My friend says that aliens don't exist because we'd be able to detect planets with a noticeable amount of oxygen. He also mentioned that any intelligent life would have been using radio waves or in the case of one more advanced than ours, a Dyson sphere because it's the most efficient way to collect energy. That or some other megastructure would allow us to easily detect them, so he concluded that it's just us based on that and the mediocrity principle.
Is he right? Tbh I don't have much I can use to argue against it. Seems legit.
Please note that he failed out of college and majored in cooking so he's not an expert or anything.
I really would like to discuss it with you guys. I'll rephrase the post if you want.
Nicholas Stewart
good post
Caleb Lewis
>assuming oxygen is a prerequesite for all life >assuming life uses radio waves for communications >assuming because dyson spheres are the most efficient way to collect energy, aliens HAVE to develop them >assuming if a dyson sphere existed it would also have to be detectable with our current technology >assuming aliens will always build megastructures >assuming if he had any credentials then this theory would have more merit >assuming that even if any of these points were true, they would disprove the existence of intelligent alien life that is not yet highly advanced (like our own) >assuming this isn't bait
Jeremiah Martinez
Hmm. Well I guess I did what I could during that argument. I don't remember what he called it but he said but he basically brushed it off.
Isaac Price
Phone fucked it. I brought up everything you said and he brushed it off.
Aaron Anderson
They'd have to emit it using something within the EM spectrum though. Which would stand out.
Levi Myers
What he called what?
The main issue I have with people who argue like this is they get it stuck in their head that aliens don't exist because obviously they would be super advanced by now or something, and start talking all megastructures and dyson spheres.
Why can't intelligent life at a similar stage of development to our own exist? I have no proof for it, but I also have nothing that concretely suggests otherwise.
Another possibility is that the probability of abiogenesis on earth-like planets is similar meaning that life began at multiple points in the universe at a similar time. There could be alien life but no advanced alien life because not enough time has passed yet.
Dominic Ramirez
Lets break this down for your brainlet ass, OP
>we'd be able to detect planets with a noticeable amount of oxygen. Even detecting a planet at all is extremely difficult, let alone using spectrums to determine the exact composition of the atmosphere. That logic would would only apply to extremely nearby planets >implied: life requires oxygen It's possible for life to exist that doesn't need oxygen. In fact, we even have some on Earth. >He also mentioned that any intelligent life would have been using radio waves Not necessarily true. Their technology could have taken a different path depending on different material availability. Maybe they just used wires for everything. Radio isn't strictly required for any of humanities important advances. Furthermore, we can't actually detect radio waves from space very well. There could be a lot of stars out there shitting out Earth levels of radio waves and we wouldn't notice it over the background radiation. > or in the case of one more advanced than ours, a Dyson sphere because it's the most efficient way to collect energy. We don't actually know what an advanced civilization would do. Imagining that a type 1 civilization would build a dyson sphere is on the same level as people in the 40s that thought everybody in the year 2000 would have a flying car and robot butler. >That or some other megastructure would allow us to easily detect them, Megastructures are not so easy to detect even if they exist. > so he concluded that it's just us based on that and the mediocrity principle. The mediocrity principle actually implies that there should be a LOT of human level life forms in the galaxy.
In conclusion, your friend is a brainlet who thinks that astronomers are wizards who have perfect photos of every planet in the universe or something. He doesn't know how much we don't know about space.
Brody Myers
He conceded to your last point. He just doesn't believes there is no intelligent life besides us because they, somehow, must build megastructures. I brought up that even we arent headed in a direction to build giant archologies.
Landon Howard
>aliens don't exist It's pretty clear from the abundance of exoplants that alien life is very likely within our own galaxy.
Michael Perez
I expanded it to "ok what about other galaxies then?"
And he said "we would detect it. Any emissions from them would light up."
Oliver Martinez
Not when the range falls below the background limit of detection. Does he know there is a certain amount of random noise in the emissions we detect?
James Howard
I failed to bring it up. I don't think he does.
Luis Barnes
We detected several candidate Dyson Spheres
Justin Richardson
Sauce?
Also I have read a study proposing that we are in a early stage of the universe, in a few billion years the conditions for biogenesis will be far better. Thus we see no one because there is no one around us to see, not in any reasonable detection range anyhow.
We are the eldar, the first. God help us and all who come after.
Anthony Carter
Planets are small and dim compared to their parent star. They're usually detected either by . "wobbles" they introduce into the star's motion as they circle or . dips in the light of the star as they pass in front.
Free oxygen in the atmosphere of a planet would be a good sign of life since the stuff won't last unless some process continually removes it. Earth had no free oxygen before single-cell plants evolved. I can't say that the atmosphere of an exoplanet has NEVER been analyzed, but it certainly hasn't been done often and, if it has been done, no oxygen found yet. That would make headlines!
Next generation James Webb space telescope expected to do better. All you can tell friend at present is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!"
Your friend suffers from what I call "CSI syndrome." "Got a blurry, distorted, dim photo and the object is only 3 pixels wide? No problem! We can computer-enhance it so you can read the numbers on the licence plate." It doesn't work like that!!!
Anthony Price
This post would have been much better if instead of >assuming you used >implying Check it out: >implying oxygen is a prerequesite for all life >implying life uses radio waves for communications >implying because dyson spheres are the most efficient way to collect energy, aliens HAVE to develop them >implying if a dyson sphere existed it would also have to be detectable with our current technology >implying aliens will always build megastructures >implying if he had any credentials then this theory would have more merit >implying that even if any of these points were true, they would disprove the existence of intelligent alien life that is not yet highly advanced (like our own) >implying this isn't bait ISHYGDDT
Zachary Wood
But they really are assumptions and not implications, just saying, good to know the difference
Jace Ramirez
Is this post ironic or do you have some sort of mental disorder?
Christian Howard
Wow, where can we get those brushes? It would be awesome to just whisk a few times and BTFO the other guy 100% of the time!
Dylan Bell
It's not post ironic, it's ancient Veeky Forums history. In a time long ago, when moot still ruled the lands, >implying and ISHYGDDT were the cool Veeky Forums memes. And yeah I probably do have some kind of mental disorder, I think most people posting on this imageboard has one.
Landon Foster
Assuming he's right, then they could easily still be extremely far away and we wouldn't be able to detect any of this shit for another trillion years.
Owen Cruz
Life has existed in our planet for more than 4 billion years. For 2.5 billion of those years there was no multi-cellular life. For 2 billion of those years there were no eukaryotes. It didn't have to happen. Two billion years of random mutations and it happened, but we don't know how likely that was, maybe even with that many attempts we were still as lucky as winning the lottery, it might have never happened. So I agree it's likely that there's alien life within range, but it's probably unicellular.
Levi Sanchez
>ancient Nigga they're a few years old at best. Ancient memes are longcat and Milhouse is not a meme.
Hudson Miller
>alien thread OK cool I have a question, are galaxies with quasars from active nuclei habitable? I figure those things are so stupidly bright it would be very harsh on life.
Can we even detect individual stars from other galaxies? Anyways, distance and the inverse square law make detecting any alien signal very unlikely.
Jayden Campbell
Should debris be combined into Attenuation? ISL is. Maybe even distance too since all that stuff is the reason for attenuation, making it a bit redundant to mention. Thus, 1 and 4 is all that's needed from that list.
Juan Evans
what's the point of this thread? >my friend is a retard, pls discuss
Aaron Richardson
Idk. I think most of it is distance. Even 1. We humans strive to cover distances and want to see ''what's out there''. Aliens may not. And even of they do, how do you cover the distance? Yourself or with a signal or a probe??
Charles Jenkins
The problem is he won't admit he's wrong.
Caleb Reed
>2 billion years >4 billion years Try 6 thousand schlomo.
Austin Young
Weak bait, try Veeky Forums
Austin Howard
>Is he right? Tbh I don't have much I can use to argue against it. Seems legit. Do the math for power, diffraction and signal attenuation. The answer is that you can't see shit.
Noah Barnes
>debris be combined into Attenuation? Signal attenuation happens even if there are no debris and space is perfectly flat. Diffraction is a major component of attenuation, if you sent out a perfect sine wave (or other shaped signal) there would be a maximum distance that the signal would be detectable above its own noise.
Same reason that lasers spread out.
Dominic Thompson
There was a fucking giant tictac out maneuvering some F18s off the coast of California and you fucks still don't think alien life exists?
Christopher Bailey
who cares? let him be
Angel Turner
?, aliens would require a reason to hunt humans , and even then they are part of the same ultimate life being , which means if we die we would also be able to pray ourselves into a safer life , also the real concern is neurohacking and neuro-linguistics code hypnosis , read the literature neuromancer for more information ,.
