20,000,000,000 habitable planets in the galaxy - So where is everyone?

[Tzaddiq]

Fuarkk watched it all lol

I'm on a Neil Degrasse Tyson youtube marathon.

[KennyK]

Galactus

[Ted Nugent]

For one, they are VERY VERY far away.

If you could go the speed of light, it would still take over 100,000 years just to get to the other side of our galaxy.

With our fastest space ship, the trip would be about 12 BILLION years.

ffffuuuuuuuuuuu

[transformerchad]

The universe is far too big


The forces of the universe seem to limit speed of travel . Nothing travels faster than the speed of light . And even if we did travel at the speed of light it wouldn't be fast enough . would take hundreds and thousands of years at travelling at the speed of light

[havoc713]

We barely have the resources to travel to mars. Maybe all those other inhabitable worlds care even less about space travel than we do.

[Agentdark45]

The speed of light is the limiting factor. Unless you can fold space time, ain't no body going to be visiting us any time soon.

[transformerchad]

ffffuuuuuuuuuuu

Scary , the human mind cant even conceptualize it

[Celsus]

aliens are so advanced they created an orgasm button and everyone just sits around pressing it instead of exploring space

LOL, goat post itt

[seanb1979]

The universe is far too big


The forces of the universe seem to limit speed of travel . Nothing travels faster than the speed of light . And even if we did travel at the speed of light it wouldn't be fast enough . would take hundreds and thousands of years at travelling at the speed of light

dont need to go faster than light if you can change the dimensions of time and space

[Shrugs4Life]

I go against the grain. Where most look at the universe and assume there must be other life, i think this delicate balance we've come to achieve is far more rare than even we can believe.

I just can't convince myself to believe this is all chance. Too much complexity and interdependency for us to be little other than a random assortment of elements.

[NeoKantian]

We barely have the resources to travel to mars. Maybe all those other inhabitable worlds care even less about space travel than we do.

Hopefully there are manned Mars missions before I die.

[santal0l]

Civilization either destroys itself or turns inward and masturbates to death in virtual reality.

We survived the "destroying self" phase and are working on implementing the second part.

I'm ok with this as long as lisa ann and gianna miachaels are there.

[seanb1979]

I go against the grain. Where most look at the universe and assume there must be other life, i think this delicate balance we've come to achieve is far more rare than even we can believe.

I just can't convince myself to believe this is all chance. Too much complexity and interdependency for us to be little other than a random assortment of elements.

and youre basing this off of no actual knowledge of other planets out there... do you realize that based on what we can detect, there are an estimated amount of planets similar to earth (in size and distance from their stars) that number in the trillions? i guess you can keep on thinking you're special, but really were just a tiny grain of existence in a vast cosmic tapestry

[NeoKantian]

and youre basing this off of no actual knowledge of other planets out there... do you realize that based on what we can detect, there are an estimated amount of planets similar to earth (in size and distance from their stars) that number in the trillions? i guess you can keep on thinking you're special, but really were just a tiny grain of existence in a vast cosmic tapestry

It would be nice if aliens visited and gave us medical technology that allowed us to cure all illnesses.

[seanb1979]

It would be nice if aliens visited and gave us medical technology that allowed us to cure all illnesses.

maybe none of them like us? weve probably been under surveillance for a while... for all we know theres an interstellar treaty to not interfere with developing civs... it would make a lot of sense, really

[cashinout]

speed of light = universal speed limit

spaceship going at the speed of light = will reach nearest solar system in 4 years

chances of a spaceship going at the speed of light = 0

you can put together the rest

[NeoKantian]

maybe none of them like us? weve probably been under surveillance for a while... for all we know theres an interstellar treaty to not interfere with developing civs... it would make a lot of sense, really

I mean technology wise at a fundamental level where it doesn't matter if you are say...carbon based or not.

I think it would make sense for them not to interfere because it might be the case that as a society progresses technologically it becomes less violent and so introducing even more destructive technology now might speed up our collapse.

[seanb1979]

I mean technology wise at a fundamental level where it doesn't matter if you are say...carbon based or not.

I think it would make sense for them not to interfere because it might be the case that as a society progresses technologically it becomes less violent and so introducing even more destructive technology now might speed up our collapse.

exactly how we see it... too much tech we dont fully understand would be bad... also, if there are competing alien civs out there, they would probably see one alien civ helping us as an act of aggression, sort of recruiting us into their regime, so to speak

[gibbypoo]

the meathead bodybuilder stereotype is strong in this thread

[tpittma2]

Expanding on what others have said, who says we haven't been visited or observed? Remember that document history only started about 40,000-45,000 years ago with cave paintings. Earth is about 4.6 billion years old.
Maybe they investigated earth when there was but microbial life.
Maybe they came to investigate when dinosaurs ruled the world.
Maybe they came when man was still primitive, and we saw them as beings from the heavens, and our religions throughout humanity is just us trying to interpret what we saw.
Maybe they just don't care because to them life on other planets is just a common occurrence.
Maybe they have no idea civilization on earth has reached a peak of intelligence. We have to remember that human's rise to civility is very, very young.

Also factor in the idea that civilizations in present time could be in galaxies billions of light years away. It'd be almost impossible to ever know because that's insanely far away.

Let's go even further and consider multiverse theories ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse ). Our universe could be one of many, many more. All of which could harbor life of some kind. Scientists even theorize that black holes could contain universes, and such our big bang may have been caused by a black hole in another universe, which was caused by a black hole in another universe, and so on.

The ideas and possibilities are mind boggling. Our universe is definitely beyond our comprehension.

[1quick1]

Expanding on what others have said, who says we haven't been visited or observed? Remember that document history only started about 40,000-45,000 years ago with cave paintings. Earth is about 4.6 billion years old.
Maybe they investigated earth when there was but microbial life.
Maybe they came to investigate when dinosaurs ruled the world.
Maybe they came when man was still primitive, and we saw them as beings from the heavens, and our religions throughout humanity is just us trying to interpret what we saw.
Maybe they just don't care because to them life on other planets is just a common occurrence.
Maybe they have no idea civilization on earth has reached a peak of intelligence. We have to remember that human's rise to civility is very, very young.

Also factor in the idea that civilizations in present time could be in galaxies billions of light years away. It'd be almost impossible to ever know because that's insanely far away.

Let's go even further and consider multiverse theories ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse ). Our universe could be one of many, many more. All of which could harbor life of some kind. Scientists even theorize that black holes could contain universes, and such our big bang may have been caused by a black hole in another universe, which was caused by a black hole in another universe, and so on.

The ideas and possibilities are mind boggling. Our universe is definitely beyond our comprehension.

And with that the birth of religion. As you hinted to above.

All valid points.

[NeoKantian]

Expanding on what others have said, who says we haven't been visited or observed? Remember that document history only started about 40,000-45,000 years ago with cave paintings. Earth is about 4.6 billion years old.
Maybe they investigated earth when there was but microbial life.
Maybe they came to investigate when dinosaurs ruled the world.
Maybe they came when man was still primitive, and we saw them as beings from the heavens, and our religions throughout humanity is just us trying to interpret what we saw.
Maybe they just don't care because to them life on other planets is just a common occurrence.
Maybe they have no idea civilization on earth has reached a peak of intelligence. We have to remember that human's rise to civility is very, very young.

Also factor in the idea that civilizations in present time could be in galaxies billions of light years away. It'd be almost impossible to ever know because that's insanely far away.

Or maybe there are civilizations that are advanced enough and they have no interest in intergalactic travel and instead do intragalactic resource mining and exploration.

[Tzaddiq]

The speed of light is the limiting factor. Unless you can fold space time, ain't no body going to be visiting us any time soon.

With the right technology, interstellar is still possible for journeys in a human life span. Due to time dilation it would take 39 years ship-time to get to the Andromeda galaxy if the spacecraft accelerated at 1g continuously, then at -1g at the midpoint. And what about unmanned stellar flights?

Maybe it's even more mundane than that. What if it never becomes economical to do so, even if the technology is there? Aliens are probably saying "why spend money up there when we have problems down here?"

[TFMOA]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-Arthur C. Clarke

[ShangTsung]

speed of light = universal speed limit

spaceship going at the speed of light = will reach nearest solar system in 4 years

chances of a spaceship going at the speed of light = 0

you can put together the rest

Based off of poverty earth science/earth tech.

Humans need logic. Speed of light = logic. Logic = comfort.

Earth science theories are so poverty that to define them as absolute (in regards to the universe) is laughable.

[shikoku]

Those figures make me wonder if life is pretty beta compared to the universe. Surely at some point life would evolve intelligence somewhere and progress enough that it would have a civilization so advanced that any dumb **** out of his alien equivalent of a garage could 3D print a massive thermophaser bomb that could blow up the entire universe.

The fact we're not singularitied or blown up by some super advanced civilization after so many billions of years is proof that life is a beta motherphucker.

[leafs43]

Based off of poverty earth science/earth tech.

Humans need logic. Speed of light = logic. Logic = comfort.

Earth science theories are so poverty that to define them as absolute (in regards to the universe) is laughable.

E=mc^2

[Tzaddiq]

Based off of poverty earth science/earth tech.

Humans need logic. Speed of light = logic. Logic = comfort.

Earth science theories are so poverty that to define them as absolute (in regards to the universe) is laughable.

[Frell]

And with that the birth of religion. As you hinted to above.

All valid points.

Yes unanswered questions spawned religion. Think about it: If slaves in the ancient times knew their lives meant nothing and were told there was no god or anything other than them, they'd revolt. At that point they'd rather die than remain slaves. Instead they'd just try to remain good people to get into heaven and would all be hoping their captors would just go to hell, assuming everything will be ok in the afterlife. This kept everything in check so to say

This all worked fine and dandy until it was engraved into peoples heads so well that when they came across another religion they would be willing to die for it.



Nowadays having un-answered questions is more important. We realize we need to work together to solve them or better understand them, this is why we've progressed so much in the last 100 years compared to the years before. You no longer get sentenced to death for questioning what others believe or for creating new theories. Now you have scientists all around the world working together for the same goal, but I'm sure this time around space colonization will be much less barbaric.