Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Someone suggested to me another roadblock on the way to post-stone-age civilization that might make that rare, even if intelligent life isn't. The Earth has a lot of plate tectonics and volcanic activity that brings metallic ores to the surface. No one knows exactly why (it could have something to do with having such a huge moon). Without this geological factor, metals tend to get buried deep underground because their weight drags them down near the planet core. So most planets might not have metal ores easily available, and civilization would be limited to a stone-age technology.

Unless there could be a substitute for bronze and iron?

If a planet has large oceans and enough internal heat it will have plate tectonics. Venus has no plate tectonics because it has no water and the hot atmosphere keeps the crust from cooling enough to sink. Water reacts with crustal rocks to form hydrate minerals, which are denser. When subducted crust reaches about 700 miles deep the water is released from the rocks and causes the formation of masses of andesitic and granitic magma that rise to the surface.

Slow boat.

The trick isn't so much intelligence; the earth has plenty of intelligent species (elephants, whales, dolphins, Great Apes, seals, bears, pigs, big cats, wolves and dogs (what animal better understands us than does a dog?), octopuses and squid, some birds... it's whether

(1) intelligent life forms can fashion the appropriate tools for rocketry and communications, and

(2) whether the life forms can live long enough for interstellar space travel and then make the transition back to life on a planet even very similar to the one that their ancestors left.

It's clear that an octopus that could live only two years couldn't survive much space travel, and that has nothing to do with the dangers of space travel. Dolphins will never fashion metal tools for the simple reasons that they have no hands and that in their environment no fire is readily available.

Dogs are quite sophisticated, but they just don't have bodies made for putting things together. Like bears and big cats they are built to tear things apart so that they can turn a rabbit into dog food. Set them loose on some alien world rich in foodstuffs on the hoof and they are going to do nothing more than wreck the ecology.

Elephants are arguably as smart as humans, but they aren't the sort of animals that you would send into space. They are too big, and any animal with the food demands of an elephant is going to need an incredible craft just to get them from one continent to another.

Suspended animation as in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Do you really trust HAL-900? An artificial womb, fetus turning into a child on the way? Humans need much influence from caring adults to develop at all, and that will be hard to supply from afar. Again, do you trust HAL-900? Having generations of people in succession on a spaceship, one of which generation drops off the child in a strange new world might be an epic failure due to the difficulty of people who have never lived on a planet adjusting from a space ship to a planet.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Slow boat.

The trick isn't so much intelligence; the earth has plenty of intelligent species (elephants, whales, dolphins, Great Apes, seals, bears, pigs, big cats, wolves and dogs (what animal better understands us than does a dog?), octopuses and squid, some birds... it's whether

(1) intelligent life forms can fashion the appropriate tools for rocketry and communications, and

(2) whether the life forms can live long enough for interstellar space travel and then make the transition back to life on a planet even very similar to the one that their ancestors left.

It's clear that an octopus that could live only two years couldn't survive much space travel, and that has nothing to do with the dangers of space travel. Dolphins will never fashion metal tools for the simple reasons that they have no hands and that in their environment no fire is readily available.

Dogs are quite sophisticated, but they just don't have bodies made for putting things together. Like bears and big cats they are built to tear things apart so that they can turn a rabbit into dog food. Set them loose on some alien world rich in foodstuffs on the hoof and they are going to do nothing more than wreck the ecology.

Elephants are arguably as smart as humans, but they aren't the sort of animals that you would send into space. They are too big, and any animal with the food demands of an elephant is going to need an incredible craft just to get them from one continent to another.

Suspended animation as in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Do you really trust HAL-900? An artificial womb, fetus turning into a child on the way? Humans need much influence from caring adults to develop at all, and that will be hard to supply from afar. Again, do you trust HAL-900? Having generations of people in succession on a spaceship, one of which generation drops off the child in a strange new world might be an epic failure due to the difficulty of people who have never lived on a planet adjusting from a space ship to a planet.

Also, humans are the only organisms on Earth with true language, that is, an open-ended system of symbolic communication encoding semantic and thematic roles (agent, patient, recipient, topic) in syntactic rules. A lot of other creatures have extraordinarily complex communication systems, but none of them are true language, they are more akin to body language and behavioral-mental signals like laughing and crying, they do not encode true symbolic information nor do they have syntactical encoding of semantic and themantic roles.

True language and the technical ability to build spaceships are merely functions of degree of intelligence. A parrot or a raccoon couldn't do these things, but neither could our forbears on the hominid line. We're smarter than they are, but not necessarily smarter than their descendants could become given several million years of evolution and an open niche.

As for the absolute nature of the speed of light, I can think of several ways around that one in theory, so I suspect it may not be a barrier ultimately.

Here is the question: If we were to go to another planet with intellegent life, would be find circles representing the saeculum like the explores did when they came to the new world?

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku


Quick review of Kardashev scheme:

A Type I civilization commands the energy resources of an entire planet.

A Type II civilization commands the energy resources of an entire star.

A Type III civiliation commands the energy resources of an entire galaxy.



"...On this scale, our present civilization is...within striking distance of being truly planetary." The present "is still a thousand times smaller than a Type I, in terms of energy production.

"...we can estimate that our current civilization is approximately 100 to 200 years from attaining type I status."

My own interest is qualitative rather than quantitative. The estimated time scale of 100-200 years makes it relevant to discussion of the saeculum. The Crisis of 2020 and the projected Crisis of 2100 would likely be critical turning points.

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku

"Although our civilization is still quite primitive, we already see signs of a transition taking place. When I gaze at the headlines, I constantly see reminders of this historic evolution. In fact, I feel privileged to be alive to witness it:

* The Internet is an emerging type I telephone system....

* The economy of the type I society will be dominated not by nations but by large trading blocs...

*The language of our type I society will probably be English....

*Nations, although they will probably exist in some form for centuries to come, will become less important, as trade barriers fall and as the world becomes more economically interdependent....

*Pollution will increasingly be tackled on a planetary scale...

* As resources...gradually flatten out, due to...overconsumption, there will be increased pressure to manage our resources on a global scale or else face famine and collapse.

*Information will be almost free, encouraging society to be much more democratic...."

Parallel Worlds

Regarding societies with our pre-Type I ("Type 0") status-we are given 50/50 odds for making the transition, as opposed to our destruction.

"...the generation now alive may be one of the most important generations ever to walk the surface of the Earth; it may well decide if we safely make the transition to a type I civilization."

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Parallel Worlds

Regarding societies with our pre-Type I ("Type 0") status-we are given 50/50 odds for making the transition, as opposed to our destruction.

"...the generation now alive may be one of the most important generations ever to walk the surface of the Earth; it may well decide if we safely make the transition to a type I civilization."

I love Michio's book and applaud you apt quotes of his work. This current one fills me with foreboding. We do not seem to be proving ourselves up to the task of transition. Would sapients on Earth get another chance or if we blow it is it blown for good?

Rare Earth

I believe that there could be thousands or millions of planets in the galaxy that currently have life of some form, but those with the technology to communicate across interstellar distances is extremely rare. I think that there is a inverse relationship between the complexity of life and its galactic abundance.

One option not in the poll was technological transcendence. Perhaps after a civilization pass a Technological Singularity, they rapidly acquire the knowledge to leave normal space and transcend to some new reality that we cannot currently comprend or observe. Maybe highly advanced races think it is silly to try to colonize the galaxy when they can create their own "universes" that suit them far better.

Originally Posted by Erik '73

Maybe highly advanced races think it is silly to try to colonize the galaxy when they can create their own "universes" that suit them far better.

What a cool idea!

Originally Posted by Erik '73

Rare Earth

I believe that there could be thousands or millions of planets in the galaxy that currently have life of some form, but those with the technology to communicate across interstellar distances is extremely rare. I think that there is a inverse relationship between the complexity of life and its galactic abundance.

Now this is the one option that I'm SURE isn't true, for reasons I posted earlier. We only have one biosphere as an example, but on Earth, each time the conditions were met for a particular advance in evolution, that advance was made in a short time geologically speaking, which says to me that the advance is high-probability, not low-probability (except when the preconditions haven't been met and in that case it's zero-probability).

We may take it as a given that a biosphere will evolve species making use of every viable survival strategy. Intelligent manipulation of the environment combined with social organization is a viable survival strategy, therefore every biosphere will evolve species making use of it. The existence of such species creates a possibility of one or another of them evolving full human-scale sapience, and there is no reason to believe this will not be a high-probability event requiring time measured in the millions of years to achieve, not hundreds of millions or billions.

The only potential bottleneck therefore is self-destruction through technology. We have no data at this point on how high that risk is.

One option not in the poll was technological transcendence. Perhaps after a civilization pass a Technological Singularity, they rapidly acquire the knowledge to leave normal space and transcend to some new reality that we cannot currently comprend or observe. Maybe highly advanced races think it is silly to try to colonize the galaxy when they can create their own "universes" that suit them far better.

Cool notion, apart from the fact that the idea of a "technological singularity" is only a cute mathematical gimmick without real-world possibility. Simply put, the fact that the rate of technological progress has increased geometrically does not mean that it will (or can) continue doing so. Infinite technological progress is, of course, as impossible as infinite anything else, and so inevitably the rate of progress will slow as one approaches the limit.

However, that in turn does not imply that there is no possibility of leaving normal space. The questions then are 1) is that possible?; and 2) if it is possible, will it normally be achieved sooner than FTL travel (which also may or may not be possible)? On thatall we can do is speculate.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Now this is the one option that I'm SURE isn't true, for reasons I posted earlier. We only have one biosphere as an example, but on Earth, each time the conditions were met for a particular advance in evolution, that advance was made in a short time geologically speaking, which says to me that the advance is high-probability, not low-probability (except when the preconditions haven't been met and in that case it's zero-probability).

We may take it as a given that a biosphere will evolve species making use of every viable survival strategy. Intelligent manipulation of the environment combined with social organization is a viable survival strategy, therefore every biosphere will evolve species making use of it. The existence of such species creates a possibility of one or another of them evolving full human-scale sapience, and there is no reason to believe this will not be a high-probability event requiring time measured in the millions of years to achieve, not hundreds of millions or billions.

I disagree that life always advances upward. Bacteria have been around for 3 billion years, are in every niche of the biosphere, and have survived every mass extinction event. Cockroaches have been around for 100 million years. They don't intelligently manipulate their environment or have social organization, but what they have is a viable survival strategy that let them survive the K-T extinction event. Dolphins are intelligent creatures that have been on this planet for 10 million years. Have they created any technology? No, because they don't need any to survive. Australian Aborigines have lived on that continent for 40000-70000 years. Did they ever create more then stone age technology? No, but it kept them alive in a harsh environment. If anything, it would appear the most viable survival strategy for life is to be simple.

Interesting you should say that. I was fascinated when word came out that 34,000-year-old bacteria had been found alive. The most interesting part was that, when the bacteria reproduced after being freed from their protective salt crystals, they evolved very quickly to "modern" forms of the bacteria found today.



PS - why is there no option on the poll for "Different forms of life inhabit other planets, but have evolved to survive in their own, unique environment." ??

Again quoting Michio Kaku....

"If a type III civilization exists in the universe, then one of their most pressing concerns would be establishing a communication system connecting the galaxy. This, of course, depends on whether they can somehow master faster-than-light technology, such as via wormholes. If we assume that they cannot, then their growth will be stunted considerably. Physicist Freeman Dyson, quoting from the work of Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond, speculates that such a society may live in a "Carroll" universe, named after Lewis Carroll. In the past, Dyson writes, human society was based on small tribes...communication between scattered tribes was impossible, and we could only venture a short distance from our birthplace within a human lifetime. Each tribe was separated by vastness of absolute space...A type III civilization may drift back to a Carroll universe once again, with pockets of space colonies separated by vast instellar distances...."

I recall a novel in which the vast instellar distances are mitigated by the presence of brown dwarves, which become sites for O'Neill type space colonies.

I find a lot of comfort in strict agnosticism about things we don't know for sure. Maybe there are infinitely many worlds of advanced civilization. Maybe someday we'll be able to contact them - or maybe the distance of universe is just too great and its limits too rigid.

Maybe there is a god or gods, or things we'd call gods, and maybe we're really the most complicated thing there is on a biological scale (entropy is what it is, after all, so being late to the party is a sign of being complex).

Maybe life out there never evolved passed bubbles of fungal goo... or maybe we just drastically understate the evolution and potential buried away on a smaller scale inside of that goo. We can barely communicate with the other life forms on our own planet, so why should we be able to easily communicate with those who evolved light years away, in environments we can hardly imagine?

Still, I voted for the Prime Directive, because the Star Trek future is the coolest of the sci-fi fantasies that remains somewhat plausible.

Originally Posted by Erik '73

I disagree that life always advances upward.

I didn't say that it did. Nor is the remainder of your post a response to what I did say. That some species have remained unchanged for a very long time is obviously true, but it has absolutely no relevance to my argument.

My argument is this:

1. A biosphere will evolve species taking advantage of every viable survival strategy. That includes intelligent manipulation of the environment and social organization, because that is one viable survival strategy. It is not the only one. Any other viable survival strategies will also be represented by species in any biosphere. But because intelligent manipulation of the environment is one viable survival strategy, it will also be represented in every biosphere -- along with all of the others.

2. A species tends to evolve over time to improve its survival strategy until no further improvements are possible without self-defeating sacrifices in other areas. If the survival strategy involves size and strength, the animal will become bigger and stronger as bigger and stronger individuals are selected by nature to breed. If the survival strategy involves speed, the animal will become faster. If it involves breeding like -- ahem -- bunnies, then the animal will become more prolific. And so on. In this, intelligent manipulation of the environment and social organization is no different than any other survival strategy, and so from a base of relatively intelligent creatures capable of manipulating their environment and of social organization, the tendency will be to evolve higher intelligence, greater dexterity, and greater social cooperation.

Given a reasonable number of intelligent species, the evolution of something equivalent to ourselves in this capacity should be high probability, only a matter of (not all that much) time.

I am still talking about millions of years, of course. We shouldn't expect to see it happening right before our eyes.

what if we're the only sentient beings because god made it that way

Originally Posted by Sadsic

what if we're the only sentient beings because god made it that way

There is other intelligent life in the universe. But the most obvious intelliegent life is other creatures on Earth.

Space has very long distances -- distances measured in light-years.

We won't be able to detect technological civilizations until we have the means of detecting artificial light from planets with sophisticated species with anything like our technology. Radio waves? Planets may emit radio waves because of a civilization upon them or because the planet is hot (like Venus). But if we can detect some interesting music -- well, any civilization that detects Beethoven's fifth symphony will find us interesting.

Is technological civilization doomed? Does it self-destruct in nuclear warfare, does it exhaust all material resources, does it reach a peak and then devolve into something incapable of further achievement? Or are the really-advanced civilizations the sorts that keep their communications to themselves for fear of giving the signal "We have plenty of water" or something even stupider, like "We will be easy to conquer, enslave, or eat!"

Heck, I have my own kernel for an SF novel. One of our communication satellites goes haywire and plays nothing but reruns of Lassie while directing its signals to some distant star, and the supremely-intelligent wolves on some orbiting planet of that star recognize the collie as a fellow wolf (dogs really are wolves) with chimp-like pets, just as is natural in the home planet of "Dog Star". Twist natural history just a little and wolves tame humans. (Pretext: the planet has about twice the axial tilt of the Earth, and seasons are more severe -- canids prevail).

NASA Scientist Claims To Have Found Evidence Of Extraterrestrial Life

A new scientific paper1 by a NASA astrobiologist, Dr. Richard Hoover, has claimed that microfossils found in interior surfaces of two meteorites are indigenous to those meteors. He has concluded that the fossilized bacteria2 are not from Earth but are instead fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors. These could have been comets, moons, or other astral bodies.

here.

James50

As to "Where are the aliens?" They're here.

The big-eyed, big-headed Grays who subject abductees to anal probes and the like are in our health care system and/or the medical officers at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

The Reptilian Aliens are at the highest levels of finance and government, but not the most public ones.

The Orion Syndicate is running Wall Street and the Orion Slave Girls are among today's pop stars.

The Martian Child and his brothers and sisters are flocking to boards like this.

Live long and prosper!

Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius.

Originally Posted by James50

NASA Scientist Claims To Have Found Evidence Of Extraterrestrial Life

here.

James50

W00T... If the science is verified that is...then W00T!

Book - copyright 2007. The Intelligent Universe AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos by James Gardner. The main theme - the fate of the Universe will be determined, in the far future, by post biological intelligence.

One consideration is that FTL - if it is possible at all - may have significant limitations. Consider the "Slow boat FTL". The ease and conveniece of warp drive, hyper drive, and stargates are designed to propel the plots of movie and television productions, not actual spaceships.