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Why Haven't Aliens Contacted Us Yet? (Fermi Paradox)

Personally, I've always considered that if aliens had FTL or some other means of travel to visit other worlds on a frequent basis, they'd take a look at our world and it's societies on it and put a quarantine notice on us.
Forget all the CE3 'contacts' who ask complete nobodies to make the world peaceful so we can be inducted into some form of Galactic unity.
 
Stormkhan said:
Personally, I've always considered that if aliens had FTL or some other means of travel to visit other worlds on a frequent basis, they'd take a look at our world and it's societies on it and put a quarantine notice on us.
Forget all the CE3 'contacts' who ask complete nobodies to make the world peaceful so we can be inducted into some form of Galactic unity.
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Pretty much my view, so much of what is believed about possible alien contact is seen through the prism of the human ego. Right at this moment aliens might be studying a spectroscopic analysis of our biosphere and shaking their heads/both heads/uppermost sensory organs in disbelief that we haven't made ourselves extinct yet.

On that note:

3 Body Problem: is the universe really a ‘dark forest’ full of hostile aliens in hiding?​


"We have no good reason to believe that aliens have ever contacted Earth. Sure, there are conspiracy theories, and some rather strange reports about harm to cattle, but nothing credible. Physicist Enrico Fermi found this odd. His formulation of the puzzle, proposed in the 1950s and now known as “the Fermi Paradox”, is still key to the search for extraterrestrial life (Seti) and messaging by sending signals into space (Meti).

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and life is at least 3.5 billion years old. The paradox states that, given the scale of the universe, favourable conditions for life are likely to have occurred many, many times. So where is everyone? We have good reasons to believe that there must be life out there, but nobody has come to call."

https://theconversation.com/3-body-...orest-full-of-hostile-aliens-in-hiding-226934
 
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Stormkhan said:
Personally, I've always considered that if aliens had FTL or some other means of travel to visit other worlds on a frequent basis, they'd take a look at our world and it's societies on it and put a quarantine notice on us.
Forget all the CE3 'contacts' who ask complete nobodies to make the world peaceful so we can be inducted into some form of Galactic unity.
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But they might take home a Beatles or Kraftwerk album on the sly.
 
The earth is the proverbial needle in the haystack (as is the solar system) the universe is unimaginably big and it could be teaming with life but be so spread out it could never meet , who knows if they have contacted us or not, the claims they have really need to be backed up more, with all the claims I have read none has ever said how they communicate
 
If aliens HAD ever given Earth the once-over -
a) why would they hang around? There must be millions of more interesting places out there, we're a very unimportant little place, and
b) why wouldn't they make their presence known? The knowledge of life out there elsewhere in the universe would (I feel) only be a good thing for humanity.

I can't buy into this 'aliens have come to watch over us and make sure we don't destroy ourselves' stuff. Why would aliens care? Do we humans care if one ant nest invades another? Or if two species are competing for habitat to the detriment of one of them? We watch from a distance, tell ourselves how interesting it is and what we can learn from the behaviours, and then we go about our lives.

Aliens, I think, would be the same.
 
I think the general assumption is if in the vastness of time and space, an alien civilisation happens to make it to our neck of the woods, they would be the equivalent of many centuries of development beyond us. Therefore, they may have a societal outlook very different form ours.

They may have achieved spacefaring status with an egalitarian ethos, or a totalitarian one. Both are equally possible, because cohesiveness is most likely what would bring a society together for the mammoth task that would be not just getting off their own planet and system, but getting to another one.

I think the point on whether we might be of interest or not is a moot one - life, let alone intelligent life, seems to be a relative rarity, or at least so within our most colloquial neck of the woods. Therefore, we may well be of interest as an early digital era species, even if we do so through a haze of our own stupidity.
 
catseye said:
If aliens HAD ever given Earth the once-over -
a) why would they hang around? There must be millions of more interesting places out there, we're a very unimportant little place, and
b) why wouldn't they make their presence known? The knowledge of life out there elsewhere in the universe would (I feel) only be a good thing for humanity.

I can't buy into this 'aliens have come to watch over us and make sure we don't destroy ourselves' stuff. Why would aliens care? Do we humans care if one ant nest invades another? Or if two species are competing for habitat to the detriment of one of them? We watch from a distance, tell ourselves how interesting it is and what we can learn from the behaviours, and then we go about our lives.

Aliens, I think, would be the same.
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I'm not convinced we habitually really care about what other humans are doing to each other unless it threatens to affect us.

One thought I've been having recently is that curiosity seems fairly common in the animal kingdom, including among intelligent animals. If intelligences as alien to us as octopuses want to understand whatever they can about the world around them, it seems likely to me some aliens would investigate Earth if they could.

I'm fairly convinced that at any one time technological civilisations are rare and thinly spread in the universe, and are likely too distant from each other to make contact. But I'd bet others are out there searching anyway, as we are.
 
PeteByrdie said:
I'm not convinced we habitually really care about what other humans are doing to each other unless it threatens to affect us.

One thought I've been having recently is that curiosity seems fairly common in the animal kingdom, including among intelligent animals. If intelligences as alien to us as octopuses want to understand whatever they can about the world around them, it seems likely to me some aliens would investigate Earth if they could.

I'm fairly convinced that at any one time technological civilisations are rare and thinly spread in the universe, and are likely too distant from each other to make contact. But I'd bet others are out there searching anyway, as we are.
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To me the math's says there must be others out there, for all intents and purposes the Universe is infinite there could be millions upon millions of civilizations out there, but it would still be a drop in the ocean, I would hazard a guess there are probably 1000's of human type civilizations, if evolution is a constant throughout the Universe
 
Humanity only started radio and tv broadcasting recently, and with things like cabled internet and short range wifi, we're already moving away from high powered transmissions of our presence. Until a civilization starts doing things like significantly messing with their star's visible output via a Dyson swarm or something, they could easily be beyond our current technology's ability to detect.
 
Robbrent said:
The earth is the proverbial needle in the haystack (as is the solar system) the universe is unimaginably big and it could be teaming with life but be so spread out it could never meet , who knows if they have contacted us or not, the claims they have really need to be backed up more, with all the claims I have read none has ever said how they communicate
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We could also be unlucky in that our two closest planets with intelligent life equivalent or greater than our own are a lot closer to each other than to us (infinite odds on a galactic scale etc.). Therefore they may both know about each other through radio waves or analysing biospheres etc. and are devoting all their energies into communication and spaceflight to reach each other. They may also have detected some curious radio signals from the third exoplanet around Sol but don't have the time or resources to take it any further.
 
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Everyone assumes that E.T. will communicate by radio waves.

Is this narrow thinking ?

I think that it is possible E.T. may communicate with different wave lengths of color from past observations.
 
charliebrown said:
Everyone assumes that E.T. will communicate by radio waves.

Is this narrow thinking ?

I think that it is possible E.T. may communicate with different wave lengths of color from past observations.
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Any transmission is going to be on the electromagnetic spectrum, whether radio waves or the visible light portion, and will face the same problems due to the laws of physics. A radio broadcast, like a lightbulb, quickly loses detectability over distance, a lot of energy is spent sending most of it in a direction that is not towards us. And a directed broadcast, like a laser, will transmit farther, but pretty much has to be pointed right at us.


Even then, they could be pointing a high powered laser right at us from the nearest star, and it would have to be enormously powerful to be detectectable from Earth. I wonder if humanity is even able to detect the brightest light (light from a nuclear bomb or something) we know how to make if the source was by the nearest star.
 
I wonder where the Earth formed. The Earth Moon system was supposedly created when a body named Theia crashed into the Earth. The ratio of land to water on the Earth is atypical of exoplanets that we know of and there are theories about incoming comets etc. adding the water. What if Earth formed in the outer solar system where water and organics seem abundant and migrated into the inner system?

Would this make the Earth a rarer type of planet (ratio of land to water, position in the inner system, lots of organic chemicals, large moon)? If this is the case then "our" type of life may be rarer than we think as most is confined to water worlds with little or no land or under layers of ice. This would make technology more difficult and cut down the number of technical civilisations.
 
Tunn11 said:
I wonder where the Earth formed. The Earth Moon system was supposedly created when a body named Theia crashed into the Earth. The ratio of land to water on the Earth is atypical of exoplanets that we know of and there are theories about incoming comets etc. adding the water. What if Earth formed in the outer solar system where water and organics seem abundant and migrated into the inner system?

Would this make the Earth a rarer type of planet (ratio of land to water, position in the inner system, lots of organic chemicals, large moon)? If this is the case then "our" type of life may be rarer than we think as most is confined to water worlds with little or no land or under layers of ice. This would make technology more difficult and cut down the number of technical civilisations.
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I get where you are coming from but we have to scale this up on an infinite level and so there could be millions of earth-like exoplanets in the universe, however perhaps not many near us.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
I get where you are coming from but we have to scale this up on an infinite level and so there could be millions of earth-like exoplanets in the universe, however perhaps not many near us.
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Our system, as far as we know because we are still limited by the resolution of our telescopes, isn't typical in that we have no Super Earths or sub Neptunes. We also probably know less about our ice giants, Uranus and Neptune than we do about any other planet in our solar system. Our ideas about how life could develop there, or water land ratios,or at what point they have solid surfaces etc. is limited. Titan also has land and oceans, albeit not water and some idea of how it formed and why it is so different from other moons may give us clues. Venus is Earth's twin and very near but one of the most inhospitable places in the solar system as far as humans are concerned.

But, you are right, given the scale of the universe there are undoubtably other Earth like worlds. I just think they may not be that common which restricts our chances of discovering technical civilisations that we would be able to communicate with.
 
Scientists today claim there is more water than what is in our oceans trapped between 200 to 400 miles in the earth’s mantle and possibly the main source of our planet’s water.
 
Tunn11 said:
I wonder where the Earth formed. The Earth Moon system was supposedly created when a body named Theia crashed into the Earth. The ratio of land to water on the Earth is atypical of exoplanets that we know of and there are theories about incoming comets etc. adding the water. What if Earth formed in the outer solar system where water and organics seem abundant and migrated into the inner system?

Would this make the Earth a rarer type of planet (ratio of land to water, position in the inner system, lots of organic chemicals, large moon)? If this is the case then "our" type of life may be rarer than we think as most is confined to water worlds with little or no land or under layers of ice. This would make technology more difficult and cut down the number of technical civilisations.
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Along the same lines is the earth a goldilocks type of place for life in that everything is just right, gravity, water, air etc? But when you think of the actual size of the universe it could be replicated millions of times over, or more frightening unique (but somehow I doubt it)
 
Robbrent said:
Along the same lines is the earth a goldilocks type of place for life in that everything is just right, gravity, water, air etc? But when you think of the actual size of the universe it could be replicated millions of times over, or more frightening unique (but somehow I doubt it)
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We term it the Goldilocks zone because it is right for us. What about Titan -way out of a Goldilocks zone, not even a liquid water environment outside the zone like Europa; but is it a possible for life? If so their Goldilocks zone would be very different.

IMO we don't know enough about smaller planets, moons, dwarf planets, etc. in other star systems to know how common or rare a double planet in the inner system is. They seem more common in the asteroid and dwarf planet areas of the system, especially the Edgewoth Kuiper belt. Was this because of the past migrations of the gas giants disrupted the inner system? If so how has that worked in other systems? Consider, Earth is virtually a double planet, Mars, two tiny captured asteroids, Mercury and Venus zilch.

IIRC Sagan thought that the story of Oannes, the fish being that taught mankind wisdom was the best candidate for an "ancient alien". He was meant to have come out of the ocean every day to impart knowledge to mankind If (big if) this is so it may point to intelligent technical life evolving on a world that had more ocean than land.

I'm not saying that the Earth is unique, the universe is too big and too old but that small rocky double planets with 70/30 water/land in a zone where water is liquid may not be as common an occurance as Hot Jupiters, Super Earths etc. which may have implications for finding technological life nearby. Once our tech starts to find smaller planets, moons, etc. out there we will get a better idea.
 
I think we are the “ garden of Eden “ for the Milky Way because so far the thousands of exoplanets found do not look promising for life.

All aliens come to earth to get their Tee-Shirt which says “ I visited the third rock from the sun “.

I think one exoplanet found recently was described as a gigantic diamond.

Earth is so special but our inhabitants are trying to destroy it.

William Shatner’s recent space ride said there is 50 miles of atmosphere between life and the darkest death.
 
Tunn11 said:
We term it the Goldilocks zone because it is right for us. What about Titan -way out of a Goldilocks zone, not even a liquid water environment outside the zone like Europa; but is it a possible for life? If so their Goldilocks zone would be very different.
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I attended one of the last lectures by the late, great astronomer Sir Patrick Moore. The main theme was the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. At the Q & A session, I was delighted that he spotted my raised hand. I asked whether our definition of the "Goldilocks Zone" was too restrictive, as there may be more extremophile alien life out there, which might be overlooked given our current definitions. Patrick's reply was that he didn't think so and all evidence points to Earth-like conditions being exceedingly rare.
 
Exceedingly rare. You have to consider the particular set of elements that formed our part of the milky way may not have been present in those quantities in other parts of the universe. That’s before the Solar System was even created.
 
I heard the theory that silicon forms 4 bonds like carbon.

Why did life go with carbon instead of silicon ?

We could be transparent beings with silicon.

Then in the original 1951 movie “ The Thing “ the scientists were doing battle with an alien who was vegetable which was described as a dangerous carrot.

Supposedly, Warner von Braun decided the crashed Roswell UFO as a vegetable that was alive and its occupants would mentally become one with the UFO as the UFO lacked mechanical dials.

But my opinion is that planet earth having all the parameters is very rare.

But if you not afraid to go down the “ rabbit hole “ there are other dimensions and there are more than one universe.
 
Stormkhan said:
The Goldilocks Zone refers to what would be possible for a human-type life to exist.
We're showing our bias there.
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Oh, look at you with your lucky planet with an inner molten core, tectonic plate shift and a convenient moon stirring the seas constantly creating the ingredients for life telling the rest of us about our bias.
 
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