Comments on: Passing the Bar

By: Stephen Syputa

Stephen Syputa — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 22:44:50 +0000

Mr. Koberlein, if you would please dare to briefly digress (from what is known or suspected scientifically), what are your gut feelings and thoughts regarding the present existence (or potential) of extraterrestrial life; and further, on the development/existence of extraterrestrial consciousness/awareness/intelligence?

By: Arturo Gutierrez

Arturo Gutierrez — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 13:30:03 +0000

I can see you read the article on “Wait but Why” about the great filters. It’s a really cool article, and I like how it concludes. Whatever the answer turns out to be for the Fermi paradox, it is mind-blowing. There’s no “boring” answer to it.

By: Tino Koschinski

Tino Koschinski — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 08:09:53 +0000

“The difference is that we are capable of seeing potential risks and planning accordingly. Our intelligence and ability to adapt to change is one of humanities greatest strengths. If a great filter does lie in our future, hopefully we will be up to the challenge.”

This made me think about global warming. When I was a kid and went to school then my teacher was talking about global warming. He said humanity does everything for it to happen but it doesn’t happen (yet). So there was a prediction of the human influence more then 30 years ago. Then, after years, we could see it happen. So the prediction became real. Now we can predict what certain levels of global warming will do to the planet. But what is humanity doing these days? Increasing its carbon footprint by the year even though we know this has the chance to cause incredible damage to our species.

That makes me believe that we are rather of the ending branches of the evolution tree of all civilizations out there. While we have undoubtedly achieved a lot – we might be far less intelligent as a species then we would like to think.

By: Richard Sanchez

Richard Sanchez — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 23:35:54 +0000

The distances are TOO GREAT. They are out there. How many? I do not know. But SOME life is out there. Did they visit US? Who knows? They may be so advanced they are invisible.

By: jpatrick

jpatrick — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 16:02:25 +0000

It is more than just probable that intelligent star-faring civilizations in the same galaxy would simply “miss” each other. After all, there are time limits and speed limits.

For sun sized main sequence stars, the time limit is, perhaps 10 billion years to evolve. Chance of that? 1 in millions or less.

The speed limit, of course is c. That just makes communication, not to mention rendezvous an intractable problem.

One is tempted to think the universe is designed that way.