Something dawned on me today.

I've always thought there is tons of other life forms in the universe, and also given the sheer number, in the millions+, there is likely lots of intelligent life out there.

Because I think this number is so large, I have to imagine there are civilizations that have 1,000+ years of technological advances over us.

Some of the worlds harbouring those civilizations would also likely have greater resources than Earth.

Given the state of technological progress and development, if exceeding the speed of light is possible, especially in a form that allows for the transport of humans, I have to believe this will be achieved within the next 1,000 years....probably much less.

The fact no aliens, or any sign of extra-terrestrial life have visited us leaves me a bit perplexed.

Either:

1) There are no other life forms out there
2) If there are, none are significantly more advanced than us
3) Exceeding speed of light is not possible
4) If it is, not to a degree that allows expedient inter-galactic travel


I have a hard time believing 1 and 2. The most likely way to resolve 2 is that self-destruction occurs once technological advances to such a high level, either accidentally or on purpose.

3 and 4 I just want to believe are possible.

Will advanced civilizations figure out how to trisect an angle with ruler and compass?

winner

^^ yes

5.)The universe is ridiculously BIG
6.) We're not that interesting

7) We've only been here for a very short time

You do know about the Fermi pardox? – although I don't think much of it.

There are other life forms. Personally I think life is ubiquitous throughout the universe. The key issue here though is the density of technological life, which is likely orders of magnitude less.

Life developed almost immediately on Earth after the comet bombardment stopped 3.8 billion years ago. Nervous systems only started developing around half a billion years ago. Human level intelligence about half a million years ago. A species that can leave a interstellar foot print in the form of radio wave transmission a couple of decades. We have not demonstrated that any bigger footprint is practical. In a billion years it seems the Earth will be too hot for life. It took around 80% of the time Earth could support life to get to our level, we were probably fairly lucky.

Personally I think this is a probable winner. For the last hundred years we have been in a technology boom. Booms generally don't last for ever. It is possible that there will be no significant technological advances beyond what we can currently visualise and plan for. (My guess is that biotechnology is the only area with significant surprises left.)

So its quite possible that there is no species much further advanced technologically than us.

That’s our best guess at the moment, which means that it is what we consider most likely at the moment. Just because FTL travel appears in most Science fiction novels does not mean it will happen.

Relativity does not preclude interstellar travel. Just makes it slower and more cumbersome.

We have had the technology for inter planetary travel for decades with not much interest shown. Motivation is a key factor. Plus the practicalities of implementing interstellar travel. Not much energy source in deep space. What to do when you get to the other end.

Edit: Why not turn the subject on its head and suggest that the amount of evidence of technological life is dependant on the difficulty for a species to leave an interstellar detectable footprint.

I think it is so interesting to realize that there could have been civilizations 1 billion years ago that make us today look like ants on a hill.

Also the theory of the multiverse. As unfathomably large as our universe is... It's quite possibly just a grain of sand on a beach.

Also cool: "NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star" 12.5.11
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ke...-briefing.html

How you can conclude, based on our primitive sensing methods for < 100 years, that intelligent life should have been noticed by us is beyond me.

I'm saying we should have had visitors.

I'm not saying we should be able to detect non-visitors.

My thoughts are formed because i believe there should be thousands of civilizations out there more advanced than us.

They would likely be 'probing' the universe in search of other life forms. they probably have much superior technology than us to be able to discover where these other life forms are. Upon discovery they are likely to attempt contact/visit.

Now the reason I think there are thousands of advanced civs out there is because of the immense size of the universe...which could also serve as a reason we have no been contacted.

Isn't 3 a good enough reason to answer this completely. Every single experiment that has ever been done has confirmed that c is an insurmountable barrier. The recent neutrino experiment is interesting but the smart money says it is an experimental error. In addition, the application of Lorentz invariance to existing quantum mechanical equations led to the prediction of new particles like the positron before they were observed.

All other explanations for the lack of contact are completely speculative, but the velocity limitation is known, theoretically sound and completely explains the current situation. Not much more to discuss, is there?

is it known?
is it theoretically sound?

what else can we discover?
perhaps there are way to travel great distances without breaking the speed of light...eg. wormholes.

My point here is that not having found evidence of other technological life is an indication that there is no such mechanism.

Edit: Alistair Reynolds Sci Fi book Revelation Space gives an amusing idea as to why there are no star faring alien empires. Basically someone built really efficient machines dedicated to the task of eliminating any species that reached too high a level of technology. So there are no alien technological life because they have all sterilised like vermin.

I have a feeling that you don't quite grasp two concepts, the immensity that you speak of and the distance between objects in the universe. If you did, you certainly wouldn't think this.

Even if aliens could travel the speed of light, the universe is so big they are not likely to run across us. There could be more advanced civilizations, but I doubt there are a lot of them. Rather than a needle in a hay stack, we are a needle in a hay field.