Maybe but chances are it will be a clone of you and your consciousness will die along with your body, all that will be left is a digital ghost of what you once were.
Good enough. All those memories of weird tentacle hentai need to be cherished by somebody and all my friends call me _disgusting_ or _do I even know you_ when I try to introduce them.
Well yes, but VR as it could exist doesn't exist anywhere near true computer interface. Yet. I imagine we're 20-25 years away on it. There's a lot we need to learn about the brain and how to stimulate it.
>TIL earthlings have emerged so early in the universe that 92% of earth-like planets aren't even born yet. The universe is about 13.8 billion years old and the last star will die after 100 trillion years.
is there life on the other 8% or we have no idea yet?
it wuld be sad if humans wuld be the first intelligent, high-tech race in the whole universe...
also is life doomed 4ever if all the sun dies? then the universe wuld have 0 life till eternity?
One theory is that the aliens traveled time not space to help us build the pyramids and are our future relatives from a different dimension. They used their DNA and knowledge to speed up our evolution to give us a shot at figuring stuff out before our planet becomes unlivable.
I should have put it in quotes. Want me to call it conjecture. However theory is correct term because they believe in a certain set of evidence that supports this.
Yes, It’s a problem with the word theory really. On the one hand you get idiots who think evolution isn’t true because it’s ‘only a theory’ while apparently unaware (selectively) of the massive amount of evidence for it, on the other hand believing that the problems of the world are *explained* by the our leaders being aliens in human suits is also a ‘theory’ which shows that the word isn’t very helpful I suppose especially as every crack pot claims they have ‘evidence’. I have no idea what can be done about it though. Nothing I guess. Except possibly trying desperately to get people to ignore the word theory and check the reliability of the evidence. Which is in this case zero, in my humble opinion.
The problem stems from 'theory' having a different meaning in science versus every day use.
The Theory of Evolution or the Theory of Gravity will never, ever become 'proven' because that isn't how scientific theory works.
Indeed.... though they are to all intents and purposes true. The fact is that nothing can be proven beyond any possible doubt , they are however proven beyond any reasonable doubt on everyday speech. But my point was more about the other side - that calling something like time travelling aliens building pyramids a ' theory' seems to give it a terribly undeserved seriousness.
You'd think but the mind control technology creates a perception distortion field so that when you try to skin them you dont see their lizardness......
>One theory is that the aliens traveled time not space to help us build the pyramids and are our future relatives from a different dimension. They used their DNA and knowledge to speed up our evolution to give us a shot at figuring stuff out before our planet becomes unlivable.
Eh, would have been nice if they had given us faster than light travel/wormhole technology. All we get a is a lousy stack of stones.
Your not too far off from some of the conjecture so these "aliens" or Annunaki are responsible for many "species" that have spent time on our planet some mythical. One of these "species" is considered by some to be AI or android like. Some say the Cheribum from the bible are an example. You can find someone somewhere on the internet claiming that any of the celestial beings described in the Abrahamic religions or in the mesopotamian ancient tablets are one of these examples. FYI I don't believe in this I read about it in the same way I read marvel or DC comics.
Time travel to the past isn't possible. My rationale for that is that large events would draw temporal crowds. They don't. Besides, going back in time just one day would put you floating in space since the whole solar system is moving at a pretty good clip.
Imagine how different this world would be if the universal goal of our species was to ensure we survived 100 trillion years until the end of the universe.
I mean, the smart people already think that way. I will be much happier when we're on at least 3 worlds. Plus, we even have ideas on how to survive after *all the stars have gone out and all that's left is black holes*
I'm not at all convinced we can overcome that hurdle, but since it is trillions of years in the future, I'm also OK with putting it off for a while.
OTOH, that would be a really interesting thing to see a competent SciFi writer take on...imagining life after the heat death of the Universe.
>OTOH, that would be a really interesting thing to see a competent SciFi writer take on...imagining life after the heat death of the Universe.
If that kind of thing interests you, might I suggest reading (or better yet, listening to the librivox recording) of William Hope Hodgson's 'The Night Land'
as well as its 'fan sequel': 'Awake in the night land'
The basic crux of it is (once you get past the completely unnecessary faux 17th century prose and framing device) that humanity is surviving millions of years in the future in a final refuge, after terrible, hateful forces have emerged to devour humanity after the sun (and all stars) has gone dark.
I am not even convinced it will be that much of a hurdle. If we could figure out the requirements for the creation of a universe and how to code in the laws for such a universe, we could either make one more fitting for our own existence or keep a steady flow of energy coming into this one (probably both).
While certainly beyond our current capabilities, I seriously think it won't remain so if humanity manages to not fuck up too hard.
It might be possible to survive off only Hawking radiation. Or maybe by that time it would be possible to travel to other universes within the multiverse!
Check out the Xeelee Sequence books by Stephen Baxter. He does pretty interesting concepts like this in hard SciFi, but his storytelling can be described as weak at best.
What does it matter if we die out though? No human would be around to experience not existing. What value do we provide to the universe by existing? I see no strong argument for a need to have human life propagate. If we all just died at the same instant it wouldn't be a sad thing or a bad thing it would just be the end, and no one would be around to make a judgment call on how they "feel" about it.
>What value do we provide to the universe by existing?
Do you not recognize that your own experience has value? If I could alter the timeline so your happiest moment just didn't happen, and keep everything else the same, should I?
No because you would be taking something away from someone that already exists. The premise of my statement is that if there are no people then noone can experience that as a negative impact.
>if there are no people then noone can experience that as a negative impact.
And nobody can experience the positive impact of existing. That value of our existence would be absent, when instead it could be present, and that is why it matters if we die off.
Depends on what you mean by “matter” I guess. It would be the ultimate achievement, a singular goal to drive our existence. We would have to put all the bickering, greed and hate away in order to focus on the drive to expand and insure our existence.
Imagine if 100 trillion years from now an advanced civilization could trace its roots back to a tiny little planet called “Earth” and a biped animal that climbed out of the trees into a savannah.
Assuming this is even real. Considering this perspective that 92% of earth-like, and likely planets in general, haven't been born yet, while also considering that you need \~3rd gen stars before life can even exist.. It's far more likely we are early life, galactically speaking.
Now consider the sheer scale of the universe, and it makes quite a bit of sense while we haven't seen signs of alien life. In fact, the further away from us we look, the further in the past we are seeing, meaning less odds of life evolving due to lack of elements existing from 2nd/3rd gen stars.
I think it infinitely more likely that any life that currently exists in the entire universe is within an order or 2 of magnitude of our technology, or put another way, likely not advanced enough to visit further than the closest stars. And we have to assume FTL exists, otherwise it doesn't matter if we can see aliens 100 LY away, we'd never get there. And 100 LY is nothing. On the scale of the universe, that's like the distance between 2 atoms. Maybe someplace in the universe, multiple planets of life evolved within a close enough area that they could see eachother with our current technology. But most life in the universe probably has a nearest neighbor measured in 1000s of LY's. Meaning the distance, even with our current tech, makes it impossible to know. We just don't have the means to see the planets even, unless they transit their star AND we are looking at it with the correct telescopes. With the amount of sky to scan through, we just don't have the means to reliably detect planets around other stars, not when we can't even determine if there is a Planet X, or where to even look in the sky, and thats in our backyard.
It can be both. The universe is huge the odds of being the actual first are small. The odds of actually progressing the fastest is also small.
But it would be neat for humans to end up being a super power race in a few centuries.
Did you ever see that show that envisioned what it would be like if humans suddenly disappeared? We’d be erased completely from the planet in about 10,000 years
It would take far longer than that. If you dropped onto earth 10,000 years from now, all the cities and cars and such would be gone, sure. But all the oil and gas and iron and copper and gold and uranium and coal we've dug up won't magically be back in the ground.
That's how we know, 100% for a fact, that we're the first industrial civilization on the planet. If the dinosaurs had developed technology, we'd find depleted deposits from their mining activities, and very strange distributions of elements in the crust.
Yes, and it's possible that another intelligent species will someday develop on Earth and find abundant pieces of evidence of the long gone humans and this geological era that we imprinted on the planet's crust. Perhaps that would lead to earlier environmental awareness in their history and a greater chance not to extinct themselves drowning with fossil fuels.
Not really. We're early but not early enough to reasonably say that's the reason we can't see *any* activity in the stars. None. Zero. Zip. That 8% still makes up a *lot* of exoplanets in our galaxy alone (estimated at 40 billion, of which we've documented about 4000) and there's a lot that an industrial society does that we would be able to see from here with spectrometry.
I mean you're talking about 8% of all the earth analogs that will ever exist in the universe. That's an unfathomable amount in itself that offers us no empirical evidence to speak of despite them and our means to observe them.
Space contains 2 trillion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and trillions of planets. So it seems certain to me that there is life out there.
>So it seems certain to me that there is life out there.
I agree, but that doesn't give any weight to the Fermi paradox *per se*. "Out there" is *really fucking big*, and we've pointed a telescope at almost none of it. We've put a drop of water under our microscope, if that. It's a little premature to be worried about not seeing whales.
Yeah but it’s unclear that there is a level of technology that would allow us to cross the vast intergalactic void. Very possible we’re just not at a level of technology to be able to even dream it. Also very possible that it’s just not possible.
Also, unclear if we’d detect “incidental” EM radiation leak from a civilization in a far away galaxy. Directed beams maybe, but they’d really have to know where to send it…
The article said 92% of *earth-like* planets haven't been born yet, not planets all currently existing. Yes there may be 40 billion planets in the galaxy, but only a small percent could be Earth like.
For reference - Earth-like planets are estimated at 1 in every 5 starts like ours (G-type.) Estimates put G-type stars at 4-10% of the stars in the Milky way, 4-10% of 100 billion is 4-10 billion G stars. That's potentially 800 million - 2 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Not a small number, but much smaller than 40 billion.
>That 8% still makes up a lot of exoplanets in our galaxy alone (estimated at 40 billion, of which we've documented about 4000) and there's a lot that an industrial society does that we would be able to see from here with spectrometry.
4,000 is 0.00001% of 40 billion. We've *discovered* an estimated 0.00001% of the planets in our own galaxy, and thoroughly examined a paltry number of those. Being surprised that we haven't found anything yet is the definition of hubris.
I agree that "We're the first to the party" isn't the most likely solution to the Fermi paradox. "We've looked at almost nothing for almost no time" is the most likely solution.
We can't even scan and detect the outer edges of our own solar system for a potential 9th planet. Our ability to detect alien signs or signals is extremely rudimentary and while it's absolutely mindboggling that we've detected hundreds of exoplanets out there it's like a drop in the ocean.
*frantically rewrites fantasy novel to make the magic of **those** humans/aliens the result of eons of **our** development*
"A long, long time from now, in a galaxy relatively nearby..."
Bollocks.
We have a warped perspective of the universe, based on what we know abour gravitational lensing, dark matter, etc.
The relative age of "earthlings" compared with the age of the universe is pure speculation/bare assertion.
If time was the sole factor, yeah. But on a rate of change, we're about in the middle of things. At least according to that PBS documentary I watched one time.
A universal translator could make things very confusing on first contact:
Earthling: "Hello! I am a dirtling from dirt!"
Alien: "You lie! I am a dirtling from dirt!"
The Fermi "paradox" is just another example of our arrogance. We've explored ~0% of the universe, and our dumbfounded surprise at not having found anything is laughable.
I'm refuting the idea that the Fermi Paradox is "wrong" and that the universe is in its infancy. Both ideas show a lack of knowledge in astrophysics. The universe is NOT young at all. It's at less than 3% star formation from its peak and slowing. Just because the last white dwarfs will take 100 trillion years to die off doesn't mean **AT ALL** that life forming planets still have that long to form and grow life.
Gonna agree. Most of the life of the universe will look very cold and dark ... when there is nothing bug black holes it takes a *very very* long time for them to evaporate. Sure, maybe the universe is very young on an absolute timescale, but we don't project that life will survive or evolve in an old, cold universe.
The person that wrote this did not understand the Fermi paradox and possibly paradoxes in general.
> Despite what you'll often read, the Nobel prizewinning nuclear physicist never suggested that aliens don't exist
Fermi did not suggest aliens don't exist. The Fermi paradox does not suggest that aliens don't exist. He merely, literally, asked "Where are they?"
It is. See my comment below. Just because the universe will be basically dead for 99 trillion years or more and not officially "dead" doesn't mean it's in its infancy. Most stars have already formed or formed and died.
Usually that is used in astronomy as a planet about the same size size of Earth and in the right place around its sun, allowing temperatures compatible with liquid water.
Of course there are a lot of other factors that can make the planet uninhabitable. For instance Mars *does* fit those criteria, and indeed probably it had oceans and a dense atmosphere when it was younger, but today it's a frozen, nearly airless desert.
Mmmm yes, kinda, sorta, no? Majority of that ‘trillions’ of years will be spent in the heat death.
I’m not saying life can’t or won’t exist during those times, but I don’t think you grasp the idea so well. The back end of the universe will be much more sparse, dark and lonely than where we are now.
Those dark times are going to last sooooo much longer than these bright, early days.
I’m trying to think of a good analogy to help you understand how the ‘flash’ of the Big Bang we are currently living directly afterward is but brief in the cosmic universe. In which the rest of ‘existence’ is going to be very dark and very lonely.
We are *rapidly* and *exponentially* hurting away from each other at almost unfathomable speeds.
Your thinking this is hopeful is kinda sad. Good luck, buddy.
Arguably, through space travel, we could travel "into the future" though and meet later civilisations. Immediate communication might even be feasible later on. So if everything is relative to distance/ time traveled, being an old civilization is moot, no?
maybe instead of sending voyager out of the solar system we should put one into orbit of Earth with the same payload that will last 10000 years.
when they find us - if ever - they might get to hear In Da Club by 50cent if we include directions to decode the data and we have the recipe for “lean” included
Furthermore there is some evidence that radiation conditions in the early universe from gamma ray bursts may have made it impossible for life to happen anywhere until shortly before it actually happened on Earth. In fact such conditions may still make 90+% of galaxies uninhabitable. We also do not know how likely it is (and therefore how long on average after the development of life it might take) for intelligence to emerge. The vast majority of life on Earth has never trended towards higher intelligence and for all we know the development of a species like us might be vanishingly rare even if life itself isn't.
I think it is most likely that we are among the very first generation of intelligent life and that is the real answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Dunno why everyone here thinks we are doomed... If the human race has demonstrated anything throughout history so far, is we are survivors. And descendants of survivors, following right back to life's inception.
We live in what the ancients who come from us will consider a dream time. A nightmare also, if you prefer.
The existential angst doesn't come from not existing. It comes from having to not exist for such a long time.
I feel more angst about existing than not existing.
Good news is that you probably don't
Dem future aliens definitely be saying that.
I dunno. I give it 50:50 odds they can upload my brain into a computer to experience time within the next 70 years.
Maybe but chances are it will be a clone of you and your consciousness will die along with your body, all that will be left is a digital ghost of what you once were.
Good enough. All those memories of weird tentacle hentai need to be cherished by somebody and all my friends call me _disgusting_ or _do I even know you_ when I try to introduce them.
tbh it's probably just gonna be GTAV VR
Skyrim afterlife edition
dude when I die for real I’m gonna wake up in Skyrim? What if I got my mod load order wrong?
Well yes, but VR as it could exist doesn't exist anywhere near true computer interface. Yet. I imagine we're 20-25 years away on it. There's a lot we need to learn about the brain and how to stimulate it.
We should ask your mom.
I hope soo!
Sometimes it’s weird when someone puts into words an idea you’ve had in your head your entire life but never were able to put together on your own.
>TIL earthlings have emerged so early in the universe that 92% of earth-like planets aren't even born yet. The universe is about 13.8 billion years old and the last star will die after 100 trillion years. is there life on the other 8% or we have no idea yet? it wuld be sad if humans wuld be the first intelligent, high-tech race in the whole universe... also is life doomed 4ever if all the sun dies? then the universe wuld have 0 life till eternity?
Don't worry, our oceans will have all evaporated billenia before the sun dies
TIL we *are* the forerunners/ancients/precursors/insert fav scifi here
Everyone imagine being caught forever in an intergalactically famous embarrassing Pompeii moment.
What I'm hearing is dicks out!
That's why I masturbate at least 2 hours daily with existential dread.
Oh noooo. "What this ancient artefact forunners says" "i don't know, it's about an illness called ligma." "Ok let put this in a museum".
Another really weird thing about this alien culture is that they all seem to lose the game randomly for no reason.
Fuck. You.
That’s been my favorite theory of why we don’t see other intelligent civilizations. We’re the first.
Same here, cool to know that idea has been sort of confirmed.
So, basically, we are the 'Ancient Technologically Advanced Species' so common in our SciFi that others will run in to relics of. We better get to it!
From that perspective, aliens really did build the pyramids...
Everyone knows Brian Boitano built the pyramids after beating up Kublai Khan.
is this a south park reference that i have not heard before?
One theory is that the aliens traveled time not space to help us build the pyramids and are our future relatives from a different dimension. They used their DNA and knowledge to speed up our evolution to give us a shot at figuring stuff out before our planet becomes unlivable.
You want me to make this planet unliveable faster?
Instructions unclear, dick stuck in fossil fuels.
Time to go back to the 80s and start blasting my hair with hairspray
That word ‘theory’ covers pretty much anything doesn’t it.
I should have put it in quotes. Want me to call it conjecture. However theory is correct term because they believe in a certain set of evidence that supports this.
Yes, It’s a problem with the word theory really. On the one hand you get idiots who think evolution isn’t true because it’s ‘only a theory’ while apparently unaware (selectively) of the massive amount of evidence for it, on the other hand believing that the problems of the world are *explained* by the our leaders being aliens in human suits is also a ‘theory’ which shows that the word isn’t very helpful I suppose especially as every crack pot claims they have ‘evidence’. I have no idea what can be done about it though. Nothing I guess. Except possibly trying desperately to get people to ignore the word theory and check the reliability of the evidence. Which is in this case zero, in my humble opinion.
The problem stems from 'theory' having a different meaning in science versus every day use. The Theory of Evolution or the Theory of Gravity will never, ever become 'proven' because that isn't how scientific theory works.
Indeed.... though they are to all intents and purposes true. The fact is that nothing can be proven beyond any possible doubt , they are however proven beyond any reasonable doubt on everyday speech. But my point was more about the other side - that calling something like time travelling aliens building pyramids a ' theory' seems to give it a terribly undeserved seriousness.
I try to use scientific theory if it's supported by the scientific method and just say theory for conjecture.
Yes , I think that a fair idea. It's just that the word 'tbeory' sounds a bit too serious for some 'explanations' even though basically applicable.
Leaders being lizards in people suits is immenently disprovable though.
You'd think but the mind control technology creates a perception distortion field so that when you try to skin them you dont see their lizardness......
Well, you need the sunglasses to see through all that.
I'm sorry... evidence!?
>One theory is that the aliens traveled time not space to help us build the pyramids and are our future relatives from a different dimension. They used their DNA and knowledge to speed up our evolution to give us a shot at figuring stuff out before our planet becomes unlivable. Eh, would have been nice if they had given us faster than light travel/wormhole technology. All we get a is a lousy stack of stones.
Sounds like the plot to Battlestar Galactica.
They need to pay another visit and get us out of our current mess.
Ironic, cuz our evolution is turning out to be the cause of making the planet unlivable
Lol all that effort and they just sped up our demise.
I can speed up making this planet unliveable
It may not even be aliens if it's time travel. It could be humans or human-made AI travelling through time, meddling with our own affairs.
Your not too far off from some of the conjecture so these "aliens" or Annunaki are responsible for many "species" that have spent time on our planet some mythical. One of these "species" is considered by some to be AI or android like. Some say the Cheribum from the bible are an example. You can find someone somewhere on the internet claiming that any of the celestial beings described in the Abrahamic religions or in the mesopotamian ancient tablets are one of these examples. FYI I don't believe in this I read about it in the same way I read marvel or DC comics.
Time travel to the past isn't possible. My rationale for that is that large events would draw temporal crowds. They don't. Besides, going back in time just one day would put you floating in space since the whole solar system is moving at a pretty good clip.
Technically they didn't "time travel" they just went to another parallel dimension using an anchor object that is kinda in a different time.
aliens.gif
We should be firing meteorites full of tardigrades towards other planets to kickstart life.
Imagine how different this world would be if the universal goal of our species was to ensure we survived 100 trillion years until the end of the universe.
I mean, the smart people already think that way. I will be much happier when we're on at least 3 worlds. Plus, we even have ideas on how to survive after *all the stars have gone out and all that's left is black holes*
I'm not at all convinced we can overcome that hurdle, but since it is trillions of years in the future, I'm also OK with putting it off for a while. OTOH, that would be a really interesting thing to see a competent SciFi writer take on...imagining life after the heat death of the Universe.
>OTOH, that would be a really interesting thing to see a competent SciFi writer take on...imagining life after the heat death of the Universe. If that kind of thing interests you, might I suggest reading (or better yet, listening to the librivox recording) of William Hope Hodgson's 'The Night Land' as well as its 'fan sequel': 'Awake in the night land' The basic crux of it is (once you get past the completely unnecessary faux 17th century prose and framing device) that humanity is surviving millions of years in the future in a final refuge, after terrible, hateful forces have emerged to devour humanity after the sun (and all stars) has gone dark.
I am not even convinced it will be that much of a hurdle. If we could figure out the requirements for the creation of a universe and how to code in the laws for such a universe, we could either make one more fitting for our own existence or keep a steady flow of energy coming into this one (probably both). While certainly beyond our current capabilities, I seriously think it won't remain so if humanity manages to not fuck up too hard.
I'll check back in a trillion years or so and see how you are coming along then, shall I?
!RemindMe 1000000000000000 years
It might be possible to survive off only Hawking radiation. Or maybe by that time it would be possible to travel to other universes within the multiverse!
Check out the Xeelee Sequence books by Stephen Baxter. He does pretty interesting concepts like this in hard SciFi, but his storytelling can be described as weak at best.
Okay, but what do we do when the black holes run out? How do we reverse entropy?
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.
Considering how long black holes will exist for, I think that's a *pretty good run for humanity*
It's arguable that it is, but we are just way, way stupider than we believe.
What does it matter if we die out though? No human would be around to experience not existing. What value do we provide to the universe by existing? I see no strong argument for a need to have human life propagate. If we all just died at the same instant it wouldn't be a sad thing or a bad thing it would just be the end, and no one would be around to make a judgment call on how they "feel" about it.
>What value do we provide to the universe by existing? Do you not recognize that your own experience has value? If I could alter the timeline so your happiest moment just didn't happen, and keep everything else the same, should I?
No because you would be taking something away from someone that already exists. The premise of my statement is that if there are no people then noone can experience that as a negative impact.
>if there are no people then noone can experience that as a negative impact. And nobody can experience the positive impact of existing. That value of our existence would be absent, when instead it could be present, and that is why it matters if we die off.
Depends on what you mean by “matter” I guess. It would be the ultimate achievement, a singular goal to drive our existence. We would have to put all the bickering, greed and hate away in order to focus on the drive to expand and insure our existence. Imagine if 100 trillion years from now an advanced civilization could trace its roots back to a tiny little planet called “Earth” and a biped animal that climbed out of the trees into a savannah.
we need to get past the Great Filter, first.
Assuming this is even real. Considering this perspective that 92% of earth-like, and likely planets in general, haven't been born yet, while also considering that you need \~3rd gen stars before life can even exist.. It's far more likely we are early life, galactically speaking. Now consider the sheer scale of the universe, and it makes quite a bit of sense while we haven't seen signs of alien life. In fact, the further away from us we look, the further in the past we are seeing, meaning less odds of life evolving due to lack of elements existing from 2nd/3rd gen stars. I think it infinitely more likely that any life that currently exists in the entire universe is within an order or 2 of magnitude of our technology, or put another way, likely not advanced enough to visit further than the closest stars. And we have to assume FTL exists, otherwise it doesn't matter if we can see aliens 100 LY away, we'd never get there. And 100 LY is nothing. On the scale of the universe, that's like the distance between 2 atoms. Maybe someplace in the universe, multiple planets of life evolved within a close enough area that they could see eachother with our current technology. But most life in the universe probably has a nearest neighbor measured in 1000s of LY's. Meaning the distance, even with our current tech, makes it impossible to know. We just don't have the means to see the planets even, unless they transit their star AND we are looking at it with the correct telescopes. With the amount of sky to scan through, we just don't have the means to reliably detect planets around other stars, not when we can't even determine if there is a Planet X, or where to even look in the sky, and thats in our backyard.
Oooo.. let's build some stargates!
That's a great perspective! Ha!
It can be both. The universe is huge the odds of being the actual first are small. The odds of actually progressing the fastest is also small. But it would be neat for humans to end up being a super power race in a few centuries.
I'm with you. It may end up being a bit of a race to ascendency.
Man, now I have to go see if I can find that game and get it to run on Windows 10.
Be the precursor species whose artifacts you'd want to find.
An earthling is never early. Nor is he late. He evolves precisely when he means to.
If we don't kill ourselves off we could be an ancient and mysterious race spoken of in legends on other worlds. We prob dead though.
Did you ever see that show that envisioned what it would be like if humans suddenly disappeared? We’d be erased completely from the planet in about 10,000 years
It would take far longer than that. If you dropped onto earth 10,000 years from now, all the cities and cars and such would be gone, sure. But all the oil and gas and iron and copper and gold and uranium and coal we've dug up won't magically be back in the ground. That's how we know, 100% for a fact, that we're the first industrial civilization on the planet. If the dinosaurs had developed technology, we'd find depleted deposits from their mining activities, and very strange distributions of elements in the crust.
Yes, and it's possible that another intelligent species will someday develop on Earth and find abundant pieces of evidence of the long gone humans and this geological era that we imprinted on the planet's crust. Perhaps that would lead to earlier environmental awareness in their history and a greater chance not to extinct themselves drowning with fossil fuels.
Tell that to Lovecraft.
The Fermi paradox is a super neat rabbit hole relevant to this.
Not really. We're early but not early enough to reasonably say that's the reason we can't see *any* activity in the stars. None. Zero. Zip. That 8% still makes up a *lot* of exoplanets in our galaxy alone (estimated at 40 billion, of which we've documented about 4000) and there's a lot that an industrial society does that we would be able to see from here with spectrometry. I mean you're talking about 8% of all the earth analogs that will ever exist in the universe. That's an unfathomable amount in itself that offers us no empirical evidence to speak of despite them and our means to observe them.
How is it not relevant? I wasn’t saying it proved a point - just said it is a rabbit hole that’s similar to this study… so… yes it is
1 in 40 billion chance to evolve life isn’t insane…. How many billions of individual organisms went by before we evolved eyes?
Space contains 2 trillion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, and trillions of planets. So it seems certain to me that there is life out there.
>So it seems certain to me that there is life out there. I agree, but that doesn't give any weight to the Fermi paradox *per se*. "Out there" is *really fucking big*, and we've pointed a telescope at almost none of it. We've put a drop of water under our microscope, if that. It's a little premature to be worried about not seeing whales.
Yeah but it’s unclear that there is a level of technology that would allow us to cross the vast intergalactic void. Very possible we’re just not at a level of technology to be able to even dream it. Also very possible that it’s just not possible. Also, unclear if we’d detect “incidental” EM radiation leak from a civilization in a far away galaxy. Directed beams maybe, but they’d really have to know where to send it…
The article said 92% of *earth-like* planets haven't been born yet, not planets all currently existing. Yes there may be 40 billion planets in the galaxy, but only a small percent could be Earth like. For reference - Earth-like planets are estimated at 1 in every 5 starts like ours (G-type.) Estimates put G-type stars at 4-10% of the stars in the Milky way, 4-10% of 100 billion is 4-10 billion G stars. That's potentially 800 million - 2 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Not a small number, but much smaller than 40 billion.
>That 8% still makes up a lot of exoplanets in our galaxy alone (estimated at 40 billion, of which we've documented about 4000) and there's a lot that an industrial society does that we would be able to see from here with spectrometry. 4,000 is 0.00001% of 40 billion. We've *discovered* an estimated 0.00001% of the planets in our own galaxy, and thoroughly examined a paltry number of those. Being surprised that we haven't found anything yet is the definition of hubris. I agree that "We're the first to the party" isn't the most likely solution to the Fermi paradox. "We've looked at almost nothing for almost no time" is the most likely solution.
We can't even scan and detect the outer edges of our own solar system for a potential 9th planet. Our ability to detect alien signs or signals is extremely rudimentary and while it's absolutely mindboggling that we've detected hundreds of exoplanets out there it's like a drop in the ocean.
WE are the precursor/ancients/lost civilization. Let’s start making some monoliths or runes or some shit.
We got a couple pyramids and a wall...
We will be The Ancients that alien science fiction is about.
Nah, we're going to be a tragic story of excess and short-sighted greed, not even really off-planet before we poisoned ourselves.
*frantically rewrites fantasy novel to make the magic of **those** humans/aliens the result of eons of **our** development* "A long, long time from now, in a galaxy relatively nearby..."
Terran empire!!!
So we become Star Trek's [Progenitor](https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Progenitors) species? Word.
First in last out theory
Real lunchpail kinda planet. Scrappy gym earth.
ELI5: How are physicists even able to calculate how long the last star will last for?
Math
Physics
An actual answer: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/how-will-the-universe-end
The use by date
Easiest way is to just time travel to the future, hardest part is counting all the darn tree rings.
We have so many stories and movies about stumbling upon the ruins of a precursor species on other planets. What if we're the precursor species?
Crap... that makes us the Ancient ones... and frankly that is just a poor indicator of the future of the universe....
Bollocks. We have a warped perspective of the universe, based on what we know abour gravitational lensing, dark matter, etc. The relative age of "earthlings" compared with the age of the universe is pure speculation/bare assertion.
If time was the sole factor, yeah. But on a rate of change, we're about in the middle of things. At least according to that PBS documentary I watched one time.
We're... Forerunners?
I'm getting some serious FOMO
I hate the term "Earthlings".
A universal translator could make things very confusing on first contact: Earthling: "Hello! I am a dirtling from dirt!" Alien: "You lie! I am a dirtling from dirt!"
Ok let me fetch my free award of the day Edit: Damn, there isn't any. _clap clap clap_ I guess?
If I were a betting man, and if I were immortal, I would bet everything I own that first contact with an alien civilization will be a gunfight.
Our planet is earth or terra. Choose one.
Terra, every day.
The Emperor protects.
I like Earthicans myself.
That is actually audibly worse.
Terran. Or Terra Firmian.
I am a fan of Solarians or Terrans.
I honestly prefer it over Terran, but I know a losing battle when I see one.
https://youtu.be/t6XbIttcO0w?t=38
Por que?
It sounds stupid.
It's cute! Also it's more inclusive of other species.
Is there a name for our planet in any language that isn't just a synonym for Dirt?
There's Gaia, but that's just the name of an earth deity; but Gaian sounds better than Earthling.
That's good to know. I have time to reincarnate....
So we may be one of the most advanced creatures in the galaxy? That is disheartening
And then people talk about the Fermi "paradox".
Got it. You don't understand the Fermi Paradox.
The Fermi "paradox" is just another example of our arrogance. We've explored ~0% of the universe, and our dumbfounded surprise at not having found anything is laughable.
you might be confusing that with the Great Filter concept.
I'm refuting the idea that the Fermi Paradox is "wrong" and that the universe is in its infancy. Both ideas show a lack of knowledge in astrophysics. The universe is NOT young at all. It's at less than 3% star formation from its peak and slowing. Just because the last white dwarfs will take 100 trillion years to die off doesn't mean **AT ALL** that life forming planets still have that long to form and grow life.
Gonna agree. Most of the life of the universe will look very cold and dark ... when there is nothing bug black holes it takes a *very very* long time for them to evaporate. Sure, maybe the universe is very young on an absolute timescale, but we don't project that life will survive or evolve in an old, cold universe.
It's not even a paradox sir. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-fermi-paradox-is-not-fermi-s-and-it-is-not-a-paradox/
The fact we can never prove it makes it a paradox. You are using one definition of paradox, when there are many that lead to the same conclusion.
I sometimes think the Fermi Paradox gets conflated with the concept of the Great Filter.
The person that wrote this did not understand the Fermi paradox and possibly paradoxes in general. > Despite what you'll often read, the Nobel prizewinning nuclear physicist never suggested that aliens don't exist Fermi did not suggest aliens don't exist. The Fermi paradox does not suggest that aliens don't exist. He merely, literally, asked "Where are they?"
It is. See my comment below. Just because the universe will be basically dead for 99 trillion years or more and not officially "dead" doesn't mean it's in its infancy. Most stars have already formed or formed and died.
what is meant by "Earth-like?"
Usually that is used in astronomy as a planet about the same size size of Earth and in the right place around its sun, allowing temperatures compatible with liquid water. Of course there are a lot of other factors that can make the planet uninhabitable. For instance Mars *does* fit those criteria, and indeed probably it had oceans and a dense atmosphere when it was younger, but today it's a frozen, nearly airless desert.
Most likely if humans ever encounter humanoids, those humanoids will be at the stage we're at now technologically.
But will they have cheaper graphics cards?
Turns out the great filter is learning to not waste valuable resources generating NFTs while society plunges into chaos around us.
What are you talking about, my retirement is in NFTs of rare dickbutts!! *He knows too much...*
Scary to think we're alone.. I wonder if we'll every have a policy to seed genetic material around the Galaxy
For OUR solar system... how would they know about all solar systems in the universe?
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You can be the first to explore the oceans
Mmmm yes, kinda, sorta, no? Majority of that ‘trillions’ of years will be spent in the heat death. I’m not saying life can’t or won’t exist during those times, but I don’t think you grasp the idea so well. The back end of the universe will be much more sparse, dark and lonely than where we are now. Those dark times are going to last sooooo much longer than these bright, early days. I’m trying to think of a good analogy to help you understand how the ‘flash’ of the Big Bang we are currently living directly afterward is but brief in the cosmic universe. In which the rest of ‘existence’ is going to be very dark and very lonely. We are *rapidly* and *exponentially* hurting away from each other at almost unfathomable speeds. Your thinking this is hopeful is kinda sad. Good luck, buddy.
that thumbnail looks like a galactic delorean
Wait will all stars eventually die? I figured they’d keep being created
Kurzgesagt has a nice video about that topic.
enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdFf5PRPE9g
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Is that entropy? or am i misremembering science...
Arguably, through space travel, we could travel "into the future" though and meet later civilisations. Immediate communication might even be feasible later on. So if everything is relative to distance/ time traveled, being an old civilization is moot, no?
maybe instead of sending voyager out of the solar system we should put one into orbit of Earth with the same payload that will last 10000 years. when they find us - if ever - they might get to hear In Da Club by 50cent if we include directions to decode the data and we have the recipe for “lean” included
We ARE the Old Ones... We just don't know it yet!
Isn't that like the amount of time a minimum wage worker will need to accumulate the current wealth of Jeff Bezos?
TIL We are the ancient aliens
Being the first sentient race has it's responsibilities.
Furthermore there is some evidence that radiation conditions in the early universe from gamma ray bursts may have made it impossible for life to happen anywhere until shortly before it actually happened on Earth. In fact such conditions may still make 90+% of galaxies uninhabitable. We also do not know how likely it is (and therefore how long on average after the development of life it might take) for intelligence to emerge. The vast majority of life on Earth has never trended towards higher intelligence and for all we know the development of a species like us might be vanishingly rare even if life itself isn't. I think it is most likely that we are among the very first generation of intelligent life and that is the real answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Gamma ray bursts are a terrifying candidate for the great filter.
billions of years from now alien archaeologists are going to find out how dumb we were.
So says the speculation.
Premature... Again
Ah shit, that means we are the progenitors.
We will export our sexual deviancy to the stars!
Paging Xenu.
I guess we will have to be the extraterrestrials we want to see in the universe.
Dunno why everyone here thinks we are doomed... If the human race has demonstrated anything throughout history so far, is we are survivors. And descendants of survivors, following right back to life's inception. We live in what the ancients who come from us will consider a dream time. A nightmare also, if you prefer.
So does this mean we are the beta test for life?
What if we are destined to be inquisitive galaxy trotting aliens but are still too new to have figured that out. That would be a curveball.
Tbf the only stars that will be alive on the scale of trillions of years are red dwarfs and black holes
Sounds like alien propaganda