"The Great Silence":

[Liffrea]

Why Haven't Signs of Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life Been Discovered?

"The idea that we are the only intelligent creatures in a cosmos of a hundred billion galaxies is so preposterous that there are very few astronomers today who would take it seriously. It is safest to assume therefore, that they are out there and to consider the manner in which this may impinge upon human society."

Arthur C. Clarke, physicist and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey

The world-renowned physicist Lee Smolin author of Life of the Cosmos says that what we should look for to confirm the existence of intelligent life in the Milky Way is a message left for us some time in the last several hundred million years.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/08/the-great-silence-why-havent-signs-of-intelligent-extraterrestial-life-been-discovered.html

[Cato]

Because there's nothing to discover.

[Ulf]

Because there's nothing to discover.

Not even amino acids or bacteria?

[Cato]

That's not what I meant. :P

[Skandi]

Probably because the time windows don't match. For us to pick up radio signals in the 60 odd years we have been looking they would have to be broadcast 100's if not thousands of years ago. equally by the time any life picks up our signals, we will probably be gone, esspecialy if you factor in the return journey time as well.
The window of opportunity for sending such signals is so small in the history of our civilization, and if theirs is similar it would be ridiculously easy to miss them. For all we know a planet could have been sending out powerful signals for the last 1000 years, but if the last one reached us before we invented radio, how would we ever know.

[Barreldriver]

Dimensional barriers are to blame. Each path down time/4th dimension/space, branches into an infinite number of possibilities, realities, events, time lines, etc... Each of these realities/forks/branches in the time line are separated by sheets/membranes. In order to contact life in another galaxy you need to be able to travel through time/the fourth dimension. In order to do so you need to be able to warp or breech the sheets/membranes separating the forks in the fourth dimension, you need to warp space itself.

Once we are able to generate enough gravity to manually warp these membranes, we will be able to travel freely in a loop between the companion universes of our own time lines, and those of all others (meaning those in other galaxies within these universes).

The answer is membranes, dimensional membranes and lots of gravity.

[Liffrea]

Stating the obvious, space is vast, my opinion is that basic life is pretty likely to be common, intelligent/sentient life, extremely rare. I wouldn’t say none existent, it would be unusual if humans were the only sentient species, but I believe it’s rare enough that from a human perspective it might a well not exist.

I believe we are very much alone in our part of the cosmos, perhaps that isn’t a bad thing…

[Psychonaut]

Dimensional barriers are to blame. Each path down time/4th dimension/space, branches into an infinite number of possibilities, realities, events, time lines, etc

Seriously? Hardly anyone takes the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many_worlds) seriously anymore (if anyone really did at all). Of all the possible solutions for resolving the problems within QM, this one is, IMO, the least believable.

[Germanicus]

The probability still comes down to the numbers, and odds,.... how many Earth like planets are in an eliptical orbit with a moon like ours, with a star like ours roughly the same distance away as ours= not many

[Barreldriver]

Seriously? Hardly anyone takes the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many_worlds) seriously anymore (if anyone really did at all). Of all the possible solutions for resolving the problems within QM, this one is, IMO, the least believable.

I take it seriously. :D

I nearly approach the Many Minds Interpretation, basically the divisions proposed happen at the level of the individual observer.

[Cato]

I regard the silence as a teleological issue and nothing more (see my sig for a hint).

[Cato]

I was influenced by this book, which has nothing to do with any teleological reasoning:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_E ight_Easy_Steps

Savage takes a Malthusian view of the exponential growth of human population and life in general, and also recommends the exponential growth of blue-green algae for sustenance. He states that it is humanity's manifest destiny to colonize every star in the galaxy. He draws heavily on the Fermi paradox (briefly stated as, "If there is intelligent life in space, why haven't we found it yet?") to support his position that it is humanity's burden alone to ignite the universe with the "spark of Life." In The Millennial Project, he calls for the creation of an international foundation to realize these goals. Originally known as the First Millennial Foundation (founded by Savage in 1987), the organization changed its name to the Living Universe Foundation.

The author [Savage] puts forth a complex plan of galactic colonization, under the belief that mankind along is the culture-bearer and culture-creator in the cosmos, which agrees with my belief in the Imago Dei:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imago_dei

A parochial belief to scientific pundits, but their lack of ability to properly explain the "great silence" is noteworthy IMO. There's scientific shuffling and theories as to why no broadcast signals from ET have been detected. I don't claim any scientific credentials, nor do I want to. My own beliefs are grounded in religion and philosophy rather than in the hard sciences.

[Tabiti]

Because we search for beings like us. Or don't know what to search at all...

[Octothorpe]

Seriously? Hardly anyone takes the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many_worlds) seriously anymore (if anyone really did at all). Of all the possible solutions for resolving the problems within QM, this one is, IMO, the least believable.

Some rather high-powered thinkers seem to think that the Many Worlds interpretation are valid: Michio Kaku, Bell, Wheeler, and the 'branes crew (Membrane theory is presently considered the best path to a unified field theory, and it essentially requires 'non-Copenhagen' quantum physics). From my readings in the journals and on-line extracts, it seems more popular now (among scientists and laymen alike) then ever before. Therefore, your statement puzzles me. Can you enlighten me as to your opinion? :confused:

[Psychonaut]

Michio Kaku

I think I have heard him bring it up on his radio show.


Wheeler

I don't remember Wheeler coming out in support of this, but the only text of his I ever used in college was Spacetime Physics which wouldn't've had anything to do with that.


it seems more popular now (among scientists and laymen alike) then ever before. Therefore, your statement puzzles me. Can you enlighten me as to your opinion? :confused:

I guess I should do a bit more reading. I'm certainly familiar with all of the old guys, but I'm not as well read as I could be on contemporary attempts at reconciling QM. Brian Greene's book was the last I read on popular physics. I certainly don't recall him coming out in favor of the Many Worlds interpretation in that. :shrug:

[Barreldriver]

I have to say the Many Worlds Interpretation appeals best to me for various reasons, #1 it's relatively easy to get a grasp on, quite a simple concept, and #2 it goes along with the mythologies I'm interested in, and #3 it has been at the forefront of most of the things I have seen in regards to the universe, quite a few programs and such sporting the theory around, so I have a personal bias when I support this theory.

[Liffrea]

Roger Penrose has suggested Many Worlds theory may be the solution to Schrodinger Evolution i.e. that the detection of a single part of a wave-packet still leads to the existence of other parts of the wave-packet, you’ll have to forgive me if I fluff some of this up, wave collapse (if I remember right) is the collapse of all probability to a single probability once it reacts with the world around it? However Penrose has also written that we would still need other theories to explain the packets we don’t consciously perceive actually existing!

Quantum mechanics, you have to be an alcoholic LSD user to get your head around it, my old man thinks it’s a load of “bollocks”! Personally I find it fascinating, if I wasn’t retarded and could do higher mathematics I would have enjoyed studying it in even more depth, as it is I’ll have to stick to “pop science”.

[Psychonaut]

if I wasn’t retarded and could do higher mathematics I would have enjoyed studying it in even more depth, as it is I’ll have to stick to “pop science”.

That's the same for me as well. I started off as a physics major in college and made it through Special Relativity. But when I got to General Relativity and Tensor Calculus, I found that I was way out of my depth.