No ET! Ever?

[Godscreated]

God allowed man to progress? Remember his reactions to man receiving the gift of fire? How bout the tower of Babel?

Well at least you accept mankind is making progress on its own...

The Tower of Babble was far more about spiritual matters than building a tower.

GC

[Jehanne]

'There is only one advanced technological civilisation in this galaxy and there has only ever been one - and that's us. We are unique.

Presenter makes bold claim during BBC documentary. He says the spark of life on earth billions of years ago was a fluke
'We still struggle to understand what happened. It's incredibly unusual' 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...nique.html

I must admit, I was surprised to read this from Brian Cox...
What do you think? Can you get your mind around the concept that we are alone? And always have and always will be?

I can hear the theists saying: I told you we're special, you just don't listen...

If there were other advanced civilizations, theists would point to "God's creative activity", or something like that.  As far as being alone, there is some evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

Granted, prosaic explanations exist, and until (and if) it is replicated, it will simply amount to nothing more than pure speculation, but it's better than anything that religion has produced.

[Edwardo Piet]

Brian Cox is wrong. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and as Steven Hawking has already explained before...... the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is extremely high due to the size of the universe but the size of the universe also explains the vast distances between different life on planets and hence why we can't find any.

[Anomalocaris]

That cliche is too generally and thoughtlessly applied.  Absence of evidence where there is compelling reason to believe presence would unavoidably leave detectable and recognizable evidence is evidence of absence.   The question is how compelling is for believing presence unavoidably leaves detectable and recognizable evidence.

I think the reasons usually given are not compelling at all.

[Jehanne]

That cliche is too generally and thoughtlessly applied.  Absence of evidence where there is compelling reason to believe presence would unavoidably leave detectable and recognizable evidence is evidence of absence.   The question is how compelling is for believing presence unavoidably leaves detectable and recognizable evidence.

I think the reasons usually given are not compelling at all.

I think that everyone needs to consider the inverse law of electromagnetism, cell phone reception and the number of kilometers (or, miles) in a light year.  The Sun, for instance, puts out a LOT of energy!  In SI units, the Sun is pumping out 3.846×10^Watts, or (9.192×1010 megatons of TNT per second)!  And, yet, the Sun would disappear from naked eye view if you traveled a mere 40 lights years from our solar system!  But, it gets worse!!  The Sun is also moving around the center of the Galaxy at a whopping 828,000 km/hr!!  That's 675.90181 Mach, or nearly 676 times the speed of sound!!!  The fastest rifle only fires at a mere 3.9 Mach!!!

Now, there are basically 2 types of antennas, directional and omnidirectional.  For those of you who do not want to pay for cable, you may be able to pickup more OTA HD channels using a directional antenna!  But, you will have to know exactly where to point it!  Now, fortunately, the FCC (for those of us who live in the US) has some online maps on how to do this; just google it.  But, for ET, where do they point their antenna?!  And, when do they transmit their message?!  And, to get their message, we would have to be listening at the exact moment with our antenna pointed at the exact spot.

If the laws of physics are constant throughout the Universe, it makes complete sense why we have not yet heard from ET, even if they are right in our backyard.

[Mr Greene]

I did hear one estimate of there being 1,000,000 civilized species in the Milky Way. 
Even if there were that many each would have on average over a 100 cubic light-years to inhabit without encroaching on another.

As for where to point an antenna; the Galactic plane would seem like a reasonable start.

[Jehanne]

I did hear one estimate of there being 1,000,000 civilized species in the Milky Way. 
Even if there were that many each would have on average over a 100 cubic light-years to inhabit without encroaching on another.

As for where to point an antenna; the Galactic plane would seem like a reasonable start.

But, they would be pointing it at a moving target that is going at 675 times the speed of sound, and then, they would also have to track that target across intergalactic space.  In addition, the radio signal, even if it was a laser, could end-up being scattered away by the zillions upon zillions of atoms, molecules, dust particles, etc., scattered throughout intergalactic space.  In addition, the energy requirements, given the inverse law, would still be enormous, likely, the entire energy output of the US over the course of a year, assuming, that ET wanted their signal to picked-up by something other than the Arecibo telescope, which means, of course, that Arecibo would need to be looking at the right spot at the exact time.

P.S. Arecibo is not equipped to pick-up laser light.

[Rhondazvous]

God allowed man to progress? Remember his reactions to man receiving the gift of fire? How bout the tower of Babel?

Well at least you accept mankind is making progress on its own...

The Tower of Babble was far more about spiritual matters than building a tower.

GC

Everything in the bible is spiritual once science and history prove it's not true. There really isn't much left.

[Jehanne]

The Tower of Babble was far more about spiritual matters than building a tower.

GC

Everything in the bible is spiritual once science and history prove it's not true. There really isn't much left.

It's much worse than that; it was not even written by those whom Jewish and Christian traditions say who wrote it, and even after it was written (upwards of a millennium "after the fact" for some of the Old Testament), it got changed and modified century after century.

[Rhondazvous]

Everything in the bible is spiritual once science and history prove it's not true. There really isn't much left.

It's much worse than that; it was not even written by those whom Jewish and Christian traditions say who wrote it, and even after it was written (upwards of a millennium "after the mythological event date for some of the Old Testament), it got changed and modified century after century.

Fixed it for you