Do you understand what Milan Ćirković is saying in this article?

Question

This author seems to be making the point that we have not solved Fermi's Paradox ("Where are all the extraterrestrials? They should have reached us by now if the universe is teeming with life.") because we think of ourselves as too special, too unique.

But it seems to me that it doesn't matter what we think of ourselves; we ARE looking, and haven't found any conclusive evidence yet for other advanced technological civilizations. Or maybe Ćirković thinks we aren't looking hard enough?

"We are now living at the tipping point—the very moment when firm empirical resolution of our biggest and oldest puzzles [extraterrestrial civilizations] is in sight. We should not miss that opportunity by fighting for an outdated vision of ourselves as pinnacles of complexity in the universe. Instead, we should reason as if we were near typical for our given epoch. Only then we shall have a fighting chance of piercing the Great Silence"

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/our-attitude-toward-aliens-proves-we-still-think-we-re-special?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Answer 1

Hi Tink,

No I do not understand the article fully...which does not keep me from expounding my ideas.

Because I suspect the Fermi situation is something of a parallel to the Michelson-Morley problem, where all you needed was this one experiment detecting aether, to wrap up science neatly into a box with all the principles of science already understood and only a few remaining details to be resolved.

Michelson-Morley came along, blew all that out of the water.

So then you got Einstein, writing things like; "If the Michelson–Morley experiment had not brought us into serious embarrassment, no one would have regarded the relativity theory as a (halfway) redemption."

So I think our special relativity bursting open, of "Is anyone out there?" is still a-comin' down the pike. A bit more specifically, yes the aliens are here, we are already found, we just don't know how to sense them yet.

Comments

But, but, but... if they are already here, couldn't they help us out a bit in detecting them?

Oh, wait... maybe we are so primitive and savage, they don't want anything to do with us.

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Yes, They Should CERTINLEE Do That, I feel strongly!

Answer 2

These are the planets which contain water, the last one is the Earth.

Humans are intelligent species but we can't reach them. What if there are intelligent species on these planets but can't communicate outside their planet.

Also, there would be a lot of planets with water which we haven't discovered yet.

Also, there is a possibility of living creators in the worlds which don't have water.

Comments

The difficulty is, is that we have only one planet, Earth, on which we know for sure life exists. That makes it impossible to determine what the chances are of intelligent life developing on a random planet, at least not until we get more data.

If, for example, the chances are only one in a trillion, say, then it would be likely that we are the only civilization in the galaxy.

Answer 3

Extraterrestrials may exist. Many people think they are monsters but they can be humans, bacteria etc.

Answer 4

To be honest with you? I recently read a good book that the author stated that no living intelligent alien life could be near us or may not exist as we know it. Big reason he had and it's a good point is that there isn't any space junk or anything alien on our moon. You would think that something would have left something there.  But..............

Comments

Well, but maybe if they are from the other side of the galaxy, they just haven't gotten around to our solar system yet.