Why haven't extraterrestrials made their presence known?

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There are so many reports of people being abducted and contacted, as well as confessions from high places, that it seems like we are being visited, even though we don't have a spaceship or body to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The best bet if they're indeed around is the quarantine/nature reserve rule. If you're studying or observing a world populated with "alien" life, you avoid contaminating it. Although cultural contamination has already occurred if that's true, so someone dropped the ball on that one. Then there's the chance that Earth is just not interesting to them and humanity appears too child-like or primitive (to their standards) to interact with. A mere curiosity of life for alien students and/or interns of xenobiology and xenosociology to study, nothing more.

They don't have the technology to get here and they're too far away to pick up our radio waves let alone voyage the universe in search of life anywhere near us.

The aliens are inteligent dust mites who get here via tiny saucers the size of dandruff particles. There could be whole cities of them in the rug beneath your feet- millions of 'em screaming at you as we speak. But you're oblvious to them!

People are unreliable witnesses. And that's when they arent actively trying to fool other people.

We may or may not have been visited but the evidence is not strong enough to say.

the universe started this round of existence 14.5 billion years ago (according to the background radiation temperature), and it takes many billions of years for planets to form that can give rise to life.
in the early universe, there was mainly hydrogen, and that formed stars that lived and went through various stages of fusion before they exploded and dispersed heavier and more complex elements into the universe.

the next generation of stars were formed still mainly of hydrogen, but they also had these heavier elements in their composition, and when it came time for them to die, they could fuse the heavier elements into even more complex and heavy elements like gold and iron etc. these trace elements are necessary for life to begin, so i surmise that at least 2 generations of stars had to live their lives before the universe had the ingredients for life (i am being extremely simplistic). simple stars like red giants live for a short amount of time, and they would have been the first stars, and their demise would have yielded material that could coalesce into more complex main sequence stars (not as complex as our sun yet) and the time taken to produce heavy elements like the elements we need for our life would be maybe 10 billion years (i am not going to go into a breakdown of it because i can not be bothered).

since our sun is approximately 4.5 billion years old, and we have on earth all the elements required for life (without reference to liquids), then i think life in this current "round" of the universe would have became possible about 4.5 billion years ago. the time it takes for a simple protozoa to evolve into beings with the abilities of humans would be similar everywhere in the universe (given ideal conditions), and therefore i suspect that there are no extraterrestrial beings that are much more advanced than we are.

there are some who point to the fact we have been broadcasting radio transmissions for 90 years, and that our tv shows and radio programs would be far off into the universe (well 90 light years is not that far really), but the signal strength of those transmissions would be completely lost and insignificant against the background noise of the other radio waves produced at random from stars and other bodies even before they exited our solar system.

for an alien consciousness to perceive our transmissions by discerning them from the extreme distances that they may be from us (due to the unlikelyhood of an ideal set of circumstances happening on another planet like ours to give rise to intelligence like ours) is like detecting a neutrino in a million cubic miles of space (just a figurative analogy).

the radial dispersion of our radio signals would render them inconspicuous within a distance that is nowhere near where other lives like ours are likely to exist.

also it is the case that i believe that no species can exist for an extreme amount of time. i do not believe humans will exist in 1 billion years or even 10 million years time. every thing that flourishes to an extreme degree starves itself of resources, and perishes in it's waste, or else it encounters an environmental change that is too great for it to adapt in a timely manner even before that.

i guess that intelligent life on other distant worlds would be subject to the same checks and balances as is the reality in this world.


whatever (my hallmark disclaimer), i may be entirely incorrect, but my brain reasons the matter as i have posted.

The speed of light is the upper bound for traveling massive objects. The stars with planets having intelligent life are too far away from us for any visitors to come from there. Likewise we are not going to be visiting them, assuming they exist.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 03 Feb 2012, 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Your question is based on the assumption that extraterrestrials are present. This is an invalid assumption, since there is no valid empirical evidence to support the claim that extraterrestrials are present, and while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it is reasonable to doubt any claims that favor the presence of extraterrestrials on Earth.


All without valid supporting evidence.


Please provide links to these alleged "confessions".


Appearances can be deceiving.


As I've said before (and will keep saying)...

Major Premise: "Absence of evidence, while not evidence of absence, is sufficient cause for reasonable doubt."
Minor Premise: "There exists no valid material evidence to support any claim for the existence of extraterrestrials on Earth."
Conclusion: "It is both reasonable to doubt the existence of extraterrestrials on Earth and unreasonable to believe otherwise."

that is what i consider to be the case.

can you not consider the universe without links to evidence derived by others?

You just answered your own question.

No. That's what Science-Fiction and Fantasy stories are for.

Claims without evidence are faith-based assumptions.

Faith proves nothing; neither do assumptions.

It's just that simple.

The galaxy is only 100,000 ly across and we've been broadcasting an O2 signature for hundreds of millions of years. Even a suffiently powerful telescopic array in the Andromeda galaxy has had plenty of time to detect Earth's O2. So every star in our galaxy capable of getting light from the Sun-Earth system has had the time to send a probe to investigate. And even 1970s technology has kept a probe operating for 35 years in space. It's not that difficult to envision one capable of operating for a 100, 100s or a thousand and travelling at a small % of c.

Assuming a civilization exists, they've had the time to send a mechanical probe. They either don't exist, haven't sent one, arrived before we were here, or choose not to make themselves known (not very hard given our limited presence in our own solar system). There is just no way to know.

Just this week they discovered evidence of a super-earth in the habitable zone of a nearby star, just 22 ly away. Life could be there, or on a moon of that world. They might have spotted us a long time ago and are intentionally not signalling themselves. You just never know.

Last edited by simon_says on 03 Feb 2012, 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have. Hello!

I'm starting to wonder about the theory that we are technically life that leapfrogged from Mars via meteor. Apparently Mars and Earth have been exchanging pieces with each other since their inception, Mars more easily to earth because of lower exit velocity, and the chemical composition in the glass of these meteors is showing up very hospitable climate there around 4 billion years ago. If that's the case we may well all be Martian diaspora (sadly for the ladies there's no evidence that they're from Venus - yet a least).

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 ret*d 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.