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There's definitely other life out there, but given a basic understanding of space and light speed travel, there is a zero chance we've made contact with non Earth life. The government has a direct benefit in claiming aliens or UFOs when testing their super military tech so our enemies are mislead on our militaries capabilities.
Like when trump posted a classified satellite image. Our population and all other governments had no idea we were capable of such clear satellite surveillance.
On the contrary, I'd recommend looking up the Fermi paradox. It exists because if we assume that ftl is impossible, both in a literal and effective sense, a civilization with the capability of long-range subluminal travel would still have the ability to colonize the galaxy within a few million years.
Now, you might be tempted to think, "okay, so a few million years from now is when we'll start seeing them", but that's assuming they took as long as we did to evolve intelligence. If I'm not mistaken, there's some speculation that dinosaurs were a significant contributor to delaying the rise of mammals, and those were around for over 100 million years. What if a civilization skipped the "oppressed by giant lizard-birds" stage? The result is that they'd potentially be millions of years ahead of us technologically.
Also, because I regularly see this question pop up in any conversation involving aliens,
"why would they come to our world? They've probably got everything they want!"
Why does a human want to explore the ocean? Why does a human want to explore space? Curiosity. Maybe they want to see it for themselves instead of looking at pictures that their friends posted on Spacebook. Maybe we're small and adorable to them. There are plenty of reasons why they might check our world out that don't involve conquest, genocide, slavery or other symptoms of rampant capitalism and authoritarianism.
Why would they send a probe to inspect ships from a visible distance? They could fulfill all their curiosity from lightyears away
No? If you think that's actually an option, then you need to go outside and touch grass; and I mean that seriously. If you really think that looking at something from so far away that it literally takes years to teach you is a suitable replacement for being there in person, then you desperately need to touch grass.
If an alien wanted to visit the Earth, they would actually die hundreds to thousands of years before they would ever get here.
It's simply just not worth the trip, when only your thousandth generation descendants would actually survive to make it.
Now, if aliens actually had warp drive technology, millions of years in the future from our technology, they probably aren't even going to bother visiting us because we're so archaic.
If an alien wanted to visit the Earth, they would actually die hundreds to thousands of years before they would ever get here.
Not necessarily.
A) that's assuming they have similar lifespans to humans. They could be significantly shorter. They could be significantly longer. They could be artificially extended via medical science.
B) that's assuming they're travelling on a small ship and not a multi-generation colony ship. Such a ship would be designed for people to be born, live and die in space.
Now, if aliens actually had warp drive technology, millions of years in the future from our technology, they probably aren't even going to bother visiting us because we're so archaic.
Not necessarily. First of all, humans nowadays aren't a whole lot more intelligent than humans 6,000 years ago. The reason why we seem to be more intelligent is because there is more which is known about our universe, we put more emphasis on knowledge, and because we have more ways of expressing that intelligence.
Secondly, I'm skeptical that it'd truly take millions of years to develop warp/warp-like technology. Tbh I think it's more likely that we're far closer to developing it ourselves than we realize, it's just that we have to be more active in space to see what we're missing.
However to connect this to my previous statement about intelligence, most scientists put ftl-like travel (I'm talking about the FTL-but-not-really technologies like warp or wormholes) a couple thousand years away. Now, again, I'm skeptical that it'd really take us that long, and I'm pretty sure they're just throwing out a really big number to make the point that you shouldn't hold your breath, but let's pretend that they really meant it. If ftl-like tech is really thousands of years in the future, that still potentially puts aliens in the realm of "near human-like intelligence".
At the end of the day though, this is all conjecture. None of it can be proven (yet), so it's all speculative. That being said, open your mind. Imagine other possibilities. There's so much stuff around aliens and future tech where people assume this, or assume that, but the truth is that we don't know shit. Aliens could be exactly the same as us. They could be so different that they can't be understood by us. They could be somewhere inbetween. They could be far more advanced than us. They could be less advanced overall, but got very lucky with a handful of technologies. We don't know.
The Fermi Paradox is based on our understanding of physics, largely based in a 3 dimensional universe/reality. If these things are inter-dimensional, do those same rules apply?
What if physical distance, as we perceive it, is something unique to us as beings that perceive and navigate the universe in only 3 dimensions?
Swarms of von Neumann probes traveling at 0.1c would cover the galaxy in a very short timeframe...in galactic terms.
It also makes zero sense to test craft in a navy training range.
What would the point of that be? Just because something is possible doesn't mean it'll be done.
And do probes flying around in navy training ranges make sense? If they wanted to be visible they would be. If they wanted to hide there wouldn't be footage of them.
its kind of neet because soon we will liter the galaxy and then we wait
I still vote we are some sort of experiment for aliens to observe, and have been under the microscope as they watched us evolve from primal creatures to the death of the world as we advance with our destructive technologies.
One thing that doesn't sit right with me is the fact that galaxies cluster together in similar ways that neurons do. Reminds me of how individual ants are just one cog in a collective hivemind. We're all just ants doing our part to power a giant alien's brain.
At least that's the answer to life, the universe, and everything that I'm going with. It also explains multiverses. Multiple aliens, all living in their own society. Maybe their universe is the same. Just brains inside of brains inside of brains. Who knows how deep it goes.
Galaxy's cluster together because of dark matter, all the baryon matter in the universe follows the dark matter which for some reason forms thise strings.
Go watch some PBS spacetime for more info... And a headache.
Personally my money's on we're one of the first, or our solar system is the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone of the galaxy and anybody who gets too close melts.
The government has a direct benefit in claiming aliens or UFOs when testing their super military tech so our enemies are mislead on our militaries capabilities.
They technically are UFOs. They are objects, they fly, and they are unidentified.
They're not really unidentified. Someone knows what they are, just not us.
That logic would apply to alien spaceships too though
there is a zero chance we've made contact with non Earth life
Yeah! Because heavier than air flight is impossible, and there's no way aliens could hold enough helium to fly to another planet!
(Our ideas about what is possible change as our technology advances)
People tend to misapply this argument frequently. It is definitely a bit excessive to say there is zero chance, but still.
It's less about what is possible, and more about what is likely. Our understanding of physics (and by extension, reality) is extremely advanced. There isn't much that is going to surprise us going forward. Even relativity and quantum theory didn't make Newtonian mechanics obsolete, they simply covered the fringe cases.
I just hate when people imply that we might suddenly learn that we were completely wrong about everything. It's dismissive of the scientists who have given their lives to bring humanity to this level of understanding the universe.
It's okay to be 'wrong' in science within the observable world, much of Newton's theories were rendered nearly obsolete by Einstein, but Newtonian physics was "good enough" until technology improved, and was "good enough" for most of his generation and later:
"While general relativity has been more precise, Newtonian gravity is still incredibly accurate and can be used for simpler situations. General relativity uses complex calculus that makes it difficult to compute. But Einstein has opened up the world to more complex physics, like black holes and gravitational waves that continue to develop our understanding of the universe. " https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/educators/programs/cosmictimes/educators/workshops/docs/InquiringIntoNatureUniverse/Newton_Einstein_FactCards.pdf
Epistemology allows for us to work within the framework of knowledge we currently have until something better is proven to be the case.
I think when people imply we might suddenly learn that we were completely wrong about everything they are actually talking about how fast science seems to evolve these days, at the very least the public's understanding of science.
I have coworkers with who i can talk about 3+ dimensions, quantum mechanics, time travel, uap and while none of us are experts in any of those fields it no longer feels like we should be wearing a tinfoil hat simply for being fascinated by such topics because we now understand these are real (nuanced) scientific topics and not "something from the movies".
Ufology, at least what we saw in Congress recently, is not remotely in the same boat as quantum, higher level dimensions, or time travel in terms of being a real scientific topic.
The other stuff I've all heard discussed seriously by actual non crackpot employed physicists.
Who’s to say that? The people testifying said themselves they are open minded to these other explanations, they coined the terms higher dimensional and quantum mechanics.
At this point with what we know a uap can be super Secret human tech. A propaganda lie, Aliens, an, hidden advanced intelligence co existing on our planet. A 4d dimensional something going trough our space, timetravelers,.. there is nothing scientific said about their nature or theyd be identifief objects.
I think I must be completely missing what you're trying to say.
Quantum mechanics came out of conversations related to Planck's proposed resolution of the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, the term was not just coined by a crackpot in a Congressional hearing.
It's happened before
Well, cutting edge science currently suggests spacetime is an illusion, so I think antireal science might have some interesting places to go as far as FTL travel. But we don't need FTL travel to talk to new forms of life, because there are sentient nonhuman species on Earth, and they speak English.
Who taught dolphins English ?
They've been singing about how grateful they are for all the fish.
True, I am right here.
Hello otherkin
How did ya know?
Cause you're a nonhuman on earth who speaks English. I was talking about otherkin in my above comment
And neither of us are being downvoted or called cringe despite us talking about this outside of a forum dedicated to Otherkin? This IS a different place from Reddit
you should check out my sublemmy !chaotesvspatriarchy@lemmy.world
If an alien civilization was developed by the same survival mechanism as on earth, they'd value survival and expansion over things like discovery. So if an alien civilization had gotten to earth, it'd be advanced enough to have strip minded or taraformed the whole planet by now. And why wouldn't they, since we'd be the intelligence of ants comparatively
Why would they strip mine earth when there are so many other planets around? There's no point
Lots of water, useful for fuel. We also don't see evidence of resource collection elsewhere
Surely it's easier to mine ice on europa?
There's giant chunks of water ice all over the place in the Kuiper belt, much easier to grab, not stuck in a gravity well full of corrosive oxygen and creepy creatures.
Well I'm a Star Trek fan, and I'm optimistic that maybe the community between the stars is less narrow minded than the people on Earth today
Maybe climate change is the reason why. It's a great filter that requires long term thinking and global cooperation to overcome. Maybe all the species similar to modern humanity end up polluting themselves back to the stone age and have to try again.
It’s probably not the only Filter either. As soon as we’ve passed the ‘climate’ filter, we’ll presumably have to deal with something else.
🖖
I still believe that the image being posted was 100% planned by the powers to be to show we have the ability to do it.
In the intelligence field this is known as a bad move.
In the intelligence field the game is usually about obfuscation and distraction.
bruh you can use an old DishNetwork and a cyberdeck to download those satellites images directly from the comfort of your home. also wierd satellite stationz
secrecy by obscurity of knowledge i believe it is called
From classified spy satellites? No shot. Unclassified stuff maybe, or civilian satellites. But anything military and/or classified is going to be encrypted, so unless you know the key you may be able to intercept the data but not make an image.
Nah, you can get images from weather satellites this way, they broadcast unencrypted/with old encryption that has been broken.
Ain't nobody getting a feed from a modern GIS sat, let alone an actual spy sat.
Do you have any links for this? That sounds fascinating but my Google fu is failing me right now.
Check out r/amateursatellites/ on reddit (sorry, I'm a refugee and unaware if similar exists in the fediverse yet), there are whole communities of people out there who listen to weather sats with antennas in their backyards, it's fascinating.
I've done it with a cheap RTLSDR and a similar setup to this Instructable, some soldering involved but it's not terrible.
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Have you tried looking between two Casimir plates?
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These are the sorts of things where the line between zero and practically zero gets blurry, so people feel the need to emphasize that it might not be zero. Like, the chances of me finding a winning lottery ticket on the street without buying one might not technically zero, but the odds are low enough that not only is it not going to be part of my financial plan, but I also don't feel the need to justify why.
The odds of hyper drive aliens being on earth is zero. There might be an error bar on that number, but it doesn't practically matter