Some stuff from the internets.
Check out this article: Its typical of its kind….
The Billion-Year Technology Gap: Could One Exist? (The Weekend Feature)
The part that annoys me:
Since at this point, there is no direct and/or widely apparent evidence that extraterrestrial life exists, it likely means one of the following:
We are (A) the first intelligent beings ever to become capable of making our presence known, and leaving our planet. At this point, there are no other life forms out there as advanced as us. Or perhaps extraterrestrial life does exists, but for some reason extraterrestrial life is so very rare and so very far away we’ll never make contact anyway—making extraterrestrial life nonexistent in a practical sense at least.
Or is it (B) that many advanced civilizations have existed before us, but without exception, they have for some unknown reason, existed and/or expanded in such a way that they are completely undetectable by our instruments.
Or is it (C) There have been others, but they have all run into some sort of “cosmic roadblock” that eventually destroys them, or at least prevents their expansion beyond a small area.
Really? That’s the best you can do towards an exhaustive list? Really? Come on!
And then, further down – more idiocy.
“Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Fermi Paradox is what it suggests for the future of our human civilization. Namely, that we have no future beyond earthly confinement and, quite possibly, extinction. Could advanced nanotechnology play a role in preventing that extinction? Or, more darkly, is it destined to be instrumental in carrying out humanity's unavoidable death sentence?” wonders Mike Treder, executive director of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN).
Treder believes that some of the little understood new technologies now being developed such as nanotech, and others, could well be either our salvation or just as likely end up causing our ultimate destruction.
“Whatever civilizations have come before us have been unable to surpass the cosmic roadblock. They are either destroyed or limited in such a way that absolutely precludes their expansion into the visible universe. If that is indeed the case—and it would seem to be the most logical explanation for Fermi's Paradox—then there is some immutable law that we too must expect to encounter at some point. We are, effectively, sentenced to death or, at best, life in the prison of a near-space bubble,” suggests Treder. “Atomically-precise exponential manufacturing could enable such concentrations of unprecedented power as to result in either terminal warfare or permanent enslavement of the human race. Of course, that sounds terribly apocalyptic, but it is worth considering that the warnings we heard at the start of the nuclear arms race, and the very real risks we faced in the height of the Cold War, were but precursors to a much greater threat posed by an arms race involving nano-built weaponry and its accompanying tools of surveillance and control.”
You incompetent excuse for a science writer! Aaaaaargh!
Perhaps we just haven’t been contacted – we’ve been aware of our place in the universe in any meaningful way for less than 200 years and on the scale of the universe that’s nothing. NOTHING!
Maybe gigayear (or hell, megayear) civilizations don’t go beyond a single galaxy. Probability alone would solve our little ‘paradox’.
There are at least several other explanations I could think of to explain our little ‘paradox’. (And many have been highlighted in the comments after the post).
Bah!
And why this is important:
Evidence of life on Mars lurks beneath surface of meteorite, Nasa experts claim
Holy crap!!!! I mean, wtf WOW!!!!
WHY ON EARTH (hehe) ISN’T THIS ALL OVER TEH INTERNETS?!
If true, this is one of the single greatest moments in the history of mankind!!!
Why aren’t people making a bigger fuss?!
5 comments:
hmmm your post seemed a bit incoherent, atleast to me. so what is your point exactly?
Shame!
Shame, that the likes of Treder make doomsday-like amateur science-fiction predictions about nanotechnology!
Still worse, his reasons for why we can't contact ET life sound like poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge!
Scientific journalism is really shoddy even in best of the popular publications! If you know a journo, and can strike a deal, you become an 'expert'.
I'm not sure if Treder even knows, as of now, nanotechnology is quite a bit of organic chemistry!
It serves the likes of Treder right that life could eventually be found somewhere so close as Mars itself!
I think NASA's finding hasn't been much publicized 'cuz people's expectations have been shaped too much into wanting 'that ET' life to be hominoid! Puny bacteria no longer impress us!
Personally, I was a bit, but not much excited with the finding of bacterial fossils on asteroid chunk simply because, I never felt organic molecule based life need be such an exotic thing!
If you'd read about the chemical evolution of life on Earth and the experiments conducted to prove the theories, you'll end up feeling: given sufficient time, and a certain temperature range, life-like molecules HAD to develop! Seriously!
In fact I would be much more suprised if someone could convincingly prove that there exists no life outside of Earth!
Thanks for scooping out the asteroid piece. Might link it a post on my blog. :)
TC.
@Madhu:
I have two, actually:
1) The first article is largely crap. The author has repeated an argument (possibly taken from a blog) without even looking at it.
His logic has more holes than Swiz cheese...
2) There is an article out there that says NASA has pretty good proof that life once existed off the earth.
Conclusive proof of life away from the earth would be an earth shattering revelation. I'm wondering why this isn't making headlines everywhere.
@Ketan: I know, I know..
My aerospace dynamics prof went on a 5 minute rant on how the media think that an opinion and a poll constitute 'science'... Its embarrassing.
Personally, I'm waiting for conclusive proof of life somewhere else in the cosmos. It'll be the last in a long line of discoveries that highlight the mediocrity of human existence- From being at the center of the world which was itself the center of a tiny cosmos to an unremarkable phenomenon on a mote of dust circling an average star in a universe of uncountable billions....
fini
hmmm ok. well yes the article was not without its fallacies, the scientist or whatever started to sound quite dreamy at the end. " a poll and an opinion constitutes science" :) welcome to the world harshad, which is has more incredulous people than u would believe. start the sentence with - according to recent studies, and u'll have them gulp down any sort of manure u might want to push down their throat. the unfortunate thing about such an attitude is that cargo cult science becomes real and the distinction between science and pseudo science gets blurred.
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