Is Finding Et Becoming A Viable Reality?

[naomi24]

In an attempt to leapfrog the planets and vault into the interstellar age, a plan to send a fleet of robot spacecraft no bigger than iPhones to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.37 light-years away, has been announced.

A rocket would deliver a “mother ship” carrying a thousand or so small probes to space. Once in orbit, the probes would unfold thin sails and then, propelled by powerful laser beams from Earth, set off across the universe.

Any returning signals would take 4 years to reach us, but it will take 20 years for the probes to reach Alpha Centauri as opposed to Voyager 1’s 70,000 years.

Exciting stuff!

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/science/alpha-centauri-breakthrough-starshot-yuri-milner-stephen-hawking.html?_r=0

[Cloverjo]

It's very exciting. But I really don't believe we will find intelligent life out there. There might be microbes or bacteria type organisms, but I don't see anything greater being found.
It is exciting though, and I'm glad money is being spent on searching. It's good for all of us.

[naomi24]

Cloverjo, do you not? Nowhere in the universe?

[aelmpvw]

// I really don't believe we will find intelligent life out there. There might be microbes or bacteria type organisms, but I don't see anything greater being found. //

there's probably an et somewhere in the universe saying the very same about us

[Cloverjo]

I really don't, Naomi. I have a newspaper article saved somewhere, which I'm trying to find now, in which the writer gave convincing reasons for the improbability of intelligent life.

[naomi24]

aelmpvw, haha! Quite possibly.

Cloverjo, I'd be interested to read that.

[Cloverjo]

There might be, aelmpvw, but I really don't think so.
The article I mentioned was bySteve Jones in The Telegraph. I don't have the date on which it was published though. I'll keep searching. He put the argument much better than I could.

[TWR]

I hope in my life time they find the intelligence to run a Country better than D.C and his cronies, or is that asking too much?

[Cloverjo]

Here it is. I have to go to work now. I'll be interested to read people's thoughts on this.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/steve-jones/9034807/Why-life-begins-and-ends-on-Earth.html

[EDDIE51]

I believe there is life out there but a LOT further than Alpha Centauri. More like 4000 LY rather than 4. Which means that due to the distance we can never contact them. So in all practical senses we are 'alone'.
That is only a proposal naomi it says it is at least 20 years away even if it could raise funding. I think the chance of success is so low it will never happen.

[naomi24]

TWR, oh good grief! Do leave it out!

Cloverjo, thank you. Busy now, but I'll read it shortly.

[Old_Geezer]

Exciting indeed. Although I'm interested in what sort of data an iPhone sized craft can return, and how it will navigate once there to ensure it doesn't fly past too far out to catch much.

Intelligent life needs specific conditions for it to evolve, as does any of the higher forms. Maybe there are plants to be found "locally" but I'd be sceptical of finding much in the way of animal forms that close to us.

[Old_Geezer]

Nothing wrong with the article itself Jo; but I'd suggest the unlikelihood of the development is offset by the vastness of space. We have no real feel for the either. Like many predictions one can start with the assumptions that create an outcome one already believes and is hoping for, and use it to support the previously created belief/viewpoint.

[TWR]

lol lol Naomi, can you imagine another lot like the sheet in the H.P? i do think there is life out there, it's too vast to think otherwise, it may have the "Answer Bank there" can you imagine another Gness / Mrs O / Murray, or even the man that hates me? Baldric?

[Old_Geezer]

They're the beans for me.

[jim360]

I can see where the author of that article is coming from. In my very non-expert opinion it's far too early in the study of the origins of life, and in particular of complex life, on this planet to be able to say in a meaningful way that intelligent life is so improbable, though. What is true is that the life/ intelligent life barrier is harder to cross than the no-life/ life barrier, ie "life", in a loose sense, is probably almost inevitable given energetically-favourable conditions, whereas I can accept that intelligent life requires rather more luck.

One way or another though, the only way to know for certain is to go to other worlds, or to investigate them from as close a distance as possible. In practice, observing the Universe from here and hoping to find confirmation of life is very, very difficult. There are ways to make some progress, but it's usually going to be tough to rule out the alternative "just a natural non-life process" for any signature you could care to look for.

We (almost certainly) aren't going to find anything life-wise at Alpha Centauri anyway, but even then the prospect of getting a meaningful experiment over there would be huge on its own; and once you've taken that step, the rest of the galaxy is open to us; or at least, say, everything within a hundred light years or so. At any rate, there are presumably worse things to spend a few billion pounds on.

[Old_Geezer]

Send something somewhere a hundred light years away, and technology should improve and something created to overtake it before it gets there :-) (Cue various SciFi stories.) Anyway Zefram Cochrane should have sorted out space warping and FTL by then.

[mushroom25]

//But I really don't believe we will find intelligent life out there.//

why not? why can't other worlds have their own all-seeing all-powerful supreme deity?

just saying........

[TWR]

Do you not think we "are being observed" I think we are.

[whiskeryron]

the idea sounds good but how is it possible to determine if intelligent life forms elsewhere in the universe developed in the same way as life on earth, would they know how a mobile phone works ?

[Huderon]

Cloverjo it seems to me that the hole in Steve Jones' article is the development of eukaryotes. He argues that they have only developed once, but we have no way of knowing that is the case. For all we know they may have developed several times with only the cells which we see today surviving.

Unless and until we find a way to shorten the travel time between stars so that we can go and find out for ourselves, the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe exists. There may not be a lot of it about, but it the possibility that it does exist can't be eliminated.

Of course if we do go out and find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, the intelligent design/creationist lot will have a field day on the basis of "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action" ... or rather God at work.