Does Our Solar System Travel or Is It Stationary?: 9 Answers

Does our solar system travel or is it stationary?
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Robert Frost, Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA

Robert has 610+ answers and 90 endorsements in Outer Space.
There are a couple of answers to that because we are a moving body within a moving
body within a moving body.
If you look towards the constellation Hercules, below Vega is a spot called the Solar
apex. Our sun is moving in that direction at about 16.5 km/s within the local
neighborhood of stars.
But the Milky Way is also moving. It is moving in the direction we look when looking
at the constellation Hydra, at about 600 km/s.
In about 4 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy.
Mathematically, the proof is in Kepler and Newton's equations. If the sun and other
stars were not revolving around the galaxy, they would have to be condensing into a
smaller and smaller galaxy as gravity did its job. Observation of Doppler shifting can
illustrate which is happening.
30,269 views 699 upvotes Written 20 Aug, 2013 Asked to answer by Ashish Gupta
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Derek Harkness, Civil Engineer, Military Engineer and University lecturer.

Robert Frost got it right as far as movement related to nearby bodies are
concerned, however, movement is relative to the point of observation. How a body is
perceived to move depends entirely on who is observing the movement and where
they are observing from. Robert used the neighbouring stars and galaxies as his
points of reference. However, these other stars and galaxies are all moving too.
Another possible answer would be to suppose that there centre to the universe, a
point from which we originated in the Big Bang, and from which, we might suppose,
we are travelling away from. If we identify such a origin or universal centre, then we
determine our velocity relative to the entire universe.
So with this in mind, the astronomers started to measure the velocity of every distant
object in the heavens.
They can do this using a technique called red shift which relies on the Doppler effect.
In short, the colour of light observed coming from a distant star changes depending
on the speed of the star. The faster a star is moving away from us, the more red it
appears, and towards us, the more blue.
The upshot of this was that when measured, all distant objects were moving away
from us. When we look left, right, up or down, everything is moving away evenly. It
isn't that object to the left are moving faster than those on the right. Both are equal.
The only difference between objects is that further away objects are moving faster
than nearer objects.
Thus the centre of the observable universe is here, its us. Thus it is logical to
conclude that we are not moving. We are stationary and everything else is moving.
It should be noted that, though we are the centre of the observable universe, the
observable universe is just a tiny fragment of the whole. It is quite likely correct to
postulate at that there is no centre to the universe at all. (see Where is the centre of
the universe?)
Thus with no centre to reference, it is logical to conclude that we are not moving.
Ultimately we measure every objects velocity with respect to ourselves. For all
intensive purposes, we are stationary and everything else is moving.
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Anita S Vasu, Wanderer

I think the question should be whether we are accelerating or not. Because moving
with constant speed is equivalent to being stationary. Ever since Einstein's special
theory of relativity, we treat this with more importance than ever before.
What are some theories on why we haven't been visited by

aliens yet?
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Thaddeus Howze, Author, Futurist, Technology Consultant
The Fermi paradox: It's complicated.
Fortunately I have found a video that breaks down the Fermi Paradox into its
component concepts in simple, four-color splendor. If you like it support the
creators. It took them 200 hours to create it.
When you are done with this video, you will understand the basic premise for why
we suspect the Universe is quiet. Some of these ideas are positively terrifying to
conceive of.
The empty dead universe concept is even more terrifying to conceive of. An entire
universe with no life in it but us. And we are poised on the edge of nuclear war,
climate change, asteroid strike, plague, and run away capitalism. The universe may
be more screwed than it knows if its depending on US to fill it with new life.
Associated with the Fermi Paradox is The Drake Equation
"What do we need to know about to discover life in space?"

How can we estimate the number of technological civilizations that might exist among
the stars? -- Frank Drake, 1961
While working as a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy

Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, Dr. Frank Drake conceived an approach
to bound the terms involved in estimating the number of technological civilizations
that may exist in our galaxy.
The Drake Equation, as it has become known, was first presented by Drake in
1961 and identifies specific factors thought to play a role in the development of such
civilizations.
Although there is no unique solution to this equation, it is a generally accepted

tool used by the scientific community to examine these factors.
UPDATE: The Fermi Paradox, Part II

Solutions and Ideas Where Are All The Aliens?
Where are all the aliens? The universe is too big and too old, why have we not met aliens
yet? Do they live in computers? Were they wiped out by an ancient super intelligence? Or
are we just to primitive to understand their motives? Whatever the answer is, it is
incredibly important for our own future.
REFERENCES:
Wikipedia: Fermi paradox
SETI Institute: The Drake Equation
Kurzgesagt Information Design
VIDEOS:
Kurz Gesagt - In a Nutshell: The Fermi Paradox video
Drake Equation Video: Published on Aug 9, 2013 - Animation explaining famous
Drake Equation with the voice of COSMOS editor Wilson da Silva.
10,346 views 61 upvotes Updated 10 Jun

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Sandhya Ramesh, amateur astronomer, particularly interested in planetary science.

Sandhya has 10+ answers in Extraterrestrial Life.
The classic Fermi paradox makes for very interesting analysis. There are some very
compelling theories on why we haven't been visited by or been made aware of other
intelligent life forms out there if there are potentially over a 100 billion Earth-like
planets out there.
To understand these theories, there are certain concepts and theories one needs to be
familiar with. This is a longish answer, but bear with me while I get to it.
Types of Intelligent Civlizations
The first thing we need to understand is the Kardashev Scale. The Kardashev scale
measures the technological advancement of a civilization based on the amount of energy
it has at its disposal. There are three types of civilizations: Type 1, where a civilization is
technologically capable of using all the energy sources on its planet (Carl Sagan puts us
at 0.7, Michio Kaku says we might become Type 1 in about 200 years); Type 2, a
civilization with enough technology to harness energy from its system's host star; and
Type 3, a civilization capable of harnessing the power of its galaxy and thereby colonizing
the galaxy. All these Types are used broadly while talking about colonization in space
and the ability to terraform and mine other planets.
(Image from October | 2012 | AstroWright)

Sorry.
Why do we talk about these civilization types? Are they some form of measurement for
future technological advancement? Not necessarily. Our Universe is 13.77 billion years
old. Our Solar System is 4.6 billion years old. The Earth is about 4.54 billion years old.
There are planets outside our Solar System that are more than twice as old as Earth.
Even if out of the 100 billion Earth-like planets, only 1% have the right conditions to
harbor life, we still have about 1000000000 planets.
(Image from theskyisbeautifultonight)

Drake's Equation, while isn't aimed at estimating the number of civilizations out there
but only at the probability of communication, is a trippy thought experiment that also
makes us think along the same lines:
N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which radio-communication might be

possible
R* = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has
planets
fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point
fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs
of their existence into space
L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space
Currently, we estimate that R* and fp are quite high, with ne being moderately high. We
do not have any proof of fl, fi, or fc yet.
On paper, some of these 1000000000 planets could easily be sustaining Type 2 or even
Type 3 civilizations. But in reality, are they? If these civilizations indeed do exist, why
have they not contacted us? Or have they contacted us? In fact, can they theoretically
even exist at all? Is it even possible, there might not be any other civilizations at all?
Let's simplify these questions and break them down into three: 1) that life either doesn't
exist or is of lower intelligence than us, making it hard for them to contact us, 2) there
are Type2 and Type3 civilizations, but they choose not to contact us or are contacting us
and we can't recognize them, and 3) we have been contacted and we know it. There are
ample theories to explain the former two scenarios, and one piece of evidence for the
third:
I. Life doesn't exist elsewhere, or if it does, is of lower

intelligence than us
To understand this further, we need to know about how life came by and the Great
Filter.
Origin of Life on Earth

Life arose on Earth from n... (more)
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David Myers, retired mental health worker

One theory in Science Fiction that I find interesting is Verner Vinge's concept of "Zones
of Thought" which is introduced in his SF novel "A Fire Upon the Deep" (pub 1992).
Simply put there are zones of thought around the entirety of the Milky Way. "The galaxy
is divided into four concentric volumes called the "Zones of Thought". The Zones
reflect fundamental differences in basic physical laws, and one of the main
consequences is their effect on intelligence, both biological and artificial.
Artificial intelligence and automation is most directly affected, in that advanced
hardware and software from the Beyond or the Transcend will work less and less well as
a ship "descends" towards the Unthinking Depths. But even biological intelligence is
affected to a lesser degree. The four zones are spoken of in terms of "low" to "high" as
follows:
"The Unthinking Depths are the innermost zone, surrounding thegalactic core
(of the Milky Way). In it, only minimal forms of intelligence, biological or
otherwise, are possible. This means that any ship straying into the Depths will be
stranded, effectively permanently. Even if the crew did not die immediately--and
some forms of life native to "higher" Zones would likely do so--they would be
rendered incapable of even human intelligence, leaving them unable to operate their
ship in any meaningful way.
Surrounding the Depths is the Slow Zone. The Earth (called "Old Earth") is
located in this Zone, and humanity is said to have originated there, although Earth
plays no significant role in the story. Biological intelligence is possible in "the
Slowness", but not true, sentient, artificial intelligence. Faster-than-light
travel may not be initiated in the Slow Zone, i.e., one may "jump" into
the Slow Zone, but not back out. All ships which find themselves in the
Slow Zone are restricted to sub-light speeds. Faster-than-light
communicationis impossible into or out of the Slow Zone. As the
boundaries of the Zones are unknown and subject to change, accidental entry to the
Slow Zone is a major interstellar navigational hazard at the "Bottom" of the Beyond.
Starships which operate near the Beyond/Slow Zone border often have an
auxiliary Bussard ramjet drive, so that, if they accidentally stray into the Slow Zone
thus disabling any FTL (faster than light) drive, they will at least have a backup
(sub-light) drive to push them back 'up' to the Beyond. Such ships also tend to
include "coldsleep" equipment, as it is likely that any such return will still take many
subjective lifetimes for most species.
The next outermost layer is the Beyond, within which artificial intelligence,
faster-than-light travel and faster-than-light communication, and antigravity are
possible. A few human civilizations exist in the Beyond, all descended from a single
ethnic Norwegian group which managed to travel from the Slow Zone to the Beyond
(presumably at sub-light speeds) and thence spread using FTL travel. The original
settlement of this group is known as Nyjora; other human settlements in the Beyond
include Straumli Realm and Sjandra Kei. In the Beyond, FTL travel is accomplished
by making many small "jumps" across intervening space, and the efficiency of
the drive increases the farther a ship travels from the galactic core. This
reflects increases in both drive efficiency and the ship's automation's
increased capacity as one moves outward, enabling the computation of
longer and longer jumps. The Beyond is not a homogeneous zone -- many
references are made to, e.g., the 'High Beyond' or the 'Bottom of the Beyond',
depending on distance to the galactic core. These terms seem to refer to differences
in the Zone itself, not just relative distance from the Core, but there are no obvious
Zone boundaries within the Beyond the way there are between the Slow Zone and
the Beyond, or between the Beyond and the Transcend. Whereas a ship that crosses
from the Beyond to the Slow Zone or vice versa will experience a dramatic change in
its capabilities, a ship in the Beyond which moves farther from the Core will
experience a gradual increase in efficiency (assuming it has the technology to make
use of it) until another major shift at the boundary to the Transcend. The Beyond is
populated by a very large number of interstellar and intergalactic civilizations which
are linked by a faster-than-light communication network, "the Net," sometimes
cynically called the "Net of a Million Lies". The Net does connect with the
Transcend, on the off-chance that one of the "Powers" that live there deigns to
communicate, but has no connections with the Slow Zone, as FTL communication is
impossible into or out of that Zone. In the novel, the Net is depicted as working
much like the Usenet network in the early 1990s, with transcripts of messages
containing header and footer information as one would find in such forums.
The outermost layer, containing the galactic halo, is the Transcend, within
which incomprehensible, superintelligent beings dwell. When a "Beyonder"
civilization reaches the point of technological singularity, it is said to "Transcend,"
becoming a "Power." Such Powers always seem to relocate to the Transcend,
seemingly necessarily, where they become engaged in affairs which remain entirely
mysterious to those that remain in the Beyond."
So simply put, if our earth is in the slow zone, beings from other stars
which are in other zones where faster than light travel is possible don't
dare come to visit us because they would then be stuck in a zone where
faster than the speed of light travel is impossible and they couldn't live
long enough to get back to zones where their faster than light drives would
work and thus be able to return from where they came. In other words we are
isolated from other higher intelligence societies because we can't get to them with our
speed of light limits and they don't dare come into our zone because they wouldn't be
able to get back to where their faster than light drives successfully function. Same goes
for electronic communications so they (higher zone inhabitants) cannot communicate
with us and we can't with them because of the same limits speed of light limits of the
"slow zone".
In Vernor Vinge's sequel to "A Fire Upon the Deep". . . . "A Deepness In the Sky", events
are set in motion which disturbs the stability of those Zone boundaries and they become
very unstable, shifting millions of miles in seconds, randomly, so that faster than light
ships near the border of the slow zone were at risk of being marooned if the boundary of
the slow zone shifts outward enough to put a such a ship in the slow zone and make their
faster than light engines unusable (and taking more than a lifetime to get back out of the
slow zone using sub-speed-of-light technology). Both of these SF novels are well worth
the read!
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Brandon Smietana, Founder of Symbolic Analytics

Originally Answered: Why haven't we met any aliens?
If Moore's law continues for another 60 years and Moravic's estimation of the
computational resources required for human brain simulation hold up, then by 2080 a
1000 USD desktop computer will be able to simulate 6 billion human minds in real time.
http://www.singularity.com/chart...
Kurzweil estimates this threshold to be passed by 2050, but I am being very conservative
and saying 2080; although the recent data points suggest we may achieve this by 2040.
If an alien civilization could simulate a whole human scale human civilization in real
time on a 1000 USD CPU, it is unlikely that they would have any interest in
communicating with us. Especially if round trip communication time was several
centuries.
Other civilizations either lack the resource and technology necessary for communication,
or if they had the technology they would be as interested in communicating with us as we
are interested in communicating with ants.
2,207 views 24 upvotes Written 16 May, 2010

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Vilan Natanzon, Internet Intellectualizer

Assuming intelligent life like our own is out there and can get here, there's the problem
of communication. There's no point in announcing their existence far and wide as
popular imagination expects. There must be some contact protocol.
Aliens must study us to understand how our minds and societies work. They must
develop some types of intermediaries that can translate from one civilization to another.
The popular abduction stories fit this idea. Intermediaries could be made by breeding
humans with more familiar life forms, like the big eyed grays. There could be layers of
intermediaries. Some may be mostly human, live among humans, not know they're
hybrids. Some may know. Some may live among the aliens.
UFO folklore aside, the translation problems are significant. Aliens would need special
purpose built minds to do it thoroughly. There are some comparisons to current machine
translation between human languages that I think are misleading. This translation relies
on different cultures thinking about the same topics in a similar way and generating
volumes of text where the main difference is language. Aliens wouldn't have this luxury,
which makes the idea of intermediary populations more plausible.
We have the same problem with animals - When can humans have inter-species
dialogue with dolphins? While we can establish basic communication with apes and
dolphins, it's not very useful. Similarly, aliens could establish basic communication with
us and it would be a dead end at best, or dangerous at worst.

When Europeans settled the Americas, they did not know how the natives wanted to live
and the natives were eventually surprised by European culture. Today we're more careful
about how we contact culturally distant groups, we have the luxury of not needing their
land. Aliens might be far more careful.
1,507 views 4 upvotes Updated 25 Jan, 2011

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Robert Walker, Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of
Tune Smit...
Robert has 50+ answers in Extraterrestrial Life.
My favorite theory is that

1.
Many ETs are non technological. Like parrots or elephants, or dogs just not
physically easily capable of making complex things however much they want to. Or
live in sub surface oceans like Europa - if they live in the sea that also makes them
likely to be non technological e.g. can't use fire easily. And may not know that the
rest of the universe exists. Such an ET could even live in our solar system. We could
have ETIs in the subsurface oceans of Europa, Ganymede, Titan and Encladus and if
they were non technological we'd have no idea at all that they exist, and they
wouldn't know that we exist. Given how many more icy moons there are than
habitable planets in our solar system - these may well be the most common types of
ETI in the galaxy.
2.
The ones that are technological are either short sighted in which case they destroy
themselves early on or at least their technology and don't remain technological for
long. Or if long sighted - then they think carefully before colonizing the galaxy.
Reason is - that if you colonize the galaxy - what are your colonies going to turn into?
What creatures or machines will your descendants ten or a hundred generations
down the line unleash onto the galaxy?
Especially bearing in mind that amongst billions of colonies separated by light speed
barriers - some may "de-evolve" biologically or socially. May become beings of only
baby like levels of understanding for instance, but with machines giving them
enormous powers. Others may develop obscure ideas and aims that are baffling to
everyone else, strange social or antisocial objectives, or may make huge
technological or biological blunders. Which with galaxy shaping power, e.g. to
unleash self replicating technology could literally trash the galaxy.
I think that a cautious ETI would give that considcrable thought and probably
wouldn't start to colonize the galaxy until they had worked it through to their
satisfaction.
3.
By the time they have the capability to colonize - and also have developed to the
point where socially they are able to colonize a galaxy without trashing it - confident
that it will be in safe hands in their descendants even ten or a hundred or even a
million generations away (and with long lives they may still be alive to see their
hundred times removed grandchildren) - then they may have very different ideas
about it than we do.
Would they even want to colonize? If they do, maybe their technology is so advanced
that we can hardly recognize it as technology at all? Maybe what they use is so unlike
what we currently call technology that it is more like magic for us? Probably they
wouldn't swarm through the galaxy and fill every single planet and star system with
their species, as humans surely would at our present stage of social development.
Maybe they feel no hurry to fill the galaxy, if at all, and maybe the nearest colony is a
thousand light years away (still very close on galactic scale). And maybe many ETIs
simply don't want to colonize at all. But are rather - a bit like the ETs in ET the
movie - they explore, visit places, sometimes take samples back with them - but leave
things as they are. Our galaxy could be filled with millions of explorers like that, and
if they aren't bent on colonizing it and filling it with their species, the chance that
any will encounter Earth in the near future is probably tiny. Maybe our last visit, if
we had one at all, was a hundred million years ago, and maybe due another visit
some time in the next hundred million years. And if they do visit, then we'd only
notice them if they wanted us to.
And - I totally don't believe at all in crashing ETI spaceships. Their technology has to
be millions of years old, otherwise astonishing coincidence that they arise just at the
same time as us. Their spacecraft wouldn't crash. And for that matter, they would be
very unlike...
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Avichal Garg, Co-Founder, Spool

I think this is a pretty cool question. An unfortunately pessimistic view of the world in
the article, but overall a cool question.
So why haven't we met aliens?
they don't exist
they don't want to be found (yet?)
we have but the government is covering it up (for their own benefit or for our
protection)
we're more advanced than they are and we have to find them
our definition of life is somehow limited
The "they don't exist" option is actually the most though provoking in my opinion.
Because the next natural question is why not?
Is it because there is some filter early in the progression of intelligent life that
wipes it out? Basically is it nearly impossible for life to evolve beyond some lower,
less evolved life (unicellular life, bacteria, small organisms)? This would actually be
great for us because this would mean that humanity and Earth have already
managed to make it through this filter. So let's hope we find lots of places with
microbial life at the least.
Is it because we do in fact blow ourselves up at some higher level of technological

advancement? This basically means there's some filter in our future that we are
marching towards, after which we basically destroy ourselves. The article points to
one scenario where this may be the case.
1,050 views 5 upvotes Written 28 Apr, 2010

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Sam Altman, Investor @ Y Combinator

I think one idea that doesn't enough consideration is that physics is booby trapped, and
there is some experiment that every civilization has to conduct before it can travel the
stars that blows it up.
I think another interesting one is that every sufficiently advanced species develops
machine intelligence at some point and there are unintended consequences.
I think the simplest explanation of all is a version of the simulation hypothesis.
14,712 views 143 upvotes Written 10 Jun

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James Earl Adams III, Bachelor of Science in biology, pathology analyst and laboratory
technician.
Here is a near exhaustive list of the possibilities. The reality of the situation may be any
one or any combination of these.
Aliens do not exist
"Preposterous!" You object, "There are innumerable planets, and so many billions of
years have passed. The odds that life has had more than one genesis are so large -- you
might even say astronomically large."
Yes, but if there is only a finite number of planets then the probability of life having a
second genesis will still be less than 1.0. Furthermore, modern biochemistry hasn't even
the dumbest clue how hard it is for life to get started or how hard it is for it to survive
once it has. So if we assume that it is astronomically unlikely for life to begin or to
survive, this balances out the astronomically large number of opportunities for it to
have.
We may be the only ones here.
Aliens exist but tend to not be very advanced
There is the notion of the Great Filter. Perhaps life is abundant but rarely advances
beyond a certain stage. This could be due to that stage being particularly hard to evolve
beyond or due to the likelihood of a mass extinction happening in the time it would take
to evolve beyond that stage.
Perhaps it's very rare to evolve beyond unicellular life or to develop much intelligence or
to sustain a space faring society. If getting beyond these stages was not hard enough,
there are many existential threats that could wipe life out at any stage of development:
geothermal cataclysms, celestial impact, green house effects, star death, gamma ray
bursts, nuclear or biological warfare.
Aliens exist but have not found us
Space is very large, so maybe the aliens that exist have not had enough time to see us.
Our radio waves have traversed a couple hundred light years. It will be another 120,000
years before they have reached all of the milky way -- nevermind other galaxies. So
unless aliens are either very near to us or using telescopes so powerful that they can see
early hominids in detail, they will have no way to know of our existence.
Aliens exist, have found us but can't quickly reach us
Perhaps they are very near to us and have seen evidence of our existence, but have found
faster-than-light travel to be an intractable problem. If this is the case, it would still take
them hundreds of years to get to us depending on how far they are and how long their
embarkation was after our first broadcast. If they are very near to us in technological
advancement, they may not even have the means of getting here.
Aliens exist, know of us, can get to us but do not care to
There are many reasons why this might be the case. Their culture, politics or behavioral
dispositions may inform this decision, but it's most likely that they are so far beyond us
technologically as to leave little incentive for them to bother with us as we have nothing
to offer them. People frequently underestimate how high the technological ceiling sits.
See my answer and commentary on this possibility.
Aliens are all around us
Ants are no strangers to our kitchen counters; they may know the layout and nuances
better than we do. However, they probably don't attribute the stoneware to the design of
higher agents such as ourselves. Like the eclipses we cast and our smelly earthquakes,
they may not be able to distinguish the workings of man from nature itself.
So mayn't we be similarly blind? Who's to say that we could recognize alien intelligence
and technology if we saw it? At the very least, their probes may have drifted unnoticed
under our noses. At the very most, their workings may be infused into our very reality -if they are especially advanced.
91,813 views 2,651 upvotes Written 31 May Asked to answer by Tanvi Jain
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Zachary Demko
Here is my list of reasons, in order of increasing likelihood, according to my personal
opinion. I hope I am wrong.
1) Life is just really unlikely, and we happen to be the only ones out there.
2) Life is relatively common, but intelligent life is not.
3) The Star Trek principle: aliens are all over, but they all agree not to contact us until we
invent warp drive.
4) Alien civilizations are relatively common, but the amount of energy it takes to travel or
even to contact neighboring civilizations is prohibitive, and worm holes / warp drive /
teleportation is not possible in this universe.
5) Intelligence life is inherently self-limiting, and does not stay in existence long enough
to contact other civilizations. Let me explain my hypothesis a bit better.
Part I: Think about evolution when new ecological niches open up, species with a
broad distribution of traits are favored to fill that niche, as they can adapt quickly. As a
species beings to acquire intelligence, those groups who are more diverse will adapt and
evolve more quickly, leading the species in the direction of intelligence. Thus any
species that acquires intelligence will necessarily be fast adapting, and therefore have a
wide diversity of traits.
Part II: As the species becomes more intelligent, each member gains more and more
power to effect change, and that includes destructive power. Think about humans fifty
millennia ago, a determined human could pick up a rock and kill another human or two
before getting clobbered by the rest. One millennium ago, a determined human could
pick up a sword and kill maybe a dozen people. Fifty years ago, a determined human
could pick up a gun and kill several dozen people. Now, using bombs, chemicals, viruses,
etc. an intelligent but determined person could kill hundreds of people. As technology
advances, the ability for one lunatic to kill others will increase, and the increase will be
exponential. In a hundred years, individual humans may have pocket nukes, be able to
engineer horribly destructive viruses in his/her basement, etc. Its only a matter of time
until individual humans will have the power to eliminate the entire species.
And given the diversity of humans, and mental states, we are guaranteed that eventually,
the right set of traits will occur in the same human psychosis + genius + ample
technology, that one will wipe out the entire species. And this pattern is inherent to the
evolution of intelligent life, then it may be the case that no species can advance
sufficiently to effect interstellar travel before they extinguish themselves.
2,866 views 19 upvotes Written 26 Nov, 2014

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Joshua Seims, Founder, TrustedCoin.com, a Bitcoin transaction cosigning service

This is a very interesting question, because if you follow a few reasonably logical steps,
they imply that the universe should be suffused with intelligent life.
Consider:
There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy (and roughly another 100 billion
galaxies outside ours). We already know through astronomical observation that our
sun isnt that remarkable, and planets are also common. So even if only 1 in a
million solar systems evolve intelligent life, there should be 100,000 such systems in
our galaxy.
The universe is about 13 billion years old. Suppose life requires heavy elements to
evolve. There should be plenty such elements after the first generation of stars (say,
8 billion years ago). So many of these civilizations should be over a billion years old.
If we extrapolate our own technological progress, we should be able to build robot
spacecraft capable of replicating themselves with matter they find while they
explore. So our civilization will be a sphere expanding at some fraction of the speed
of light. Even though interstellar distances are long, the timescales were talking
about are even longer. The galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. Even
conventional rockets would cross this space in a few hundred million years.
So why havent we met aliens? Some possibilities that seem reasonable:
All intelligent civilizations blow themselves up at some point. We just cant adapt
our tooth and claw evolutionary programming to high tech capabilities.
Were living in a simulation, and there are no aliens in this simulation.
Aliens are all around us, but theyve chosen not to reveal themselves (aka the zoo
hypothesis).
Personally, I think one of the three possibilities above is more likely than they havent
found us or were the only ones out here.
1,484 views 38 upvotes Updated 31 Jan, 2011

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Vadim Berman, can't come up with a witty tagline

For the sake of a thought experiment, let's assume there is one or more technologically
advanced spacefaring civilisation capable of interstellar travel at near-luminal speeds in
our "backyard" (they don't have to have the same lifespans as us, right? so spending 10
terrestrial years in space may not be a big deal for them).
If the Solar System is located within a neutral zone or "terra (?) nullius" where none of
the spacefaring civilisations is supposed to go, the answer is clear: coming here means
asking for trouble, and the humanity has nothing to do with it. For comparison, imagine
Antarctica (the British / Argentinian / Chilean dispute) but with an indigenous

population.
If the Solar System is located within a sphere of influence of one such advanced
civilisation (similar to the primitive Amazonian tribes in Brazil), others would not want
to venture there. What about the advanced civilisation itself, why not contact us?
Because even in the unlikely case they gain anything from it, contacting us would be
unwise and potentially dangerous. Let's start with the obvious. Who are they going to
address?
USA? China? EU?...
People of the planet Earth, bypassing their governments (armed with nukes)?
Why not the government of Tuvalu? Surely they have more power than UN! (Speaking of
UN, the Outer Space Treaty declares the outer space the property of mankind... were I a
spacefaring alien, I'd be laughing my a* off.)
And what happens if the contact spurs religious extremism, riots, hysteria, and some
kind of black swan event (e.g. fight over the valuable intellectual property)? This makes
them responsible. And if now we can't do much harm to them, our descendants might be
able to (maybe happily helped by their possible rivals).
What would they gain from such a contact? Cultural exchange - probably not. How many
people today would read Gilgamesh for leisure? Would you be interested to study a 5
volume epic about the travels of a grower of gyrrdk'j (a kind of reptilian animal
domesticated by the people of planet Hajkuksop) in the gaseous wastelands of Urg? Well
- Shakespeare is out then.
Trade - there is not much point hauling primitive fossil fuels to another world. iPhones
will probably not be as successful either.
The only meaningful exchange could entail intellectual property trade. Here, however,
given the vast differences in the age of the stars, we're more in a position of these tribes
in Amazon (except that we are fragmented and potentially more dangerous).
So contacting us is not likely to bring anything except headaches. In the unlikely case
they absolutely need our Solar System (as an interstellar highway), it must be much
easier to camouflage their presence and set up a base somewhere on the outskirts where
our primitive Hubbles and Curiositys are not watching.
If someone advanced indeed exists in our backyard, they must be wise enough to set up
"weather stations" / "live webcams" or some kind of surveillance equipment (probably

more advanced than the Hubble telescope), so it is more likely that some kind of outer
space peeping Tom is monitoring us. (Not exactly the same as the zoo hypothesis, more
like wait-and-see approach.)
What would trigger them to reveal themselves? Probably a possibility that we somehow
can detect them rather than a technological or societal milestone reached.
1,280 views 15 upvotes Written 31 Jan, 2013

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Peter Flom, Independent statistical consultant for researchers in social, medical and
beh...
The best theory, I think, is that space is too big and the speed of light really is a limit.
Others:
There are no aliens
There are aliens, but they are not capable of space flight
There are aliens who are capable of space flight, but aren't interested in us.
There are aliens who are capable of faster than light space flight, but they have us on a
watch list and if we don't get civilized before we get FTL flight, they will exterminate us
There are aliens with FTL flight but they are so different from us that they don't even
regard us as life. Or, perhaps, they regard us as life but not anything interesting.

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Daniel Montano, has a paper that says Biology.

Daniel has 20+ answers in Extraterrestrial Life.
Fermi paradox
The theories are many. My favorite is the simplest. Space is really big and travel takes too
long. It could easily be that the universe is packed full of isolated species that never
manage to visit each other (possibly because they are too busy bombing themselves to
little pieces.)
5,612 views 44 upvotes Written 26 Nov, 2014 Asked to answer by Ivy Lee
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Ankit Jain
One theory argued by Steven Pinker (or may be Richards Dawkins, I can't recollect) in
one of the books is very insightful and eye opening. The whole idea that there must be
aliens out there in the space who must be colonizing space and seeking to meet other
intelligent life forms assumes that intelligent life is a natural extension of life. That's not
true.
Intelligent life is far, far less probable than life itself. Intelligent life forms wanting to
colonize space in turn is far less probable than mere existence of intelligent life.
Evolution doesn't systematically work towards making ever wiser intelligent life forms; it
just makes life forms more suited to survival in their immediate habitat.
Consider the history of earth. Life has existed on earth for close to 4 billion years. The
primate order containing species with higher intelligence (monkeys, gorillas,
chimpanzees, humans etc) have existed for only 50 million years or about 1% of age of
life on earth. The modern human beings have only existed for about 200,000 years.
That's 0.005% of age of life on earth. Even the most intelligent life form has spent most
of its time in wilderness with comolex civilization appearing only about 5,000 years ago.
That's 0.0001% of age of life on earth. And even the idea that humans must colonize
space (let alone executing it) is less than 200 years old or 0.0000005% of age of life.
Now, there are an immense number of failures points in that story. If 65 million years
ago that fateful meteorite had not struck the earth, giant dinosaurs would have been
roaming on earth still and primates wouldn't have had the opportunity to evolve at all.
And 65 million years ago life was just as vibrant and rich on the planet as it is today; they
were not missing us on the planet.
The whole idea that nature must have worked hard to evolve intelligent beings like us
and that we are the culmination of evolution is terribly conceited and parochial. Even if
there is life somewhere else in the universe, there is close to zero chance that it will
include intelligent life form. And even if it did, there is close to zero chance that it will
coincide in time with us.
1,498 views 28 upvotes Updated 14 Jun

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Franklin Veaux, Small business owner, sexuality educator, writer

Franklin has 10+ answers in Extraterrestrial Life.
A staple of nearly all science fiction is that the speed of light is just a technical
inconvenience; some day, sooner or later, we'll figure out how to beat it.
The laws of physics, however, strongly suggest that it is absolute and immutable--woven
into the fabric of the universe on such a fundamental level that nothing and nobody will
ever travel or send information faster than light, period, no exceptions. If this is true,
that alone would go far toward explaining why we haven't been visited by aliens. The
universe is a big place and it takes a long, long, long time to get around in it, no matter
how advanced your technology.
That doesn't mean we can't ever be aware that aliens exist. We might, for example,
observe their radio signals, or see examples of huge macroscale engineering projects like
Dyson spheres.
The question of why we haven't observed incidental evidence of alien sapience is called
the Fermi paradox. The three solutions proposed thus far are "we're first," "we're rare,"
or "we're fucked." We're first means that we are the first sapient, language and metatoolusing organisms to have arisen in the Milky Way. This might be because life is less
common than we think, or (more likely) life is common but sapient life is not. "We're
rare" is that there is other sapient life, but sapient life is so incredibly uncommon that it
tends not to overlap--that is, entire sapient civilizations might have flourished and then
faded during the age of the dinosaurs. "We're fucked" is the idea that sapient, language
and metatool-using organisms don't last long.
I've written about the Fermi paradox here:
Musings on being fucked: Christian millennialism and the Fermi paradox
654 views 6 upvotes Written 9 Dec, 2014

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Eric Scher
You should consider something that everyone knows is possible but nobody thinks
about.
This is a long story. Settle in.
First, some background:
People think that Universe is old, but it's not. The Era of Stars, that period of time in
which stars and planets exist and therefor life, is thought to be about 100 Trillion years.
Our universe is, according to the best current estimates I can find, about 13.75 Billion
years old. That's about 1.3 ten-thousandths of our total lifespan, making our universe
insanely young. In human terms, if we assume an average human lifespan of 75 years,
we're so young (less than 4 days) that our poop doesn't even stink yet.
Most Stars can't make anything higher on the periodic table than iron. Why? Because
what holds a star in balance is that the inward pressure of gravity is balanced by the
outward pressure of nuclear fusion energy. Why does Nuclear fusion produce energy?
Because usually, when you mash two atoms together to make a new, heavier atom, there
are parts left over. That's the energy that makes an H-Bomb work and keeps a Star
going. But when you make iron, there aren't any parts left over. No leftovers = no
energy. That's a bit of an oversimplification, Has anyobut it's basically true. Unless you
have a really heavy Star and it collapses with enough force to "bounce", which not only
creates heavier elements, it pukes them out into the universe where they become part of
new stars.
How much of these heavier elements a Star has is called it's "Metallicity" and long story
short, complex life like ours requires a whole bunch of these heavier elements.
So, the Universe forms, then spends time developing enough metallicity to create
complex life. This happens faster the closer you are to the galactic core, but the galactic
core is a bad neighborhood, with all kinds of bad things happening that can kill you. So,
too far in and you get cooked by a nearby pulsar or something. Too far out and there
isn't enough metallicity. So there is a ring, actually more of a donut, in every galaxy like
ours, in which complex life can evolve. Plus, there is a similar donut shaped habitable
zone in each solar system in which the temperature is right for liquid water.
OK, so you have a planet that is in your solar system's habitable zone, and your Sun is in
the Galactic habitable zone.
So now you have life. But wait... most life here on Earth and likely out in the universe as
well, is simple one cell organisms. You know, slime mold.
It takes a long time from THAT point until you evolve intelligent organism that can
manipulate tools, which is fancy way of saying that they figured out how to bang the
rocks together properly. It took a couple of billion years.
All of this is a VERY long and roundabout way of saying that it takes a long damn time
for life to even evolve to the point where it COULD create a technological civilization.
Which brings me to my point...
SOMEONE HAS TO BE FIRST.
How do we know that WE aren't the "Ancients", that are such a common plot device in
science fiction?
Maybe we haven't seen aliens because so far we're the only ones who have reached this
point?
3,998 views 38 upvotes Written 4 Jul, 2013

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Michael Dransfield, Database Administrator

I tried to absorb all previously posted answers, and I didn't see anything that explains it
as I see it, so here's my thought, however unoriginal:
Imagine a very long line that constitutes all time, from the big bang to the present. The
time that we've been here and intelligent enough to record our thoughts and experiences,
is a razor-thin line through that timeline. The likelihood that our existence (in our
current somewhat intelligent form) would occur at the same time that some other
equally advanced or more advanced life form existed, and that we would somehow
stumble upon one another, seems infinitesimally small. Habitable worlds could have
formed, thrived and died many times over before we came into existence. Just imagine
what black holes might have swallowed.
720 views 11 upvotes Written 7 Jan, 2015

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Thomas Jolly, Astronautical Engr., Electrical Engineer, Game and Puzzle Designer
Here are my two favorites;

1. There is so much matter between stars (dark planets, dark asteroids, ice balls, dark
pebbles) that it's literally impossible to go from star to star without running into it. And
at high speeds, that kills you. Something to back up this idea; we almost never see out-ofplane objects pass through our solar system; we only ever see things that appear to drop
in from the Oort cloud, at worst. We never see any object moving at a decent fraction of
light-speed come through. Even if intelligent life existed, it can't get here (at least, not at
any reasonable speed).
2. Statistically, if tech-level aliens exist, the odds of their tech being within 1000 years of
our own are about zero. They'll be so wildly advanced beyond us that it would be
impossible for us to detect their presence if they didn't want us to. Consider our
communications tech from only 100 years ago compared to now. We can't even speculate
what OUR tech will look like in 100 years, much less alien tech in a million. If I were that
advanced, I'd be picking a few thousand stable stars to populate outside the galaxy,
where problems with little things like a supernova in a neighboring star don't exist. The
incentive to spread out may not really exist if you have a stable population base in safe
locations; then "exploring" can just consist of looking through probes, and making sure
that some self-replicating machine isn't getting ready to consume their part of
civilization.
3. Alright, I lied. Three favorites. (but it's too obvious) By some cosmic coincidence,
we're the first ones to reach this level. Someone has to be first. I find this unlikely, but
the chance exists.
523 views 6 upvotes Written 1 Jun

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Mike Thielman, Works at JPL

I believe questions of this nature are based on the assumption that life is rare. Suppose
there are millions or billions of life bearing worlds in our galaxy. Why would anybody
visit ours? That is like saying someone who studies ants feels it necessary to search out
and study every single ant nest in the world, or even their own city. They would not do it
because there would be considerable expense and no benefit. Maybe countless aliens
have been through the area but didn't bother to stop by and say hi. Maybe they are so
advanced that speaking to us would be like our trying to speak to ants. Think of how far
we have gotten in hundreds or thousands of years. Then figure that other species would
likely be millions of years apart from us technologically. A universe like Star Trek seems
very unlikely where most species are at the same level. With few exceptions (Q) every
race seems within hundreds of years of each other. Maybe interstellar trade could
accomplish that.
Anyway my point is there are so many reasons that we can understand, just think of how
many might be beyond our understanding.
I do think it is an interesting line of thinking and I particularly like reading scifi that
explores this topic. David Brin has some good ones.
Edit: another one I like. Think of the time scale of evolution. Maybe they came by
millions of years ago and setup a monitoring station. We have only recently achieved
intelligence (by our standards at least) so maybe the signal went out and they will get
around to visiting in some thousands of years. Or maybe the sensor is waiting to detect
some level of technology - nuclear, warp drive, teleportation, anti gravity, etc before
notifying the owners.

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Chris Craddock, Believes in science, not science fiction

A2A. The answer to the Fermi paradox isn't complicated at all. Space is vast beyond
human comprehension. The age old sci-fi idea of faster than light travel is utterly
impossible, ruled out by the structure of the universe itself.
Between the certainty of Special Relativity (validated to more than 8 decimal places in
progressively larger accelerators) and the Inverse Square law, we can easily be
surrounded by thousands of sentient species and never know it.
We can't "hear" them and they can't hear us and it is overwhelmingly too far to go
(assuming it was even possible) on a multi-hundred, or thousand year journey just for a
look around. It's very dull and unglamorous, but there you have it.
565 views 5 upvotes Written 28 Dec, 2014 Asked to answer by Ivy Lee
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James G Smith
I would like to call my theory the "We are the spark" theory, as opposed to the obvious
but less romantic alternative. I suggest that our galaxy is like a pile of oily rags in a
garage. If left undisturbed over a sufficient period of time, the chances of spontaneous
combustion is fairly high. However, once combustion has begun, the chances of the
spontaneous spark happening somewhere else in the pile before the flame of the first
spark consumes the whole pile is, um, remote. I think that to a technological society, as
soon as they can get themselves off their starting planet, the galaxy starts to look like a
whole lot of natural resources. We, I hope, are the first spark. If we can avoid
catastrophe for the next fifty to one hundred years ( and I see no reason to be pessimistic
about this) I think we will be fairly safe.
The observations which support this theory include the fact that single-celled life
appeared on Earth almost as soon as it was physically possible, but multi-celled life did
not appear until billions of years after that. What is the half-life, if that is an appropriate
term, of that step? Then there are the various evolutionary steps needed to get to an
intelligent land animal? For the sake of argument I will assume that intelligent sea
creatures are unlikely to become technological. How long were there large land animals
running around on earth without any of them evolving into intelligent tech users. The
dinosaurs apparently had their chance but didn't get there before time ran out. The
point is, I believe the "half-life" of producing a technological society is very long relative
to the time it takes for a newly produced technological society to consume the galaxy.
As for reasons to believe the time to consume the galaxy will be relatively short (one
hundred million years or less), I point to the works of K. Eric Drexler and Ray Kurzweil,
i.e., nano tech and the singularity, for the technical means, and to the entreprenurial
spirit of Western, and now more and more Eastern culture, for the motivation.
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David Mullich, video game designer and producer since 6502.

Originally Answered: What are the ten most plausible reasons explaining why we haven't interacted
with aliens yet?
1.
Aliens don't exist.
2.
Aliens do exist, but they have not yet evolved the ability to communicate.
3.
None are located close enough to Earth to engage in communications with us.
4.
None are technologically advanced enough to send any form of communication

transmissions to our planet.
5.
They are trying to communicated with us, but we aren't technologically advanced
with us to detect their method of communication.
6.
We are able to perceive their method of communication, but the form of

communication is too alien for us to recognize as such.
7.
They aren't interested in communicating with us at all.
8.
They are waiting for us to become more advanced before communicating with us.
9.
Their communication transmissions are being blocked by some natural

phenomenon.
10.
A third party is intercepting their communications transmissions.
943 views 21 upvotes Written 29 Apr

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Marcus Geduld, Shakespearean director, computer programmer, teacher, writer, likes

dinosaurs.
As you probably know, if you flip a coin often enough, you will get heads ninety times in
a row. So why hasn't this happened to you yet? Why hasn't this happened to anyone, ever
(as far as we know)? Because we're so young as a species. The odds of it happening in our
brief flicker of Evolutionary history are astronomically stacked against us. If everyone
starts flipping coins and the human race survives long enough, eventually someone will
throw ninety heads, but it would be foolish or hubristic to think it's going to happen to
you or even in your lifetime.
The universe is almost 14-billion years old. Humans have only seriously been searching
for aliens since 1977 (when SETI started), so compare 35 years to 14-billion years! Even
if you expect aliens to contact us without us having to listen for them, compare 14 billion
years with 200,000 years (Homo Sapiens Sapiens first appeared about 200,000 years
ago).
If each one of these dots represents a billion years, the universe is this old:
..............
Now, imagine that last dot blown way up:
.............[**********]
That closeup view shows that the dot is made out of ten asterisks, each one equal to 100
million years. And if we blow up just one of those asterisks...
*********['''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''']
... we find that it's made up of a hundred tick-marks, each equal to a million years. And if
we blow up the tick mark...
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
'''''''''''''[##########]
... we find it's made up of ten pound-signs, each equal to 100,000 years.
Two of those (# #) is the entire history of human kind. (And if you only count likely alien
contact from the beginning of SETI, you have to chop one of those pound signs into tiny
bits and focus on just one bit.)
And, remember, the universe (even the galaxy) is a big place.
If the Earth is this:
o
And the moon is this
.
And the moon is this far away from the Earth
o.
How far away do you think the Sun is? (The sun is this: *)
A. o . ----------> *
B. o . --------------------------> *
C. o . ---------------------------------------------------> *
D. o . ----------------------------------------------------------------> *
E. None of the above.
The correct answer is E. The Sun is 92,935,700 miles from the Earth. My screen
resolution is about 2,000 pixels wide, so to simulate the distance between the Earth and
the Sun (and aliens will be much further away than that), I'd have to place several
screens next to each other, with the Earth on the first screen and the Sun on the last one.
(Proxima Centauri, the closest star to us, is 2.47927106 10^13 miles away.)
Aliens and humans finding each other is a needle-in-a-haystack project. And we've only
been had a teeny, tiny amount of time to do it.
Hoping it will happen in your lifetime is natural. Expecting it to happen in your lifetime
is a confusion at best and hubristic at worst.
UPDATE: I had another thought about this:

Right now, given how long, from our tunnel-vision point-of-view, we've been searching,
it seems odd that we haven't found signs of alien life. We naturally feel "a long time" in
human scales, in the scales of our lifetimes.
Now, imagine that we do find aliens, but we find them 200 years from now.
Now, imagine a school child living 15,000 years from now, in the year 17,012. On his
history exam, he sees this really tough question:

We first found signs of alien life in this year:
A. 1812
B. 2012.
C. 2212.
He would probably cry foul. That would be an awfully picky question, especially
considering (again) that our species has been around for 200,000 years.
Another way of thinking about it: when we started searching for alien life in 1977, given
the vast size of the universe and the small amount we're capable of searching at once,
what's a reasonable about of time to expect it to take? Is it absolutely nuts that we've
been searching for 35 years and haven't yet found anything? 35 years is a long time. But
would it be odd if I dropped 1000 pennies in random parts of the Pacific Ocean and it
happened to take longer than 35 years for people to find one of them?
4,249 views 73 upvotes Written 16 Jan, 2012

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Tom Golden, once got a B+ in science

They don't know we're here.

We are for all intents and purposes, invisible to the rest of thie galaxy.
The oldest man-made electromagnetic signals left Earth a bit more than 100 years ago
with the invention of radio. Those signals, the only way we have of announcing our
existence, have now crossed .001% of the galaxy. The other 99.999% of the galaxy has
NO IDEA that we exist. We are just 1 of hundreds of billions of planets and there is no
reason for a civilization outside that 100 light year bubble to pay any more attention to
us than to any of those gadzillion other planets.
But it gets worse. For a civilization to have come calling, they can't be any more than 50
light years away (50 years for our oldest signals to reach them, 50 more for them to
travel here at the speed of light. Assuming they could do that, and that they dropped
everything to plan the trip the moment they detected our earliest transmissions).
Realistically, for us to have had visitors, they would have to live within just a few light
years of earth. Not impossible, but vanishingly unlikely.
504 views 5 upvotes Written 13 Feb, 2011

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Ramses Ramirez, planetary scientist, Cornell

I personally find invoking the "space is too big" answer for Fermi's paradox rather
unsatisfying and unlikely. The suggestion is even if the universe teems with aliens,
nobody has been capable enough to figure out how to traverse large distances in short
amounts of time. However, history has shown that humans have been smart enough to
turn "science fiction" into science fact... many, many times. This should be at
least doubly true for aliens more advanced than us. Technology advances at an alarming
rate. Thus, assuming the universe contains some tens of thousands of civilizations or so
per galaxy, someone should have phoned home by now. The fact that they haven't
suggests other reasons at work for the pronounced silence. Otherwise, the universe is
teeming with idiots, none smarter than us.
An alternate explanation I find more satisfying is just that life (at least intelligent life) is
very rare. A somewhat creative variation of this theme is the "Great Filter
hypothesis." This is the idea that life is rare either because it is hard to evolve to begin
with or, even after it has, there is a limit as to how advanced such a civilization may get.
That is, a sufficiently advanced civilization will drive itself into extinction before it
develops the means to achieve interstellar flight. Out of those two possibilities, it seems
more probable that evolving life (maybe intelligent life?) poses the real bottleneck
because the latter again assumes that all civilizations are incapable of coping with the
pressures of technological advancement.
I realize people may not like this answer, but the way I see it, if intelligent life really is
cosmically rare, that just challenges our scientists and engineers more than ever to
devise the most creative means to find it.
903 views 5 upvotes Written 1 Dec, 2014

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Abhay Mehta, Ambidextrous

The best theory I believe why we haven't been visited by aliens is that we're just too
primitive for them.
I'd quote a long short story here.
They're Made out of Meat
by Terry Bisson
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet,
took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're
completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals
come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the
machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in
sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that
sector and they're made out of meat."
"Maybe they're like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes
through a meat stage."
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life
spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat
head with an electron plasma brain inside."
"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told
you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."
"No brain?"
"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what
I've been trying to tell you."
"So ... what does the thinking?"
"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you.
The brain does the thinking. The meat."
"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"
"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the
whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"
"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."
"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying
to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."
"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact
other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."
"We're supposed to talk to meat."
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out
there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when
you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other.
They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
"Officially or unofficially?"
"Both."
"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or
multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor.
Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."
"I was hoping you would say that."
"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"
"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But
will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"
"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't
live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to
the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim.
Infinitesimal, in fact."
"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."
"That's it."
"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been
aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"
"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed
out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."
"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."
"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."
"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting
on that side of the galaxy?"
"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in
G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."
"They always come around."
"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be
if one were all alone ..."
I don't know but I feel more excited and scared that there are smarter beings out there
unknown to us than just empty dark space.
3,538 views 69 upvotes Updated 15 Dec, 2014

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Seema Momin, Vocal minority of the silent majority.

1. Our view that we have not been visited by aliens, is based on the
assumption that if they did visit us, we would know about it: It's highly
probable that we have been visited by extraterrestrials in the past, and probably will be
visited by them in the future. We could be surrounded by aliens right now. It's just that
we might not even know about their presence. We don't have any knowledge about their
powers, technology, motives etc.
2. No visits, but close monitoring: It's possible that we are being closely monitored
by extraterrestrials, and we're not aware of that. They might not want to 'visit' us, but
instead monitor us, in order to learn more about us without causing a panic among
Earthians. Imagine a situation wherein the world knows, as a matter of fact, about the
existence of aliens on Earth. Imagine the level of curiosity, panic, unnecessary tension,
chaos, and the fights between Governments that will follow.
3. The size factor: This Universe is gigantic. We cannot possibly imagine its extent and
magnificence. The Earth is only like a mote of dust. What if I told you to go and visit a
carbon atom? How would you even do that? Huge planets could probably be home to
extremely huge life forms.
4. We're just stupid little creatures for them: Aliens wouldn't be interested in us
at all because we're so unsophisticated for them - like ants. Do we even bother to worry
about ants? They don't influence our lives in any significant way, and we don't usually
bother about whether or not we should make ants aware of our presence.
5. Search for extraterrestrial "intelligence": We usually think of aliens as
creatures more advanced than us. We are not interested in those extraterrestrials who
are less advanced, right? Then why would they be? The extraterrestrials who we are
expecting to be interested in us, might actually be searching for more advanced
extraterrestrials themselves.
6. They could be invisible: For those who believe in ghosts, angels, spirits - They
could all be extraterrestrials, you know? Who just visit Earth sometimes.
543 views 11 upvotes Written 9 May

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Andy Murphy, Curiouser and curiouser

To be able to communicate with an alien life forms, you must be at most (and I'm
guessing from homo sapiens evolution here) 100,000 years apart in terms of civilization
and technological advancement. A civilization a million years older won't bother to
explain themselves to us as much as we won't bother to explain ourselves to a colony of
ants. In the perspective of 14 billion years old universe, two civilizations only 100,000
years apart are almost a "twin". They must evolve during a terrifyingly precise time and
evolve in an extraordinarily similar speed. What is the probability of such coincidence to
happen? My guess, really really small.

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Bob Singer, NASA Project Manager and Space Enthusiast for over 50 years
Originally Answered: What are the ten most plausible reasons explaining why we haven't interacted
with aliens yet?
1. There are none

2. They are so far away they haven't detected us yet.
3. They have not reached a level of technology that would allow for contact
4. They have a completely different evolutionary path that does not even come close to
ours and have no idea we are here. Maybe they see in infrared or never discovered radio
waves.
5. They have discovered us and decided to stay away as we are dangerous.
6. They are not compatible with an oxygen and carbon based atmosphere.
7. We have nothing they need and they have no interest in us.
8. We have and we don't know it.
9. They have gone extinct already
10. We ARE the aliens.

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David Plumpton
Why does nobody choose the obvious boring answer? Interstellar travel is really hard. It
takes enormous energy and large amounts of time. It's likely just too hard, even for very
advanced civilizations. Even if it can be achieved it throws the cost/benefit ratio too far
out of whack.
1,071 views 14 upvotes Written 28 Dec, 2010

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Fred Straub
Let's go with some givens... there are enough suns out there with enough planets out
there that some have to be enough like ours that life must exist. If even a tiny fraction of
a fraction of them produce intelligent life then somewhere out there exists life that can
travel through space. However, interstellar space travel would likely cost much of a
planet's GDP. If travelling through space takes enormous time and resources are you
going to go in a direction that you KNOW someone is or in a direction you don't know
someone is? Since we haven't managed to contact another civilization by any means at
all the answer is simple. We haven't met aliens yet because it's too damned expensive to
flit around the universe to "seek out new civilizations and boldly go where no man has
gone before."
Until we invite someone they ain't comin'. And we don't know how to send invitations.
The likelihood of being discovered by accident is infinitesimal.
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Steve McKerracher, Skeptic activist in the faith vs reason culture war.

1. There are no other intelligent enough life forms within traversable distance of us.
2. They have visited, and or are observing us, but hide their presence or visits.
Steve McKerracher's answer to Hypothetically, if there is intelligent alien life, with the
knowledge and means to traverse space and travel to Earth, what would be their reasons
for not making contact? (Please read details.)
3. They haven't made it to us yet, for the same reasons we haven't made it to them, yet,
and it may happen in time.
4. They just don't care.
To me, this is by far the least likely. I doubt very much life is so common that any other
intelligent life simply wouldn't care, and I don't think intelligence can evolve without
curiosity, so this just doesn't add up.
1,121 views 3 upvotes Written 3 Dec, 2014 Asked to answer by Ivy Lee
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Brett Andrew
I think the most likely answer is that serious intelligence is a biological rarity (it took
billions of years for it to arise on Earth as far as we know), and there are a variety of
potential filters that ensure that space-faring and/or radio-using civilizations are very
few and far between. For example,
1.
Consider species evolving in a fully aquatic environment. They would have no

access to fire, which effectively means a stringent limit on that species' use of
metallurgy and other advanced technologies.
2.
Suppose your species is land-dwelling. That's no guarantee that they'll ever form
settled communities with advancing technology. Look at humanity - anatomically
modern humans lived as hunter-gatherer groups for hundreds of thousands of years
before the rise of agriculture.
3.
Even assuming that your civilization does develop sedentary communities with
technological advance, there's no guarantee that they won't move towards some sort
of "steady-state", static civilization before the rise of space travel and radio.
4.
For a species that gets past those filters, there's still the "would they want to?"
question. Humanity, for example, has the technological potential to expand beyond
Earth in a major way, but there's no will to do it, so the technology lies mostly in the
bounds of speculation.

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Jeevanshu Dhawan, Former Senior Resident, Paediatric Surgery

I am not sure but I have an intuition that they are living amongst us. Probably there is
a universal law where higher beings have an obligation to help in advancement
of lesser beings in galaxy, may be even possible on an intergalactic scale similar to
what we have on earth, where richer and technologically advanced nations help the
lesser advanced countries.
May be they are on earth from 14,000 years, from the time of Cro-Magnon man.
Are they also made of bone and flesh?
If my assumption is true we will be in for a rude shock.
What could be their terms and services?
Till what time in evolution of human beings do they have to supervise?
What could be their terms of engagement?
Does GOD exist?
Are there any other universes?
What time and technological advancement does one civilization requires to work at
multiverse level?
May be they do not need spaceships to travel, they have developed the technology to
travel and communicate, simply by creating a thought or by the their process of thinking,
the speed of thoughts doesn't have any limit. Speed of light appears to be very small
when compared to the speed of thought.
They do not need a base on the moon for that to happen.
They do not need radio-waves or electro magnetic waves to communicate, they simply
communicate with help of their advanced minds, which is so powerful that they could
control lesser beings easily.
I think this could be the reason why they do not openly declare their
existence as it could create panic and hysteria amongst the masses.
We earthlings do not value life. When we do, these extra-terrestrials would share with us
everything they know.
Do read answer of Steve McKerracher . He has provided excellent assumptions in his

answers as well in his comments.

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Scott Hathaway
Check out the Fermi Paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fer.... It gives a good

treatment to this question and some of the possible answers to which a few of the
previous answers elluded.
606 views 6 upvotes Written 15 Jul, 2010

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Randy McDonald, Torontonian and loving it

I asked people back in October about this question: "What is your preferred answer to
the Fermi paradox?" Many of the answers gravitated around the plausible argument that
we don't actually know how a species capable of interstellar travel would behave. Do we
know that they, or their proxies, would actually make the trip? Would they be
recognizable to us? Have they visited, even settled, and we just haven't identified the
evidence of this?
All we can say at this point is that we don't know. We can't identify any reason why there
could not be an abundance of life in the galaxy, with potentially habitable planets
scattered liberally throughout and the processes leading to the evolution of life
presumably being achievable on many of these. We have no particular reason to think
that tool-using social intelligence is unlikely, its relatively late development in our
world's history being the major factor suggesting it could be. (Are we typical, though?
And there are so many worlds out there ...) We likewise have no particular reason to
think that interstellar flight and expansion is impossible, with a fair number of plausible
techniques already sketched out. It would only take one civilization that beat the odds to
colonize the galaxy. Where is it?
Where is everyone? I think there's a non-trivial possibility that aliens might already be
here and we haven't recognized them. Maybe when New Horizons reaches Pluto-Charon
we'll discover that the Kuiper Belt is actually inhabited. Who knows? Right now, all we
can say is that the answer to the Fermi paradox, if and when it comes, will answer many
of our existential questions about us and our universe.
334 views 2 upvotes Written 27 Dec, 2014 Asked to answer by Ivy Lee
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Jay Falk, Video Junkie
I saw a quantum physics documentary and can give a woefully simplified version of one
of its theories:
It said that if, in the future, we could develop a simulation that was indistinguishable
from our reality - which it theorised was highly probable, then it was almost a certainty
that this is a simulation.
I have worked in the games industry for many years and all I can say is that if this is
indeed a simulation and there are no aliens then somewhere (somewhen??) there is a
game designer who really should lose her or his job!

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James Radvan, tech veteran, media producer

It's a fascinating question. I favour the rather depressing theory that civilisations tend to
wipe themselves out shortly after developing the means to do so. After all, we as a species
have possessed this ability for less than a century, and nuclear annihilation has been a
more or less omnipresent threat since then. One human lifetime. It's nothing in
cosmological scales.
But that's just one of many plausible theories. Simulation would certainly explain a lot.
The human ant farm? I don't know. The search is a worthwhile pursuit though.
*edit* a number of years of searching later, I'm leaning mostly to the Fermi Paradox
now.

Does Our Solar System Travel or Is It Stationary?: 9 Answers

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Does Our Solar System Travel or Is It Stationary?: 9 Answers

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Does our solar system travel or is it stationary?

Write your answer, or answer later

Robert Frost, Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA

Derek Harkness, Civil Engineer, Military Engineer and University lecturer.

Anita S Vasu, Wanderer

What are some theories on why we haven't been visited by

Write your answer, or answer later

Thaddeus Howze, Author, Futurist, Technology Consultant

The Fermi paradox: It's complicated.

Associated with the Fermi Paradox is The Drake Equation

"What do we need to know about to discover life in space?"

While working as a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy

Although there is no unique solution to this equation, it is a generally accepted

UPDATE: The Fermi Paradox, Part II

10,346 views 61 upvotes Updated 10 Jun

Sandhya Ramesh, amateur astronomer, particularly interested in planetary science.

(Image from October | 2012 | AstroWright)

(Image from theskyisbeautifultonight)

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which radio-communication might be

I. Life doesn't exist elsewhere, or if it does, is of lower

Origin of Life on Earth

David Myers, retired mental health worker

3,352 views 18 upvotes Written 3 Jun

Brandon Smietana, Founder of Symbolic Analytics

2,207 views 24 upvotes Written 16 May, 2010

Vilan Natanzon, Internet Intellectualizer

us and it would be a dead end at best, or dangerous at worst.

1,507 views 4 upvotes Updated 25 Jan, 2011

My favorite theory is that

Avichal Garg, Co-Founder, Spool

they don't exist

they don't want to be found (yet?)

our definition of life is somehow limited

Is it because we do in fact blow ourselves up at some higher level of technological

1,050 views 5 upvotes Written 28 Apr, 2010

Sam Altman, Investor @ Y Combinator

14,712 views 143 upvotes Written 10 Jun

Aliens do not exist

Aliens exist but tend to not be very advanced

Aliens exist but have not found us

Aliens exist, have found us but can't quickly reach us

Aliens exist, know of us, can get to us but do not care to

Aliens are all around us

2,866 views 19 upvotes Written 26 Nov, 2014

Joshua Seims, Founder, TrustedCoin.com, a Bitcoin transaction cosigning service

So why havent we met aliens? Some possibilities that seem reasonable:

1,484 views 38 upvotes Updated 31 Jan, 2011

Vadim Berman, can't come up with a witty tagline

Antarctica (the British / Argentinian / Chilean dispute) but with an indigenous

"weather stations" / "live webcams" or some kind of surveillance equipment (probably

1,280 views 15 upvotes Written 31 Jan, 2013

23,072 views 269 upvotes Written 29 Nov, 2014

Daniel Montano, has a paper that says Biology.

1,498 views 28 upvotes Updated 14 Jun

Franklin Veaux, Small business owner, sexuality educator, writer

654 views 6 upvotes Written 9 Dec, 2014

SOMEONE HAS TO BE FIRST.

3,998 views 38 upvotes Written 4 Jul, 2013

Michael Dransfield, Database Administrator

720 views 11 upvotes Written 7 Jan, 2015

Here are my two favorites;

523 views 6 upvotes Written 1 Jun