Extraterrestrial intelligence?

[Jehanne]

Fixed that for you. The current investigative hypotheses are:

1. there are combinations of known naturalistic phenomena working to create unexpected effects
2. there is/are a new naturalistic phenomenon/phenomena at work, waiting to be discovered
3. there are issues with/impacts on the data that have not yet been corrected for

'Aliens' seems to be a subtly humourous proposal that's been taken too far by the popular press. They could have said 'a fly on the lens' but then the joke wouldn't have sold so well.

I appreciate your skepticism.  But, certainly, if we can identify intelligent life on this World (setting all jokes aside), then what's stopping us from doing the same on other Worlds?

[Jehanne]

Fixed that for you. The current investigative hypotheses are:

1. there are combinations of known naturalistic phenomena working to create unexpected effects
2. there is/are a new naturalistic phenomenon/phenomena at work, waiting to be discovered
3. there are issues with/impacts on the data that have not yet been corrected for

'Aliens' seems to be a subtly humourous proposal that's been taken too far by the popular press. They could have said 'a fly on the lens' but then the joke wouldn't have sold so well.

Don't be so sure it was a joke. A lot of scientists, I'm sure, are well aware of the Fermi Paradox. I don't think alien life is that much of a preposterous thing to believe in that a joke like that would be made, especially when talking to the media/reporting on a scientific matter.

If interstellar space travel is a physical impossibility (that's my view), then the Fermi Paradox has been explained.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Fixed that for you. The current investigative hypotheses are:

1. there are combinations of known naturalistic phenomena working to create unexpected effects
2. there is/are a new naturalistic phenomenon/phenomena at work, waiting to be discovered
3. there are issues with/impacts on the data that have not yet been corrected for

'Aliens' seems to be a subtly humourous proposal that's been taken too far by the popular press. They could have said 'a fly on the lens' but then the joke wouldn't have sold so well.

I appreciate your skepticism.  But, certainly, if we can identify intelligent life on this World (setting all jokes aside), then what's stopping us from doing the same on other Worlds?

Primarily, the fact that we aren't on other worlds.

Boru

[vorlon13]

Freeman Dyson seemed to think the technology of the 50s and 60s was edging towards being sufficient for interstellar travel,  Orion Nuclear Impulse looking like it could advance enough to send 50,000 colonists and the fixins for a viable colony to Alpha Centauri.  The time scale was a little daunting, developing and building the craft was projected to take a few centuries, the flight time would be similar.

My favorite explain for the Fermi paradox (and Fermi might even concur) is that we are first.

Picture all the inhabitable planets in the galaxy in a competition.  The first one to evolve a lifeform with the urge and the ability to establish a colony at another star system capable of itself sending out another colony effort wins the galaxy.

In this view the galaxy is equivalent to a petri dish, and the first 'germ' to figure out how to move and multiply gets the entire petri dish.  The time scale for exploring and colonizing the galaxy is a few million years, even with spacecraft speeds of a small % that of light.  What really gets the 'winner' up the graph is after a few generations of establishing colonies and those colonies establishing more, the speed of the spacecrafts becomes increasingly irrelevant. At any given time, even with ships only capable of 5% C, if there are 64 of them, or 256, or 4096, you're getting the job done even if each one is pokey.

[AFTT47]

Yes, the Vorlons have been to Earth. The Vorlons have been everywhere.

[Jehanne]

I appreciate your skepticism.  But, certainly, if we can identify intelligent life on this World (setting all jokes aside), then what's stopping us from doing the same on other Worlds?

Primarily, the fact that we aren't on other worlds.  

Boru

Astronauts were still able to communicate to the Earth from the Moon, and NASA/JPL is still in touch with the Voyager spacecraft after nearly 40 years of being in space.  The ID proponents are correct in this regard, in that there is such a thing as an artificial signal; they are simply wrong about the fact that such a signal is present anywhere within biology, which is not the case.

Question is, is the data from KIC 8462852 indicative of an artificial signal or can it be explained by natural processes?  Nuclear/stellar physics would be incomplete if something such as a star could vary its brightness by 20%, and there is no reason to think that modern particle physics is incomplete.

But, yes, none of this is evidence; that is not what I am suggesting here.  But, more data, more data, more data, etc., is what is needed.

[Jehanne]

Yes, the Vorlons have been to Earth. The Vorlons have been everywhere.

I don't believe in UFOs.  I did see the latest Star Trek last night.  Poor Anton; he will definitively be missed.

Not to derail this thread, though...

[Fake Messiah]

Seems they're at it again:

Astronomers Ermanno Borra and Eric Trottier, from the Université Laval in Quebec, examined the stars that were catalogued from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Out of more than 2 million surveyed stars, the scientists found 234 that exhibit spectral modulation.

The stars exhibit rapid bursts of light. The spectral modulation also seems to be identical across many different stars. The scientists said that the signal from the stars is consistent with signals from an alien civilization sending extremely rapid optical pulses that was predicted in an earlier paper by Borra.

Last year, the giant star KIC 8462852 made a stir after scientists found that it emits light patterns different from those observed on other stars. Some considered the idea that the dips in the starlight could indicate the existence of an alien megastructure.

The researchers considered several possible explanations for these light pulses but eventually concluded that these signals can be best explained by extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). Borra and Trottier said that the signals are likely from an intelligent alien civilization manipulating the stars to send a message and make us aware that they exist.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/183699...zation.htm

Still seems to me like a some natural phenomenon we haven't explained yet, like pulsars were few decades ago.

[bennyboy]

Sounds like ye old "confirmation bias" to me.

[bennyboy]

Yes, the Vorlons have been to Earth. The Vorlons have been everywhere.

I don't believe in UFOs.  I did see the latest Star Trek last night.  Poor Anton; he will definitively be missed.

Not to derail this thread, though...

Who wouldn't believe in UFOs?  There are probably hundreds or thousands of them every year.  They are just most likely not spacecraft made by extraterrestrial beings.