

Ask HN: Do you believe we'll ever encounter aliens? - uptown

A topic of conversation that colleagues and I frequently revisit questions whether humankind will ever encounter what's typically referred to as "aliens", and if so ... the implications of such an encounter.  We've generally concluded that if such an encounter were to occur, it could change almost every aspect of our lives (science,religion,technology, etc.).  With that said, we have no consensus of belief as to whether it will ever happen nor an agreement of exactly how our society would be impacted.<p>I'm curious what the members of the Hacker News community believe .... both whether it will ever happen, and how it would affect the world we know.
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vjk2005
IMO the only 'aliens' we'll ever meet will be humans who had left Earth for
distant planets sometime in the future and whom Earth inhabitants have
forgotten or fail to recognize for some reason(environmental adaptation
causing inhuman features). A chance encounter in space will then be the
'meeting with the aliens' that many fantasize about.

As far as meeting intelligent species completely alien to our planet and our
ecosystem, like the ones shown in Hollywood movies, I don't believe that's
gonna to happen. Not now. Not ever.

The logic usually is that since space is vast, there's gotta be a planet
somewhere that has similar environment like Earth and thus similar life forms
inhabiting it. That's sound logic. My problem with that logic is... out of the
100 million+ species of life that are estimated to exist today and the
countless ones that used to thrive over the last 4.5 billion years since the
birth of our planet, only one... just one out of all those billions of species
that existed over billions of years has developed far enough to type these
words.

That's why when people say 'hey there are billions of galaxies out there, so
we can't be the only ones' I ask them then that by the same logic, out of the
billions of species that have existed on this planet there's gotta be more
species like us doing the same things that we do? But there isn't. We are the
only ones capable of doing things we keep hoping the aliens would do.

That's why I believe we are the only ones, on our planet as well as outside of
it.

~~~
jsean
I pretty much agree with what you've said. Although, regarding "I ask them
then that by the same logic, out of the billions of species that have existed
on this planet there's gotta be more species like us doing the same things
that we do?" My answer would be - sound logic but flawed line of thought.
Since all billion species here on earth are confined in this well connected
area it means, all billion species pretty much have been and still are
competing with each others and amongst themselves. Meaning there can in the
end only be one winner (following some sort of law of the jungle). The winner
gets to type these words.

If we assume "since space is vast, there's gotta be a planet somewhere that
has similar environment like Earth and thus similar life forms inhabiting it"
we can regard each of those planets as completely separate competitions and
thus there can be as many winners as there are "similar environments"

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Tycho
It's see it like this:

Observe that historical trends show communication technology advancing much
faster than transportation technology. In the 20th century we got cars,
planes, helicopters, rockets... and now we still have cars, planes,
helicopters and rockets (do they make hovercraft anymore?). No major advance
for decades. Compare to communication, which seems to change beyond
recognition every ten years.

What then is bound to happen is that we develop some sort of theoretically
inter-stellar range communication technology. Of course by the time we do
that, we'll be lucky if humanity has so much as a moon base. But the chances
are we are not the first intelligent race, and a number of intelligent races
will already exist, and will have already have implemented this technology.

In effect, we will switch on one day and find a galactic internet (the
Intergalacticnet?) of forever isolated planetary nodes. Once we figure out how
to decode and communicate etc., we will exchange/trade information and
progress will increase exponentially. But no field trips (maybe some sort of
VR/avatar tour of alien worlds though).

IMO sci-fi writers get it wrong when they show spaceships bumping into alien
civilizations etc. Regardless of whether that sort of transportation is even
feasible, communication will have been established much sooner.

~~~
wlievens
> What then is bound to happen is that we develop some sort of theoretically
> inter-stellar range communication technology.

'Bound to happen' is quite a bold statement for something that, according to
current scientific understanding, is not really possible. That is, if you mean
faster-than-light communication, which I think you allude to in the next
paragraphs.

~~~
Tycho
You're right of course but I believe science already has some inroads in FTL
communication (quantum entanglement, some exploit I read in New Scientist
about a sweeping beam traveling faster at the the ends than the pivoting
centre) whereas from what I've gathered FTL space travel is still a non-
starter.

~~~
wlievens
That's not how I interpret it. The light-speed constraint isn't just about
preventing matter to move faster than light, it's about _information_
traveling faster than light. Picturing it like FTL communication being just an
engineering problem (sorry for the exaggeration) and FTL travel being near-
impossible in contrast is rather strange.

Quantum entanglement doesn't allow faster-than light information transfer
(though it is pretty mysterious in its own right). The sweeping beam thing
doesn't either. These things aren't in any way pushing the frontier with
regards to FTL communication.

 _Do note that I hope with all my heart that I'm wrong here. We're all geeks,
right._

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TomOfTTB
Encounter is a pretty vague term. Do I think we'll have meaningful
conversation with Aliens any time in the next thousand years? Probably not.
Hubble can see billions of light years out at this point meaning if something
was within a couple hundred light years of us we'd probably know about it.

There could be societies far more advanced than ours since our sun didn't show
up for about 10 billion years into the Universe's life. Those societies may be
able to travel faster than light. But even if that is true they'd need to find
us and I consider that unlikely. Because while traveling faster than light may
be possible it doesn't change the facts that (a) the universe is huge and (b)
light still only travels at light speed so you can't see things in real time.
So even if they could get to us they wouldn't know where to look.

What's interesting to me is we might get to see the beginnings of one of these
civilizations. Since we're basically looking billions of years into their past
we might see another civilization long before we can do anything about it.

~~~
amikazmi
But (b) assumes that they use light to know about us.. That may be false :)

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diego_moita
The most boring thing about these speculations about beings from other planets
is the absolute lack of imagination. Most times people imagine something like
a vertebrate with human-like appearance.

Why assume that the evolution of any form of life in a different environment
would repeat so closely the evolution of life on earth? It could and should be
completely different. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan speculated about life in other
planets based in nitrogen and sulfur, with huge bubbles gathering nutrients
and other smaller ones preying on them. Now this is what I call imagination.

~~~
cruiser
I agree. Whenever I witness such an utter lack of imagination, I console
myself by thinking that line from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide that has
the phrase "super-intelligent shades of blue". Just imagine colors being
intelligent! That's the best alien life-form I've heard of.

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charlesdm
The chance of it existing somewhere is pretty big. However, our galaxy is huge
so the chance of ever encountering them is pretty slim for now. I don't really
expect us to find something until we develop a working sort of FTL technology.
Since achieving this is probably still a few hundred years off I'm personally
a bit sceptic whether we'll ever reach this point with all the problems we're
facing here on earth.

I really believe we should focus on development of technology and
infrastructure that would allow a large amount of people to go live on for
instance Mars. This would allow us to focus on the development of FTL
technology without the chance of dying before we complete it and it would
probably boost additional development in space technology as well.

~~~
byoung2
_The chance of it existing somewhere is pretty big. However, our galaxy is
huge so the chance of ever encountering them is pretty slim for now_

Just 500 years ago, Europeans didn't know about America. It may turn out that
aliens bump into us by accident and we find out that they were right around
the corner the whole time. Or it is possible that the aliens have the FTL
technology to get to us from a point far enough away that our satellites can't
see them yet.

~~~
charlesdm
I was mainly referring to the fact of us bumping into them.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
I think they'll find us first though. Isn't that what Stephen Hawking has said
also?

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robertdempsey
Perhaps.

If they're smart, they'll wait until we annihilate ourselves or destroy our
planet, and then walk right in. Less resources will be expended on their side.

If they do come, and don't have an ability to morph into beings like
ourselves, people will crap all over themselves and the government will
probably try to nab them.

Who knows what would happen. If they are out there, and I believe they are,
and they do come, I hope they're cool and don't just wipe everyone out and
start over. I also don't fancy being a pet.

~~~
bryanh
> If they're smart, they'll wait until we annihilate ourselves or destroy our
> planet, and then walk right in. Less resources will be expended on their
> side.

That's assuming they have time on their side. By the time they are searching
other galaxies for resources, I'd imagine they wouldn't be so patient if we
neglect to be hasty... ;-)

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brk
So then, you're presuming it hasn't already happened?

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markkat
I am sure that intelligent life exists out there. It's just a numbers game.
However, if they are intelligent, based on how long we have been around,
chances are they have been so much much longer. Millions of years would be
more likely than thousands.

So, I don't think we would even recognize them, or they us. I am pretty sure
they would have cast off their biological bodies long ago, and probably have
gotten to a point where time and space aren't as limiting either. I could see
us doing this in a few thousand years. As any given intelligent life in the
universe would likely be ahead of us by much more than that, I think we are
akin to fleas on a dog wondering if there are other dogs with other fleas on
them. Where in fact, there is much more going on all around us, and we aren't
yet capable of being a party to that conversation.

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emilsedgh
Forget stuff you watched on Stargate. Probably first encounters would be much
less interesting. Like we find a few bacterias there. Or with best luck, an
animal or something like that.

Really, encountering inteligence life on other planets would be very damn
interesting, but IMHO, highly unlikely.

~~~
paol
Still, even finding non-intelligent alien life would make it much more likely
that intelligent alien life exists somewhere.

(Basically there are 2 probabilities we can't estimate now, other that they
are != 0: the probability of life appearing on a given planet (P1), and the
probability of intelligence evolving once life is present (P2). The
probability of intelligent life then is P1 x P2)

~~~
proexploit
Finding non-intelligent alien life would not make it more likely that
intelligent alien life exists. It either exists or it doesn't. :)

~~~
InclinedPlane
This is semantics.

Finding non-intelligent alien life would raise our current estimate for the
likelihood that intelligent non-human life exists.

Is that better? :P

~~~
proexploit
Yes, much better, I was just having a little fun.

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paol
It seems it mostly depends on whether FTL travel turns out to be possible or
not. If not, contact between alien inteligences is going to be highly unlikely
even in a universe relatively filled with life.

Things are not looking very good at this point...

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wlievens
People typically say "the galaxy is big, so it's unlikely", which is not
necessarily true. You need no more than a few tens of thousands of years to
colonize a significant part of the galaxy, and it's not unthinkable many
societies have had that kind of head start.

The real expanse that separates civilizations is time. It takes only slightly
more than 1000 years to travel a thousand light years, but the gaps in time
can be much bigger. It's possible that over the course of a billion years,
many thousands of civilizations rise and fall, but at any given time only a
handful are in existance concurrently.

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herrherr
Check out this video from the American Museum of Natural History:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U>

\- It makes me think that we cannot be the only society in the universe

\- But it also makes be think that it is unlikely that we will find them in
the near future or vice versa

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doctorzaius
I worked on <http://quest-for-life.org> for the Rails Rumble last year.

It's basically an online Drake Equation calculator, with some educational
material and references to help inform the parameters.

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khandelwal
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation>

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rosser
If we do, I just hope they aren't hungry.

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revorad
<http://thecuriousbrain.com/?p=2629>

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lotusleaf1987
I think it's more of a when than a how question. As long as an asteroid
doesn't come and wipe us all out before we master planetary space travel, I
think it's pretty safe to say at some point we will encounter alien life. With
all the planets that exist...too much potential for their not to be.

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unavailable
no

