Is the discovery of Keplar 186f bad news for earthlings?

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or do we have a preconceived notion of what alien life is that makes it impossible to recognize what is in front of us.

Has anyone seen the movie "Down the Rabbit Hole, What the Bleep Do We Know" and remember the part about the islander seeing ships on the horizon that no one had noticed before but which had been there for an indefinite period of time, because of what humans had been conditioned to see, or not see? Maybe that is the case with alien life forms. We are not like Star Trek, having devices that can detect what we don't even know about, are we? Maybe there are things among us that we don't know how to look for or detect.


http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/ ... 1k6MeZdWDo

I believe that mankind was never intended to join the advanced spacefaring races of the galaxy. I believe we are merely a sandbox race uncivilized and un-civilizable, a test race and nothing more.

Wouldn't that make us a litter box race?

maybe a litterbox for some advanced race. I believe that when the great library of Alexandria was sacked, that was the last straw, mankind collectively made the choice to look backwards instead of forwards. if that had not happened, I believe we'd be a spacefaring race by now. probably we are too provincial and spiteful a race to survive for much longer.

I think that you're incorrect.

It may be that our current state of social evolution given the massive technological & scientific surge we're experiencing is unsustainable over the long term, but humans are an extremely hardy species.
Even a global disaster, if it failed to completely destroy the biosphere, would be unlikely to wipe out more than 98% of us, if that.

The rest would survive, and evolve yet with the legacy of technlogy & science plus understandings of the dangers they pose could potentially produce the first new social evolution of our species since we started building cities.
It's just an untestable theory I came up with many years ago in college based on a bunch of things it took a whole series of huge, Professor confounding papers for me to adequately articulate the reasons which led me to this conclusion, unfortunately, but I still think it has a significant possibility of occuring and that my theory is valid as things currently stand and current & recent past events are consistent wwith the general socio-econo-political trends I predicted would eventually cause this to happen.

Still, there's a long way to go, plenty of escape routes left, and I'll probably not live long enough to even get close to the events themselves, so who knows?

^^^^But if just one a**hole survives,like say a Westboro Baptist,and they multiply..........

We have no evidence that such "advance spacefaring racies" exist. We we do what we do using our own brains an resources. It remains to be seen how far we will advance. And no, our scientific breakthroughs did not come from "ancient aliens". Everything done by the human race so far is by our own efforts and talents.

ruveyn

What the Bleep Do We Know is not a good reference on how reality work.

Actually, my predictions indicate that individuals, as such, will cease to be viable survival units outside of societies, and the sole purpose of those societies would be their survival.
As a consequence this would rapidly cull those who were too powerhungry, radical, violent, or parasitic from the remaining populations.
Small groups may persist for some time after as outcasts, but inevitably fighting amongst them would graudually dwindle their numbers until they were either absorbed or all gone.

Of course it could actually go the other way, a reversion to tribalism at its worst, but I'm an optimist at heart.

It's fun to speculate about alien life.
There was one movie that laid out the details succinctly. The aliens were all one race on their planet, one language, one religion, and a single government. So that's why we can't get anywhere. We're constantly at each others throats, constantly killing anyone not of our "tribe". We'll never achieve anything close to space travel because we're too violent.

As to the great filter nonsense, it's just barely possible that other alien races achieve a high level of science and then simply can't resist the urge to "cross the streams". Or they're all just barely less violent then we are, and end up unleashing some super weapon upon each other. The article doesn't apply the theory very well. It also ignores the fact that we have NO way to check for alien civilizations. Let's admit for once that monitoring radio waves is just stupid. We can't begin to guess how aliens would communicate. Why would they use a technology that we do?

Finally, the "great filter" could be the development of science. It's just possible that alien races get stuck at the agricultural level and never make the the jump we did. We presume they all would, but if you know your history, you know it isn't a 'slam dunk'.

all I know, is that if I were the human race, and I managed to make it to at least level 1 [kardachev scale] I would set to work constructing a big opaque sphere around the solar system so that no other civilization could detect me.

Now, now AuntBlabby, that's just a touch paranoid, isn't it ???
What about all the friendly space brothers that want to come here and help us achieve worldwide peace?
Michael Rennie is out there, just waiting to drop in and help us.
Zero point energy, peace, love …..

if it's good enough for hawking, it's good enough for me.

The earth could not be detected before radio, less than a hundred years ago, and this earth like planet is almost 500 light years away. They would be getting signals from Columbus spreading disease to the new world. As the people that were dying were considered a gift from god, who wanted to give the land to the one true faith, It was seen as a good thing.

Intelligent life would take action, and send a planet killer, which will arrive in 700 years.

Invasive species are always bad. That is just here, the biology of another planet, ecodisaster is a sure thing.

What is not being reported is how old is the sun? New stars are forming, so we are looking for a planet about five billion years old, to host our level of life.

A Precambrian world would be the best, where life has not formed, or barely started, and seeding it with earth species could drive it's development toward something that would not outright kill us, and we could eat.

The stage where free Oxygen forms would help, something we could breath.

None of the close stars scanned showed anything, and reaching 500 light years is still a problem.

Maybe tens of thousands of years to produce earth like conditions, before sending people, to mess it up.

That has to consider that out of the last 150,000 years, 130,000 were in three ice ages, with two five thousand year intergacials, before this ten thousand year period.

Before that we went through some warm times, 125 Degree F, no winter, and an age of Reptiles.

We do not have a stable base to run a project that would take up to fifty thousand years.

If other intelligent life were a hundred years behind us, we could not detect them for six hundred years.

If they were a hundred years ahead of us, they would not be wasting energy broadcasting, they would use fiber optic,supercooled power transmission, and not waste a third of all energy produced.

Our methods, we are searching for life, that is named Bob, Joe, Mary, Jane, because we have names.

If the fuel problem could be solved, physics limits us to maybe 10% of the speed of light, and as much energy to stop. It would be a ten thousand year trip.

That could be an automated probe to seed the planet with our life, a major war crime of planet Biological genocide.

Ten thousand years later we could send people, if any of those are left.

What will arrive will not be what we sent, they will mutate in space, and again if they land and survive.

By the time we get the message, "We made it," another five hundred years, they will no longer be what sent the message.

It can be done, I am free to start work after the fall harvest. A deposit will be required.

For less than 5% of that cost, and in only a hundred years, this planet couod be rebuilt into a park, covered in food, with some climate stability.

I'm wit dat.

As far as space fairing civilizations go, the late Carl Sagan had suggested that that might very well might end up being us, as someone has to be first.