New method of finding extraterrestrial life I just thought of

OneOfTheseDays

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2000
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I just got thinking about this. Instead of us trying to find life out there, why don't we just send out a bunch of probes in space with information about the Earth (i.e. where we are, who we are, etc.). If any alien intercepts the probe or happens upon it they can find us and make contact. Of course this is assuming the aliens are all nice and don't want to destroy us :0
 

YoungGun21

Platinum Member
Aug 17, 2006
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Umm one problem, our greatest chance of finding extraterrestrial life is finding bacteria-like organisms. Not full fledged aliens that can read and write in an Earth language.
 

Ktulu

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2000
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The problem I see is that we're all so used to calling hoax on anything regarding intelligent extraterrestrial life that we won't know the real deal when it happens. Also, even if they do contact our governments, we'll most likely be kept in the dark.
 

Mojoed

Diamond Member
Jul 20, 2004
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Even if mankind launched millions and millions of probes in every possible direction, it would take our lifetimes for most of them just to exit the far reaches of our puny solar system which itself is a speck of a speck of a speck of a spec of an ordinary galaxy which there are billions of.

I'll support your idea when we can equip these probes with warp engines. :p
 

JulesMaximus

No Lifer
Jul 3, 2003
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Originally posted by: OneOfTheseDays
I just got thinking about this. Instead of us trying to find life out there, why don't we just send out a bunch of probes in space with information about the Earth (i.e. where we are, who we are, etc.). If any alien intercepts the probe or happens upon it they can find us and make contact. Of course this is assuming the aliens are all nice and don't want to destroy us :0

That's like sending a needle out into a billion cubic meters of hay expecting it to hit a single microbe. Hell, even if you launched them all at solar systems identified as being capable of supporting life, an infinitesimal error in calculation could amount to your probe being billions and billions of miles off target...let alone there being anyone there to discover it. Oh, and it wouldn't happen in your lifetime. But hey! It will cost you only $30 million dollars (at best) to send each probe out.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here though. I'm not usually this cynical. :p
 

Cogman

Lifer
Sep 19, 2000
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Ill have to agree with Mojoed, it is impractical because it would just take too long just to exit our solar system, let alone travel to another star. Not only that, but who's to say that aliens that can somehow get past the General theory of relativity wont just zoom past the debris thinking nothing of it. Nope, we are much more likely to find them through radio waves.
 

Kadarin

Lifer
Nov 23, 2001
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Something tells me that even if we did it, the only aliens that would intercept these would be predators of some sort.
 

Darwin333

Lifer
Dec 11, 2006
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It doesn't matter if we can make the probes travel 10 times as fast as we are currently able to. I'll quote Armageddon"And begging your pardon, its a big ass sky".

Its like making a bullseye from a few hundred yards away with a hand thrown dart just to get a probe in the vicinity of a solar system that we consider to be capable of having life.
 

NanoStuff

Banned
Mar 23, 2006
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Originally posted by: OS
this is not a new idea, in fact someone took it another step by suggesting the probes be self replicating, they are called Von Neumann probes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...replicating_spacecraft

That would be our most realistic chance of ever finding space creatures. The probes would also easily be able to contain uploaded humans, so instant communicative contact could be established. Finding volunteers for that kind of mission would be the challenge :)
 

3NF

Golden Member
Feb 5, 2005
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What makes you think the aliens want to make contact with us? We kill our own, so what tells them that we won't kill them? My guess is that they have already heard us and they will answer when the time is right ...
 

Ruptga

Lifer
Aug 3, 2006
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Originally posted by: Nacelle
Originally posted by: OS
this is not a new idea, in fact someone took it another step by suggesting the probes be self replicating, they are called Von Neumann probes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...replicating_spacecraft

Mix the probe that was changed in the first Star Trek Movie with the replicators from Stargate, and that's what you'd end up with, on this idea.

That's exactly the first thing I thought of, actually. It could still work very well, we'd just better make dang sure that they're coded to reproduce only X times before departing to search out life, and then store all that code in several memory chips to make sure it doesn't get corrupted.
 

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Mar 5, 2001
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Originally posted by: Darwin333
It doesn't matter if we can make the probes travel 10 times as fast as we are currently able to. I'll quote Armageddon"And begging your pardon, its a big ass sky".

Its like making a bullseye from a few hundred yards away with a hand thrown dart just to get a probe in the vicinity of a solar system that we consider to be capable of having life.

That's pretty optimistic.

Scale the sun down to the size of basketball. The solar system would then be about a mile across. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri would be roughly 3000 miles away at that scale. So, it'd be more like a tiny organism standing on something smaller than a raisin in NYC aiming for another raisin in Los Angeles. Of course, you'd give the probe some sort of a self-guidance system.

Now, imagine that some alien culture sent a probe to OUR solar system. Would we be able to find it? Yeah, right! I'll remind you that just last year, humankind discovered something in our solar system that is 30% larger than what was formerly known as a planet (Pluto). Rough scaling this time, let's say the solar system was the size of the United States. We still haven't found all the watermellon sized objects (45 cm from a quick napkin calculation), and you expect us to find an object that's .00015 centimeters across?? Maybe it'll have blinking lights (j/k, we still wouldn't see it) Or maybe, it'll broadcast a signal. Uhh, what frequency should we scan for? That's still a needle in a haystack.
 

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
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Oh, and I almost forgot... There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth. Think about that for a moment. Even if we sent a trillion probes, that would represent only 1 ten billionth of the stars out there. So, let's say, for example that there are 10,000 planets that support intelligent life. We'll take 10,000 grains of sand and paint them orange, then scatter them on the beaches of the earth. You get to walk around the earth, shoveling up 1 sand pail full of sand at random from every mile of beach (i.e. you completely ignore the vast majority of every beach) and hope that one of those pails has one of those 10,000 planets.
 

Ruptga

Lifer
Aug 3, 2006
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Originally posted by: DrPizza
Oh, and I almost forgot... There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth. Think about that for a moment. Even if we sent a trillion probes, that would represent only 1 ten billionth of the stars out there. So, let's say, for example that there are 10,000 planets that support intelligent life. We'll take 10,000 grains of sand and paint them orange, then scatter them on the beaches of the earth. You get to walk around the earth, shoveling up 1 sand pail full of sand at random from every mile of beach (i.e. you completely ignore the vast majority of every beach) and hope that one of those pails has one of those 10,000 planets.

To be fair, the idea here is that you make a k'nex robot (or something else simple to maufacture) that makes more of itself, then tell it reproduce like rabbits, and once it has reproduced, say, twelve times it begins to scour a 5'x5' patch of beach.

Yeah, it's still an effort on a ridiculously large scale, but it's not as ridiculous as you made it seem. OTOH, I think it's still ridiculous enough that we're wasting our time looking for ET and need to focus on figuring out our own immediate vicinity.

Heck, how about we make some robots like this, except they terraform. Once Mars and Venus are habitable we'll have enough experience here to be able to make our own swarm of replicators to fling across the sky.
 

FleshLight

Diamond Member
Mar 18, 2004
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Probability of alien race detecting probe = (Range of alien's detecting technology) / (Volume of the Universe)

= 1 light year (being a bit conservative here) / infinity

= 0
 

3NF

Golden Member
Feb 5, 2005
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Originally posted by: ADDAvenger
... OTOH, I think it's still ridiculous enough that we're wasting our time looking for ET and need to focus on figuring out our own immediate vicinity ...

Not sure what you mean by "immediate vicinity", but I do agree with this statement to a certain point. ET doesn't want us to find him, especially since we can't deal with the stupid problems that already exist on our own planet.

I ask myself, if I was ET, would I really want to meet George W. Bush, the leader and representative of the United States? :confused:

 

Ruptga

Lifer
Aug 3, 2006
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Originally posted by: 3NF
Originally posted by: ADDAvenger
... OTOH, I think it's still ridiculous enough that we're wasting our time looking for ET and need to focus on figuring out our own immediate vicinity ...

Not sure what you mean by "immediate vicinity", but I do agree with this statement to a certain point. ET doesn't want us to find him, especially since we can't deal with the stupid problems that already exist on our own planet.

I ask myself, if I was ET, would I really want to meet George W. Bush, the leader and representative of the United States? :confused:

Well read on in my post :p I mean Mars and Venus, and of course we shouldn't forget our own oceans while we're at it.

I'd want to meet him if I was an alien interested in people, he's a powerful guy in the world today, and just because someone's unpopular and has made a mistake that's been repeated throughout history doesn't necessarily mean they're stupid. I mean seriously, MidEast/West relations have always been totally screwed up and rife with misunderstanding and all that, it's not like GW figured out some new way to screw with people (and if you believe he has, you contradict yourself, because that's not something an idiot could do).

Anywhoo, what does meeting world leaders have to do with finding aliens? There's plenty of world leaders to choose from, I'm sure aliens could find one they like (assuming they exist, are here/nearby, and give a rip in the first place).