Ask HN: Is there any credible evidence for ET intelligent life? - dosy
======
ndethore
It depends on your definition of "intelligent life", but if you're talking
about a life form that we, humans could observe and interact with using our
few senses then I'm afraid that the answer is "no". Anders Sandberg, Eric
Drexler and Toby Ord recently published a paper that demonstrate a substantial
probability that we're alone our galaxy and perhaps observable universe:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404)

Can you guys hear the cosmic crickets too? lol

~~~
dosy
If we're really alone, does what we do / not do, have any real value? More
anecdotal evidence for them could be said to exist than for God and if there
are no ETs/God/higher powers, and we're just alone does any of it really
matter? Isn't all morality / law just whatever elites/leaders have determined
is the best way to control us / let them maintain their power? If there is no
karma (bad people prosper, while the meek/good often perish) why not just go
full-Machiavellian? Is the only meaning in this world the pursuit of
biological urges / or money-status? If we're alone, what's the point?

By the same logic that priests having the power to channel / control the
believers access to God have wielded tremendous power, the State would
probably love if ETs were real, since it could then co-opt ETs into a
mechanism for control. Or maybe the ETs can't be co-opted...

------
gmuslera
Not that I'm aware of. And maybe we will never have one, by far most of the
universe is out of our reach and (detailed enough) sight. We might eventually
have evidence of ET intelligent life in some point of the future, but never
will have of the lack of it.

But the size and age of the universe makes the odds of us being an unique case
very improbable.

------
taxicabjesus
A better question might be, "if there was incontrovertible evidence of the
existence of ET intelligent life, how would the conditions of human
civilization on planet Earth be different?"

Suppose that Planet Earth is actually being visited regularly by ETs with
technology vastly more advanced than our own. Our transportation technology
runs on the laws of thermodynamics, while theirs would presumably be powered
by the more-fundamental laws that govern "dark energy" (superseding
thermodynamics, just like Einstein > Newton).

I don't have any evidence either way, but I think it's hubris to make a case
that ours is the only planet with life anything like our own, and that
equivalents to humanity's 1st generation space technologies (radios, rockets,
etc) would still be used by more advanced civilizations.

~~~
dosy
Yep, or our 1st-gen comms tech (EMF, observable radio waves, unencrypted). But
if earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe 3x that and 200 x 10^9
other stars in Milky Way, and 100x10^9 other galaxies in universe, and in our
own planet/history many traits (eyes, etc) evolved independently many times
over, and there's nothing "special" about Earth chemistry ( these elements are
all produced by stars, everywhere ), and nothing special about Earth in the
"habitable" zone around a star, --> why would we be the only life here?

And what's that Pentagon video of some super fast object?
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-
prog...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-
harry-reid.html)

I think if ET was real most people would still care about the same things
(because consider that 2000 years ago we are warlike, violent, superstitious,
gullible, flawed, selfish, kind, etc, and 2000 years later, after organized
religion, industrial revolution, international travel, internet, long
lifespans, mobile phones, we are still the same). Maybe 10 - 20% of the
population would adopt ETs as some sort of "god" / higher power (but there are
ppl who do this anyway, even now). I don't think much would change, but ppl
would try holding their governments to more accountability ( why don't we have
that tech, why have you kept it secret ), but like most protest movements
recently, it will probably be pretty ineffective. I use to think there will be
large scale civil unrest, but now I think, people really won't care.

But if there is that tech on Earth, then our military has to make it a
priority to obtain it (because what if someone else also has it), so there's
that consideration, which could justify keeping everything secret (what if
everyone had a UFO and could fly anywhere they wanted at 20,000 km/h? probably
chaos, an upending of the order ~ but maybe not. We thought individuals having
access to all information, and a publishing platform, would make individuals
vastly more powerful, but that hasn't really upended the order. If anything,
the State has become more powerful because of the internet.)

But UFO travel would sure beat 15 hours across the pacific in an uncomfortable
aluminium tube.

~~~
krapp
>But if earth is 4.5 billion years old, (...) why would we be the only life
here?

As far as we know, there's no way to get around the lightspeed limit, which
implies no matter how advanced a civilization gets, they would be constrained
by physics and available resources - so no warp drives, no stargates, nothing
but rockets and things that work like rockets, and generations of travel
between the stars.

If that's the case, it any form of space travel, much less long term
interstellar travel, might be an exception rather than the rule for
intelligent species. We only assume that expansion out into the stars is a
natural consequence of progress due to biases we have regarding biological and
societal evolution, but space isn't just a bigger ocean.

We can't really extrapolate the likelihood of visitation by extraterrestrials
from the historical tendency of cultures to encounter one another on our own
planet. Given the vast size of the observable universe and the unremarkable
nature of the Earth (from which we've only been broadcasting signals for a
fraction of an instant, relatively speaking) it's not at all surprising that
we wouldn't see anyone or that no one would see us, much less stop by for a
visit.

~~~
dosy
That's true. I've seen no evidence for FTL travel, except "circumstantial" \-
if we interpret UFOs to mean they are coming here, FTL must be possible. But
even then there's a get-out clause, they could be coming from Venus / Saturn /
some moon in our solar system.

Although "Quantum Teleportation" could that theoretically be used to
"teleport" a spacecraft FTL?

~~~
krapp
>Although "Quantum Teleportation" could that theoretically be used to
"teleport" a spacecraft FTL?

Everything I've ever read about quantum teleportation says no [0..2]. Even if
state changes are instantaneous, the transmission of information itself is
still limited to the speed of light (and a ship counts as "information" in
this case), and the process of quantum teleportation would require some
classical communication channel to transmit state.

All that notwithstanding the amount of energy you would need to "entangle" an
entire ship in the first place.

[0][https://www.quora.com/Is-the-any-possibility-that-Quantum-
Te...](https://www.quora.com/Is-the-any-possibility-that-Quantum-
Teleportation-may-eventually-enable-FTL-communication)

[1][https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-can-we-
use-q...](https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-can-we-use-quantum-
entanglement-to-communicate-faster-than-light-e0d7097c0322)

[2][http://www.askamathematician.com/2013/01/q-what-is-
quantum-t...](http://www.askamathematician.com/2013/01/q-what-is-quantum-
teleportation-why-cant-we-use-it-to-communicate-faster-than-light/)

------
staunch
AFAIK the closest thing we have is the very recently released USS Nimitz
incident:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident)

And even this example is very very far from being enough evidence to believe
extraterrestrial intelligent life has visited Earth.

------
splodge
[https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16204.jpg](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16204.jpg)

~~~
willmeyers
Just for clarification (since OP didn't give any insight to the picture he/she
posted), it's a picture of the "Mars Rat"[1]. It's just a funny looking rock.

[1] [https://www.space.com/21455-mars-rat-curiosity-rover-
drive.h...](https://www.space.com/21455-mars-rat-curiosity-rover-drive.html)

~~~
blocked_again
Yup. Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidences.

------
hprotagonist
i do not believe that we have any such evidence.

I’m open to the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists. I suspect that
it’s mostly prokaryotic — and i don’t think there’s any credible evidence for
advanced alien civilizations or the like, to date.

