Contact with Space Aliens

or maybe there's no one else home.

 

Thought this would concern a soon-to-be released movie.

Earth's emitted radio/TV sphere, now >50 light years in radius is less of A Thing than one might suppose. One over r squared really bites. Listeners having Arecibo-class equipment could have detected it out to 3 light years. Further out, so sorry.

If life->civilizations is common, it should be so where planets are common, which is to say, not here. Middle third of galaxy instead. This leads to the notion that They are There, but we just have not yet heard.

So, keep listening, at all frequencies and (appropriate) directions. For transmitting, I don't see the point, but others have made it a rallying cry.

Lacking >lightspeed travel, we will only ever converse. Not visit. Out here in 'the sticks', conversations will have long latencies. All that 'not for another 1500 years' talk presumes start dates for other civilizations that are simply not in evidence.

Having >lightspeed travel, they will visit eventually, but not necessarily soon. This is where Mediocrity kicks in.

The idea of Human Uniqueness in this galaxy seems really improbable to me. But until evidence appears, even absurd hypotheses have a place on the table.

PS: When they chat or arrive, lose the term "Aliens" as (a) it's wrong and (b) no point in making gratuitous insults.

 

Maybe they don't care to meet all the Prius-driving Vegans?

 

The movie, about which this thread is not:

This is what meeting aliens might really be like | Ars Technica

 

making excuses as to why we haven't been visited yet just seems like so much desperation.

 

A thousand light years is not a made-up excuse. It is a really really long distance.

 

for humans.

 

For humans, for stars, for matter, for photons.

This galaxy (universe) is either one where superluminal travel is possible, or it is not. In the case of 'not', they ain't coming.

 

if they ain't coming, why are we expecting them?

 

If this is a 'no faster travel' universe, I am not expecting ET arrival. Others may be.

If this is a 'faster travel' universe, I suppose there is a lot of hob-nobbing to be done in the middle third of the galaxy. At some point, they would venture to the 'rural' outer third. I have no basis to suggest otherwise. Nor any to suggest when it might happen.

 

agreed. there's no basis for expecting something, or nothing. except, what about those crop circles...

 

Within physiological and engineering limits, people can be very clever.

Crop circle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In (science) fiction writing, great cleverness can be expressed without regard to physiological and engineering limits. Seems perfectly fine to me, except if one blurs such limits in real life.

Or (as a gratuitous insult to my conversant here) supposes that such limits apply particularly to humans.

 

Interview with Charles Hall who lived with Tall Whites for about 2 years...

 

A great many crop circles have the stalks bent by some technology that I don't understand. Do a little investigating and it will become clear that crop circles not made with stomping boards (which is nearly all the exotic ones) use a very sophisticated bending technology. The "cleverness" you mentioned is a lot more impressive once you discover this aspect of crop circles.

PS. cropcircleconnector.com is a fun site to see.

 

Unless subspace travel is possible, we're really far away from potential intelligent life.

 

maybe, but how do we know it isn't?

 

With only one example of biological evolution (this one), no general conclusions can be drawn. What we have here is a planet that spent ~ 3/4 of its biological time with single-celled procaryotes. The more recent 1/4 time has multicellular, differentiated cell functions. This led to really big beasts (previous dinosaur overlords) and cognition/civilization (current primate overlords).

This may be important for ET and timing. If procaryote-only period could be shorter (even slightly shorter in relative terms), a biological planet could reach civilization stage a whole lot faster. Thus (admitting fast travel), dropped by here a really long time ago. This is a common sci fi starting point. If they did drop by, and chose not to leave evidence, we'd never know about it. If evidence left behind were subtle, we might not yet have perceived it.

I think Earth would have been a dandy tourist spot during dino-times. In many regards more interesting than now. Plus the whole 'prime directive' thing does not kick in before there is a local civilization (right?).

If there has not been visit during the most recent 2000 (ish) years of record keeping, that really does not prove much in light of much longer times.