Are we alone in the universe?

[theoldwolf]

A recent article on CNN left me feeling .

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell claims that, once again, the guv'mint knows that aliens have visited Earth, and are covering it up.

Now, the Drake equation is an interesting exercise in cerebral onanism, but for my money has too many irrelevant variables such as f_c - intelligent life elsewhere may be sufficiently advanced that they don't give a rat's south-40 about who else is out there, and instead concentrate on maximizing conditions on their own spatial lifeboat...

All I have to do is look at the deep-field and ultra-deep field images, multiply the infinity of galaxies I observe there by the total area of our sky, and say to myself, "How flapping arrogant does a person have to be to assume that we are the pinnacle of that infinitely supreme creation?"

Nobody's ever seen a Higgs boson. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but there are enough empirical signposts to make it worth spending gozillions of dollars to find it. Conversely, people have been spending substantial sums of money to locate extraterrestrial life, and thus far we've come up with nothing. In all the "reported" UFO sightings in my lifetime, why has no one ever been able to get a decent photo instead of the fuzzy Frisbees™ we have all come to know and love?

My two very unscientific penn'orth:

1. Even assuming calculations based on the Big Bang theory (i.e. the universe is finite in size) are correct, the value for N* in the Drake Equation is mind-boggling. And as N* approaches the infinite, the probability that N = 0 approaches 0. Yes, there is other intelligent life out there.
   
2. We are probably being watched, or have been at some point.
   
3. We have a long way to go before anyone else thinks we're worth open contact, and
   
4. No, the guv'ment doesn't know any more than anyone else.
   

In the meantime, I'll focus on trying to make Spaceship Earth a place that works for everyone.

Comments

[daemionfox.livejournal.com]

The main _issue_ with locating exterrestial life (and vice versa) is that radio and the radio age on any given civilization is very short lived, maybe 300 years or so in any given civ. (we're actually getting near the end of ours, we have at most, another century of radio before something better completely replaces it)

So given the speed of light, any civ that we can listen to, is likely already past their radio-age and won't hear us for a while yet. We ain't alone, but we're probably not in shouting distance yet.

[ccdesan.livejournal.com]

Excellent points! All I know is that I'm stuck in the wrong century...