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[cripterion]

I saw this not too long ago.

This is the great filter and the reason why we haven't been visited by anyone. Basically outer space is so gigantic, and so inhospitable to life that interstellar space travel is virtually impossible.

So how do you explain UFO /UAP phenomena? We assume we know but we just don't know fuck all in the end.

 

[Liljagare]

So how do you explain UFO /UAP phenomena? We assume we know but we just don't know fuck all in the end.

It's also a cultural phenomena, most reports are from the US east coast, uneducated people that don't know what a landing airplane looks like, or a simple helicopter, or their own rocket launches, or .......

Try to look at this map, https://nuforc.org/map/

Masses of people with internet, that know nothing about atmospheric phenomenae, low education, tons of mobile phones, and little to no knowledge of how mobile phone cameras work.

Yet, they all manage to produce garbo pictures, with garbage quality of UAP's. I guess Aliens just skip over the entire continent of Africa, but are suuuuuper interested in the eastern US.

 

[cripterion]

It's also a cultural phenomena, most reports are from the US east coast, uneducated people that don't know what a landing airplane looks like, or a simple helicopter, or their own rocket launches, or .......

Try to look at this map, https://nuforc.org/map/

Masses of people with internet, that know nothing about atmospheric phenomenae, low education, tons of mobile phones, and little to no knowledge of how mobile phone cameras work.

Yet, they all manage to produce garbo pictures, with garbage quality of UAP's. I guess Aliens just skip over the entire continent of Africa, but are suuuuuper interested in the eastern US.

I have seen what could be described as a far off distant plane doing things that's humanly impossible, that was back when I was living in Ecuador, in the mid 90's.

I don't think the phenoma is centric to USA.

 

[kpopSuperstar]

From what we know, an intelligent species similar to us would eventually make machines no matter what, its the natural path towards progress and every progressing race of beings would therfore make some sort of spaceships in time. Just as all life always must consume energy to live, toolmaking would always progress intelligent species to space.

Which means that intelligent life would send out drones on mass over the galaxy to explore. Millions of them, to chart plants across the galaxy. It would take millions of years before any such drone would reach us, but eventually all planets around stars would likely be visited by drones.

In theory, thats what we are discovering now, governments are seeing/detecting space drones. The nimitz and such things.

All of this is based on wild assumptions and I don't believe it, but if there are any "realistic" alien theories, this is what I would go for. Because I dont think aliens are traveling through the insane reaches of space, but I could see drones do it, and in a few hundred years time, I think we will have sent out millions of AI drones as well.

I think its likely most aliens would do this as well no matter how different they are from us.

 

[I collect VHS tapes]

it's possible intelligent life is a non-carbon-based lifeform and we just aren't looking for it

I remember back in my college astronomy class we studied the possibility of plasma based life forms. that was a trip. I think the example was something like that in certain extreme environments, like literally within a star, it's conceivable that life could exist in all sorts of different forms vastly different from what we know, including plasma.

 

[Coconutt]

And we won't ever find any. Earth is unique in that it has life.

 

[PonyStation4]

I find it stranger to think about Earth dying. Like, if we take at face value we are the only life, then what is the point of the Universe if there is no life? There would just be this vast space of various planets, stars and moons that exist for no real reason.

That concept blows my mind more tbh.

It gets easier to understand when you realize that the Universe doesn't exist as we see it, but instead as electrons, photons and quarks (protons/neutrons) that we perceive to be things depending on how they're arranged. So there was no meaning to whether life exists to begin with. For all we know, we're just small parts of a much bigger arrangement of things.

 

[kevboard]

The odds of life forming is so unlikely not to mention the odds that life can exist long enough to evolve enough to develop technologically to travel vast distances of space is even more unlikely.

I think it's also just nonsense to assume that life on another planet would evolve into a species that creates advanced technology.
even given billions of years that is just not even remotely guaranteed.

Crocodiles and some Sharks barely changed in millions of years because they don't have to. they don't need to become more intelligent or become able to build technology to survive. neither do insects, or other mammals. We're just 1 random path 1 group of mammals went down and even a single change in the environment could have completely derailed this path of evolution, and maybe make it end in something more similar to say a Lemur.

so I think even if we ignore catastrophic events, it's still not very likely that a high technology species emerges, even after billions of years of uninterrupted evolution.

 

[niilokin]

In addition to space being huge, maybe the timeframe of Terrestrial life existing is a such short blink in the eyes of the universe that we just missed other life existing "nearby" by couple billion years.

 

[niilokin]

It gets easier to understand when you realize that the Universe doesn't exist as we see it, but instead as electrons, photons and quarks (protons/neutrons) that we perceive to be things depending on how they're arranged. So there was no meaning to whether life exists to begin with. For all we know, we're just small parts of a much bigger arrangement of things.

I see life as sort of fluctuating similarly to solar flares, it reaches out and returns to the "source". But there might be of course be life that is not carbon based etc. And also our brains are very limited in what we can perceive, so I think that also somehow plays into that. We only look into finding life similar to us which could be really really narrow window of possibility instead of thinking outside that particular box.

 

[TheUnicornGuy]

What classes as an intelligent species? I'm assuming humans do, which makes me think that if there are multiple intelligent species throughout the galaxy/universe that one of them has to be the oldest, why not us? It's also entire plausible that FTL/interstellar travel isn't possible.

 

[MikeM]

We haven’t earned the right to be contacted by aliens. Have you seen our shitshow of a species? Like little kids but with nukes that shits in its own backyard.

 

[rm082e]

We haven’t earned the right to be contacted by aliens. Have you seen our shitshow of a species? Like little kids but with nukes that shits in its own backyard.

Any alien civilization out there on the cosmos will have gone through a similar arc in their own history. They will have had war, murder, slavery, conquest, stupidity, evil, etc. They may have come up with technological solutions to everything such that they don't need to fight over resources anymore. But they will have had all of those things in their past.

They'd probably be a lot more understanding of us than people assume.

 

[FeralEcho]

I mean,we can barely see inteligent life on this planet anymore,let alone outer space.

We're dumber than ever thanks to social media that at this point I don't think most of the world population can even recognize inteligent beings if they were standing right in front of them.

 

[FeralEcho]

Any alien civilization out there on the cosmos will have gone through a similar arc in their own history. They will have had war, murder, slavery, conquest, stupidity, evil, etc. They may have come up with technological solutions to everything such that they don't need to fight over resources anymore. But they will have had all of those things in their past.

They'd probably be a lot more understanding of us than people assume.

Or the reason no one has contacted us is they all killed eachother eventually by not moving past this egotistical simple way of thinking of war,murder,conquest,stupidity etc. as we are slowly doing to our species.

 

[Trilobit]

Yes, life finds a way.

 

[rm082e]

Or the reason no one has contacted us is they all killed eachother eventually by not moving past this egotistical simple way of thinking of war,murder,conquest,stupidity etc. as we are slowly doing to our species.

That's the "great filter" hypothesis. I'll admit it's possible, but I think it's highly unlikely that would prevent a civilization from moving forward. It could certainly delay the timeline of advancement, but I don't see many self-induced events destroying an entire species.

 

[ClanOfNone]

Just because we are self destructive assholes doesn’t mean that other civilizations would coalesce in the exact same way.

Humans project human qualities on to everything, it’s kind of annoying.

 

[GloveSlap]

I feel like why we need to discover exactly how life began before you can even start to calculate the odds of extra-terrestrial life.