar zones have? We obviously don't know. But they do.

what if our human race is one of millions that inhabits other planets, we might not be as "one of a kind" as one would think. What if we are another stray human race similar to a stray dog you see on the streets you generally don't pay attention to.

Or simply, maybe there are rules in place that prevent them from interfering with growth of life from other planets. Many many theories and possibly reasons why.

if you read that link I posted on my first reply it links to some other possible scenarios, again all speculation

My main reason again, is we need world peace, we need to be 1 as a race and 1 as a planet. If they know we cant be at peace with our own race, why would we be at peace with another?

Interesting topic and OP. I think that there is definitely life out there, but it's exceptionally uncommon. Think of all the things that had to happen, even though the Earth is in the goldilocks zone to make life possible here. Comets bringing water (and building blocks of life), having an impact that created a moon at exactly the right distance and size to create tidal forces that churn the water and keeps the core molten, even the Dino Killing Asteroid had to happen to allow US to evolve to the top of the food chain.

I'd say the chances of enough good things to happen to allow life to continuously exist on even a perfectly suited plant is probably one in a million. Now for that life to naturally select into something that is truly intelligent to the top of the food chain while not sustaining a natural disaster of some sort is probably rare as well. Maybe another 1 in 10,000. Heck, the Toba Catastrophe theory had Human bottlenecking to what, 10,000 individuals due to environment around 70K years ago.

If you do all of that math...8.8 B/1MM/10K...you come up with the Milky way having approximately 1 advanced technological civilization, US. Those are all just guesses, but that math makes sense to me....millions of stars in a galaxy, one creates life..just like our Sperm. Each Galaxy is a womb, stars are the sperm and we were the fastest swimmers .

Now, there are unlimited galaxies, but the distances are such that we will NEVER hear or see our space brethren.

reply to post by H34T533K3R

For all we know, we are similar to a small ant hill in a vast remote forest. Why would any explorers in that forest want to visit and make a big deal out of a small ant hill?

I'd say the only ET's who'd want to study us 'ants' would be those who might be equivalent to an Earthly myrmecologist (one who studies ants) and those types of ET may well have been studying us through the ages...right up until we 'ants' decided to build a collection of weapons that would enable us to destroy our own planet and most of the life residing here and when we decided to send robotic probes out of our own atmosphere and scout our Solar system...then i suspect a great many more ET's would be interested (or concerned) in what we were up to.

IOW..we're pretty sophisticated ants.

H34T533K3R
Sorry to say but Earth is not chosen, at least not yet. What may seem grand to us may be small and meaningless to the next.

Of course Earth is not "chosen"; its more like; available. As in close.

Why is that that we don't arm the remote tribes of the amazon with current weapons of war? why don't we give them technology that will bring them into current age? To some degree we do, but not fully. Perhaps to preserve them? to let them be?

More likely; "they don't need it." ost peoples like that are One with their environment, and in little need of technology on an event-to-event basis like the "civilized" world. One could say they have their shi* together, where "we" don't.

what I meant in what you quoted me is why would they choose us to expose themselves to out of billions of other possibly similar planets. Our planet has thousands or hundreds of thousands types of species of lifeforms, how many more or less (either more interesting or less interesting) species would other similar planets in similar zones have? We obviously don't know. But they do.

Out of "billions of other possible similar planets". Well you won't find billions of planets near here, prolly not even within this galaxy, at least not planets anything like Earth. On rather good estimation I saw was on the order of 440 million Earth like planets within the milky way...long way from billions.

what if our human race is one of millions that inhabits other planets, we might not be as "one of a kind" as one would think. What if we are another stray human race similar to a stray dog you see on the streets you generally don't pay attention to.

Yes many possibilities; a whole universe full of possibility. It is sometime a bit more practical to work with the probable as opposed to the possible. While with the probable there are fewer options, most of them are actually...well probable So you might actually get to see one.

Yes there are millions, billions of advanced sentient beings in the Universe, only a hand full near Earth. And, make no mistake; any Extraterrestrial visiting Earth is, in all probability, from within 50 ly or so.

Distance in space does make a difference.

Or simply, maybe there are rules in place that prevent them from interfering with growth of life from other planets. Many many theories and possibly reasons why.

I used to think that perhaps there were rules like that, though, looking back I can't see "why" I would have thought that way. There is actually no evidence for it.

I think that off-worlder interaction with Earth should be much more like Terrestrial interaction with their own more primitive micro-cultures. Full access by, in essence, both sides, with the primitive left alone for the most part in his decisions regarding evolution and progress of his own culture. I think that other planets, even in near-by space, enjoy full interaction with even the most advanced types around.

For some reason Earth has been left out, and now suffers for it. Which, in a way is a more serious violation of any "prime directive" than direct intervention could ever be.

Here's a little thing about wars. It seems that "true Terrestrial Humans" may not be so war like as most seem to think. If we look at the American Indians of only a couple hundred years ago; when they fought with each other they "counted coo" more than they "took life". It wasn't till after Europeans arrived that they started to kill. I do not believe Europeans to be fully Terrestrial Human, nor most of the "developed" world.

There have been 5 major global extinctions in the last 540 million years. Every extinction event is like a reset button that creates an opportunity for new species to flourish. As far as we can tell humans are the only 'advanced' species thus far. So through this logic I put the odds of life on a planet evolving to a human level of intelligence at 1 in 5.

Also consider the life on our planet. Of the 6-7 billion humans currently alive, only a couple dozen have ever been to space, and not one of us has ever been farther away than our moon. We just now sent our first hunk of metal EVER outside our own solar system. We are still far, far away from being able to explore another solar system in person. Perhaps only 1 in 10000 intelligent species achieve interstellar travel before they make themselves extinct.

I don't think there are huge numbers of species traveling galactic distances. If one has the capability it would likely be reserved for the few elite, much like our space program. The general population won't have a 'space machine' in the garage to cruise around in. I also wouldn't ignore that ET has been recorded in many of our ancient cultures. Even if only 1 in a 1000 ET events are authentic that would be pretty amazing.

Wow, got my mind going now. Nice thread. Good read. Thanks guys, and OP.

Have you ever heard of the Inverse-Square Law? It pretty much answers your entire OP for you on why alien life hasn't picked up our radio waves yet or we theirs.

Inverse-square law

The inverse-square law generally applies when some force, energy, or other conserved quantity is evenly radiated outward from a point source in three-dimensional space. Since the surface area of a sphere (which is 4πr2 ) is proportional to the square of the radius, as the emitted radiation gets farther from the source, it is spread out over an area that is increasing in proportion to the square of the distance from the source. Hence, the intensity of radiation passing through any unit area (directly facing the point source) is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the point source. Gauss's law applies to, and can be used with any physical quantity that acts in accord to, the inverse-square relationship.

Here's what that means in relation to your OP:

How Far Have Our Radio Signals Traveled From Earth?

While it’s interesting to imagine how far our radio signals have traveled into space, it’s extremely unlikely that an alien civilization will be able to catch the latest episode of ‘I Love Lucy’. This is thanks to the inverse square law. In Layman’s term, it’s a form of signal degradation.

As radio signals leave earth, they propagate out in a wave form. Just like dropping a stone in a lake, the waves diffuse or “spread out” over distance thanks to the exponentially larger area they must encompass. The area can be calculated by multiplying length times width which is why we measure it in square units – square centimeters, square miles, etc. This means that the further away from the source, the more square units of area a signal has to ‘illuminate’.inverse square law

Another way to think of it, is that the strength of a radio signal will be only 1/4 as great once you are twice the distance from the source. At ten times the distance, the strength of the signal would only be one hundredth as great.

Because of this inverse square law, all of our terrestrial radio signals become indistinguishable from background noise at around a few light-years from earth. For a civilization only a couple hundred light-years away, trying to listen to our broadcasts would be like trying to detect the small ripple from a pebble dropped in the pacific ocean off the coast of California – from Japan.

reply to post by tanka418


did you even read the OPs article he/she linked? it was from yesterday or day before, came out on cnn, fox etc. anyways says they theorize at least 8.8 billion (yes billion) earth sized planets in a so called "goldilocks" zone revolving around a sun at the same or similar distance just like earth, in the milky way alone.

If you read the article, it says the 8.8 bil is just a start it could be more like 40 bil.

ill relink

www.foxnews.com...

wont bother replying to the rest of your points since you clearly didn't even read the article that brought up this discussion.

so much for dissecting my post eh?

reply to post by SouthernForkway26


That's actually a very good point. For having so many people and being in a technological state where we COULD send a ton of people into space, we could have colonized Mars and the Moon right now if it was something we were interested in..how many people have actually been to space? what does our footprint in the galaxy look like?

As much as we ask "where is everybody at?" we are sitting around waiting for signals and not really stretching out our reach that far either. If you just sit on the couch waiting for someone to talk to you in a house alone, chances are that you won't hear much.

Nice post.