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We've already given up on intelligence on earth!
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr.PhD P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Close, +/- 2,000,000,000 years.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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I read that NASA detected methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Only an organic life form can produce methane. I'd say that's a pretty solid indication that Mars once had some form of life. What else would cause methane to exist in the Martian atmosphere?
I believe there is abundant life throughout the entire universe. How much of that life could be considered intelligent? Only a tiny fraction of that life is intelligent IMO. I say that because when we scan the stars for radio signals from other life forms, we find nothing. It's awfully quiet out there.
When you think about the tiny percentage of intelligent life out there, consider how many of those life forms have built a civilization. If they have created a civilization, are they listening to the skies just like us? How long would a typical civilization last? If there are extraterrestrials listening for radio signals, they won't be able to receive any radio signals from Earth if they're located any more than 70 or so light-years away. Here on Earth, 99.9% of all species have gone extinct. Modern man has only existed for 150,000 years, which is a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. How long will we last? How long will our civilization last? That's even less than the blink of an eye when we look back at the 3.7-4.3 billion years that Earth has existed.
As for our radio transmissions on Earth, who would be listening for our radio signals within 70 or so light years? To put that in perspective, the Milky Way galaxy is about 1,000 light-years thick. The diameter is 100 times that distance.
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James Webb telescope (I got to see it before it went into space) has detected stars 10 billion light years from earth. That makes space really, really big with lots and lots of stars. Given those numbers, it seems quite likely that intelligence can be found. However, as Enrico Fermi put it in a brief quote "Where is everybody?" The Fermi paradox "is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence."
At 10 billion light years away, how do we know that source of light still exists?
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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jmaida wrote: James Webb telescope (I got to see it before it went into space) has detected stars 10 billion light years from earth.
You actually saw the telescope in person? Wow, that would be incredible.
I understand that the most distant object observed by the James Webb telescope is 13.5 billion light-years from Earth. Estimates vary, but it's theorized that the Big Bang occurred closer to 14 billion years ago. That's amazing. To be able to see back 13.5 billion years is absolutely astounding. In terms of the size, and age of the universe, we can only theorize about the known universe. We can't observe anything outside the known universe, so there's no way to know what exists beyond that. Here's an interesting article detailing James Webb's distant observation: James Webb Space Telescope spots the most distant galaxy ever seen (image) | Space[^]
I don't understand how we're able to detect even more distant objects. I think it has something to do with the Doppler effect and the red shift in light from the distant object. Even so, the speed of causality is limited to the speed of light. If an object is detected at 33 billion light-years from Earth, that makes absolutely no sense to me. According to a Google search, the AI result states the following:
According to current data, the most distant object detected by the James Webb Space Telescope is a galaxy named "JADES-GS-z14-0", which is estimated to be around 33.8 billion light-years away, observed as it was just 290 million years after the Big Bang, making it one of the earliest galaxies ever seen. The ability to detect an object that is 33 billion light-years away has something to do with the notion that space isn't linear. It's a mystery to me as to how or why that can be. We know next to nothing about our universe and how it works. Even things like the understanding of turbulence and friction are unsolved mysteries in science. Then we have quantum mechanics and special relativity. We can't reconcile the two. I've done some studying about these two areas of physics, and the only thing I realized is that I feel like I'm mentally retarded. If you ever feel overconfident about your intelligence and knowledge, just do some research on special relativity and quantum mechanics. It'll make you feel so dumb.
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jmaida wrote: However, as Enrico Fermi put it in a brief quote "Where is everybody?"
The implicit assumption in that statement is that there is some way to get from there to here and they have it. That ignores the substantial evidence that we have that it is not possible.
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Oxy-nitrogen atmospheres like Earth's are inherently unstable without life as we know it - the oxygen would combine with almost anything and be flushed from the atmosphere in a geologically short time. We can conceivably also detect technological civilizations that produce large amounts of electromagnetic radiation. What about the intelligent non-technological life? The Greeks and Romans were just as intelligent as modern humans, but their civilization could not be detected at interstellar ranges. How many civilizations are trapped at that level?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: We can conceivably also detect technological civilizations that produce large amounts of electromagnetic radiation.
The other issue is that producing large amounts of electromagnetic radiation may simply be a passing phase. Already, a lot of our media is streamed over copper wire or fibre optic cable so TV and radio is declining or reducing in power to become more local. In addition, more transmissions are now directed, meaning we are going quiet. Other technological civilizations may follow the same path and hence be barely detectable.
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For broadcasting, it depends a lot on the selected technology. DAB radio is designed for not having some huge main transmitters on high mountain tops, with maybe 100 kW transmitted power (as it was in the days of FM), but rather a large number of small transmitters creating a moderate signal strength 'blanket' over the land. When we (Norway, that is) replaced FM with DAB, the required transmission power for the same coverage fell to 10%, measured per channel (and the sound quality of each channel was significantly improved). One important argument for switching to DAB was to reduce the electricity bill.
A partial reason for this reduction: If the signal from an FM transmitter is so weak that there is a lot of hiss and other noise in the received sound, that energy is wasted when you have to switch to another transmitter providing a strong enough signal. With DAB, two transmitters, each providing a too low signal, may be combined into a signal that is strong enough for problem free reception. If you put up a new transmitter, it doesn't need to provide the full power signal itself, if there are other, weak signals in the area, but only the power needed to lift the sum of the signals to the required level.
We use very similar technology for digital TV broadcasts (DVB), with the same power savings and same ease of installing new transmitters to improve signal strength in an established network.
The other major saving is in frequencies: Each block of 12-15 radio channels or 8-12 (or more) TV channels requires a single frequency for covering the entire nation.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Quote: I read that NASA detected methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Only an organic life form can produce methane.
Seems odd, as most planets and moons in our solar system that have atmospheres, have some methane in their atmosphere.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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jeron1 wrote: most planets and moons in our solar system that have atmospheres, have some methane in their atmosphere.
Really?  Since the info came from NASA, I didn't question it. I believe I understood them correctly, but now I'm sure it's incorrect.
You're right, methane does exist in the atmosphere of other planets that are inhospitable to supporting life. Just for reference, here's an article from a reputable source confirming your statement: NASA’s Webb Identifies Methane In an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere[^]
This has sparked my curiosity, so I will dig around to figure this out. I could have sworn that the gas that NASA was referring to was methane. As to why they stated that for methane to exist in an atmosphere, it must be produced exclusively by living organisms. That's a mystery as well. That's obviously incorrect. This is going to drive me nuts.
If I find out the truth, I'll definitely post it to this thread. One thing that I am sure of is that NASA is extremely conservative on speculations that life may have existed on Mars at one point. If they did find an indication that proves there was once life on Mars, they wouldn't acknowledge it until they had irrefutable evidence to base their assertion upon.
Thanks for that reply. 
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Steve Raw wrote: If I find out the truth, I'll definitely post it to this thread.
Sounds good. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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This is interesting. It turns out that I did understand NASA's statement, but did not understand the details. I found this:
NASA’s Curiosity rover has found new evidence preserved in rocks on Mars that suggests the planet could have supported ancient life, as well as new evidence in the Martian atmosphere that relates to the search for current life on the Red Planet. While not necessarily evidence of life itself, these findings are a good sign for future missions exploring the planet’s surface and subsurface.
The new findings – "tough" organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks near the surface, as well as seasonal variations in the levels of methane in the atmosphere – appear in the June 8 edition of the journal Science. Source: NASA Finds Ancient Organic Material, Mysterious Methane on Mars - NASA[^]
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Thanks for the link. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Steve Raw wrote:
How long will our civilization last?
One could argue that our civilization has already lost any semblance of intelligence!
CQ de W5ALT
Walt Fair, Jr.PhD P. E.
Comport Computing
Specializing in Technical Engineering Software
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Steve Raw wrote: How long will our civilization last?
Imagine that the entire Western world experiences a pandemic with similar effects as the Black Death in the mid 1300s: Half the population dead, society in limbo for more than a generation. For 20-30 years, people was fighting to survive, with little excess resources to promote culture, technology, society.
If we had experienced something similar two generations ago, when society recovered, a major part of our knowledge would still be available without the need for any high technology: Even if some libraries were destroyed by floods or fires, lots of books and reports would be found in other libraries.
Today, most advanced knowledge is not available that way. If power plants, magnetic and flash disks, cooling fans for the CPU cabinets, communication fibers ... have been sitting dead for 50 years, putting them back into operation is likely to be unsuccessful. The information to get them running is only available if you already have them running! You cannot look up on the internet how to reestablish the internet. You cannot read the electronic version of an interface, or a communication protocol, or a repair manual for a failing disk, without having access to that electronic version.
And even if you come across a printout of the required information: If noone has practiced the art for 50 years, you will not find people with sufficient professional background to understand those documents. Our technological society depends on so many different advanced professions, that it isn't sufficient to find one expert who can read the specs: You need a large crowd of people who can the the power plant working, drill oil wells and run refineries to give you fuel to those excavators for digging down (or up) fiber lined, people who know what LEDs used to be, experts on fibers, experts on semiconductor technology ... And you need that before you can access useful information from an electronic library.
Of course we will never experience anything like the Black Death again. Today we are able to stop epidemics, we have got vaccines and can control the spreading of virus and bacteria. We proved that with the Covid epidemics.
Didn't we?
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I don't know if it's the greatest song ever, but Brad Delp (RIP) certainly had a great voice.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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He had quite a voice. Too bad he did himself in.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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Wordle 1,194 3/6
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Wordle 1,194 3/6*
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Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have. -Anon
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"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 1,194 4/6
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