Look up and you will see lots of dots of light. No, it’s not a load of cars screaming towards the Earth because they missed the stop sign at Mars. It’s stars. There are said to be about 140 billion stars that look like the sun in the Milky Way.
There are a lot more stars than just sun like stars. life could evolve around other stars but would probably be very
Loads of stars
different to what we know. Intelligent life though is intelligent life and as long as we can understand and comprehend them and they don’t throw up looking at us then who is to say that we can’t get on.
An easy way (relatively) to find out if alien civilisations exist is to listen for their radio signals. The first search for alien signals was in 1960 but this was trillions of times less sensitive than today’s SETI (search for extra terrestrial intelligence) telescopes. Even so SETI only scans a very small proportion of the heavens. It really is like looking for a needle in a haystack and a big haystack at that. But, that still means that there is a chance which is better than not doing anything at all.
The Kepler mission is to discover new earthlike planets in the habitable zone of stars. This mission was started after 300 planets had been found all over the galaxy. As I write this post 353 planets outside the solar system have been discovered. To find out about the search and how many have recently been found and by what methods travel here.
Other ways of looking for an alien civilisation are being found. This article shows that we may find ET by mistake due to another project.
Seti Telescope
We may not have found an alien civilisation just yet but then we have only been looking seriously for about 20 years. When you think that the universe has been around for 13.7 billion years and there are a serious amount of stars in the galaxy (not to mention the universe) then it would be folly to say that there aren’t any civilisations out there.
So why haven’t we contacted them yet, or why haven’t they contacted us yet? Here’s a list of the best reasons I could think of-
1)They have so many other civilisations to deal with they don’t have time. if you are living in London do you have time to go round every single house, knock on their door and shake their hand?
2) They may be waiting to see if we can get along with each other or if we destroy each other via nuclear war or other technology.
3) In their eyes we are but a child race that needs to mature before we can be contacted. Would you try talking to a microbe?
4)We may need to possess interstellar travel before we are even considered worthy of a place in the Galactic Council.
5) Aliens have recieved our signals, TV Programmes, Military broadcasts and Radio, and decided they dont want to contact a species that invented 24 hour shopping channels, World war, bad music and chat shows of any sort.
6) They’re decoding our signals wrong for whatever reason, and its coming over as completely random white noise and fuzz.
7)The government is concealing alien life from us poor civilians. Area 51 is at the centre of most of this, as is alien abduction and UFOs (watch out for Michael Jackson getting involved). If they managed to get here but were detained by the government they must want to be detained by the government otherwise they would contact us with the superior technology they used to get to our world (it must be superior otherwise they would not have been able to travel the distances involved).
8 ) The universe is so big that civilisations are so spread apart that by the time they could have got to us they had become extinct, even if they were to travel here by a light speed ship or send their robot creations to spread the word. Perhaps, a little like us, they look at the universe, sigh and go back to the Star Trek program they were watching.
Take Me To Your Doctor
9)An extinction event occurs before we are able to contact anyone. Perhaps if that asteroid hadn’t hit Earth ages ago the dinosaurs would have been flying around the Milky Way in some rather large spacecraft.
10)life is so sparse and spread apart that civilisations never get the chance to interact.
11)There are no alien civilisations out there. Considering the size of an infinite universe that is probably an infinitely wrong conclusion to come to.
12)The alien civilisation is so advanced that they don’t notice us. Don’t forget that they could be a billion years ahead of us, we can’t even picture a billion years let alone what a race would be like in a billion years.
13)They are building their military might before they contact and take us over.
14)Perhaps we haven’t been able to comprehend them. They could be talking to us and we may never understand them. Perhaps they are sending out messages and we are interpreting them as the events that occur in quantum physics.
15)Perhaps, like us, they don’t look far enough into the future and don’t have a 1000yr plan. We do have SETI but it’s a minor offshoot when you look at the billions spent by NASA and remember that it is kept going by private finding.
16)The window of oppurtunity to contact an alien civilisation might be too small. In short, there may have been intelligent civilizations in the galaxy before the emergence of intelligence on Earth, and there may be intelligent civilizations after Earths extinction, but it is possible that human beings are the only intelligent civilization in existence “now.”
17)There are other civilisations out there but we are the most technologically advanced. Well, that’s great for the ego but not for having a chat with our neighbours.
18)The universe beyond the solar system or galaxy does not exist it’s all an optical illusion. Has anyone been there? Just because we can see it, it doesn’t mean it exists. Are we in a computer game and the damn programmer hasn’t bothered to program in a universe with alien friends?
19)Aliens are here but have possessed human bodies. just because that makes a cheap movie doesn’t mean it may not have happened. The alien’s though would probably be better off keeping their own bodies.
20)The Earth was colonised ages ago as a colony and we have been left and forgotten or they could be growing us as some future food supply.
21)Alien civilisations have contacted us by email but unfortunately the spam filter was on and the e-mails went into the spam box.
SETI may find a signal which leads us to intelligent life or another more direct way may be that kepler finds earthlike planets and this pushes the human race into future interstellar travel. It will come one day, just look at what we have done in 100 years.
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Well I enjoyed that post. Here is some feed back:
“3) In their eyes we are but a child race that needs to mature before we can be contacted.”
True, We are not even a level 1 civilization yet, Therefor we are no where near worthy to talk to.
“5) Aliens have recieved our signals, TV Programmes, Military broadcasts and Radio, and decided they dont want to contact a species that invented 24 hour shopping channels, World war, bad music and chat shows of any sort.”
I very much doubt this one, We have only been sending radio trasmissions for about 100 years and TV trasmissions for about 60 years. Which means we could only have reached 100 light years away at the most.
But a good post none the less.
22. Perhaps we are not searching for alien life. We are searching for earth like planets so that we can habitat there. Our earth is already near distruction either by world war or global warming. And I think perhaps it is accurate reason. And I think if we would find alien life that might be reptilians, though saying them alien isn’t appropriate. We should change our perception about alien life. We would never like to contact microbes. Perhaps we are microbes when compared to alien technology. Might be EINSTEIN’s theory isn’t final theory that none can move faster than light. May be possible I will discover tachyon or other phenomenon which lead EINSTEIN’s theory to be false. We can’t predict it.
Umm… Bruce, What you just said was already stated in many of chris’s reasons and also dr. michio kaku stated most of it in his video aswell.
So there was no need for your useless post.
Sean in regard to 5) Aliens have recieved our signals, your right but I suppose I could fudge it and say the aliens had a ship passing by within range.
Bruceleeowe, Kepler which is looking for earth like planets is a very cheap (relatively speaking!) way but also time consuming way to look. It may take ages to find one but I very much hope not.
The only way to get to the stars seems to be a moonbase then Mars then? As NASA are umming and arring over the successor to the shuttle it is going to take a while.
“Sean in regard to 5) Aliens have recieved our signals, your right but I suppose I could fudge it and say the aliens had a ship passing by within range.”
True, But the chances of that happening are slim to none given the vast size of the universe.
“The only way to get to the stars seems to be a moonbase then Mars then?”
Yes, a moon base would be good, But if we colonise on the moon too much, We may weigh the moon down too much and through it’s orbit off a slight ammount, Which could cause alot of negative implications on Earth’s weather.
It would probably be just a refuelling station and hotel on the moon I would think.
Haha, Yeah, You’re probably right, But as soon as people hear that there is hotel’s on the moon, Everyone will want to go there.
But it would most likly be only the rich able to go there.
Sean, it costs billions of dollars to send a spaceship up, thats excluding the price to build the hotel!
Yes, I know that c-h-r-i-s but it may become cheaper later on, everything always becomes cheaper with time.
Only if we find a better way to fly space ships, other then with oil.
That will happen eventually, We’ve done harder things before. It’s just that space travel wasn’t exactly at the top of the to-do list like it is now.
First of all, space travel isn’t on the top of the ‘to-do list’, making the earth run on solar/wave etc. power is what we are trying to achieve at the moment.
Only after we achieve this may we be able to build hotels on mars.
We can’t take a look at moon case till we reach to the moon once again. There are already too many theories about moon landing. Nasa has released new high quality video perhaps a hollywood video.
23. There could be plenty of “intelligence” out there but not so many human-like civilizations – humanity might be just a niche speciality that evolved to take advantage of some very specific conditions rather than the high point of all evolution, and under different conditions intelligent species might arise that don’t have the same interests in colonizing the Universe or making TV programmes.
sadly i think number 18 is the only rational reason..
You wouldn’t happen to be a lazy programmer would you?
I think its an exciting time to be an astronomer or scientist:)we r gaining new insights almost daily and i think that it is only a matter of time before we come to realize the “truth” of what existence is:)i think its entirely possible that many of the reasons listed above r true:)i really believe that other civilizations r in fact “watching”us:)but to that end i think that we r no more than an interesting tv program:)lol we r fun and entertaining to watch but thats about it:)maybe in the future when we become a type 1 or 2 civilization they will be interested in communicating with us:)we can only hope that our species will survive that long:)
I came to this blog from bing when i was searching for ‘affordable confectionery’. Thanks for the info
Must have been a bong from Bing.
Well, let me put my two cents worth in. I enjoy reading most of the posts. I enjoy some of the humor, but sometimes it becomes too infantile. I believe there are other civilizations “out there”. I find it kind of simple that we resort to our human understanding of the universe. We make statements, for example, that they are so far away and because light speed is an unbreakable barrier that it is iimpossible for them to reach us. How do we KNOW our knowledge of physics is the end all? Suppose there are civilizations that are so undifferent from us that we just aren’t interesting to them. We are like ants trying to explain the nature of a mountain and thinking our view of the universe is pat science. We believe life is defined by a carbon-based matrix that needs water, sunlight, and other variables to exsist. WHY? Because our ant-like perspective of the universe tells us it MUST be so? Suppose there are silicon-based life forms, Chrysaline-life forms, and other inumerable forms of life that are totally inconpreshensible? I find it ludicrous that on one hand there are those in the scientific community that WANT to believe there are other civilizations and forms of life in the universe, BUT they must exist on our own parameters. Our biggest problem is that we too readily HUMANIZE the aliens in our discussions. We are finite beings trying to convince an INFINITE universe that life can our should exist on our menial terms. I believe in the premise that we just aren’t interesting enough for contact. Oh we have lofty ideas about what a first contact would be like, but alas our immaturity would show. If someone would decide to visit us it would not be beneficial because they would shatter our arrogance, science, and philosophy. They would be so far advanced in every imaginable and unimaginable manner that we would have a very difficult time accepting that. It could in my opinion result in a culture shock that would paralyze humanity. So why have we not been visited by intelligent aliens? The simple answer is……THEY ARE INTELLIGENT, that’s why. Somwhere outside the confines of our solar system is a cloaked beacon that was placed there warning curious civilizations to leave the pretty blue marble located third astrogation unit out from Sol alone. We are not ready and will not be for quite some time. One last thought. We would not like it very much to discover we are nothing more than an insignicant “virus” to a galactic civilization………NUFF SAID!
some very good points, thanks.