You mean that your hit chance is 99% yet you miss 3 shots in a row? xDMy experience with aliens and probabilities in Xcom tells me that with those odds, we're fucked.
But the paper is not playing with "near zero" numbers, they are in the 50% range.
reminder: we are talking about the metric that WE are alone in the milky way or observable universe, not the chance of one civilization being alone in their own galaxies with the observable universe as the sample size. (So the chance of one civilization existing in every galaxy)
look at the percentages.
So in our own galaxy, that has trillions of stars, there is a chance of 53 to 99.6 percent chance that we are alone.
The observable Universe, who has trillions of galaxies with trillions of stars in every Galaxy the chance that we are alone is 39 to 85 percent.
That is just bollocks-math. Expanding the sample size by a trillion and having near identical percent figures.
Either our own galaxy must be 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% chance of only us living in it or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of being alone in the whole observable Universe, if you want to use one of the two percentage ranges.
I'm hardly an expert, but those percentages for civilizations in our galaxy versus the whole universe seem far too similar for this conclusion to be remotely plausible.
The known portion of our galaxy is an imperceptibly small fragment of the universe.
"Based upon the current state of astrobiological knowledge" - Now, I fully admit to not having read the paper, but that line bugs me. Given that we haven't even explored our own solar system at all thoroughly, and only have extremely limited data on extrasolar planets, isn't our current level of astrobiological knowledge basically zero?
To be fair, that doesn't change the number of stars or planets, just galaxies. There's the same number of stars as before, they just group together into smaller galaxies rather than larger ones.no kidding. 2 years ago there were an estimated 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. then they figured out, oops, there's at least 10x as many.
I learned the exact opposite during my Scientific Research classes in college. Though I'm sure Vox's reporting is missing a great deal of the methodology's nuance.
So what? The conclusion you draw is not correct because that's just not how probability works. You are not thinking about randomness, you are thinking that if there is one in the Milky Way, there has to be at least one in each galaxy. No, it is possible we are the only life on Earth, or there might be another one, maybe in this galaxy, or it could be in 5 billion lyrs away.look at the percentages.
So in our own galaxy, that has trillions of stars, there is a chance of 53 to 99.6 percent chance that we are alone.
The observable Universe, who has trillions of galaxies with trillions of stars in every Galaxy the chance that we are alone is 39 to 85 percent.
That is just bollocks-math. Expanding the sample size by a trillion and having near identical percent figures.
Either our own galaxy must be 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% chance of only us living in it or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance of being alone in the whole observable Universe, if you want to use one of the two percentage ranges.
Honestly I find the whole Lovecraftian notion of horrors that break human minds simply by being seen laughable.When I hear aliens, I think eldritch abominations. I'm okay with our species never crossing paths with aliens that have horrifying forms that break human minds.
Honestly I find the whole Lovecraftian notion of horrors that break human minds simply by being seen laughable.
Either a lifeform is going to be perfectly fine to look at, or at worst the brown note is gonna be something utterly underwhelming. Oh yes, regale me with your tales of how anyone who stares into the abnormal line patterns on Apos'troph'e the Maddener's skin for an hour straight with no aside glances will have mild permanent eyesight impairment.
The idea of regular aliens being a threat on purpose gets me, too. If you're space dwelling, you already have all the resources at your disposal you could possibly need. Grow your own food, our flesh probably isn't even edible. Get water out of comets. Terraform barren Goldilocks planets instead of an occupied one if you can already custom-remix an atmosphere. If you have robots, you don't need flesh and blood slaves. The only use Earth has to alien life is as a curiosity, basically. Either just watch quietly from a distance or else go in, get bio samples and leave. Alien threat is a joke.
And with that in mind I really hope we aren't alone in the universe. Barring something inadvertent, I just don't see a reason why it would screw with us other than our own paranoia fantasies. It doesn't hurt that the study of potential biology beyond earth is so darn young and the percentages here are basically a numerical shrug.
On one hand, sapient life is terrible.Well, just look at humans, for example. It seems like it is built in our DNA to wage war with another, and in our planet Bezos or Musk can probably erase world hunger if they are willing to share their worth to the rest of us but the reality is anything but.
I mean it's not that far-fetched to imagine that even if we someday capable of space-faring and space-dwelling, we would still find a way to make war since "sharing with all" is not something that most people would do, and as such it's not that impossible that another intelligent life may have the same tendency as us as well, even if they are already capable of using space-related technology.
On one hand, sapient life is terrible.
On the other hand, sapient life is usually terrible because it's resource hoarding like a greedy dragon pouting like a five year old, and I find the odds of us or vice-versa aliens actually finding anything "oooh, I need that!" useful on each others' planets to be a lot lower than Hollywood thinks it is.
It'd be raw asshattery if it happened and most people at least want something tangible as a shiny sparkly trophy if they're going on a stupidity crusade.
Based upon the current state of astrobiological knowledge, there's a 53 to 99.6 percent chance we are the only civilization in this galaxy and a 39 to 85 percent chance we are the only one in the observable universe.
I'm definitely expecting some shenanigans on an individual level if there were ever a cultural meeting with another intelligent species. And of course dumb people on both sides claiming individual actions are representative of a species and etc.Well, I bet there will always be something that can spark conflict between us and another intelligent life, should we someday ever meet and interact with one. It's just who we are as a species, and it might be who they are too, as a species. I mean "raw asshattery" is pretty much the default state of mankind everywhere :P
My head hurts. So the galaxies within our cluster will keep stretching away from us while we can't keep up. At what point does the it end. Like it's so hard to grasp how the universe keeps expanding infinitely and there isn't an "edge", so to speak.
Honestly, that sounds like bullshit. Same as the Fermi paradox. Never understood why this is so popular in the first place. Just because we haven't found any aliens or alien civilizations yet, this means absolutely nothing.
For how long have humans seriously searched for extraterrestrial life? Maybe 100 years? That's nothing compared to the age of the universe. And with what kind of technology? Yeah, right. And where have we been able to really look? We can't even confirm that there isn't extraterrestrial life in our own solar system.
People who think that the Fermi paradox has any validity don't seem to understand the dimensions of time and space, or the extent of our technological progress.
How vast is time compared to the observable universe. I always think those who take the stance of "it's so big there has to be more" never take time into the equation.
Isn't earths life only a blip in all of time? What are the chances of two planets with living creatures with one able to observe the other within the time window of the average expectancy of the creatures survival?
Seems far more likely to me we will never line up with anything else in the observable universe.
Would time not erode that all away eventually though? Or is it something like billions of years for that to happen?The Milky Way is both a younger galaxy, Earth is in a younger portion of the galaxy, and it took humanity a long time to arise on Earth. If other civilizations exist, they are likely older than us. They may be extinct now, but their tech should have outlived them. There could be spacefaring drone ships, for instance, as evidence of that civilization.
that's probably just 2-300 year's worth of human history?
Not if those specific parameters are for the moment near impossible to comprehend, much less be understood/observed/calculated and further used for reliable mathematicsI question the accuracy of the prediction because it is based on guesswork, but if we ignore that minor detail then the results are actually very useful because they tell us the order of magnitude of the probability range.
A few adjusted parameters and we could have very easily seen a result that the probability range is between 0.0000000003% and 0.00000008%.