Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Discovery has a theory as to why we haven’t discovered evidence of intelligent alien civilisations; According to Discovery, the handful of planets which have just the right characteristics for life to thrive, are eventually destroyed by a technological environmental cataclysm.
Why Can’t We Find Aliens? Climate Change Killed Them
As we look deeper into our galaxy for signs of extraterrestrial life, we keep drawing a blank. Does this mean life on Earth is unique and we’re the only ones out here? Or could it just mean that all the aliens are dead?
…
“The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens,” said Aditya Chopra, lead author of the paper. “Early life is fragile, so we believe it rarely evolves quickly enough to survive.”
“Most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable,” he said.
…
But now we have an intelligent lifeform that emerged as a dominant force, interrupting and exploiting our planet’s natural cycles. Humanity has inadvertently created a new bottleneck — let’s call it the “Industrial Bottleneck” — by causing irreversible changes to our delicate biosphere. Now, we’re seeing rapid impacts on our civilization as the balance in our climate is knocked off-kilter by the inexorable rise of greenhouse gases from industrial processes and energy needs.
Are these bottlenecks common throughout the cosmos? If an extraterrestrial lifeform “makes the grade” and survives the Gaian Bottleneck, does it then face another existential threat from their evolution into a industrial civilisation?
For now, this is all speculation, but what’s clear from observations of our own planet, is that the mother of all existential self-inflicted bottlenecks is on the horizon and, unless we find a way of reversing the damage we’ve caused to our environment, it seems we’ll quickly become just another lifeform that didn’t make the grade.
Read more: http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/why-cant-we-find-aliens-climate-change-killed-them-160121.htm
There’s evidence that intelligence is rare, either that or they are doing a very good job of hiding themselves. If even one other intelligence arose in our Galaxy at least half a million years ago, then where are they?.
However, a hypothesis of fiery death through technological climate apocalypse simply doesn’t make sense. In a few decades, a century at most, mankind will have the engineering capability to adjust the global thermostat to whatever we want, by pumping aerosols into the upper atmosphere, installing orbital mirrors, nuclear fusion powered heaters, or through advanced technologies we simply haven’t considered yet. I’m sure we can think of circumstances which would prevent aliens following the same technological path to greater control of their environment, but surely such circumstances would be special cases, not generally applicable?
My theory is that intelligent aliens, if they exist, are difficult to find, because they mostly end up abandoning the real world. Their computer games become so compelling, so immersive, the intelligences which created them simply don’t bother with physical reality anymore.
Our society has already seen the emergency of video game addiction. How bad will such addiction problems be, when the VR is piped directly into your brain, through a neural interface, and computer generated game reality is utterly indistinguishable from physical reality? Except of course, in the computer generated universe you are a superhero or a god, or whatever other character takes your fancy?
All this nonsense about things we don’t know being pontificated upon when the current state of cosmology can’t even tell us for certain whether the universe has a limit or not. I think that seeing unusual signals in the night sky might just have a LOT more pedestrian solutions than being evidence of civilized life.
During the Cold War the self-inflicted bottleneck terminating all extraterrestrial technological civilizations used to be an all-out nuclear war in each case, but now it morphed into Climate Disruption. Their history seems to be rather malleable, I say.
Checked calendar…. not April 1.
Checked Discovery web site…. not a hoax, article actually there.
Pinched self…ouch… awake, not having a bad dream.
Where’s caitiecaitie? Maybe she can explain using science?
davidmhoffer asks:
Where’s caitiecaitie? Maybe she can explain using science?
That would be a first! ☺
Actually, the aliens tried to communicate with us last year but all they heard was caitiecaitie yelling ” the models said it was true “, so they went on their merry way with fingers in their ears !
Dear Discovery:
I will believe climate change destroyed other planetary aliens if you can explain to me how America’s astronauts traveled through the Van Allen Belts going and coming from, the moon. Perhaps this short documentary will help jog your memory. You can start at about 22:00 and watch the last 20 minutes if you’re pressed for time.
Watches the Skies
Chief, Semihole Indian Tribe
* * *
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4h2czZTTLM
Quite easily, according to James Van Allen. You’re not Lewendowsky, are you?
That claim about the van Allen belts was the only one I couldn’t refute readily from my memories of growing up with the space program. However, I never researched it, there’s just no reward dealing with that crowd.
However, when I met Harrison Schmitt at one of the ICCCs in Chicago, I asked him about it, and how much protection the command capsule provided. He said the main reason it wasn’t an issue was how quickly they passed through the belt. Keep in mind the belts are pretty close to the Earth, so Apollo was moving very quickly, slowing nearly all the way to the moon.
Oh, don’t watch that video, it’s just too annoying and full of misinterpretations.
In a few decades, a century at most, mankind will have the engineering capability to adjust the global thermostat to whatever we want, by pumping aerosols into the upper atmosphere, installing orbital mirrors, nuclear fusion powered heaters, or through advanced technologies we simply haven’t considered yet
When I see that flying car then I’m ready to believe. More like the babe learning to tie its shoes then considering itself ready to run the Olympics
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yn2uyQJ1jc
🙂
Academia is full of industry hating people who if they had had their way would have prevented the industrial revolution that gave us the wealth prosperity health and abundant free time and communication technology which allows us to listen to these academic morons and laugh.
I much prefer Douglas Adam’s explanation. I don’t have the text to hand, so Wikipedia to the rescue:
“Earth is widely regarded with derision and scorn by most sentient beings in the galaxy. That most other races have shunned Earth is in part due to its primitive technological state and also for its invention of the game of cricket, an unfortunate product of racial memory that appears to make light of the horrendously genocidal Krikkit Wars, which right-thinking galactic citizens find immensely distasteful. Before the arrival of Ford Prefect and the Vogons, Earth’s main form of extraterrestrial contact was with “teasers”: bored rich kids who cruise the galaxy looking for planets yet to make interstellar contact, find some isolated spot, land in front of some credulous soul they know no one will ever believe, strut up and down in front of them with “silly antennas on their head” and make “beep-beep” noises at them. Ford regards this practice as “rather childish, really”. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
For those unfamiliar, the Krikkits were dedicated to the obliteration of the universe. As I recall, their shock troops were white robots who dispatched little red bombs with bats.
Ah, the late, great Douglas Adams – gone too soon. I have several of his books currently in a prominent place in my bookcase. It might be time to re-read one or two, perhaps a Dirk Gently novel or two. 🙂
Some thoughts. Planet Earth has been around some four and a half BILLION years. Intelligent human life as we know it has been around some ten THOUSAND years. Current behaviour indicates this human life will be extinct in less than a hundred years.
If alien life has similar problems it is no wonder we can’t discover evidence of any aliens.
Even conservative estimates put Homo Sapiens Sapiens in pretty much our format as 125,000 years+ – current behaviour indicates only THIS Civilisation might not last 100 years.
Fortunately for most of our history we have not been ‘this civilisation’ and the egoistic idea that we are somehow the ideal culmination of all that has gone before ignores the misery this society brings to almost everyone on the planet.
What I am suggesting is, chances are the ‘Consume or Perish’ economy is NOT the pinnacle of human life and shortly (looking like maybe a couple of months at the moment with the Dow Jones Industrial and Transportation Averages crashing) we may have an opportunity to build something much more suited to humans.
Are we really so egotistical we think if we can’t make things good, nobody else can either?
*giggles* So… because we can’t SEE them, other intelligences aren’t there? Really? I wonder if it has occurred to people that maybe, just perhaps, actual intelligent species…
1. Do NOT broadcast their presence to all and sundry because maybe they have had an evolution similar to the one we haven’t bothered learning from? Like… when the more advanced ‘others’ arrive on your shore, they arrive for THEIR benefit, not ours?
2. Maybe have evolved past broad spectrum analog signals and use some kind of direct to receiver digital signal for all communications? I mean think about it – we now use digital on a broad scale – would anyone notice 0’s and 1’s at any frequency? Unless you have the code used, they would appear pretty random.
e.g. the above para would be transmitted as:
0100110101100001011110010110001001100101001000000110100001100001011101100110010100100000011001010111011001101111011011000111011001100101011001000010000001110000011000010111001101110100001000000110001001110010011011110110000101100100001000000111001101110000011001010110001101110100011100100111010101101101001000000110000101101110011000010110110001101111011001110010000001110011011010010110011101101110011000010110110001110011001000000110000101101110011001000010000001110101011100110110010100100000011100110110111101101101011001010010000001101011011010010110111001100100001000000110111101100110001000000110010001101001011100100110010101100011011101000010000001110100011011110010000001110010011001010110001101100101011010010111011001100101011100100010000001100100011010010110011101101001011101000110000101101100001000000111001101101001011001110110111001100001011011000010000001100110011011110111001000100000011000010110110001101100001000000110001101101111011011010110110101110101011011100110100101100011011000010111010001101001011011110110111001110011001111110010000001001001001000000110110101100101011000010110111000100000011101000110100001101001011011100110101100100000011000010110001001101111011101010111010000100000011010010111010000100000001011010010000001110111011001010010000001101110011011110111011100100000011101010111001101100101001000000110010001101001011001110110100101110100011000010110110000100000011011110110111000100000011000010010000001100010011100100110111101100001011001000010000001110011011000110110000101101100011001010010000000101101001000000111011101101111011101010110110001100100001000000110000101101110011110010110111101101110011001010010000001101110011011110111010001101001011000110110010100100000001100000010011101110011001000000110000101101110011001000010000000110001001001110111001100100000011000010111010000100000011000010110111001111001001000000110011001110010011001010111000101110101011001010110111001100011011110010011111100100000010101010110111001101100011001010111001101110011001000000111100101101111011101010010000001101000011000010111011001100101001000000111010001101000011001010010000001100011011011110110010001100101001000000111010101110011011001010110010000101100001000000111010001101000011001010111100100100000011101110110111101110101011011000110010000100000011000010111000001110000011001010110000101110010001000000111000001110010011001010111010001110100011110010010000001110010011000010110111001100100011011110110110100101110
Now given I used an EARTH converter it ‘knew’ to make it 8 bit. Try removing all those spaces and work out what this means…
But all an alien would see is a string of 1’s and 0’s – I’m not sure how sophisticated our search engines are for SETI but would the above stream look any different from a random fluctuation if you DIDN’T know to use an 8 bit string?
3. So hundreds of thousands of people, including some VERY credible witnesses and even technology traces, are all incorrect and we have NO evidence of ‘others’ arriving? There is a term for people who let their personal beliefs prevent them from seeing actual data – we normally call them ‘Religious’ – Science should be non-Religious at all times.
4. And of course there is also the evidence we have that Earth has gone through far more extreme climactic conditions than anything we have seen since apes became bipedal and yet somehow Life still evolved into people who can look out into space and make really stupid announcements.
My apologies for the long string – I can’t seem to edit it to put in line breaks.
Um, the Ice Ages ARE ‘extreme weather changes’ since they plunge down in temperature and then suddenly shoot upwards again which is exactly why we evolved relatively rapidly, these big brains.
“extreme climactic conditions”
—
you mean climatic, climactic, or climacteric?
My friend went to a Bigfoot conference and brought me back a Bigfoot T-shirt. Does that count?
[The mods would count themselves as “impressed” if your friend had brought back Bigfoot’s T-shirt. .mod]
We are truly entering the IDIOCENE age. The evidence is all around us.
How many ants in an ant-nest, know that there is a human observing them?
Same applies, we are looking for the wrong technologies. I mean, everyone knows that aliens use neutrino transmitters – don’t they??
Ralph
It used to be Nuclear War that killed off the aliens.
I wonder what the next cause will be?
Perhaps the study of Science Fiction anthologies could tell exactly when the last change occurred and when the next one is happening.
Whatever it is, you’ll be gobsmacked that someone actually put it into a paper, let alone somebody may believe it.
Read the Player of Games. We need ships capable of kilolights to get anywhere.
In the words of Monty Python “I hope there is intelligent life out there because there’s bugger all down here on earth ”
Oh how wise they really were .
Maybe immortality turns put to be deadly boring, and the only escape is offing yourself.
turns out …
What is probably inevitable with every evolution of life forms with grotesquely bulbous heads and advanced abstract mental function (I won’t use the word intelligence) is the emergence of equivalents to the na3is, communists, islamofasc1sts and despotic pseudoscientist environmentalists.
Was it for this that clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
Wilfred Owen
“Global Warming Killed all the Aliens”
It has also killed of all the yeti and bigfoot off. I am sure (faux) Nobel laureate Michael Mann will be crying about it.
“When Michael Mann presents public lectures on climate change, he almost always ends with the same PowerPoint slide. It’s a photo of his daughter, Megan.
The now-8-year-old is standing in a plexiglass tunnel beneath a polar bear exhibit at the Pittsburgh Zoo, looking up at the tank that holds the massive arctic creatures. For Mann and his climate change supporters, it’s symbolic.”
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/01/michael_mann_the_penn_state_pr.html
It is certainly symbolic but not in the way the alarmists think!
“Global Warming Killed all the Aliens”
And it all started around when when video killed the radio star.
Do radio stars have planetary systems that support video life forms? Is a video life form one that can be seen but not heard?
Will video life forms kill and kill again or are they satisfied with having killed their own sun? What drives their global warming system once the sun dies?
So many questions, so little time…
Pellegrino’s Postulate (Flying to Valhalla): prudent races assume at least one other is predatory and destructive, so they pre-emptively destroy every life-bearing planet. They are collectively very efficient.
The aliens came, they saw, they decided that there’s no intelligent life here.
The Vegetable Men from Dendros 5 in the Arboreal Galaxy absolutely thrive on CO2. They have moved way beyond radio communications because they communicate like plants on earth do.
“My theory is that intelligent aliens, if they exist, are difficult to find, because they mostly end up abandoning the real world. Their computer games become so compelling, so immersive, the intelligences which created them simply don’t bother with physical reality anymore.”
Or “monsters from the Id” – reference to “Forbidden Planet”.
I thought skeptics were silly for believing in UFOs. It appears that warmists are only silly for believing UFO’s do exist because it goes against the global warming gospel and that, bottom line, they do actually believe there are/were aliens. Seems warmists are believers, too.
“In a few decades, a century at most, mankind will have the engineering capability to adjust the global thermostat to whatever we want, by pumping aerosols into the upper atmosphere, installing orbital mirrors, nuclear fusion powered heaters, or through advanced technologies we simply haven’t considered yet.”
Climate science has a bright future. :-/
How about this? Species evolve to a point where even the stupid of the species thrive because natural evolution is paused because of technology. Since the stupid outnumber the smart they control the governing forces of the planet. The stupid rulers direct the scientists of their employ to solve non-existent problems that further the rulers’ own goals of retaining power. They ignore the actual goal of survival of the species which is to get off of their planet before the inevitable asteroid strike/ice age/super volcano occurs. Some real planetary scale catastrophe occurs and they are ill prepared. Most are wiped out. Some survive. Repeat process from beginning.
That was the exact problem we had where I came from. Fortunately some of us got away.
You’re originally from Detroit then, Tom?