When you look at the night
sky, and see billions of stars, do you imagine how big the Universe is and is
somewhere in that vastness other life? What kind of life do you think might
exist in the oceans of water world, on a land where sun never sets or even a
planet like our own Earth? And if the universe is so large, then why haven’t we
met anyone yet? Or maybe they are already watching us, but we are not aware of
this? Scientists do a lot of research, build huge telescopes and direct them to
distant stars, launch probes into space and send signals. Over the past decade,
many discoveries have been made and answers to many questions have been given,
but the most important of which remains open. Are we
alone?
In this TED’s talk Douglas
Vakoch explain to us why we still have not found anyone and why it is not as
simple as it may seem.
Questions:
1. Have you ever thought
about this?
2. Do you believe that we are
not alone?
3. Are we ready to face
extraterrestrial civilization?
Comments
2. Considering how incredibly vast space is, it’s hard to believe that we are so special that the whole universe is empty apart from our ‘pale, blue dot’. We may have never observed other life forms apart from Earthlings, but we should also consider how hard would it be to notice us from the cosmic distance. We may think that it would be easy, but from hundreds of light years away there are no detectable signals that would indicate that we are here.
3. Considering how hard is it for us to communicate with each other I doubt that we would be able to confront other civilization with sympathy. We should learn to live with ourselves first.
Yes of course, I think everyone more or less thinks about it.
2. Do you believe that we are not alone?
Yes, I belevie there is another live creatures out there even basics one.
3. Are we ready to face extraterrestrial civilization?
Will we ever be ready ? :)
2. Yes, because of the size of the space and the number of objects there, I also think that it is highly improbable that we are the only form of intelligent life. Maybe it is just coincidence that we are in such isolated location without any possibility to contact other civilisations, or such information is just hidden from us.
3. I don’t think so. If they find us first, that would mean that their technological advancement is way superior to ours. I think that people would panic, and the outcome would be disastrous, because it is very hard to believe in good intentions when there is such difference. It is hard to imagine the opposite situation, because current research and achievements still look very far from the visions presented in science fiction.
It would be very egoistic to think otherwise.
If you think about size of universe, possible fluctuations to it's form and put some statistic to it - it would be unwise to assume we are alone. On the other hand, we might never meet. There is theory of great filter that explains why it might be even impossible.
From sociological point of view, we as a society we aren't even ready to meet other human's races. From technological point of view - we might be able to communicate with them, so maybe.
2. Of course we are not alone. There are countless solar systems out there with differentiating number of planets in them. We are still in the middle of studying our planets and can’t even “see” the ones that are located in the farther galaxies. How can you even think we are alone living in a place like that?
3. No. Just no. If we’re waiting for them to come here and contact us we can already say we are not prepared.
I have. I have read about Fermi paradox in the past, and the solutions seem quite plausible for me. The main one is simple speed of light. The closest galaxy to Milky Way -- Andromeda, is 250 billion light years away from the Earth, meaning thaw we see it just like it was 250 billions years back. Who knows, it can even be destroyed by now. Similarly, if there are aliens out there, they see Earth and Milky Way as their past images. And this is only light -- any other signal travels even slower.
2. Do you believe that we are not alone?
Quite possible. Why wouldn't we be?
3. Are we ready to face extraterrestrial civilization?
Who knows? Hard to tell. The whole topic with aliens is extremely speculative.
2. Probably yes. Unfortunately, due to space travel limitations - both physical and technological, we will never be able to reach them. Another idea is that even if we met, we may not be able to communicate and understand each other. I came across this idea while reading Solaris by Stanisław Lem.
3. As I said before - I'm almost sure that we'll never meet such civilization so the problem is theoretical. Even if such situation take place, we'll probably be able to face it. At first the panic will outburst, but I think that human kind is able to adapt and we'll learn how to live in such situation.
Yeah, I think that each of us has thought about it at least once.
2. Do you believe that we are not alone?
Looking at the enormity of the universe one can come to the conclusion that it would be an unimaginable case if only on our planet life would develop. That's why I think there may be a civilization somewhere, but we'll probably never know.
3. Are we ready to face extraterrestrial civilization?
We consider ourselves to be a developed civilization, but perhaps there is one somewhere that surpasses us unimaginably. However, the question arises: "So why haven't they contacted us yet? Definitely a meeting of another civilization would be the most important event in the history of mankind, but much would depend on their approach to us.
Yes, I have thought about it many times. Probably like all of us.
2. Do you believe that we are not alone?
Yes, I think that we are not alone, that there is definitely life somewhere. Maybe not as advanced as we are (or maybe more advanced than we are), but it is somewhere for sure. The universe is too big.
3. Are we ready to face extraterrestrial civilization?
It all depends on how advanced is the civilization with which we would contact. But in the end I tnik yes we are ready.
There was a time when I thought about this topic a lot. I abandoned it because I didn't have enough knowledge and information. But I came to the conclusion that can't be alone in Universe. Cosmos is too big and uncharted to establish that people are only inteligent creatures in it. I don't think we will be ever ready to face other civilization, it is something unpredictable and hard to know what to expect.
1. Yes, I have. It would be rather weird is somebody haven't.
2. I think that the probability of being alone is simply too low. After all the universe is somewhat "infinite". Thinking that we are alone and there is no place where life of any form would develop is kind of ego centrical.
3. I don't think so. Surely we are not ready for a war if such was to occur, but appearance of alien would shock the world a bit too much I think
2. I'm quite certain that we are not alone in the universe, however, how advanced would the aliens be or if they would be even interested in contacting us is a mystery. There could be a life that we don't even understand, being able to look through dimensions and understand time such as we understand the third dimension. On the other hand, life could be completely feral and never form a civilisation as we know it. Perhaps there is life similar to ours, however, as said in the video, it is possible that we just missed them.
3. I'm not sure, but it could be a way to finally unites us.
2. I do belive that we are not alone. Takeing in consideration how huge universe is, chance of us being the only cyvilisiation is small.
3. It's hard to say, it depend how we would get the information that we are not alone. If aliens would come directly to our planet there could be mass hysteria and in the worst case use of weapons, but if we learned about it by detecting, for example, a radio transmission or a satellite similar to those we send ourselves into space, we would have more time to get used to this information.
2. Like I said in previous answer: I do believe that we're alone.
3. This question is left for people who believe in other civilisations outside of ours. Personally, if there was any, then there is no fundamental evidence that any of them would be better or worse for us.
2. As I said before. I belive that we are not alone. I'm big fan of space and science. When we think about galaxy and all these planets. There is huge number of possibilities and in my opinion there is life in space.
3. No, I think we have enough problems with our race now.
2. This is a hard question. I think there is extraterrestrial life, but it does not have to be as developed as it is on earth.
3. In my opinion, we are not ready to meet other intelligent beings. We are ready to explore extraterrestrial life, but without beings as intelligent as humans. The existence of other intelligent creatures could cause panic on earth.
2. I think that there could be life outside the Earth somewhere, but it might as well be just some bacteria or single-cell organism.
3. I think that if people can't agree with each other then we are not ready to meet any other civilization.
2. I believe that maybe somewhere far from our Earth there is some alien civilization that thinks about their loneliness as we do. So, yes I believe that such opportunity exists.
3. I do not know, it is difficult to predict. Maybe we will face them as just foreigners from another country and nothing special. Of course, for the first time, it can be as a shock but we can manage with this. Let's be positive and hope that they won't destroy us:)
2. Maybe. But I don’t believe in aliens who kidnap people on their ship and research them and leave strange patterns in the cornfield.
3. No we aren’t. We wouldn’t find extraterrestrial civilization but if they had found us, they would have killed us. In this situation they have to be better than we are.
2. There is definitely life in space. Earth is one of the billion stars.
3. It definitely depends on what civilization it would be.
It is definitely better to get to know new civilizations while being much stronger than them.
Yes. I think everyone thought about it at least once. For me, it's quite an interesting and fascinating topic. I like scientific movies about space.
2) Do you believe that we are not alone?
Yes, in my opinion, it's strange to think that we are alone. Because we've only studied a tiny percentage of space. We can't learn more than that yet because of technologies. I hope in the nearest future we will know something more about space.
3) Are we ready to face extraterrestrial civilization?
Definitely, we aren't ready to meet someone from another civilization. We can't clean up our world, we can't stop wars and murders, we do not know how to deal with some diseases. And what will we do with a new civilization? But, probably, other civilizations will be more developed and will have answers to our questions.
2.As I mentioned above I do believe that there is some kind of different creatures in our universe. We as humanity existing in planted earth so why not for other individuals
3.If we assume that they exists I don't think that we are ready now. I guess they have massive and mind blowing technologies, so actually we as contact target might be simply not interesting for them