Warlike Civilizations don't become space farers. They just blow themselves up and never leave the Planet.

A peaceful democratic Republic has a hostile takeover, and the Empire is formed. It took years for the Empire to be destroyed ...and the Peaceful democratic Republic to be formed again, at least in the eyes of George Lucas. Even in the far reaches of space, this could happen....ya know, long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Could have come from some pundit's mouth after the GOP debate: Obe Wan: "Who's more foolish - the fool, or the fool who follows him."

Sounds like a Dyson Sphere. Something a Type II civilization could build.

I don't buy into claims about aliens, until evidence presents it self definitively; However unlike Deities, ghosts, or demons, angels and other purely superstitious human dribble, I won't go so far as to claim that alien life is impossible, or even improbable. IF any of this were evident , I doubt we discover them be for they discover us in any case. Who knows though... maybe they have seen us for a long time and are ignoring us as a primitive race that still wars under it's own atmosphere with each other. Maybe they are just waiting for us to point that radio telescope at the exact right spot. Maybe they are testing us to see if we can. Maybe we just need to stop reading so much sci-fi and jumping straight to such lofty, and wondrous explanations right off the bat.

Intelligent life is a bit tricker but I am fairly certain it is out there.

Now for the sad part. It is unlikely we will find a lot of evidence for it. The distances are incredibly vast. Contrary to popular belief the idea of picking up signals is remote and the idea of our television signals making to another civilization is incredibly unlikely.

As an illustration, try to imagine tossing a boulder into the Atlantic off of the coast of Ireland and then try to imagine being able to be able to tell what color the boulder was in New York based on the changes in the waves that are breaking the shore.

That is what we are looking at.

The Khardashev scale is complete bunk.

We cannot expect to see Dyson spheres as there is no reason an advanced space civilization would ever need so much energy. The first thing you learn in space travel is efficiency. You don't get to do much in space without being an absolute energy miser. If you don't learn it before you go out into space then a number of orbiting missions quickly teach it to you.

The Space Race gave us all manner of lessons in solar panels, micro electrical generation, and designing computers and systems that were both redundant and that used very little energy.

So some guy imagines energy consumption and the ability to capture energy is the measure of how advanced a civilization is? Nonsense.

I'm pretty much always skeptical, but there are times when it's just way too much fun to throw skepticism to the winds and have a wild speculative fling. That, of course, assumes that we will all sober up in the morning and come back to reality.

That's two weeks of fun I would miss out on by being skeptical right from the start.

Life is not always about being right.

that sounds like f'ing Fox News.

And it could be the dance of the giant pink unicorns! Some "experts" say.

Too bad Percival Lowell isn't still around to tell these "experts" not to go there until additional data is available.

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/postsecondary/features/F_Canali_and_First_Martians.html


Sorry folks, but the only currently existing data (our own planet) shows that if live exists elsewhere, and it probably does, it's most likely by a loooooong shot not to be multicellular, much less intelligent. How long has multi-cellular life existed on earth in its 4.5 billion year existence? Not terribly long. And intelligent life (debatable, I know)? A mere blink of an eye.

No. It sounds like ANCIENT ALIENS. My husband loves that show.

have already lost their energy and died out, life may have already formed, evolved and expired. Any intelligent life may only have their relics remaining. Perhaps intelligence can only span billions of years in an artificial vessel. Intelligence born and sustained by life seems to require an enduring set of geophysical systems and circumstances. This cannot be sustainable, as the time and energy needed to harness those systems on a galactic scale seem insurmountable.

Indeed how can individual self-determination survive the required singularity of purpose of maintaining the legacy of the species. It would be easier for machines to manipulate raw materials to create computing and storage systems that retain and add to the legacy.

But without the impetus of curiosity or even of sexual desire, what woud be the point?

They are just saying we need to study it more like any unexpected phenomenon. Even if it isn't a technological civilization understanding what actually is happening will improve our own understanding of solar system formation.

Examples of large engineering feats such as structures and propulsion are probably the most likely first signs of an alien technological civilization. Fortunately it costs little to look since we should be looking anyway.

You are right about the high unlikelihood of complex multicellular or even technological life. We ran through a good chunk of our star's history getting to this point. Consider the many keyhole events that we went through that almost led to our extinction. It is truly amazing that our evolutionary path also led to our ability to develop technology. Looking at the other candidates besides primates (dolphins and whales, elephants, rodents, avians/dinosaurs, and octopuses) we can see how unlikely it really is. We have found absolutely no examples of tool use in dinosaurs even though they had an extraordinarily long run.

1500 light years distance is most likely all that's kept us from becoming farm animals.

They are probably already on their way.

And not so much into traveling?

if they evolved opposable thumbs and ruled Earth.

It must be something really cool!

whatever it is, it's unusual and none of the possible natural explanations that they've come up with completely fits the data.

Even so, odds are it's just some rare natural phenomenon. Either way, studying it some more will teach us more about our universe.

Abt 1:22:10

is possible

In the end, it’s probably not an alien megastructure, just like the first pulsar signals weren’t sent by LGM-1 (Little Green Men). But whatever’s causing the dips, Boyajian wants astronomers to keep a close watch on KIC 8462852 to find out if and when its erratic light variations repeat. I love a mystery, but answers are even better.



Don't tell the Mormons that scientists may have found the home of their god...

But Signal= Chapter 2 of the History of Earth

I don't think people need to be wildly Internet-dismissive about this (complete with annoying memes) but I think there are more probable explanations.

Alien life is highly probable in the galaxy. Intelligent life... eh... hard to say.


Personally, I think this is probably a dark, fast moving, high gravity, body orbiting the star that is creating this regular deviations. Something small, exotic, and thoroughly collapsed with a regular orbit.

Maybe people that are doubting the alien thing could put up an idea of what they think it is rather than stupid frigging memes.

That's an interesting idea. I haven't seen that proposed elsewhere.

Probably more likely just a high gravity object that is messing with the orbit of these objects. It doesn't have to be a black hole. Actually if it were a black hole they would probably already have seen evidence of it.

Some kind of dark dwarf star that used to be part of a binary. It could dim the light a bit when it gets in the way as well as cause weird orbits for the objects.

Something like a large swarm of comets.

wobble we could detect. Same goes for it if was another star or even a large planet.

Unless there is some error in the data somehow, this has to be something large but without a lot of mass (weight). So think comet fragments or fragments from the collision of two Earth sized planets that pulverized them both into asteroid sized pieces.