Dpp1978
Posts: 1012
Joined: 2/4/2006
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quote:
ORIGINAL: superdan
The problem is we have no real basis for comparison - just because we exist, doesn't mean it is in any way probable that similarly intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. For all we know, our mere existence could be one of the unlikeliest flukes in the history of the universe. And even though it's unimaginably vast, space is basically just that - space. The distances involved are beyond comprehension. I love the Bill Bryson quote from A Short History Of Nearly Everything:
“We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So, they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs--people who don't know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin "Dear Sire," and congratulate us on the handsomness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us.”
That is a really nice quote. To take it one step further: if they did see us as we were 200 years ago and sent us a message, it would take another 200 years to get here. So if we were to receive a message from these particular aliens there would be 400 years worth of lag between them observing us and us receiving that observation.
That isn't to say that 200 light years is an insurmountable distance to travel, even taking into account the limit to how fast we can travel: the speed of light.
Let us pretend our alien friends 200 light years away invite us for tea, and we decide to accept.
Einstein told us, and no-one has been clever enough to correct him, that as we move faster through space we move proportionally slower through time. It has been observed experimentally and is pretty well accepted as fact.
That means if we could invent and use a means of propulsion which would allow us to travel at speeds approaching the speed of light, from our perspective we would experience time much slower. If we found a way to propel ourselves at such a rate of speed that time as we perceive it slows down to, say, 1% of what we consider normal, we could make the journey to visit our alien friends in 2 years. At least from our perspective.
The problem is that for those who aren't travelling with us, their journey through time would carry on as normal. So we'd arrive and 200 years or so would still have passed from our alien friends' perspective since we left: 400 since they sent the invitation. Let us pretend that they are a long lived, patient bunch (or maybe they perceive time differently to us) and as we are by and large a polite people we sent an RSVP a few weeks prior to launch (which would have reached them roughly that amount of time before we did) they have a reception ready for us. The promised tea, maybe a tour of their world and an exchange of gifts etc. Then we get homesick and decide to go home, which takes another 2 years from our perspective.
When we get home more than 400 years on Earth have passed. Everyone we know will be dead or downloaded into robot bodies. Society will have moved on, ended, or maybe, just maybe the apes will have taken over. The world we arrive back to will be just as alien to us as the one we just visited. With that being the cost of exploration of the distant stars; basically giving up your home and everyone you know and love, it seems to me an awfully big ask for anyone. The whole point of exploring is telling people what you found.
Maybe the aliens who allegedly visited us were a tribe of galactic nomads who dropped in wearing space-suits that look like tribal headpieces, taught us how to make headpieces that look like space-suits and then promptly buggered off again. Maybe we are the ancestors of such a tribe marooned on Earth, or perhaps Earth was a place to deposit the dregs of their society. An intergalactic version of 19th century Australia if you will.
The point is this theory is all supposition, and no small amount of storytelling.
We like the stories that aliens have visited because they are, if well told, very entertaining. Certainly more so than many of the accepted truths. But to give them any more weight than that, without any good evidence to back it up is no different to what bible literalists do with the creation myth.
I've written before that people see what they want to see where the choice is given. Yes those statues do look like space-suits through early 21st century eyes. That doesn't make them spacesuits. It is possible our space suit helmets would look like tribal headpieces to the Aztecs.
What I do find mildly amusing in all this is that a 14th century religious painting: an expression of one faith, is being used as evidence for the theory of ancient astronauts. Which at this point relies as much on the faith of those who choose to accept it as anything those of a religious inclination choose to believe.
< Message edited by Dpp1978 -- 2/7/2012 5:02:56 PM >
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