are we alone in the universe?

[Charmonium]

What kind of dope are you taking? Spectral signs of biological activity that can be detectable across a galaxy? ROFL!! Dude, you gotta stop turning to Star Trek for your "knowledge" of science.

I'll admit that I don't tend to pay attention to issues of scale but I do read extensively on scientific subjects. Mainly particle physics and molecular biology but also cosmology and science generally.

That said, I'm not sure what the theoretical limits of detection are given what the physical laws we know of are. However as I have repeatedly pointed out, to say our knowledge of the universe and its laws is primitive is a vast overestimate. But even within those strictures it may be possible to detect spectra from individual planets in other galaxies. I honestly don't know and if you can prove otherwise, by all means, go for it.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I don't really understand what you're saying. If you're saying that they wouldn't be curious about us, I address that in a previous above. If you're saying that they wouldn't want to interfere with our culture, sure, that's a possibility but that unduly anthropomorphizes them and is very unlikely given the range of possible attitudes aliens might have. You need to clarify.

Imagine this :
Let's say, that tomorrow morning you will walk the street and have a very good understanding of what is going to happen within a given time frame because the behavior and choices of all the people around you is very predictable to a very high degree. It is not predicting the future, it is intuition fed through an enormous amount of almost instantenous data gathering. It is fun at first, but it will soon start to be boring.
So you start to use that ability for other uses, expanding yourself. Looking at life interactions, so many variables at once, more and more up till a point you are one with what happens around you. No longer is the sun this all mighty force that protects and feeds us, No longer are the heliospheric current sheets only visible in a simulation, No longer are the plasma streams along the poles of the earth a mystery. your aware of it all. Up till a point you can predict where the virtual particles will momentarily exist and you can actually see everything connected. And it will not stop because it is so good.

You are rudely awaken from all of this by a guy on the bus...
Now comes this dude up to you and starts telling you that it is all the fault of them (enter your favorite enemy here) ..... that he lost his job while he has been warned after numerous times that he cannot come drunk to work....

Well, that is a bit how an alien that can do lightyears of space travel would feel about us. it is not the best example, but it is to give an idea...


edit:
removed annoying typo.

 

[Charmonium]

Okay. I get that they're literally and figuratively light years beyond us. I'm sorry for being thick but I think I'm still missing the point but let me make my best effort. So is the idea that we wouldn't be interesting because we're just too simple? I suppose that's possible and I guess it's possible that they could determine this from a distance. Either that or they could be here and we would never be aware of their presence.

Those just feel like human artifices to me though. Deception is a typically human trait that I don't really like to ascribe to an alien species w/o good reason and from an evolutionary point of view I don't know that there is one. I guess you could argue that all societal interaction of any kind requires some amount of deception and therefore it should be a universal constant in which case I would be inclined to give that idea some weight but I'm not sure I believe that.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I understand what you mean, but there is something about being conscious and human that gives us an extreme edge over all other species. We can learn and adapt. And we learn at an accelerated pace when there is no stress, enough sleep and food and if we are interested, motivated and eager. An open mind. Maybe, that is an universal blue print, at least here on Earth.
All other animals do behave in a similar fashion when exposed to stress.
We are not fixed and rigid, but highly adaptable and that makes as ruthless killers and the most caring creatures at the same time. The brain...


As a side note :
Someone here mentioned it already, we radiate EM waves with information about us into space for the last 80 years.
If someone is interested, all they do is to gather this information.

Since EM waves travel at the speed of light but do get weaker( lets ignore that for a second), i wonder if we would be a 80 lightyears from the Earth, would we then receive the transmissions from 1938 ?
If these signals could leave our atmosphere ?

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Okay. I get that they're literally and figuratively light years beyond us. I'm sorry for being thick but I think I'm still missing the point but let me make my best effort. So is the idea that we wouldn't be interesting because we're just too simple? I suppose that's possible and I guess it's possible that they could determine this from a distance. Either that or they could be here and we would never be aware of their presence.

Would you want to go say hi to Ebola? Or would you want to not get in touch with it and observe it from a safe distance to make sure it isn't trying to get to you? The human race is like Ebola. There is no reason for a higher developed civilisation to want to contact us, unless it's to clean the planet from humanity to put Earth to a better purpose.