Over 35,000 advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way

[willy88]

http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/10/20/1230207.shtml

...And we aren't one of them.

 

[Coolhand]

nope... We're a type 0.7 civilisation at best... Not even type 1 yet.

I'm really not surprised that our galaxy might be teeming with advanced civilisations - they probably get a big laugh out of watching us.

 

[Woo482]

What are you on about? we are the advanced civillization ever we all know 1+1=2

 

[RisingFury]

SETI hasn't found anything yet...

 

[Coolhand]

there are key stages that a civilisation goes through, based on energy consuption... we're still the primatives burning dead plants for energy as Michio Kaku once said. We're not that far from being a type 1 though its possibly the most difficult transition of all.... After we reach Type 1 then everyone has access to equal amounts of energy, unlike today where some of us live in a technologically advanced society and some of us live in something not much better than the stoneage or any point in between.

"In a 1964 article on searching for extraterrestrial civilizations, the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev suggested using radio telescopes to detect energy signals from other solar systems in which there might be civilizations of three levels of advancement: Type 1 can harness all of the energy of its home planet; Type 2 can harvest all of the power of its sun; and Type 3 can master the energy from its entire galaxy.

Based on our energy efficiency at the time, in 1973 the astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that Earth represented a Type 0.7 civilization on a Type 0 to Type 1 scale. (More current assessments put us at 0.72.) As the Kardashevian scale is logarithmic -- where any increase in power consumption requires a huge leap in power production -- we have a ways before 1."

given that our star is fairly young, there might well be civilisations out there who are type 2's or 3's or even higher.

 

[RisingFury]

Yea, I've heard about that theory, the "great filter" and how to populate the galaxy in the shortest possible time.

Still, the equation we use to calculate the amount of civilizations in the Milky Way is based on quite a few crude estimates...

We don't even have a good definition of what a life form is, we don't understand how life on planet Earth begun and has evolved and we also lack a good definition of what intelligence is.

Oh and... what's up with the search for "Eart-like planet"?
Anyone considered that if other life does exist, it might be based of different chemistry and different processes?

 

[garyw]

Or maybe we are the first. Assuming that an extra terrestrial intelligence follows the same path as us we should still be able to detect radio waves from the time the culture was using radio. We haven't.

 

[dbeachy1]

Or maybe we are the first. Assuming that an extra terrestrial intelligence follows the same path as us we should still be able to detect radio waves from the time the culture was using radio. We haven't.

I forget who made this quote originally, but I'll repeat it here: "Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence." We have only searched a tiny fraction of the sky yet.

 

[RisingFury]

Assuming that an extra terrestrial intelligence follows the same path as us...

That's my point... we can't assume anything accurately here.
This goes soooooooo beyond us right now.

There's a chance that even if other intelligent life exists, they've taken completely different learning curve and mentality then humanity has.

Look around: our societies are being run on disposable stuff, from packages you buy in stores to rocket science.
The development of other life might have gone a completely other way... which brings me to one last point...

"Intelligent life" doesn't instantly mean high tech. Might be they're living a completely other way.

 

[Coolhand]

well, any advanced civilisation should be detectable from the energy they leak out, but you have to be looking for the right thing... If you're looking for their tv transmissions then you're assuming that they haven't advanced beyond that point... For example, i don't watch TV from UHF transmissions anymore, or listen to conventional radio, everything is transmitted to me via a series of underground tubes, it doesn't leak out into space in the same way. And who knows what other better ways there might be to send data. SETI has barely had a chance of finding anything, but perhaps one day it will.

 

[RisingFury]

I hope SETI will find something. It'd be nice to have an ally on a different planet and trading knowledge and all...

Also, if other civilizations do exist, I wonder how accurate our perception of them is.
Would some really be peaceful, some warlike to the extreme? Are war, diplomacy and negotiation maybe only human concepts?

 

[TSPenguin]

Let's not forget that we might be the first, or at least one of the first.
The first stars could not have supported life simply because all there was, was gas. It took a few novae and deteriating stars to create most elements we know and use and think are elemental for life as we know it.
The universe is still young, there might not be anyone around to say "Hey, you have warp drive now. Come and get some of the cool stuff!"

I like this scenario much better than some alien sitting in subspace with popcorn in one tentacle and betting slips on how and when we blow ourselves up in the other 11...

 

[Coolhand]

There has been plenty of time for life to evolve and grow into an advanced civilisation on other worlds... All the elements we're familiar with and are made of, all existed way before us. To think we're the first, it just seems ridiculous to me... but eh, i guess you'll never know for sure unless you look everywhere in the entire multimegauberverse and don't find anyone else.

 

[RisingFury]

It's actually highly unlikely that we're the first.
In my opinion, we're closer to the last...



Universe isn't as young as you think. Elements have been around for billions of years. If we look at our local universe, we see large (ish) galaxies. If we look far away (far back in time) we see clusters of small galaxies that have yet to merge.

This means that we're past the point when huge galaxies are being created. And even though there's still plenty of gas in these big galaxies to form new stars, new planets and possibly new life, a lot has already been used up many of these possibilities are in the past.

 

[Coolhand]

Think of how far we have come in 200 years... what will we be like in a further 200? How about an alien race thats just 100,000 years older than us, just a tiny fraction compared to the age of the universe but they would have technology so far ahead of us. so even if life did not exist long before us on a cosmic scale they could be immensely more powerful in terms of the energy they can harness and the things they can do.

There's plenty of time left in the universe for younger races than us to evolve as well, before the universe becomes cold and dead. We'll only be the last if we go around killing all the other species in space, as we do on earth.

 

[EJ316]

"Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence."

This is a wonderful quote! :speakcool:

This whole thread is really interesting. I personally think that we are not alone in the Universe but obviously some of the civilizations will be more advanced and some less advanced, and some completely different. It does put it into perspective how we think we're so advanced but we could be the most primitive beings in the Universe..:sorry:

 

[TSPenguin]

My post was not meant to give anyone the impression that we are first.
It just meant, that we are early. We come from the first generation of stars where it is likely that habitable solar systems form. That of course does not mean that there weren't any such systems generations before.
And as Coolhand said so nicely, even civilisations that are ahead of us a few hundred/thousand years could be unimaginably further advanced than we are.

 

[RisingFury]

Yes, of course. I mean, what's 100 years in comparison to 100 000...

Though I think we're discussing things on a waaaay wrong level. Or we are just confirming that we don't even know what intelligence is.

Take dogs for example.

Dogs can learn stuff - tricks and all, can associate their "self" with their name and can easily navigate around once they're familiar with a certain area. That would indicate that they might have some intelligence and yet, even though they technically are intelligent life forms - compared to single cell organisms, they don't use tools or any other technology for that matter.

However, if we say that... for someone to be intelligent, they'd have to use tools, then the most we can say about intelligent lifeforms other then Humans on planet Earth are Chimpanzees. They've learned to use sticks and stones as primitive tools and yet are still far off from understanding rocket science

Granted, species take time to evolve and it took humans a long time to get here from when we picked up the first tools, but 2 million years of our evolution isn't such a short time anymore, when comparing to 100 000 years



There are just too many factors to consider for this equation, used for calculation of civilizations, to be effective. Too many assumptions are made for this to be anywhere near accurate. This isn't even our best guess, it's just a guess.

 

[Ghostrider]

I forget who made this quote originally, but I'll repeat it here: "Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence."

Whoever may have said it, sure as hell wasn't a lawyer.

 

[Kyle]

Kinda doubt that they are warlike, or else they must be a lot like Animals and hence not an advanced civilization, they'd be like us, warlike and aggressive.