RE: Why we might be alone in the Universe
May 9, 2019 at 11:18 am
(This post was last modified: May 9, 2019 at 11:36 am by Anomalocaris.)
(May 9, 2019 at 6:46 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:(May 9, 2019 at 6:31 am)Alan V Wrote: Long distance relationships never work out.
I met my wife online. Me, St. Louis. Her, Albuquerque. We exchanged in excess of 20,000 messages (each) before we actually met. We will have been married nine years in July.
Now if she had been on Aldebaran...
A wifely nag will take a long time to cross 65 light years......
(May 8, 2019 at 11:43 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote:(May 8, 2019 at 11:08 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: “Might” means probability of what?
Alone in the universe as in which specific definition of the universe?
If any technological civilization evolved somewhere in the universe within the period when our solar system existed, and that civilization made an concerted effort to show us an unmissable sign of its existence that conquers any distance or intervening obstruction, that civilization still has to be in a very tiny portion of the entire observable universe, roughly a volume equal to 0.5% of the total observable universe, for it to even be theoretically possible for us to see those signs.
The video answers (or at least explores) the first two questions. The third is unrelated to its thesis.
I see the video more as a counterpoint to those claiming that life elsewhere in the universe is likely given the size of the observable universe and (apparently) large number of earth-like planets.
We have one data point, it argues, and there are plenty of other factors to consider.
The third is entirely relevant to the thesis. Even if we exhaustively eliminated any possibility of any technological civilization from every part of the entire universe whence any indication of any technological civilization can even be theoretically be accessible to us, we would have ruled out the presence of technological civilization from just a few % of the volume of the observable universe, and just for one single conical slice of time. But we are so far from having exhaustively ruled that out, that to first, second and third degree of approximation we can say we are 0% of the way there.
In other words, we are not in, and has no prospect of ever being in, any position to observationally contradict the probabilistic assessment that other technological civilization likely exist in some numbers elsewhere in the universe.
Even if the average distance between any technological civilization that ever arise is 1 billion light years when they arise, there can still be >10,000 technological civilizations that arose within the observable volume of universe.
