Why haven't extraterrestrials made their presence known?

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That is assuming that the multi-terawatt Hydrogen-based emission spectrum from the Sun sun does not drown out the meager Oxygen absorption spectrum from the Earth (which it does).


Assuming also that they've evolved to a technology level that surpasses our own without having first incinerated themselves in a global thermonuclear war.


They may also be superstitious cave-dwellers, tree-dwelling proto-sentients, or bottom-dwelling ooze.


The planet has 4.5 times the gravity of Earth, making for a higher escape velocity and a vastly retarded space program. It also receives almost no ultraviolet light from its own sun, making photosynthesis unlikely, and green plants even less likely.


... or not.


No such moon has been detected.


They may have no idea we're here or the may not care to even look up - assuming that they even exist in the first place.


Lack of knowledge is no reason to assume an abundance of extra-terrestrial life; or that if such life exists, that they are capable of finding out what lies beyond their sky. To do otherwise is to commit the fallacy of "Argument from Ignorance", or "Appeal to Ignorance" - where "ignorance" stands for "lack of evidence to the contrary". Such a fallacy is used to assert that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false. Appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof away from the person making an invalid claim, or they may be used as a rationalization by a person who realizes that he has no reason for holding the belief that he does.

It is only an hypothesis - testable, but untested.

Well, both the ESA and NASA have space based interfermotery telescope designs to tease out these signals, out to 40 ly or so.. And that's with near term technology.

If you built a large enough telescopic array (which is beyond our technology), you could even see surface features of extra-solar planets. Determining the atmospheric composition is the low end of what is possible. If we ever do leave the solar system, we're already going to know what the other planet's atmosphere contains. So the context of my comment was that we've been broadcasting a strong signal (powered by the sun) for a very long time. Any life like ours that is looking has had more to go on than radio waves. And for far longer.

['m not making any assumptions about reality, just entertaining possibilities. I personally don't put the prospect of alien life in the same box with elves and dragons. Your mileage may vary.




Good think I didnt assume that. Don't hurt yourself trying to read.

I never said you did.


Likewise.

^^^ This.

I don't know if they've visited us or not, but I certainly don't buy the stories that come out of places like Area 51. The government don't really confirm or deny the possibility of ET presences, because they like the cover it gives their secret experimental projects.

Area 51 itself may only be a distraction...

They have and most people have not accepted it...at least that was the closest to what I think.

O RLY?


Furthermore, the massive galaxy M87 has a jet of matter spewing out of its center that appears to be moving 6-8 times the speed of light. Some astrophysicists try to explain this away as an optical illusion caused by the curvature of space-time around the galaxy itself; but even that explanation is problematic because special relativity predicts that nothing can even appear to move faster than light since the speed of light is a universal reference frame in its own right!

However, it does seem to be evident that travelling faster than light cannot be done by brute force. The best way of getting to distant stars and elsewhere in the Cosmos would be to figure out how to amplify gravity enough to create a Lorentizan wormhole(a byproduct of General Relativity). I'm not saying that relativity is entirely wrong; I'm pointing that relativity is far from perfect.

No one believes me...

[img][800:523]http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/images/alien15.gif[/img]

There are three possibilities here:

1.Aliens have visited, we just don't know.

2.Aliens do not have the technology to visit Earth.

3.Aliens do not exist.

Quite frankly my vote has to go to the second option. The universe is massive, chances are at least one other planet out there is supporting life. This does not mean, however, that said life is going to be more advanced than us, to the extent of being able to travel across vast distances of space.

Maybe but the likelihood that it's just a testing ground for experimental crafts is greater.

There are a lot of people on Earth already who fear extraterrestrials, who think it would be detrimental to the Human race to have contact with them. That we could be colonized and enslaved. I think on other planets with sentient life that considers the possibility of life elsewhere they have this fear as well. It could be that when space faring civilizations meet they never get along. So perhaps aliens do not want to be found

DON'T SAY THAT!

If they are listening, space aliens, I don't fear you, and you shouldn't fear me. I wish you'd come see me, I wouldn't mind hoping off this planet for a couple days or maybe until eternity. I'm a fun guy, I swear!