NASA announces water currently on Mars

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by peter12

Violent, insecure, and dishonest. Honestly, I don't fall for the Sagan nonsense that ETs are the great answer to mankind's problem. If they are anything like us, we should hide, and if they aren't like us, they won't want anything to do with us.

Maybe they are hiding from us.

Maybe we are purposely hidden from them.

Maybe we are alone.


That last one is the scariest thought.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by peter12

Violent, insecure, and dishonest. Honestly, I don't fall for the Sagan nonsense that ETs are the great answer to mankind's problem. If they are anything like us, we should hide, and if they aren't like us, they won't want anything to do with us.

That's a pretty pessimistic view there Debbie downs.

Humans also are capable of love, sharing, forgiveness / understanding, compassion (for other species in fact) and peace.

[FlamesPuck12]

Originally Posted by peter12

Violent, insecure, and dishonest. Honestly, I don't fall for the Sagan nonsense that ETs are the great answer to mankind's problem. If they are anything like us, we should hide, and if they aren't like us, they won't want anything to do with us.

The possible explanations for Fermi Paradox explains the different scenarios on why we haven't seen alien life form like us and what could happen if they come to us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_...or_the_paradox

[T@T]

Originally Posted by MattyC

I'm thinking someone who thinks Space exploration important will generally also agree that ocean exploration is important as well.

But someone who doesn't know the Sun is a star is likely interested in neither, and is probably more concerned with the size of Kim Kardashian's ass, or whether or not Caitlyn Jenner is a woman. Those people are the real danger to humanity.

Most people who don't know the Sun is just a star still think the earth was made in 6 days about 6000 years ago.

[Looch City]

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

That's a pretty pessimistic view there Debbie downs.

Humans also are capable of love, sharing, forgiveness / understanding, compassion (for other species in fact) and peace.

How do we know that ET's would be capable of those things, they've evolved in a different way and had different experiences if they exist.

As it stands they might be so different that we could probably be staring at a huge spider on the wall and not realizing that its actually Emperor BLGITHKGS!!234 leader of Omicron Persius 6.

Or they could be a rock or crystal looking thing sitting in our backyard.

Maybe we're so different that its not possible to perceive each other as lifeforms so they don't think they're wiping out lives when they bulldoze our planet and put up a parking lot.

There's a theory that if/when extraterrestrial life comes here that it will be recognizable or we'll be able to appeal to their emotional layers, or they'll be some kind of common ground for discussion or negotiation.

damn hollywood.

We could appear to be terrifying monsters that fire off their survival instinct because we look so horrible or vice versa.

I personally think that we should shut down all of our radio and television communications, turn out all of our lights and huddle under our beds til they pass us by while making shhhhh noises and pray that they don't see us.

[troutman]

Ridley Scott knew there was water on Mars, didn’t have time to change The Martian
http://www.avclub.com/article/ridley...t-have--226014

[Looch City]

Originally Posted by troutman

Ridley Scott knew there was water on Mars, didn’t have time to change The Martian
http://www.avclub.com/article/ridley...t-have--226014

Good, stick to the book.

[polak]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

damn hollywood.

I've always hated the phrase "life as we know it". Yeah, exactly, the one silly example we have of life doesn't mean #### all.

[Barnes]

It would have been silly to have him collect the "water" from these streaks.

Take hydrogen. Add oxygen. Burn.

[FlamesAddiction]

I hope we do find alien animals so we can try their meat.

I always wondered what a gelatinous cube would taste like.

[pylon]

When you think of the likelihood of communicating with an alien species, you have to think 4 dimensionally. Everyone thinks of up, down left right... basic co-ordinates, but everyone neglects time. Not only does the civilization have to exist, it has to exist pretty much in a time frame, the size of a grain of sand laid next to a football field next to our grain of sand which is our moment in time as well.

There have likely been thousands or millions of species and civilizations that have risen and fallen over the lifespan of the universe, but how long did they exist in a form that could communicate in a way we could identify? Humans have had the capability for 100 years +/-, on the scale of the universe, it wouldn't even be 1/10th of a second on a 24 hour day. There could have been a civilization 2 billion years ago, that lasted for 10 million years, but were they wiped out by disease? War? A cosmic event like a Gamma ray burst or super nova... the possibilities are endless. Did they eventually evolve to a form of life so far advanced from us, and already encountered other species but we are a brutally primitive species to them no different than a fruit fly is to us, and not even worth their time? Perhaps they know of millions of inter universal species, and to them, we are nothing.

Not only do the physical and technological properties have to match, the time frame in which the civilizations exist must as well. And that will likely be the biggest hurdle to finding sentient, intelligent life.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I hope we do find alien animals so we can try their meat.

I always wondered what a gelatinous cube would taste like.

Someone watched Wayne's World this weekend!

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

Norm Macdonald: Hey Germany, you don't get to be a country no more on account'a you keep attacking......the world. I mean who do you think you are?.........Mars?

[polak]

Sort of building on Pylon post, there's also the often brushed over chance that hey, maybe we're the leading species.

Someone has to be #1 and we have yet to see anything out there to indicate that it's not us. It's not like we're that far from being so advanced that our presence is noticeable from other stars.

In 100 years we've went from zero presence to broadcasting signals, sending out probes into deep space and legitimately having a plan of how to colonize another planet. In another 100 years? Having some sort of infrastructure in space that is identifiable from outside of our solar system doesn't seem to be that out to lunch.

And hey, they're starting to do spectroscopy on the atmosphere of exoplantets. Who knows what that might uncover. Hopefully some irregularities that tickle our curiosity.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Barnes

Take hydrogen. Add oxygen. Burn.

Getting the hydrogen and oxygen might be difficult though.

[Muta]

Originally Posted by polak

Sort of building on Pylon post, there's also the often brushed over chance that hey, maybe we're the leading species.

Someone has to be #1 and we have yet to see anything out there to indicate that it's not us. It's not like we're that far from being so advanced that our presence is noticeable from other stars.

In 100 years we've went from zero presence to broadcasting signals, sending out probes into deep space and legitimately having a plan of how to colonize another planet. In another 100 years? Having some sort of infrastructure in space that is identifiable from outside of our solar system doesn't seem to be that out to lunch.

And hey, they're starting to do spectroscopy on the atmosphere of exoplantets. Who knows what that might uncover. Hopefully some irregularities that tickle our curiosity.

When disclosure happens, and it will, you will realize just how primitive we really are.

[GreenLantern]

Originally Posted by pylon

Did they eventually evolve to a form of life so far advanced from us, and already encountered other species but we are a brutally primitive species to them no different than a fruit fly is to us, and not even worth their time? Perhaps they know of millions of inter universal species, and to them, we are nothing.

I've thought this as a child since I picked up my first Green Lantern comic and they referred to Earth as a 'backwater planet'.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by pylon

When you think of the likelihood of communicating with an alien species, you have to think 4 dimensionally. Everyone thinks of up, down left right... basic co-ordinates, but everyone neglects time. Not only does the civilization have to exist, it has to exist pretty much in a time frame, the size of a grain of sand laid next to a football field next to our grain of sand which is our moment in time as well.

There have likely been thousands or millions of species and civilizations that have risen and fallen over the lifespan of the universe, but how long did they exist in a form that could communicate in a way we could identify? Humans have had the capability for 100 years +/-, on the scale of the universe, it wouldn't even be 1/10th of a second on a 24 hour day. There could have been a civilization 2 billion years ago, that lasted for 10 million years, but were they wiped out by disease? War? A cosmic event like a Gamma ray burst or super nova... the possibilities are endless. Did they eventually evolve to a form of life so far advanced from us, and already encountered other species but we are a brutally primitive species to them no different than a fruit fly is to us, and not even worth their time? Perhaps they know of millions of inter universal species, and to them, we are nothing.

Not only do the physical and technological properties have to match, the time frame in which the civilizations exist must as well. And that will likely be the biggest hurdle to finding sentient, intelligent life.

Exactly this. Parts of the universe have already gone through their whole life cycles before humans even existed. Civilizations probably rise and fall in cosmic blinks of an eye.

It's depressing to think, but knowing what we know about Earth species, humans will likely be extinct before we can ever conquer the distance problem. It would be like a person in Tokyo using a remote controlled boat and another person on the Bow River using one, and hoping that one day within their life times, they can move around and cover enough area to run into each other keeping in mind that both could be looking in the wrong direction.

I think our best bet is to leave as much behind as we can so that maybe once day an alien species can clone us.

[troutman]

Now the long wait was ending. On yet another world, intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax.

Those who had begun that experiment, so long ago, had not been men -- or even remotely human. But they were flesh and blood, and when they looked out across the deeps of space, they had felt awe, and wonder, and loneliness. As soon as they possessed the power, they set forth for the stars. In their explorations, they encountered life in many forms and watched the workings of evolution on a thousand worlds. they saw how often the first faint sparks of intelligence flickered and died in the cosmic night.

And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.

And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

from 2010: Odyssey Two (1982) by Arthur C. Clarke