This is my first poll, so I hope it works ok and apologies if its been done.

I would like to know how many people think that, in the remaining lifetime of the sun (around 4.5 billion years?) Planet Earth will be visited by intelligent species from another solar system, or have we already been visited.

Thanks

The chances depend statistically on the number of deep space-faring life-forms that exist in our galaxy over a long period of time, and how broad an area their explorations take them over time.

There is not one aspect of those criteria that we know anything about, so for now the question cannot be answered. Any answer is a guess or supposition without scientific basis.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

Yup I was after guesses and peoples opinions... rather than scientific fact. Of course the question is probably impossible to answer with any degree of certainty.

I answered "yes", but the lifeform in question I expect to visit Planet Earth (some time between 10^5 and 10^7 years from now) will be distant descendants of Homo Sapiens no longer aware of their planet of origin.

More generally, I expect that "first contact" with another intelligent species will be between two branches of humanity which by that time will have lost touch with each other -- and will probably look very differently.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

We're about halfway through the lifetime of the sun. We haven't been visited up to date (there's no obvious sign of such a visit, that is), so I don't think it is likely that we will be visitied in the second half of the lifetime.

I guess, civilizations are to few, to widespread and to shortlived to ever encounter each other.

I voted already been visited. Some of my reasons can be found in the Rogues and Guardians thread in Conspiracy Theories.

Rogues and Guardians

This is a very interesting point and something that I hadn't thought of. I am having trouble thinking how it would happen though. If humans were to leave the planet and populate other worlds, how would it ever be that contact with the mother planet would ever be lost?

If indeed we find that life did not orginate on earth but was some how seeded then we are that extraterrestrial. And to make it even more interesting if life indeed was seed here then who is to say it only occured once or that it has stopped, indeed if so extraterrestrial not only has visit us but may even continue to do so long into the future. Being speculative of course but then I do so because I am capable...

EyajWhynsos 3

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The limits limitless...."prove it?" is what is said

well take a half of a step of each step taken in life, and be living to you say when....

Why not? Here is a scenario:

Centuries from now, some alignment of politics, economics, and technology propels a colonizations mission to, say, Procyon. It is a massive undertaking even by the standards of the time, not to repeat in foreseeable future [here "present" means the time mission launches]. The colony is successful, and for several decades, or even centuries, it communicates with Earth.

Then Earth falls on hard times. Maybe it is a major economic downturn, maybe a war, maybe emergence of a religion which frowns on interstellar contact, maybe most of Earth population is content to dream in VR baths and simply lost interest in outside world. Maybe all of the above. For whatever reason, without explanation, Earth falls silent. After fifty years or so, Procyon colony stops trying to signal Earth. Being nowhere near the capabilities needed to launch an interstellar ship, the colony concentrates on itself. Two hundred years later, Earth is just a myth -- and on Earth, Procyon colony is just a myth. In fact, even there WAS an explanation -- if the last transmission from Earth told exactly what happened, -- after a few centuries most Procyonians never heard of it, and among those who have an endless debate goes on whether the explantion was geniuine or a hoax.

A thousand years later, a ship of Procyonians -- genetically modified to the point they are not even mammals, strictly speaking, -- arrives on Earth populated by cyborgs who all exist as one collective consciousness.

Fanciful, granted, but my general point is that civilizations rise and fall, and knowledge gets lost; sometimes deliberately destroyed, sometimes simply no longer believed. Most people on this forum believe one of two things -- either that human civilization will continue unbroken essentially forever, or that we'll destroy ourselves through war, pollution, etc. I subscribe to neither view. It is HARD to really destroy human race, but not THAT hard to seriously knock it down. A global thermonuclear war would leave enough people alive to repopulate the planet within a few centuries, to restore technological civilization within few millenia. In geological terms, it would be but a minor setback -- but if interstellar colonies got established before such war occured, they would be completely unknown "aliens" when survivors' descendants met them.

Moreover, even without any major cataclysms I am not at all sure there will be any communication between Earth (Solar system, actually) and colonies right from the start. I gave a lot of thought to the idea of generation ships, and the only way I can see them happenening is if they are crewed not by representatives of the prevailing society of their time, but by people who want to get away from that society. Since a generation ship is basically a fast-moving self-sufficient habitat, technology for self-sufficient habitats MUST be perfected before such ship can be even attempted. And once such technology is perfected (more likely, a lot earlier), every kooky cult will want one. Every 22nd Century version of Branch Davidians, Russian Old Believers, or Lesbian Separatists will want to stay as far from "corrupted, sinful Earth" as possible. In fact, such kooky groups ARE the ones who will most likely perfect the habitat technology -- by dying in every unsuccessful design. Eventually one or another isolationist group will take The Big Leap and leave Solar system altogether. Should they succeed in forming a colony, they will DELIBERATELY forget about Earth.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Thanks for that Ilya! A very thought provoking read!

Lose contact in the next few billion years? Considering that quite a lot of human history, after the invention of writing, is lost, I suspect that losing contact with the descendants of humanity scattered through the universe would be very likely.

It's extremely unlikely that the species Homo sapiens will exist, just given the average lifetime of species in the fossil record, so I guess a pedantic answer would be "no," because the human race won't exist.

Just as a clarification, this requires an actual physical visit, right? Sending a probe is not enough to qualify as a "visit", I assume.

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As above, so below

How many of those species in the fossil record did discuss the possibility of ET life on an Internet forum?

Ilya "There are those who believe that life here, began out there...."

What counts as "intellegent"? (Spelling ability presumably not required) Who are "we"?

Is there any other species in the fossil record quite like humans? We adapt through technology, we have made ourselves comfortable and there's no reason we'd change the circumstances which we consider comfortable. Our little bubbles of air conditioning and microwaveable meals will always stay the same, and they are our world. The world changes for other species, not for us. That's why animals must adapt and evolve. Natural selection has mostly seized to exist for us on the other hand, life is easy enough for humans to mostly live into adulthood. The only thing that makes you more likely to ensure the survival of the human species is if you're more physically or personally attractive for whatever reason. So in the future humans may evolve to become a race of exceptionally beautiful intelligent people, but we will still have no need to evolve in the way animals evolve. Of course, maybe I'm wrong, as ideals of beauty and personality differ, and that's what makes us humans, diversity.

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You can't really tell the difference between drunken rambling and sober blogging.

The world will change drastically for us if global warming continues a pace. Imagine if the process had a runaway effect and that Earth transforms into a Venus analogue (yes, a big exaggeration). Do you still think we would be unaffected? But seriously, even a 3C - 4C degree change would affect the planet and us greatly. The very things that makes us live in comfortable environments are the very things that makes those environments less comfortable.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

If another civilization exists, where is the incentive to blst off and come
" Here" . This is your ego talking. Earthman in the cosmos is a pretty insignificant item, and obviously overlooked so far.

Dan

In one aspect I agree with both of you:
We belong to a completely new category (technological civilizations).
Consulting the fossil record about our life expectancy is a bit like judging the survival chances of the first land-dwellers from the fossil record of fish.

The average life span in our category might be much longer than that of the average non-technological species.
But then it could be way shorter, too.

After its nova stage the sun will exist as a white dwarf for hundreds of billions of years, so that ups the chances of the sun being visited by quite a bit. Locations near the very stable white dwarfs that are from other hazards the universe has prepared for us will be prime real estate.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

That is, of course true given that a) civilization doesn't fall and b) some form of artificial evolution isn't applied to biological humans.

We don't know. Anyone who claims they do know is either lying, or is just very ignorant.