Transcript of a lecture at the observatory in Givatayim. I chose to tell about my private belief in the non-existence of intelligent aliens in our galaxy
good evening. My name isRoey Tsezana, and I am a futures researcher at the Center for Technological Forecasting at Tel Aviv University. It's a job that's kind of a dream job for every kid like me. Every day I do something different. One day I go to airports around the world to get an impression of their security, understand how it works and try to think like a future terrorist who would want to carry out an attack on a plane. The next day I try to understand how biology will change man in the near and distant future. And on the third day I even write a research proposal for the European Union on the most effective way to fight corruption in the present and in the future. Our studies are designed to provide policy recommendations to private companies, public bodies, government offices and even giant bodies like the European Union.
As you can understand, most of our research work is quite serious. But almost a year ago, my colleague, Dr. Aharon Hauptman, who is a senior researcher at the center, approached me with an extraordinary proposal. There is a European Union project, in which we closely participate, which is designed to formulate policy recommendations even for 'wild' events: those that almost certainly will not happen, but if they do, they will have a far-reaching effect. And Aaron asked me to formulate a policy for one of these wild scenarios: the day intelligent aliens make contact with Earth.
So I wrote. The results are in the policy books produced by the project (and may yet be published on the blog). But while writing I became aware of some of the arguments for and against the existence of intelligent aliens, and I would like to present them to you today. Beyond that, I intend to formulate them for you into an argument according to which the intelligent aliens do not exist in our galaxy. And I define in advance: this is an incomplete, partial argument, which is based on data we do not know, and most likely in my lifetime we will never know either. And yet, I believe that this argument is valid - and I'm very happy about it.
Before we continue, I want to qualify my position. I do believe there are extraterrestrials, but the vast majority come in the form of single-celled organisms, such as bacteria. I'm pretty sure they can survive for a good few years in a small part of the meteorite cores, frozen and protected from cosmic radiation by the thickness of the rock surrounding them. There may even be lichens - an organism that is a combination of algae and fungi, and one of the most robust known to man, that manages to grow even on the icy steppes of Antarctica. But intelligent life? That's where I draw the line.
It is possible that someday, when we manage to send a proper expedition - perhaps of robots - to our nearest neighbor, the planet Mars, we will discover frozen bacteria there under the surface of the ground. Titan, Saturn's icy moon, may have the simplest organisms. But for that we will need conclusive physical and chemical evidence. The claim that there is life in outer space is so big, so significant, that we need no less great evidence for it. And certainly the said is doubly true for intelligent life in space.
Since on the planets we have visited, or at least come close to, to date we have not found intelligent life, and since it is likely that if there were any in the solar system they would have already announced their presence with undisguised pride, we are left to wonder: Is it possible that they are on other planets? Ones that exist outside our warm home solar system? To answer the question, we can use the same tools that we have used until today in trying to find an answer. We can - and do it! - to look for planets as similar as possible to the mud planet on which we live, love and hate, and send exploration missions to them. But the era of space exploration is still in its infancy. We got to the moon, yes. We sent robots to Mars, sure. But if we use the fastest space probe we have, Voyager, which is traveling at a speed of almost sixty-thousand kilometers per hour, it will still take us close to a hundred-thousand years to cross the road to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, only to discover that there is nothing there.
A more realistic tool, therefore, might be one that would allow us to detect intelligent life even without shaking their hands ourselves. Such a tool exists in the form of the American SETI program - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Pay attention: not just a life, but an intelligent life. The reason for this important caveat is SETI's modus operandi, which focuses on detecting radio transmissions that could only come from intelligent sources.
SETI works to receive radio signals reaching the Earth from outer space, using huge antennas. We assume that an alien culture that has developed in a similar way to ours, will learn to use electromagnetic radiation that also includes radio waves as part of its technology. Such a culture, if it wanted to make contact with other civilizations outside its planet, would send broadcasts all over outer space, with statements like "from our senses to peace". Even if such a culture would be xenophobic (hates foreigners) and would prefer to isolate itself on its own planet, the radio transmissions that would run across the surface of the planet would also leak into space and eventually reach us and the SETI antennas. And when they arrive, SETI's data-processing algorithms will be able to recognize them as having the repeating pattern that characterizes real language.
There are plenty of problems with the SETI theory. There is no certainty that intelligent aliens will really use radio waves to communicate with each other, for example. This seems reasonable to us and a logical and desirable path of technological progress, but since we have never encountered other intelligent creatures that evolved in other living environments - and especially those that may not even be based on carbon - it is difficult to know what is true about them and what is not. Even if they use radio waves, their language may be so different from ours that repeating sequences cannot be recognized. Both of these claims seem weak to me, especially since they don't provide alternative ways of finding aliens in outer space, but they do exist. And yet, the biggest problem of all is probably the price problem: continuous operation of the SETI program for a year requires around 2.5 million dollars. And considering all these problems, it was enough for her to win the 'Golden Fleece' award - a steriological award given by senators in the United States to projects that waste public money. On the other hand, the White House also won this award, perhaps rightfully so.
Now look, the truth is that this is a small amount compared to our other expenses. One drone costs almost twice as much as SETI. An Apache helicopter costs seven times more. A single launch of the space shuttle costs 450 million dollars, and the profits from the movie 'Twilight' reached 700 million dollars. It's clear to me that considering all of this, 2.5 million dollars seems like a lot, but... friends, it's still 2.5 million dollars! They can be used to feed hungry people, help veterans enter the academy, and give stipends to yeshiva students. So when I, as a thinking person, try to understand whether it is even worth investing in a worn-out SETIagora, it is important for me to understand whether logically there are even intelligent aliens in the world.
I'm not alone
It turns out I'm not the only one with these concerns. Before me there was a guy named Fermi, a physicist who won the Nobel Prize at the age of 37, for his work that revealed important aspects of nuclear processes. Fermi was originally Italian, but immediately after winning the Nobel Prize in 1938, he immigrated to America with his wife and children. His wife was Jewish, and the fascist racial laws that were also implemented in Italy threatened to harm her. A year after his arrival, he was recruited to create the first atomic bomb.
Fermi was a kind of cluster man in physics. He liked to come up with strange questions and solve them step by step, using guesses. An example of this can be found in the fact that after the experimental explosion of the first atomic bomb, he stood outside the building and scattered torn pieces of paper in the air. When the shock wave arrived, the pieces were thrown a certain distance in the air. Fermi calculated the mass of the papers, the air resistance, the distance they traveled - and from this he arrived at the power of the first nuclear bomb: 10,000 tons of TNT. The real power was very close in physical terms: 19,000 tons.
Some time after the end of the Second World War, Fermi and his friends, one by one famous physicists, sat for lunch and talked about different and strange topics, when Fermi suddenly jumped up and asked - "Where are they?!". Since there are no waiters in the physics cafeteria, it meant intelligent aliens. Fermi assumed that if the conditions in the universe allow the formation of intelligent life, then someone, or something, should have made contact with us a long time ago. So where are these intelligent aliens? This question is known to this day as Fermi's paradox.
Drake's solution
Ten years after Fermi raised the question in this formulation, Dr. Frank Drake arrived, who conducted the first search using the SETI method, that is, by scanning radio waves from space. Drake realized that he had to systematically and clearly present the things that needed to be known in order to understand the probability of the existence of intelligent life out there in space. For this he created an equation whose solution shows the number of space civilizations in our galaxy, which we can locate and identify. The equation consists of the following factors -
For those who are not familiar with the way of formulating physical problems, the equation may seem intimidating at first glance, but in fact it is extremely simple. Each of the signs in it represents a different factor that affects the chance of finding intelligent life outside the earth. And the signs are as follows –
R*- the average rate at which stars (like our sun) are formed in the galaxy every year.
Fp- the number of stars endowed with planets surrounding them, compared to the number of stars not endowed with planets.
Ne - the average number of planets that can potentially support life, for each planet that has planets.
Fl - the number of planets from the above, which actually develop life at a certain point.
Fi- the number of planets from the above, which develop intelligent life at a certain point.
Fc - the number of civilizations from the above that develop technology that releases signs of their presence into outer space.
L- The length of time during which the civilizations release signs into space.
Drake decided that of all the planets endowed with conditions suitable for the development of life, 100% of them would develop living beings. Out of all these, one percent of the planets will reach the development of intelligent beings, and of these - one percent will be able to send signals to outer space. The civilizations established by these intelligent aliens will survive for 10,000 years before disappearing. When he multiplied all these factors together, he came to the conclusion that there are ten intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone, whose radio signals we should be able to detect relatively easily. This is a very convenient calculation for Drake, who was one of the founding fathers of the SETI program and had to justify the investment in it.
Well, it's convenient, that's for sure, but it's far from accurate or reliable. There is not much debate about the physical factors - the number of planets per star, or the rate of creation of stars. The problem is that we do not know for sure what the necessary conditions are for the existence of life on the surface of the planets, what are the chances for living creatures to develop intelligence (or what is intelligence at all!), and what are the chances of intelligent creatures creating a scientific community that will produce devices for interspace communication. And of course, we have no way of knowing how long such a civilization will last before it destroys itself.
The Drake equation, therefore, is a good idea at the level of ordering and organizing the data we need to answer the question of the existence of intelligent aliens in the galaxy, but since our data is far from reliable, the answer is likely to be wrong as well. In short, this is not where the theoretical proof of the existence or otherwise of the aliens will come.
Von-Neumann's solution
This is where another towering genius came into the picture, John von Neumann, known as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, and a man who was more or less involved in all fields of science and made a significant contribution to them. Von-Neumann's solution to Fermi's paradox was simple: no intelligent civilizations other than ours exist, and that's because if they did, they wouldn't just destroy themselves. They would destroy us too.
And I'll explain.
In the middle of the XNUMXth century, the physicist John von Neumann arose, who tried to provide an answer to the question and find a way in which living things could spread throughout the universe. Von-Neumann was a true genius, the kind that only one or two like him live in each generation. But like some geniuses, he was a bit… crooked… in his ways of thinking. He helped invent the atomic bomb that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and then he encouraged America to use it against the Soviets at every opportunity. He promoted the initiative to develop hydrogen bombs, which are strong enough to crack the earth's crust and bring an end to all the inhabitants of the planet. In short, he was far from being the good fairy.
When von Neumann turned his considerable brainpower to trying to find a solution to space travel, he came up with a different answer than everyone else. Because von Neumann's plan was truly extraordinary. He wanted to populate the universe with machines. von Neumann machines.
Perhaps 'machine' is not the best term. Von-Neumann machines are not just cranes, cars or televisions. The mad physicist dreamed of much more interesting machines. The first von Neumann machine was supposed to look like a small spacecraft that would land on a planet rich in resources and building materials. At first glance it is a spacecraft with engines, but it is not designed to carry human or alien pilots. In fact, it will be powered by artificial intelligence. When the spaceship lands on the planet, it will break up into a large number of robots that will set up a factory and utilize the planet's resources - the iron, the carbon, the water and everything else - in order to build many more spaceships from them, each of which will be robotic in itself. Along the way, the spacecraft will also try to transform the planet and adapt it to the living conditions of the aliens who sent it, so that when they get there themselves, they can live there without a problem.
The spacecraft production process will require many resources, of course. In fact, it could devour all available resources on the face of the planet and leave it worthless. But it doesn't matter, because we now have one planet with dozens of spacecraft ready for launch. Each of them is a new von Neumann machine, and is launched to its new destination: another planet several tens of light years away. It takes them quite a while to get to these new stars, but once the von Neumann machines reach them, they will also turn them into a factory for new von Neumann machines that will spread to other stars to make more von Neumann machines, which will spread to other stars to make more von Neumann machines - Newman, to spread to other stars to -
Well, you get the point.
The beauty of this process is that the spread is almost unstoppable. From the moment one von Neumann machine is produced and launched, it 'gives birth' to dozens and hundreds of other offspring, each of which spreads to other planets and produces hundreds more offspring by itself. If in the first generation we had only one machine, and we assume that it can create a hundred offspring, then in the second generation we will have a hundred machines. And since each of these machines can create another hundred machines, in the third generation there will be ten-thousand machines, and in the fourth generation there will already be a million machines. This is a pattern called 'exponential growth' or 'exponential growth'. In each generation we multiply the number of previous machines by a hundred. And even if all these machines travel through space at a tenth of the speed of light - which is a relatively slow speed - they will still be able to conquer all the planets in the Milky Way galaxy in half a million years. which is really little compared to the size of the galaxy. And from there they will go on to take over the other galaxies and the entire universe.
Scary? me too. But before we look to the sky with worry, we must ask can von Neumann machines even exist? They must fulfill, after all, a large number of conditions. Even if we ignore the space travel, they must manage to recreate themselves on every planet they reach. And since the most efficient machines will strive to carry as little cargo as possible, each spaceship sent on a journey will only contain a 'seed' - one small machine that can replicate many times and fill the planet it will fall on with its offspring, which will unite to create larger and more complex machines.
I guess the first thought going through all of your heads right now is: oh my, we are von-Neumann machines! But I'm sorry - we are not star children in this sense of the word. The evidence for the evolution of humans from apes is too strong. At most, one can do as Arthur C. Clarke did: imagine that at some point aliens arrived and delegated their intelligence to the great apes. But until we find some kind of evidence of this, there is no reason to believe it happened.
What's more, the meaning for me is that von Neumann machines are definitely possible on a conceptual level. It may take another hundred years of scientific and engineering progress, but we can get there. I truly believe that one day we will be able to create machines the size of cells - in fact, they will be cells themselves - that can unite and divide and create larger organisms that can live on a wide variety of planets in different conditions.
And here I must ask myself, and you: if this is possible, then where are the von Neumann machines that were supposed to already fill the universe with storm? Say aliens wouldn't have made them? Can be. But even if one culture out of a hundred chose to launch such machines into space, they would already spread throughout existing space within a very short space of time on a cosmic scale. Would you say aliens are smarter than that? Maybe. But out of every thousand alien civilizations, there must be one that was short-sighted enough to make such machines and launch them into space. Will you say that they will install security mechanisms in the spaceships that will prevent them from spreading to infinity? Maybe. But out of every million alien civilizations, one will fail and have a bug. And its spaceships will conquer all the other planets. And the meaning of all this to me is that since we have not yet encountered not only an alien, but even von Neumann machines, then there are no intelligent aliens within our galaxy. clear and smooth. that technological intelligent life is so rare - or so short-lived - that it simply does not exist.
It's an interesting idea, but it has a lot of problems. There may not be enough planets available to allow von Neumann machines to safely hop from planet to planet. Even the most sophisticated propulsion technologies may not be powerful enough to shorten interstellar travel time. It could also be that many alien civilizations have invented entertainment technologies (Big Brother?) that have taken away from them the ambition to explore into space. Or embedded themselves in a wireless network. A particularly interesting possibility is the existence of an immune system. A bacterium that enters the body is supposed to create about 24 million copies of itself within 16 hours. The reason he does not succeed in this lies in the existence of an immune system. Is it possible that one of the earliest alien civilizations to arise created an immune system against von Neumann machines, perhaps itself consisting of von Neumann machines focused on eliminating other von Neumann machines? But even here there is always the danger that the immune system itself will get out of control... and in short, we have no idea what is going on out there.
But in the end, they are not here yet. And the simplest explanation from my side for this is that they don't exist.
Your second thought is surely that I don't know for sure that aliens haven't visited us, and that every Monday and Thursday there are other messages about aliens. This is where the XKCD Flake equation comes in and in general I recommend you read the book 'A Haunted World' by Carl Sagan. He does not refer there to any specific case of 'visitation', but he explains how problematic all these claims are. In short, there is not enough reliable evidence to take seriously the claims that aliens have already visited us, and I say this with great regret, because as a biologist there is nothing that excites me more than putting my hands on aliens and understanding the way they evolved. The way in which a whole world developed is completely different from ours.
I am very afraid that this opportunity will never fall to me, but I still have hope. My hope is that while I believe the creation of intelligent life is a phenomenally rare event, there are enough galaxies that in others it might happen. And if so, they will surely make von Neumann machines, or make themselves one. And where are they now? They, with their starships, are stuck in the intergalactic spaces, in the great dark and vast dimensions, and spend tens of millions of years on journeys that will take them to the next planet.
And maybe, if they don't come to us by themselves, then in the next few hundred years we will already have our legs amputated - and we will go towards them. I really hope that will happen, because if they come to visit us in the next few years, the meeting could end in disaster. In every encounter between two human civilizations, the advanced one usually almost completely eliminated the backward one. This is what happened when we conquered America, or when we made Africa a source of slaves and left it desolate and impoverished. I see no reason why a similar case will not be repeated with intelligent and technologically advanced aliens who will come to visit us on Earth.
It is better that we come to them.
118 תגובות
The truth is that I have a lot to respond to, but you opened up so many topics here that it's confusing in my head, which I really liked what you wrote, a small part, I didn't quite understand the part with crazy Poniman machines. The fact is that Puniman himself is supposedly the mad genius, luckily we didn't send the Puniman machines into space or something, and they hide from us in any case on the topic of aliens whether they exist or not. which is understandable, but without too much proof, you are welcome to browse, write in Google "the people" asked not to advertise that they are here" in any case, my next flight will probably be to area 51, I hope they don't make me disappear
I think most of the comments here explain the truth very well
1. The author of the article - it's amazing that he's even a doctor - how did you get a doctorate???? It is not clear !!!
2 Who gave you a job as a "fortune teller"? You are just delusional and careless in your "investigation"
3 This says a lot about the corruption in the State of Israel - if a person like you gets a doctor's degree and another "forecast" just to write a lot of nonsense and reach conclusions that are completely nonsense from beginning to end!!!
Lecturer of fools
Blatant and uncivilized slander, and Tetha doesn't even understand it 🙂
Apparently there are no miracles in the world, but there is one here who has trouble reading comprehension. Where did you see my friend that the article contradicts my opinion? On the contrary, I went in to read since this is my position and I wanted to delve into it, but I found an eloquent hash that was not properly baked. Or is the purpose of the comments here just to pat each other on the back and like like on Facebook
Lecturer of fools
The article contradicts your opinion, so your response is an attempt to insult a child in kindergarten?
Fools also come in the guise of a doctor's degree, a bald head and Dedi Zucker's oval glasses. This is how it is when you copy and translate from other sources without checking that there is a logical match between the different translations. Just poured out a barrage of information and said nothing while contradicting himself at least 3 times
There is one inherent problem when we come to discuss aliens: we are working with the statistics of one, which means we only know our case (and even that is not always).
There are so many variables along the way that nothing is certain and any such discussion is nothing more than intellectual entertainment.
Aliens or not the main thing is that we have good music
Ilona
The logic is of course with you. But, don't forget something very important - most people are unreasonable.
Let's think together what we know today about the universe. The age of the universe is about 15 billion years. Earth between about 4.5 billion years. The (modern) man has existed for about 100 thousand years. Existing technology - hundreds of years. And look where we got!! And consider that in a time that is negligible in terms of the age of the universe - we will be able to colonize more planets and/or live in space. Therefore, it is very likely that there are other civilizations in the universe.
Think about the fact that out of the hundreds of millions of species that have lived and are living on earth - only one species has developed a language. And this species will not necessarily survive for many more years. So maybe there are aliens, but the chances that they are smart are low...
In a second we will think about what the logic says. The universe is vast and contains many galaxies. Apparently there is at least one other planet (if not more) where intelligent and non-intelligent life exists. There is no logic in any other answer and the argument of: "I didn't see it so it doesn't exist" doesn't work here.
When you're in the room you don't see the moon at night, does that mean the moon doesn't exist?
Aliens exist, but we haven't discovered them. point.
Because of the enormous size of the universe it is hard for me to believe that in the entire universe (not necessarily the visible universe) there are no other intelligent living beings besides us, the fact that we have not found evidence of their existence, or we have not been able to communicate with them does not perhaps reduce the probability that there are other intelligent beings in the environment close to us, but certainly Does not contradict the possibility of their existence anywhere in the universe.
"Von-Neumann's solution to Fermi's paradox was simple: no intelligent civilizations exist except our own, and this is because if they did exist, they would not only destroy themselves. They would destroy us too.
And I will explain…”
But where is the explanation? You went on to explain von Neumann machines without explaining why they would necessarily destroy us.
I will rejoice in repentance.
I almost fell asleep
Maybe you really go to sleep??
What a pointless blah-blah. Tell me, Dr., is this what you earn a living and receive a salary from? Maybe do something productive and useful instead of making a living from air business and nothing.
Nir
Do you have one piece of evidence that proves there were aliens here? A reliable photo that proves beyond any doubt that it is indeed a spaceship of foreign origin?
SMS from an alien? Something that really proves that there were aliens here?
There are many more believers in Jesus than there are aliens. Why is their opinion unacceptable to you?
Hello, alien
The writer is apparently a very nice person and has great connections, otherwise it is difficult to explain how he got to his position and why any bodies would want to know what he thinks. Finger-sucked assumptions are a typical and common thing among people who want to prove their worldview. Scientists surprisingly forget that the purpose of science is to search for the truth And don't try to prove what you think. I have a lot of free time for watching and reading. I've spent hundreds of hours watching movies about aliens. I don't think there is another topic where the amount of evidence is so great and it's about millions of people from around the world according to surveys by the UN. And it doesn't seem to matter in any way To the people of science, they will still continue to ask where they are, it seems as if even if a flying saucer lands near the physics department and a few dozen 'scientists' witness it, and even if an alien delegation comes out and greets them, they will deny the phenomenon altogether and ask their colleagues from the psychology department to explain to them what the hell happened here because Hey, it's not possible for aliens to go on a journey of hundreds of years or more [because it's impossible to exceed the speed of light] just to say hello to my friends in the physics department at Tel Aviv University, let's say it must therefore be a case of mass hypnosis and you have to look for the answer on this plane. In short, you and your friend They are as bad as the ultra-Orthodox religious people for their belief that they will not let any fact get in their way, so I will call you squares and I will look for the truth on YouTube, Google and Wikipedia under the entry "lost science" there you can find everything both lies and truth and without squares
Why would an intelligent alien race invent Paul Newman type machines? These are the seeds for his kidney.
It is enough for a virus to be designed by another race to be distributed on top of these machines (a virus that could itself be a Paul Newman machine) in order to collapse the entire race and exterminate it (by reverse terraforming).
Who said "rationalization" and didn't get it?
This assumption, that if something could happen then it should have happened by now is simply illogical.
can invent hovercrafts for private use (DeLorean style in the second and third movies of "Back to the Future"). It hasn't happened yet! Conclusion: This cannot happen.
We can, in principle, invent a von Neumann machine. It hasn't happened yet!!!
Conclusion: This cannot happen. And not only that, no one in the universe can invent one like this!!
Nonsense in juice. I really hope you don't use that kind of thinking in your work.
Miracles
Where are the days when I gave examples on television of time reversals and I was famous like Eyal Golan without age and with transparency of parallel dimensions. How much I "miss" them
Water blowing
Hellas nonsense 🙂
Yaron
What exactly is the relationship with God? If God cannot be shown to exist, then practically speaking He does not exist.
Shooter - Aharon Hauptman, who is a senior researcher at the Center for Technological Forecasting and is interested in meeting aliens, is the same Aaron Hauptman who edited the mythical Fantasy 2000; And could it be otherwise?
First, is the reference to Aharon Hauptman who was the editor of "Fantasia" in the 70's? Secondly, with all due respect, the distances are so unfathomable that it is impossible to rule with such certainty on the negation of the possibility of extraterrestrial existence in our galaxy. The amount of stars and solar systems in the galaxy is also huge and this certainly adds to the skepticism in the statement presented in the article. What about the "wow" event from the mid-70s (?) that was picked up by a SETI facility? And again, skepticism exists. What I definitely agree with the author of the article is the claim that if we encounter an extraterrestrial civilization it should be outside the solar system and without the possibility of locating our home planet. Stephen Hawking also claims the same.
The honorable Yaron.
With all due respect, the speed of light does not constitute a blocking wall, also because each individual has an individual point of view from every direction, also because quantum physics contains within it the spread of the multiple worlds and simply because of my "personal" experience in returning time, thanks and with respect
My conclusion from the article is not that intelligent life does not exist, but that it necessarily does. But there will not be and there was no physical possibility for any connection between us. That's why no machines or spaceships or transmissions arrived here. The speed of light is a physical barrier blocking the possibility of any future connection.
As in the question of whether God exists or not.
Physically it cannot be proven, one way or another.
In my humble opinion, the formation of life forms is embedded in the DNA of the cosmic matter of the universe, just like the formation of energy and matter and the formation of the elements and then the molecules, etc. Perhaps it can be seen as layers of Lego bricks, each lower layer serving as building blocks for the layer above it. In any case, I have no doubt that any planet that has the right conditions will create life on it.
What is certain - sunglasses.
And beyond that, "the word always exists in only one sentence." Prof. Yuri Rivkov.
Science is based on one very simple law - what is not proven, is not known for sure.
And a good researcher should know how to question existing facts as well.
And I don't even get into the matter of statistics and probability that some here have already explained better than me.
In conclusion - the article is suitable for the Seven Days supplement.
Eastern June
In the number of stars you are wrong by 4 orders of magnitude.... And that's just in the observable universe.
To say that there is a high probability that civilizations more advanced than us live on Earth borders on nonsense. There is no reason to think so. Our experience does not give this any probability.
Just an example.
Humans are more developed and intelligent than an ant which is somewhere in the forest in South America.
Even so, the chances are high that the ant that is somewhere in the forest as far away as South America has never encountered a human being.
Why? Because a person has no interest in reaching the depths of the forest and meeting the ant.
Even the advanced civilization from somewhere in the galaxy has no interest in coming here. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I think it is very presumptuous to make such a firm statement that the issue is still open - what we know for sure is that we are constantly making mistakes and relearning things that we thought were already clear to us.
I think it is ridiculous and arrogant to think that in a universe that has over a billion galaxies and each galaxy has over a billion stars that only on the small earth did life develop into what it is today.
There is a probability that civilizations more advanced than us are already here on Earth, but we do not notice them. Why? When was the last time any of us sat down and had a conversation with ants? Exactly the same principle, such an advanced civilization probably won't bother with a bunch of apes that are still fighting over territory and colored paper pieces...
come on.
Is it possible to let serious researchers write such articles, instead of - let's not know - babbling and pessimistic historians?
Oh my, I hope you don't structure your other studies in this way,
First he draws a conclusion and then makes up nonsense to explain it.
I can't prove it, but I believe that statistically, there are so many planets that intelligent life can develop on some of them.
In any case this article says nothing but your heart's desire.
This is scientific writing???. Dr.'s?
Your only logic that repeats the whole article is "we don't see them so they don't exist"
A. Obviously, there is currently no proof of the existence of aliens.
B. Why rely on scientific observations in an article (long and somewhat tedious)?
third. There is a sequence of time - it is clear that as far as the Babylonians are concerned, electricity does not exist and perhaps they could not expect it
But what does this mean for predicting the future? "Scientific"?
d. If we don't meet all the signs for aliens - for example we don't make von Neumann machines.
Maybe we don't actually exist?
And maybe the other aliens are in the same phase as us (which turns out to be mostly a phase of snarky language)
Emanuel
What is the connection between your last sentence and everything you said???
Another note about the possibility of making contact using radio waves
Go out and figure out what the power of such a radio wave is and what antennas and what receivers you will need to succeed in stimulating the input signal from a distance greater than 50 light years,,,,
This is about the hydrogen bomb suppliers at least
Therefore, instead of sending signals to the outside world, we must first of all develop morally in order for us to be entitled to such a visit
Apo are they??
Why do you think that an intelligent entity capable of contacting us would actually make such a connection?
See what happened in our world when an advanced culture made contact with a backward culture
Even if they don't hurt us or take advantage of us
They are smart enough to understand that as soon as they establish such a relationship, their technology will reach us and we are probably not ready yet
Therefore, if there are such cultures, and I think there are, and there are also in our galaxy, they will not contact us under any circumstances until we reach a moral level that they believe is high enough for us to be accepted into their family.
Most of the problems in the world today are the result of associating advanced technology with nations with relatively backward morals
Where there is the oppression of women, slavery, the rule of religion, the suppression of freedom of expression, and there is also the advanced technology, there is also the misuse of this technology.
Therefore, my dear friend, do not break your head
They did not contact us soon and maybe they are helping us little by little so that we learn more and more independently
Perhaps they were the ones who prevented Hitler from winning World War II
Perhaps they were the ones who prevented a nuclear conflict during the Cold War
And if they are able to reach our planet they are also able to make you do things according to their will,,,,
We are not "von Neumann machines" - we are more than that.
"But even if one culture out of a hundred chose to launch such machines into space, they would already spread throughout existing space within a very short period of time on a cosmic scale."
Not true.
The universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, there are areas that are moving away from us faster than the speed of light, assuming that there is no technology that allows us to move faster than the speed of light, or to move faster than the expansion of the universe at a greater distance. This means that nothing beyond this horizon can affect us, ever. That is, if they were invented Von Neumann machines - which can move fast, even faster than the speed of light somehow - there is still a closed area of the universe where they have to be invented in order for them to get here. Because from a certain distance the universe expands faster than the speed of light, and from a certain distance the universe recedes faster than their theoretical speed.
Maybe we are the product of biological von Neumann machines
seeded here by living cells
which spread in a slow diffusion process
in the interstellar medium.
The cells land on a star
breed in it
and cause oxygen poisoning that changes the atmosphere
One that is based on methane
to an oxygen-based atmosphere.
The cells are ejected into outer space by volcanic eruptions
and an asteroid impact
and continue their journey to other stars.
It's very convenient to dismiss and solve things that way...but we don't really know. I do know that there are unexplained phenomena that raise serious question marks
You can see by the tone of things that he is joking. What serious head of state would answer such a silly question seriously?
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/421/106.html
The former president of Russia, Medvedev, expressed himself in a slightly different way...
And again - the writer subordinates the possibility of intelligent life being found to the human way in which it exists. Since the relevant scientific human existence is less than 100 years, then the totality of the claims made cannot be taken seriously. In addition - since the human race is at the beginning of its journey, many series of alternative claims can be put forward - starting from remote monitoring of the planet (and possibly a masking of it) designed to test whether we will reach the level of maturity that would allow the beginning of an inter-racial dialogue, to the possibility of the existence of communication technologies far more advanced than anything we able to imagine right now..
philoshit
Far more people have produced evidence for the existence of God than for the existence of aliens. including pilots and scientists….
What it means??
Roy, from what you wrote and from what was written in the comments, a number of other issues arise:
1. The interest in aliens is probably a gender issue - I did not get the impression that there is interest among girls of the opposite sex in this issue. From this, I surmise that some of the aliens may even belong to some kind of "feminine" species (please treat this as a joke and not as something of misogynistic or chauvinistic origin). This illustrates the cultural-gender bias in this discussion.
2. This "serious" topic is of interest mainly to the secular circles of the population, and indeed there is sociological evidence that the interest in aliens developed along with the "removal of magic" from the world by the scientific revolution, along with the understanding that we are alone in the world after we killed God, and after the great wars of The XNUMXth century brought human morality to the lowest level while the growing strength of science and technology.
3. Talking about aliens is like talking about any other religion - the arguments are constructed in the same way because the object of research is "hidden" and only a few are the "prophets" who saw or heard the aliens. I wonder why the SETI project was not set up to receive divine signals from space? Maybe because there are enough churches/synagogues/houses of worship and other temples...
4. Anecdote - in a book that Beni reads (the origin of the term "flying saucers" is told. In the 50s, it was published in a local newspaper in some part of the USA (again, these Americans who outline the cultural mindset...) that a local pilot saw flying saucers over the lake. After After this article, many more testimonies of such a phenomenon appeared all over the USA. Several years later, journalists approached the first witness of the phenomenon and asked him what exactly he saw. He told them that on that day he actually reported on something that looked like a flying banana, but for some reason the news was published in the newspaper In a slightly different way... it somewhat conveys the power of mass media, the way in which messages are conveyed and the way in which we think and perceive "reality".
5. I think the article is written great and lays out the issue well (by the way, there were various corrections to the Drake equation) except for its name which is meant to be populist and catchy. Perhaps the only thing that is missing is that the article actually talks about aliens who are very, very similar to us (with the same desires, desires and the same cultural tendency to reproduce and survive) so I think it can be said that maybe we actually find them every day among us...
You just blew your mind
I think you're confused, since the "logical" argument you're talking about is that of the "humanitarians", who draw far-reaching conclusions that intelligent beings from other planets have visited or are visiting the Earth based on "proofs" that are no more true than the miracles that religious people describe that they witnessed, have you ever wondered why most UFO videos are blurry? Why are most of them photographed (allegedly) in poor visibility conditions? Why not even one remnant of extraterrestrial technology has been found to this day? Is there life on other planets?- I have no doubt that there is, but did they come to visit us in spaceships?- To date I have not seen any scientific proof that there is.
Once upon a time there was a man named Aristotle. He was a wise philosopher for sure, who found that God is at the center of the universe and everything else revolves around it. When you look at nature, there is no reason not to think otherwise - the sun revolves around the center of the sky, and so do the stars.
Aristotle's "logical" argument has misled the world for centuries. The same thing happens today with "logical" arguments regarding life outside the universe: all the scientific evidence shows that there is no reason to support the hypothesis of the existence of other life.
On the other hand, there are millions of people who have experienced such and such things. So most observations can be explained as errors. But what happens when soldiers, pilots and scientists come up with the same arguments? People who usually have above average professional knowledge, those who know how to distinguish between a balloon and an airplane? They are also dismissed, because they do not fit the "logical" pattern we have created for ourselves.
I don't pretend to understand the motives of an extraterrestrial culture that exposes and covers up. But to say that all the evidence about UFOs, for hundreds and thousands of years, is either a mistake or a hallucination - in my eyes, is worse than saying that Earth is at the center of the universe. Just as with Aristotle, once again human arrogance thinks it knows everything, and forces the universe to behave accordingly.
Zvi, the principle of mediocrity applies here for one simple reason - that life is not a unique physical force that no one knows how it was created - but part of a very well-established branch of science called chemistry, and more precisely - biology is the development of a special sub-branch of chemistry called organic chemistry.
Now, since the reactions in organic chemistry usually take place between 150 and plus 150, there is no need for a powerful particle accelerator or the creation of very special conditions to get to the compounds from which biology was created - although no one has yet succeeded in artificially producing a real cell, there are generally enough theories that explain how An amino acid becomes a cell. Again, we are not talking about the Higgs boson or quantum gravity which has not yet been discovered, but a branch of science whose basis is quite well known. What's more, organic molecules have already been discovered outside this planet, so the building blocks of life also exist outside the earth.
Therefore, it can be assumed that the circumstances for the creation of life are not a one-time miracle - and that carbon-based chemical reactions at the temperatures I mentioned have occurred or are occurring in other places throughout the universe, and therefore the likelihood that life was created from this is increasing and increasing.
Where is the principle of mediocrity invalid? In the possibility that these aliens walk on two, they have 2 nipples, 4 limbs, have hair on their heads, and speak Hebrew. And this is of course a very extreme example.
That is, the principle of mediocrity is based on the assumption that the guiding rules in the cases where we use this principle, exist everywhere. And organic chemistry, you will agree with me, can take place outside the earth. And since the basis of life can occur outside the earth, it can be assumed, of course - without proof yet - that life is also able to develop outside the earth.
Unless, of course, it is found that in the entire universe outside the earth there is some strange phenomenon that prevents the formation of organic molecules. Since we have already examined 9 planets and found no such material, but on the contrary - we found organic molecules throughout the interplanetary space, it can be assumed that the organic chemistry, the basis of life, occurs in other places, and this is enough to even raise the possibility that given the right conditions, it will start life. Now what are those conditions and how rare are they - choose any of the theories you want, each of them does not rule out a similar chain of events in other places in the universe.
Hello deer,
It seems that we use the same username (mostly I don't call myself another deer but deer).
I don't know which of us was here first, but it seems to me that we will have to come to a decision about the name.
Thanks
deer
Hello Schmitz!
If we agree that "intelligent life" is something that exists on our planet, then the chance of its appearance throughout the universe is 100% and then the Drake comparison, joke or no joke, is confirmed. On the other hand, if we reverse and reverse the words of Douglas Adams, it will become clear that he did not write "not sure" but rather "certainly not"...
Ariel,
You cannot use the principle of mediocrity to prove your point. The principle itself says what you want to prove. In the same way I can pull out the "Rare Earth hypothesis", which says exactly the opposite of what the rule of mediocrity says.
When you determined that 4 out of 760 planets could support life you only considered the size and distance from their star. Who decided it was enough? There can be dozens of other factors that have an impact on the formation of life. Some people argue that the existence of a satellite like the moon and plate tectonics are also necessary for life. Where does this fit into your calculations? Of course they could be wrong, and maybe even considering these factors there would be enough planets suitable for life. My point is that as of now we have no way of knowing who is right and who is wrong. Therefore, the logical position is a position of skepticism towards each of the camps, those who claim that there is almost certainly life and those who claim that there is almost certainly not.
In any case, I do not understand what the principle of mediocrity is based on. On what basis does he determine that we are not special? It's not like our planet is some random sample we sampled, in which case it makes more sense to assume mediocrity on the sample than to assume it's special and rare. We sampled this sample because it has life, because if it didn't have life, we wouldn't be here to sample it. Let's assume for a moment that life is indeed very rare, so rare that only one place in the universe created life. From them, by chance, intelligent beings evolved. The creatures look at their planet and say that according to the principle of mediocrity there is no reason to assume that there is anything special on their planet and hence conclude that there is life in other places in the universe.
Or to put it another way, you may be here because this planet is special. And if he wasn't special you wouldn't be here. Therefore, mediocrity cannot be assumed.
And one more thing, you agreed with me that the uncertainty of evolution plays a role in whether or not intelligent life exists. But what I said is that uncertainty exists even before life was even created. If life began with a nucleic acid that replicates itself, then already here evolution comes into action, and therefore already here, even before the first cell was formed, there is uncertainty. We do not know why that nucleic acid led us to a living cell, and what the factors are that influence this, so it may be that while the same entity did develop and replicate itself on other planets, life has not yet developed on them.
What would happen, really, if the universe is full of intelligent beings, but when they read talkbacks they decide not to contact us?
How does it affect our lives? What does this mean about us??
In the book "The Man in the Labyrinth" by Robert Silverberg, he calls humanity's problem with extraterrestrial intelligence "the anthropological problem" - we cannot think of intelligent life that does not look like humans, and according to the vast majority of science fiction series, the aliens are - human beings made up!
Also, this Drake equation is a joke. It was built to show that with statistics you can prove what you want. When there is no restriction on the assumption, then one can assume with a probability of 0.000000000000000000001% that this is the chance of intelligent life. Now just assume that the number of suitable planets is 100 times 1 divided by that number and we get 1.
And a request to the website editors: water on a distant planet is not life. They are also not signs of life. They are, maybe - water! And that's it.
I assume there are many readers on the site who see water on a distant planet as proof of atheism or notheism, but all I'm asking is to get the facts straight. We will leave the "inner" truth for another time.
And my personal opinion is that it doesn't matter at all whether there is intelligent life in the universe or not. As Douglas Adams wrote, based on human history it is not at all certain that there is intelligent life on Earth...
Lol…
Look at some of the responses... look at how interesting the topic is to most people compared to a million topics that science investigates like the seed content of the blue mustard or hand cream consumption patterns in Manhattan or any of these tiny, super specific topics. (With all due respect)
It is not clear to me why they settle for SETI and hypothesis A. They haven't arrived here yet b. They use radio communication like we do. And SETI is still struggling to get additional funding!
There are a million other possibilities and one of them is that the "crazy people" from Ambology are right. Why not check? Why not fly drones with some cameras and look for unusual things? Why not give a little more seriousness to eyewitness reports like eyewitnesses in criminal crimes? I cannot but agree with the claim that there has been a deliberate and highly invested ridicule of the issue for 60 years by various parties.
Zvi, as you probably know, the rule of mediocrity exists in science - that our planet, because of the size of the universe, is not special. Now its rarity - that's another matter. Let's take a second look at the statistics of the planets we have discovered so far - 760 planets. Of these - 4 planets were discovered that are the reasonable size and the reasonable distance from their star to support life. This is 0.5 percent. Now, let's assume that around almost every star, there are also some planets. Out of 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, you have a billion life-supporting planets, potentially. Here I also did not include the number of moons that could possibly support life - currently estimated at 30 (but never observed, so I am not including the statistics).
In any case, let's assume that 99% of these planets are in areas of the galaxy that do not support life - 90% are too close to the black hole at the center of the galaxy, so that the radiation and the frequency with which stars collide or solar systems collide with each other is too great to allow the normal development of life. The other 9% are found in the remote regions of the galaxy, where the amount of materials other than hydrogen or helium decreases drastically, and therefore apparently the elements necessary for life are not present at a high frequency.
You are left with 1% of a billion - that's 10 million planets, on which life can develop. Even if we assume we are left with only 0.1%, and 99.9% of the planets are in areas of the galaxy that do not allow the development of life - still, a million planets where any life can develop. You want to tell me that out of these million containers, life cannot develop? The rule of mediocrity comes into effect here - and most likely there are still many living planets. The question is whether they are intelligent or not - cannot be answered, because this is where the uncertainty principle of evolution comes into play, as both you and I agree.
sympathetic,
It cannot be said that we searched properly - with all due respect, already today our civilization is becoming quiet in terms of radio, when analog transmissions disappear, and direct transmissions (laser, optical fibers, etc.) become more and more common. In addition, the most sensitive radio telescope we were able to build, if it was directed towards the Earth - would only be able to hear it from a distance of 0.3 light years. And on top of all that, we only look at specific places. I don't know of any SETI collaboration with the planet discovery teams trying to listen to the newly discovered planets that have the potential to support life. Maybe so and I'm not up to date.
Anyway, SETI's method is too inefficient, and is the main one.
I would bet much more on remote sensing, and look forward to the new telescopes of the next decade that will allow for much better remote sensing (although when it comes to remote sensing, I'm biased).
By the way, another solution to Fermi's paradox is the zoo theory - which says that perhaps the reason no advanced civilization has contacted us / revealed itself to us is because we are sitting in the territory of a large and developed interstellar culture, one of whose basic principles is not to interfere in the development of primitive cultures, until that they reach a certain technological level. This theory actually requires a universe full of life, so that such a civilization could arise.
I personally don't know, one way or the other. I think there is life, certainly beyond the unicellular level, on many other planets in our galaxy. I would like to assume that there is another number of intelligent life as well - but we simply lack enough data regarding life on other planets (that is - does not exist) to assess how common the evolutionary path that took place here is, which will lead to the development of intelligent life.
It is not so clear to me why this rush to search for intelligent life on distant planets. Don't you think you should start looking for them here on our private planet?
Ariel,
All I said is that today it is possible to state that intelligent life is not very common. Until today we could make this claim based on our solar system. Today we know of many more solar systems that also apparently do not have intelligent life in addition to the fact that while we were scanning the space we did not discover any radio signal or similar sign. There is nothing in these claims to rule out the possibility of intelligent life, but in my opinion the lack of discovery indicates that not every planet with a suitable temperature and atmosphere has created life. If intelligent life were very, very common, then in every small time scale there would be many intelligent cultures close to each other and in such a scenario there would have to be such a culture in our neighborhood. By the way, to make sure that we are broadcasting on the same wave, what I mean by very common intelligent life is that in every solar system there will be at least one planet on which intelligent life was created or will be created, this kind of scenario is an option that I believe we can reject, not much more.
Regarding communication with the help of neutrinos, this is a very ineffective method, as I have already written, whose only advantage is its ability to penetrate, and therefore it can perhaps be used for communication through planets to the dark side in relation to the transmitter or perhaps even for communication through suns, although I doubt it. The best way to communicate in most cases (even if major engineering issues are ignored) is through electromagnetic waves.
Ariel,
The laws of nature may behave similarly everywhere, but that does not mean that rare events do not occur in nature.
If you take a container of water with all the organic molecules you want and expose it to the conditions that prevailed here 3.5 billion years ago you will not get a nucleic acid, regardless of the laws of nature. At least here you will have to agree with me, that this reaction is rare enough that it will not occur even once in the tank for a certain period of time.
All I'm saying is that, perhaps, the reaction is rare enough to occur only once in several large containers (here the container is an Earth-like planet) during the time the planet is exposed to the appropriate conditions.
Maybe she's not rare enough, and maybe she is. This has nothing to do with the fact that the laws of physics are fixed in each of the planets.
And another thing, which I have already said before, even if the same nucleic acid is created for you, it does not mean that life will be created from it, either because this event is also very rare or because the molecule and its replication will be destroyed for one reason or another before they have time to develop into a living creature or for any other reason.
Note, now that the nucleic acid has already been created we are no longer talking about simple chemistry but about evolution, and here the business starts to get much more chaotic. Here we are talking about our process, it is known only once when it occurred and in this case it led from the same nucleic acid to the first living cell, but it would be a mistake to think that this process will repeat itself every time. Here the fact that the conditions in all cases are similar no longer plays a big role.
deer,
I don't see it as a logical fallacy at all. If we start from the assumption that the formation of life is a natural chemical reaction and not the work of some intelligent force (God or aliens), then there is no reason why it could not happen elsewhere in the universe, given the same conditions. More than that - nature is not a laboratory condition, so the same natural chemical reaction can also occur in a situation where there is probably no planet that is 100% identical to Earth. I do agree, that it is impossible to know how similar the planet should be to Earth, in order for the same chemical reactions to occur. What I do know, and this is an important rule in science, is that the laws of nature behave similarly everywhere, and therefore it is possible to expect and calculate what might happen given similar conditions. In recent years, a number of organic molecules have been discovered in space, enough experiments have been carried out on the subject, etc. - that it is quite clear that carbon-based organic matter, which is a very important chemical base, is also common outside the earth (how common - is another question).
I'm not claiming that I know for sure that life exists, and I'm certainly not claiming that the universe is flooded with intelligent life - I'm simply claiming that according to our current knowledge of the universe, it is possible to start from the assumption that we are not special in anything, maybe a little rare, but not special, and that life, too Non-intelligent, also exist in the rest of the universe. In the meantime, I have not received any new information that would disqualify such a theory, so there is no reason for it not to remain as it is - a theory with a lot of basis in what we know so far (but not yet proven in an "experiment", i.e. the discovery of extraterrestrial life).
Ehud, I actually claim that it is impossible to know whether intelligent life is common or not - it is simply a reduction to a resolution that we do not know enough to talk about, and this is contrary to the claim that there is probably life outside the earth. Intelligent life developed here on Earth only after 3.5 billion years of life, and only after 4.6 billion years that the Earth has existed - that's a lot of time. Out of the 200,000 years that Homo sapiens has existed, only in the last 100 years has it begun to transmit radio transmissions outside its planet. This is a small comma out of a hundred million times longer time in which life existed here, and they were not intelligent, and even after they were intelligent - they did not discover the radio. And by the same token - they could also not find out for another 200 years.
Regarding neutrino communication, it turns out I'm not the only one who thought of it:
They used a massive accelerator to create the neutrinos and a massive detector to read the signal - but it worked. In principle we can communicate using neutrinos, just don't expect to see such a device at RadioShack anytime soon.
There are conceivable uses of neutrino communication that would be worth investing in multi-million dollar equipment on the part of large governments, like the US. Because neutrinos interact so weakly with matter, a neutrino signal could travel through any obstacle - the earth, other bodies like the moon, or any type of shielding. There would be no place without a clear signal (can you hear me now?). NASA could therefore communicate with ships or bases on the far side of the moon. Or the military could communicate with submarines far beneath the ocean's surface.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/neutrino-communication/
R.H.
Although I tend to agree with you. It is possible to imagine life that is not based on carbon, for example a type of von Neumann machines. If we have robots with intelligence can they be called life? This is where the question of the origin of life arises. Is it possible to get a walking and thinking robot from inanimate materials or is a robot the result of human engineering, in the case of a robot it is quite clear that its evolution is an engineering evolution, but on the other hand it is an example of life (if you are willing to call it living) that is not carbon based.
Ariel,
When I say we don't know how life came about I mean we don't know the chain of chemical reactions that led to the formation of the first nucleic acid (or whatever). Therefore, we do not have the ability to estimate what is the probability that such a chain of reactions will occur. I don't understand based on what you are saying that given a planet similar to earth there is a 50% chance that this chain of reactions will occur on it.
And note, no one assures us that the formation of that entity replicates enough to create life. All we know is that amino acids, for example, can be formed in natural chemical reactions, and even create structures under certain conditions, and that sometime before, say, 3.5 billion years, life first appeared. But who knows how many intermediate stages were needed on the way to life, and what is the probability that each such intermediate stage will occur.
You speak as if it is enough for that initial chain of reactions to occur (which in itself can be rare enough that it almost never happens) and "oops" you have a living cell. I see all of this as one big logical fallacy.
Here on Earth it happened that some chain of reactions resulted in, let's say, we got some kind of nucleic acid, then another chain of events created the first cell, then some chain of events created the first multicellular production, then some chain of events created intelligent beings, one species of which survived long enough to build technology. And from this many people come to the conclusion that the same process that leads from amino acids to intelligent beings with technology is very likely taking place in other places in space.
The problem with all of this is that we don't understand any of these intermediate stages, and don't know what some of the intermediate stages were at all. Each of these intermediate stages can be very rare, and the whole chain even if it has started to occur can be interrupted (for example, maybe the same entity was created and replicated on another planet but a radical change in climate destroyed it and all its "descendants"), and of course each intermediate stage can have several chains possibilities that will develop from it.
I have no intention of involving a divine hand or any mystical powers in the whole matter. I'm just saying that all the events that led to us, as rare as they are, happened the way they did, otherwise we wouldn't be corresponding now, and not because they were supposed to happen that way, as if there is a judicial law that aims to create intelligent life everywhere.
sympathetic,
Thinking that life will be carbon based or that it requires conditions like on Earth is not such egocentric thinking.
If we assume that one of the basic requirements for life is the possibility of maximum chemical diversity, then the only molecules that can almost form the basis of such an enormous molecular diversity as on Earth are carbon and silicon.
Another condition is that the temperatures will be between say -100 and +~ 150. Outside this range, the range of chemical reactions decreases drastically. This is also the reason that it can be assumed with great probability that life will not be produced on stars but only on planets.
To ensure such conditions you need a planet with a certain window of distances from its sun, with rotation around the axis in such a way that there is no too hot side and too cold side. It is also argued that the moon with the tides also contributed to the mixing of all the oceans and increased interactions.
Another condition is probably an atmosphere that keeps every small meteorite from destroying all newly formed life and on the other hand does not limit the radiation from the star to too low energy levels.
ravine,
Even if we are not interested in the creatures they still emit signals that can be picked up. An intelligent civilization needs energy and communication. Physicist Freeman Dyson divided intelligent civilizations into 3 levels and claimed that at the highest level intelligent civilizations will use their suns to produce energy not in the sense of solar energy sources, but rather what is perceived in our eyes as furnaces or a car engine. I don't know if Dyson is right, but an advanced culture will leave its mark on the star system and perhaps the galaxy in which it is located, and only from this fact is there a chance that we will discover it. By the way, I hope that the culture you are talking about got rid of the habit of smoking, because as we know, smokers do not live long and we would like to think that the aforementioned culture will exist for billions of years.
As a side note, the number of intelligent civilizations was not large, there were civilizations that were interesting and those that were not. There were cultures that would send signals into space and pretend they didn't bother. The only claim that is probably true is that it is unlikely that there is an intelligent culture that was able to recognize life on Earth and our signals and respond that such an intelligent culture should have been right in our immediate neighborhood....
Ariel,
All I'm saying is that the fact that we haven't discovered evidence of intelligent life yet doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, but it does constitute a barrier to its prevalence.
If there were many planets with intelligent life in our galaxy, statistically it would not be possible to think that life on Earth is the most advanced. We would expect many advanced cultures from us and many backward cultures in relation to us. Some cultures used electromagnetic radiation for communication and some did not. If there were enough civilizations we would detect electromagnetic signals from them (what is also possible today to detect neutrinos, albeit only in a small amount). As a side note and I'm a bit biased, good communication is through the electromagnetic force and not one that is based on the weak force i.e. neutrino. First, it is very simple to produce electric charges in motion, secondly, it is very easy to receive electromagnetic waves, the three main losses are as a result of being absorbed by the atmosphere, so communication in space will not be a significant problem. The example of the use of electromagnetic radiation is not a good example of egocentric thinking in my opinion. Thinking that life will be carbon based or that it requires conditions like on Earth seems much more egocentric to me.
sympathetic
Questions are beyond the ability to confirm and the ability to refute, but the inability to prove a theory, Popper, etc., etc. The problems that exist in the coherence of the theories in physics are gratifying, because it is interesting, and the approaching solution - yes, God willing - will be interesting. The fact that GPS works here does not contradict what I said. I did not say that the creatures are hiding from us, I said that they are smoking a cigarette behind a distant tree because we are not of interest to them, and the smoke has not yet reached here because we have known how to look for galactic smoke for barely 40 years and they may or may not have already weaned themselves from cigarettes. It is not too early to express an opinion if there are dolphins at the edge of the universe, but it is definitely too early to decide.
deer,
But the existence of planets similar to ours constitute a very strong argument in favor of the existence of life there. Because biology is actually chemistry, and let's say that the laws of physics are similar throughout the universe, and the chemistry of these planets is similar to ours, and they are at such a distance from their parent star that the temperature on their planet is similar to ours - according to everything we know so far about science, chemistry and biology - a chance Very large, over 50%, that have grown on such a planet life, even if completely different from the life forms that dominate here (but still carbon-based).
Holding on to the fact that we do not know how life began and therefore it is not possible to assume and assume according to many strong evidences that it also developed under very similar conditions in other places, gives strong feelings of a mystical attribution to the formation of life. The point is that we actually have a pretty good idea of how life originated, and the subject is pretty well established in chemistry and biology. True, there is no exact certainty as to exactly how this happened, but there is enough knowledge to understand that it is not a new physical law or a divine hand - but rather chemical processes.
Therefore, if these conditions exist in other districts - we can roughly assume that life developed there as well.
Ariel,
First I want to make it clear that I do not agree with the article. I didn't say I don't think there are aliens, but I just don't know.
I am skeptical of the claims on both sides, because both sides claim to know with near certainty that there are/are not aliens when they simply do not have the necessary information to decide this question.
The existence of planets similar to ours is not enough to justify your position without reference to the probability that life will form on such a planet. The probability can be high enough for it to happen a million times or low enough to raise questions about our formation. In any case, the diversity of life on our planet is irrelevant because you are referring here to the adaptation of life to different environments after it was formed, and I am talking about the formation itself which may only occur under very specific conditions.
The last message was from me...
Zvi - about 15 years ago, I'm sure there was a similar discussion regarding the existence of planets around other stars. And fact, it has been proven to exist. 10 years ago, it was argued that maybe planets that are gas giants are common, but it is certain that solid, Earth-like planets in size and mass, that would be in the habitable zone of their star, is very, very rare. And here, quite a few of them were found. At the same time, evidence of how diverse life is, and able to live and develop different niches in environments so different from each other, that it would be better if they were completely different planets, is constantly being discovered only on our earth. And in addition to all this, evidence of the existence of pre-organic molecules on meteorites, also strengthens the likelihood.
So it's true, 15 years ago it was possible to talk about the possibility of life in the universe other than here in the way you talk - only vague remnants. But with all the accumulated evidence, one would have to be blind not to realize that the line of thought, or heteroskepticism, is a line of thought similar to those who firmly stated that the sun moves around the earth.
True, neither I nor anyone has conclusive evidence that life exists in the universe, but with all the evidence collected in recent years, I think that such skepticism as you present or is presented in the article, is quite out of touch with reality.
Ehud - I did not claim that intelligent life is common - on the contrary, life has existed on this planet for probably 3.6 billion years, and only in the last 200,000 years has intelligent life been created here. More than that - I argued that it is quite early to enter into assessments of whether intelligent life developed relatively quickly here, or very slowly, and therefore the claim that the earth is young is not relevant at all to the question of why we are not visited by intelligent beings, or why we are not heard from. We may very well be among the first. It may be that in other places, intelligent life has not yet reached our technology - in fact, modern humans have existed for 200,000 years, and only in the last 100 years have we become a civilization that transmits its presence into space, and that too as a result of the industrial revolution that took place in some remote corner of northwestern Europe. In the same way, Britain and Europe could have entered additional Middle Ages and no civilization would have passed the industrial revolution for another 500 or 1000 or 5,000 years.
Like I said, there may be other intelligent civilizations like us, who are currently 1000 years behind us technologically. You wouldn't consider a medieval level civilization to be intelligent?
The thinking that radio is the most effective form of communication, and therefore we will still be using it in another 10,000 years, is also debunked. I gave an example of neutrino-based communication here. Others talked about a laser here. Perhaps they use a form of dark energy to transmit and explore the universe. Or maybe they switched to broadcasting from a spaceman like in the fictional series Star Trek, and don't receive radio at all. And perhaps intelligent life is scattered so far, that their sign has not yet reached us. Or maybe they were close, and we could hear them 5,000 years ago, but have now destroyed themselves or died of a virus or sunk into the Middle Ages or some natural disaster.
In short, I think it is impossible to definitively determine how many aliens exist, or how many intelligent life exists in the universe and how common they are, but it can be estimated that there is a very high probability that there is life on other planets, and most likely they will not remain only in the form of bacteria (although language on Earth until recently billion years ago, most life was unicellular).
Adam Red,
It is not accurate to say that we have a single statistical sample. We look into space and look for signals that will testify to another intelligent culture, so the fact that we did not come across such a signal is also statistical information.
Regarding the rest, you are of course right, our understanding is very limited, so it is appropriate that we express ourselves with the appropriate modesty.
Regarding your claim about von Neumann machines, it is clear to you that the more a culture spreads, the greater the chances of discovering it. In addition, every culture wants to spread to the limit of its capacity, see the growing humanity. If living productions do not want to spread and expand they would die as a species, an almost basic condition for survival is the desire to increase the number of surviving offspring. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that most cultures wanted to spread in space.
Ariel,
That's exactly the problem. If the chance of life is as great as you think why don't we find evidence of intelligent life in the universe. If the chance was that great for intelligent life, the universe would be flooded with intelligent life at all levels of
development. The assumption is that intelligent beings will transmit communication signals and thus it will be possible to distinguish them, therefore there is some evidence in the work that we did not come across that intelligent life as we perceive it is not that common.
ravine,
First of all, science is not a question mark, but a way to produce models to describe reality. Indeed, part of the scientific process involves questioning the existing knowledge and re-examining it, but the claim that the questions that arise in physics today undermine
About the invariance of scientific laws is definitely wrong. There are many delusional theories common today but they cannot be called science.
Regarding the hidden productions. If they are hiding today we should have seen them thousands of years ago in the years when they were not hiding. If intelligent civilizations are so common we should have seen many types of civilizations, some may try to obscure their existence and some may try to establish contact, not specifically with us but with different cultures in general. Here again the basic question arises where are they?
Hi, good shabbos
What bothers me in the article is the decisiveness. As far as I understand science these are question marks. The questions that arise in physics today challenge even the invariance of known physical "laws". Not least on the subject there is/is no "life" outside the mouth. It looks a bit like - forgive me Roy - belief in an entropic universe.
I will refer to only one argument in the article: "Where are they?" It's easy to refute: who told you that I or you are of interest to anyone or anything at all? And who told you that they are not here but they don't want you to see them, until you and I and humanity grows up a bit?
In the meantime, they hide behind the tree that grows on a star that revolves around a sun that is two billion light years away, and smoke a cigarette, there is time. Short - the assumption that they will look for you because you are looking for them is a psychological transference that is true for human beings but may not necessarily be true for them, especially in light of the absolute and irrefutable fact, just because that's how I believe, that they are sleeping right now.
Ariel,
I did not understand why the logical assumption is that the probability of the formation of life is high. We know that intelligent animals exist here on Earth, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation, and from this we can only conclude that life is a possibility, but not how probable its formation elsewhere is. And even if there are many planets that are "similar" to our planet, it is still not enough because as long as we do not understand exactly how life was created it is difficult to say how similar a planet should be to ours and how many planets is enough.
Who knows, maybe our solar system is indeed special, maybe certain conditions existed here that enabled the formation of life that we don't know about, that don't exist anywhere else, and maybe in many places the conditions exist, but even given the conditions, the likelihood that life will form is low enough for it to happen only locally one.
In any case, I don't see how one can come to the conclusion that there is life in the form of animals elsewhere, let alone intelligent animals. Because we also do not know why animals evolved, and even more so why intelligent animals evolved from them. It is easy to imagine a planet full of plant-like creatures, and it would also be possible to define intelligence for them that would be expressed, for example, in an advanced communication ability, but this still does not mean that they will be able to create machines or civilizations. In any case, if there is life elsewhere there is no reason to assume that it is something that resembles animals, plants or fungi.
Zvi, I can't say what the chances are for the development of life, but since as time goes by we prove how special our solar system is, and how many planets not dissimilar in size from Earth are in the "living zone" of their star, the logical and healthy assumption - in fact, a razor Hekham - says that it can be assumed with a fairly high probability that the creation of life is not a rare event either. Especially when you discover organic materials in meteorites and planets in the solar system that are incapable of supporting life.
I would certainly bet that life exists on many planets in our galaxy, even in the animal state. As for what we define as intelligent life - I don't know how common it is. For us it took 4.6 billion years since our planet was born. It's a very long time. On the other hand - since you are right, and we have no indication of how life is created, it is very possible that with us it took an unusually long time, or a little time - to such a resolution that it is truly impossible to reach.
A very interesting article on a subject that is one of the most exciting imaginable.
As a matter of fact: it is always surprising to hear that even though the only statistical sample that humanity has is the earth teeming with life, including intelligent life, the conclusion of some of humanity (and especially the non-laymen, meaning the part with the greater specific weight which is the majority of the scientific establishment) is that there is no intelligent life in the stars Others, this despite the fact that the basic conclusion should have apparently been exactly the opposite, if the only sample we know of has life, then other samples (other planets) also have life.
Of course, based on a single sample, it is not possible to claim one way or the other and this is exactly our problem, we are completely groping in the dark. According to probability theory, a sample that is statistically significant requires at least 30 samples. In the meantime, humanity has a single sample and it is already drawing conclusions one way or another and this is disturbing while feeling certainty and justice on the part of the scientific establishment.
The Yom Kippur War taught the Israeli intelligence system never again to declare that something is "certainly not going to happen" or "certainly does not exist". Since then, the intelligence community in Israel has written in all its analyzes that "the probability is very low", that "it is possible" and "it is unlikely that" and other phrases of skepticism, but nothing like certainty, and this is something that the author of the article should also have included, much more skepticism and less certainty, according to The best method of the philosopher David Yom.
Humanity is just beginning to emerge from the jungle in the sense of understanding the universe around us, and this in a period of time that constitutes a tiny particle, from the time when we exist as humans and we already think we understand and know and have final understandings and certainties and so on. We need much more modesty and skepticism mainly because the rapid rate at which the scientific explanations around us change, and more importantly those related to the biological sciences, prove to us how far we are from understanding the development and existence of life on planets.
In general, it is interesting to see the changes in scientific thinking: twenty years ago, many astrophysicists had doubts at all about the existence of planets, some of them even dared to say that our solar system is unique. what a joke Only technological progress shows us that we are not a unique solar system and the discovery of new planets already reaches the dimensions of popcorn. Now that more and more planets are being discovered, it is already clear that those among them that are at a certain distance from their Saturn planet in the "life span" radius can, under certain conditions, grow carbon-based life on them. That already dramatically raises the odds in the Drake equation. But this is a big pity, even if Drake's basic equation is completely correct, the large number of variables in the equation and our inability to even estimate at the most basic level the ranges of some of these variables does not allow us to determine anything reasonable based on the equation. One can argue like Drake that only one percent of the life-bearing stars will develop intelligent life, one can determine that this will happen at fifty percent, or three percent or only two per mille or a tenth of a tenth of a per mille - any number wins!
Regarding von Neumann machines: it is easy to understand where von Neumann came to his way of thinking in regards to hostile and destructive civilizations: apart from computers, he spent part of his life with better and more successful ideas on how to destroy enemies and then how to produce an even more powerful weapon whose byproduct is Can even destroy the earth (hydrogen bombs). There is no historical doubt that it would have been better for von Neumann to have helped the American side and not the German side (lucky he was Jewish...) because otherwise the world might have been ruled by Nazis today and therefore it is better for the ultimate weapon of destruction to be on the side of the good guys. What could be the biggest mistake in von Neumann's concept is that civilizations that reach a certain technological level will want to destroy other civilizations. But the writer Roy Cezana handled this issue correctly, he writes and I quote "But out of every thousand alien civilizations, there must be one that was short-sighted enough to produce such machines and launch them into space..." The ultimate answer to this is that out of 999 alien civilizations there will be enough civilizations Those who will do everything so that von Neumann machines do not spread in the universe...
The bottom line: we still know nothing and are completely groping in the dark, so it is better to resort to the method of skepticism both regarding the existence of aliens and regarding their non-existence.
In my opinion, the problem can be separated into two independent parts:
The first part is the chance of intelligent life forming and in my opinion we are almost unable to make informed assessments regarding this question.
The second part is how intelligent life would develop given that it was created. Von Neumann's approach is a mechanistic approach. You can also think of an evolutionary approach where in order to develop the aliens have to compete for limited resources in changing living conditions. In an evolutionary approach, it will not be a single alien system, that is, machines that will undergo development, but the aliens will change in the transition from one planet to another as a result of random changes in their structure in order to adapt to the new environment. Given an evolutionary mechanism, wars will inevitably be created over the limited living conditions between alien civilizations even on the same planet and this will lead to the destruction of civilizations and a delay in the rate of expansion if not its complete elimination.
In any case, the chance of discovering aliens is guided by the answer to the two questions: what is the chance of intelligent life forming and what is the mechanism by which they will spread themselves. Assuming that the growth rate of the alien culture is exponential the question is what is the time constant found in the exponent. We don't have a chance to answer both questions, but it's still nice to speculate.
Ariel,
How can you say that it is statistically implausible that life only evolved on our planet when you don't know what the probability is that it would evolve on a random planet?
In order to say whether it is likely or unlikely that there is other life besides us in the universe, it is not enough to know the number of planets in the universe, you also need to understand how exactly life is created.
Roy I have some issues with your personal belief, but since it is your personal belief, you have every right to deploy it. I have every right to try to make it bloom, like this:
A. As others have said here, the assumption that there is no life beyond single-celled organisms or lichens is refutable. On Earth for a billion years there were animals more complex than the cell, and only during the last million years did some intelligent production develop here (Homo erectus). It was only 10,000 years ago that human civilization began, and only 100 years ago did it begin to transmit any signals outside of our planet. That is, only during the last 100 years, out of a billion years, which is actually one fraction of hundreds of millions. It could very well be, and even very likely, that on many, many planets, there is developed life - perhaps even intelligent, capable of producing buildings like the Colosseum in Rome and transoceanic ships like Columbus, gunpowder like the Chinese and printing presses like Gutenberg - but unable / interested in inventing the radio , or start an industrial revolution. In truth, the industrial revolution was also started thanks to one small island that rose to greatness. In other words, out of less than a billion people who lived about 100, 150 years ago, thanks to a population of several million people on a small island somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean, the industrial revolution developed which led several decades later to the invention of radios.
B. Let's suppose that in 100 years the technology will develop so much that we decide that it is better to use neutrino radiation as a means of communication in space, than electromagnetic radiation. The neutrino has countless advantages over the photon - it can cross huge masses almost without interference, is not affected by electromagnetic fields that flood space, and due to its small mass is hardly affected by gravity. Already today we know how to build very, very primitive neutrino detectors. We also know how to produce neutrinos on a daily basis in hundreds of nuclear reactors and dozens of experiments in particle accelerators around the world. Maybe in another hundred years, we will have progressed enough to come to the conclusion that the ideal way to communicate is with the help of this particle. What it means? This means that in total, the Earth's radio age will be 200-250 years, and that's it. Now suppose there is an advanced civilization 500 years away from us, which is about 200 light years from us. Or a civilization that is 2000 years more advanced than us, and is about 1000 light years away from us. Let's assume that with them too, the radio bubble they created was only 200-250 years old. This means that hundreds or thousands of years ago, this radio wave passed through the earth, but there was no one listening. And more importantly - our radio wave has not yet reached them. And when he reaches them - they will not listen to him for a long time, because they have already moved to a much more advanced technology. The egocentrism in thinking that our electromagnetic technology is the most efficient thing in the world, and therefore surely every advanced civilization will still use it, or even reached the stage where it discovered electromagnetic radiation, reminds me of thinking that the earth is at the center of the universe, and the sun revolves around it.
third. Also thinking that developed life (not necessarily intelligent) only developed here on Earth, that you see such a huge variety of animals here, and as a biologist you know that life here has adapted to such different environments, is a very egocentric way of thinking, in view of the amount of planets that have been discovered and are discovered every day. Statistically, it does not make sense that such life developed only on our planet, after we ascertained in the last decade the number of planets in the galaxy.
d. I often hear the claim that the Earth is young, therefore there must be life on other planets, older than us. Well, I don't know what that claim is based on. Let's say the universe has existed for 13 billion years. The Earth has existed for 4.6 billion years (meaning it was created when the universe was , and life was created there 3.8 billion years ago. That means it took our planet 4.6 billion years to reach a civilization that is able to broadcast outside of its planet. That's a long time, and we have no indication that it isn't It takes longer, or there were more advanced civilizations in our galaxy than 2 billion years ago, which became extinct, etc. Considering how long it took for life to develop, and certainly for intelligent life, I'm not at all sure that we are young - it could very well be that we are among the first in the galaxy to develop super-intelligent life Their planet. In short, there may very well be one, or two or maybe three other civilizations that are as advanced as we are or more than us, somewhere in the vastness of the galaxy. There may have been more, and they were destroyed by nuclear war, by a virus, by a meteor strike, by a supernova near them, etc. You know. This thinking that the earth is young is actually an adoption of the opposite approach to the egocentric approach, which says that we are at the center, which your other claims are flawed in, which says that the earth is not unique but Young and apparently developed life must have developed in many places before that, she is mistaken, judging by the amount of time it took them to develop on Earth.
In short, the disqualifier in Momo disqualifies.
[yawn]
A pseudo-science discussion about a pseudo-science article conducted by a pseudo-debate with pseudo-alien lovers and pseudo-statistics
Pasado is interesting…
They lost me
: )
There are all the arguments for and against other intelligent life, which determines which argument you will adopt for yourself in order to establish a position in the creditor, and finally you will qualify your position and say that it is very possible that I am wrong and there is other intelligent life in the universe despite all your arguments
Summary In the current state of science and technology, it is impossible to determine with certainty that there is or is not, although in my opinion statistically it is very likely that there will be
It seems to me that he is wrong, look at our planet for example: 3/2 of it is covered by water, most people are concentrated in the remaining third, if an alien would scan the earth in the same way we have scanned the universe up to now and only scans the area covered by water - he He came to the conclusion that since he scanned most of the area - there is no life on Earth, there is no reason to assume that if there are millions of suns (at least - and these are only suns in our galaxy) around some of them there will be life, and let's assume that only some of them will develop beyond bacteria and other tiny life forms - There are still a very large number of planets around which intelligent beings can live, it is possible that they do not use radio - because they have other methods (lasers for example) or because it is a technology that is too primitive for them - such as the use of tum tum drums and smoke signals, or simply that the radio waves are still They didn't have time to reach us, in addition, if they don't manage to break Einstein's theory of relativity - they also have no practical way to reach us, and why would they come to us at all?
Hi,
Speaking of aliens, I opened a group on Facebook called UFOs Ltd. You are welcome to join...
http://www.facebook.com/groups/275796482507484/
The author's very "mundane" assumptions are his "proofs" for the assumption that there are no aliens...
Who says that humans understand the physics of the universe in its entirety? It may be that we are in the promile stage of the permile in our understanding of physics.
The truth is, I don't understand this courage, to publish such an article with such a clear conclusion and ruling...
The only thing that the writer is "building" on is that in the lifetime of the readers of the article, we will not be visited by aliens (a visit in our sensory perceptual sense).
One point, the thickets don't interest me (perhaps if I were an anthropologist I would try to find out what the source of the disorder is, but I'm not). I meant calculations that claim to be scientific such as the Drake formula and the Fermi paradox, or as presented by Cezanne in the current blog (although you are right that the nomenclature aliens is used more for delusions, while science uses the nomenclature of intelligent life).
As I said, such calculations are based on so little information that they make the whole issue ridiculous.
Eli, not to be confused with the interesting scientific question of whether there is life somewhere else in the universe.
and the hallucinatory assertion of Abaim believers, that there are beings from other places that are here with us. (And this without any DNA evidence that these are not creatures that evolved here on earth, the believers simply know that these are creatures from another place, this is very critical to their faith, I wonder what Freud would have said about it)
Our knowledge of the evolution of life is so poor that any hypothesis about whether or not there are aliens is a joke and nothing more.
We don't have that much data so a little manipulation can change the probability from close to 100% to close to 0%.
Specifically in the present article the failure is clear - their inclusion as a statistical figure is a joke. There is no way to quantify the chances that an intelligent civilization would be willing and able to build such machines.
This is the logical fallacy that characterizes all alien deniers/believers. "The chance of an intelligent culture is...", if intelligent beings exist, obviously...", "an average intelligent culture will exist..." These are all wild speculations that can be played with according to the desired result.
Why is this similar - a debate about the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth without space observations, without archaeological findings and without knowing the laws of physics.
skeptic,
It's a book by Crichton (the one who wrote Jurassic Park) that was later made into a movie called "Seed of Andromeda".
On the same subject, there was also a book by the excellent Polish writer Stanislaw Lem called "The Victory Space Cruiser" which describes the evolution of such von Neumann machines that breed and produce themselves.
If we assume that 7 percent are psychotic delusions (I don't know what the real statistics are), XNUMX percent of XNUMX billion is a lot.
You say we have never encountered but there are large groups of people who swear they have actually encountered aliens/or alien technology. You are drowning out an entire branch of information whether valid or not just because you are not in these groups.
It is interesting that all those who saw aliens, who were abducted by aliens, are defined, similarly to those who hear voices, as mentally ill.
Excellent article..I agree with the commenters - bacteria/DNA can definitely meet the definition of a von Neumann machine.
It may be that advanced civilizations intentionally hide transmissions, in order to prevent unwanted visitors (aliens more advanced than them) - and it is possible that we too should behave this way (: - Don't forget that radio waves are only 100 years old on Earth.
I really hope that Mr. Roi will deceive himself, I - nevertheless - am waiting...
About 40 years ago a science fiction book was written which was later made into a movie. The name of the book and the movie is ANDOMEDA STRAIN, it is about an alien viral life form that came to Earth on top of a meteorite.
The aforementioned virus is a mineral crystal that is capable of reproduction (metabolism is completely different from the metabolism of life on Earth).
I only saw the movie. The film is fascinating and quite scientifically accurate.
There is this video on YOUTUBE divided into about 13 parts. The visual quality of the movie on YOUTUBE is borderline quality, but in my opinion the visual quality is enough to enjoy the movie. (The length of the movie is about 130 minutes, the total of all parts is about 450 megabytes). You can find the above movie on YOUTUBE by searching on Google
Search keywords are ANDROMEDA STRAIN FULL MOVIE
not maybe Sure. Germs are Newman machines for all intents and purposes.
I agree with Yael. Roy Cezana, who lives on another planet, even quite close to us, would also come to the conclusion that there are no intelligent beings in the galaxy because he does not see von Neumann machines. Did we send von Neumann machines?
It is also quite absurd to think that any intelligent civilization will behave like us and be "forced" to send von Neumann machines. In my opinion, we will not do it either, but the settlement will be by people accompanied by technology or even cyborgs, but not only machines.
By the way, the closest thing conceptually to Newman machines are bacteria that are apparently able to cross space under certain conditions, reach other planets and very quickly take advantage of all the resources there for their culture needs. So maybe they are Newman machines?
In all the statistical formulas we forgot to include the time dimension. If we start from the assumption that all the matter in the universe was created in one moment (the big bang) and that the development of matter occurs in a similar way at every point in the universe, it is not impossible that 50 thousand light years away from us there is a civilization identical to ours which, like us, began to pollute space with electromagnetic information a century ago. However, by the time SFETI detects it, 50 thousand years will pass.
The conclusion that there are no intelligent aliens in our galaxy is not clear to me.
Quote from article:
"But in the end, they are not here yet. And the simplest explanation from my side for this is that they don't exist (von-Neumann machines)"
What is the difference between this and the existence of intelligent life?
I do not understand the justification for the claim that intelligent life necessarily leads to the creation of von Neumann machines. These are machines whose creation by advanced intelligent beings is only a hypothesis, and even if it were possible to create them, it is not clear what the motives are for sending them into space.
Besides that, you wrote: "..but even if one culture out of a hundred chose to launch such machines into space... but out of every thousand alien cultures, there must be one that was short-sighted enough to produce such machines.... But out of every million alien civilizations, one will fail and have a bug. "
There are two problems here. First you assume that there are a million alien civilizations out of which there will be one that will succeed in manufacturing and distributing those machines to infinity, but maybe there are only a few other civilizations besides us? Second, you make up statistics, who said that one in a hundred will produce the machines? I realize this is only a rough estimate but still, if you replace your made up numbers with other made up numbers, you can accept that only one civilization out of millions upon millions will succeed, and that leaves the possibility that our universe/galaxy only has a million civilizations and therefore we don't see the machines. In any case, as I said earlier, it is not relevant at all because there may only be a single number of cultures.
I do not understand how anyone can come to the conclusion that there is/is no other life in the universe and that there is/is no intelligent life apart from us.
We still do not know how life was created here and why intelligent creatures developed here and there are already people who are sure that they know whether or not there is life in other places and how many of them are endowed with intelligence.
Quote from article:
"Von-Neumann's solution to Fermi's paradox was simple: no intelligent civilizations exist except our own, and this is because if they did exist, they would not only destroy themselves. They would destroy us too."
The more I think about it, the more I find no contradiction in the following theory:
An intelligent race that does not develop empathy/sensitivity towards other races, will destroy itself before it develops the massive technological capabilities required to find and destroy other races.
I still haven't found an intelligent article on the subject, so I would appreciate a discussion/article/references for and against.
Hi,
Roy - see faith comes from the Egyptian language to consecrate a certain god whose name is derived from it!
It's a bit like the Paul-Newman machines you described...
Now if you want to consecrate Egyptian gods and harness it to the rationality of scientific religion, you'll be fine, but it doesn't exactly work out logically, comprando?
post Scriptum.
There is a lot of spirit in this world, try for at least a minute a day to turn off the thought machine and listen to it, maybe it will show you the light...
felt happy
politicians. What will we do if aliens come tomorrow..ahh..just so they don't catch me off guard. Roy, you seem like a brilliant guy to me, take this money we collected as taxes from people who do work and write us something for it. Is that how it went? 2 and a half million dollars for radio signal analysis? go to work or not. Just why from my taxes?
The SETI program and what it has achieved so far is equivalent to a person trying to find life in the ocean using a bucket of water and after filling one bucket with only water he concluded that there is no life in the sea.
I think the problem for most of you (forgive me the rest) is that you are incapable of grasping the size of the universe, so it is hard for you to imagine that there is other life besides Earth.
In our galaxy alone there are hundreds of billions of stars and our galaxy is only part of a local and relatively small cluster of billions of galaxies, and our cluster itself is only part of a cluster that contains several billion clusters and it is actually only part of a SUPER CLUSTER that itself contains several billion clusters, and there are many super – such clusters in the universe **known to us** only (!!)
Just for scale - finding a culture like ours in the universe is several billion times more difficult than looking for a purple grain of sand in the middle of the Sahara desert...
Since as stated both in the article and in the "calculations" that the basis is more on estimates than knowledge, we stayed with the faith. And as a "believing" person, I have a hard time with the assumption that we are alone because then there is no end to our existence. It is easier for me to accept the belief in the existence of aliens than the belief in the existence of God. And it is true that we have before us journeys of thousands of light years... but as Mao said: "Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step".
To the author of the article.
According to your claim, Derek's equation is not an exact science, that's true! It is a statistical equation, but today that in every corner of the sky we aim the Kepler satellite we find stars in the field of life, we realize that the number of planets with a chance to allow life is immeasurably greater than we believed until now. The Kepler research team believes there are about 500 million habitable planets in our galaxy out of 500 billion. It is true that the star of the field of life does not definitely indicate life, but it is a bit hard to believe that everyone is desolate.
The claim of a lack of extraterrestrial radio transmissions has many problems. It is possible that other races do not use the radio or they do but we have not yet scanned this part of the sky or it is possible that we are scanning the right part but the transmissions will only arrive in millions of years or the transmitter is too weak and we will not receive it or it is even possible that the radio was used for a very short period of -200 years and then move to more advanced technologies such as optical fibers or even quantum teleportation (EPR)
Regarding "Von-Neumann machines" this is an idea that doesn't make sense why would any species invest huge amounts of energy to send machines that will destroy all the stars with the resources in its vicinity? Even a race that strives for rapid expansion should do so in moderation if it wants to remain in a reasonable hierarchical structure. And let's say there is a crazy race that just wants to destroy the universe why do you think the other races won't stop it?
Another rather sad possibility and probably the most likely is that Einstein was right and the distances are too great. It is possible that even an advanced civilization two million years old cannot approach the speed of light and all of us (like all advanced civilizations in our galaxy) will continue to live our lives each in our own environment and never meet our neighbors.
I offer another explanation why we have not yet discovered "aliens" or intelligent intelligence in the universe and it is not because they do not exist.
But because of the vast distances between, let's say, Earth, and a planet considered by scientists to be one where intelligent life can develop. Sometimes we get confused between science fiction and science, and restaurants in space that look simple in Star Wars or Star Trek are a huge technological project. We don't always understand all aspects of space travel. Even if there is an intelligent mind somewhere in the universe and it is at a short distance of let's say only 2000 light years from us, communicating with them will take 4000 years, assuming that Einstein was not mistaken and the speed of light is finite. That's why sometimes you have to stop thinking with science fiction and think with contemporary science, even if we advance technologically for hundreds of years the distances will always be crazy and maybe this is why encounters of the third kind are next to impossible.
Roy Shalom,
Thoughtful amusement: if we say 55 light years away there is a planet inhabited in a surprisingly similar way to Earth, and on this planet there is a country that is incredibly similar to the State of Israel, and on this planet there is also a guy who is amazingly similar to you...
What will prevent him from writing the article you wrote?
What hint/machines did you give to make him notice your existence?
: )
On the "pro" side, you can quote the sentence (which I don't remember who said) that if we are the only intelligent civilization in the universe, then it is an awful waste of space.
On the "opposite" side, we can rely on Ray Kurzweil who claims in his latest book (without exaggerating too much) that if the path to the singularity is correct then one of two things: either intelligent life will destroy itself before reaching the singularity point, or we are indeed unique in the world, because considering the relatively young age of Kedah "A. We should have already seen a massive presence of intelligent beings around us.
Despite the above, we know so little about space, our knowledge about space is so tiny, with so many unsolved fundamental questions, that it is difficult to think that at this stage it is possible to express a firm opinion in one direction or another.
Personally, I'm in favor of an open mind with a slight tendency to "favor" if only because it's *much* more interesting than the second option.
You've gone too far for my opinion... there is no reason why there shouldn't be complex organisms outside of Kdhua. I don't think that Kdhua is that unique.
The chance that "intelligent" creatures (if man, for example, deserves to be called that is another question) will make contact is indeed low, but there is no reason why there should not be "Jurassic Park" style life on planets outside the solar system and aquatic creatures on Jupiter's "Europa" moon or similar.
Since when I write a comment or respond to a comment I identify myself as Asaf
I find it necessary to clarify that the commenter "Asaf" (8) is not me!
I predict that what he predicts may not come to pass
I didn't understand what a futurist is?
How can one person be an expert in both security and biology and a lawyer expert in anti-corruption laws,
Sounds a bit amateurish to me?
I believe in an alien that came from the planet Melmac Gordon Shamway (Alf). He also resembles my dog Shuki: they both have reddish fur and when they both come to the kitchen they bark and it's annoying.
UFO team leader
I don't think they called
.
Hanan
I agree if you said,
My opinion, this is not the place for articles. such
Even if they are interesting and well articulated.
.
Hanan,
The aliens called.
They asked you not to find out..
For those who do not know.
Robert von Neumann is the one who invented the computer. He used the ideas of Turing and his successors to build an electronic computer that actually works (one that allows the implementation of non-trivial algorithms). (The input and output on his computer were, it occurred to me, perforated paper tapes). Von Neumann built his computer at Princeton University (I think), the construction was funded by the IBM company that understood the commercial potential of computers in those days. (Until then, IBM built machines for arithmetic calculation only - calculators - which it sold in huge quantities during World War II).
Therefore it is no wonder that von Neumann thought of the option of building robots (after all: robot = computer + mechanics).
Robert von Neumann, by the way, was Jewish. His father (who was a banker in Switzerland, I remember) - changed his name to "Von Neumann" to obscure his Jewish identity, against the evil eye of anti-Semites.
The most correct summary of the lecture was said by Roi himself: it is about his private belief...
Therefore, since we are dealing with beliefs here, it should not be attributed to what was said in the above article as information based on any scientific research, or a scientific reference to research data pertaining to the field of scientific UFO research.
Hanan Sabat
http://WWW.EURA.ORG.IL
Sounds like unfounded philosophical nonsense.
I believe that you are wrong and only time will tell.