Why havent aliens landed yet on earth?

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What if there is life, but it's really boring, and only evolves into what we already have here?

I mean, what the hell leads us to assume Xenomorphs and green men are everywhere?
 
Speevy said:
What if there is life, but it's really boring, and only evolves into what we already have here?

I mean, what the hell leads us to assume Xenomorphs and green men are everywhere?
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Everywhere, I don't think anyone is saying that; but, pure statistical chance tells us that it is more than probable that significant alien life exists. Of the places that it exists it is less probable that it is intelligent life. Basically it is much more probable that intelligent life exists in the universe than otherwise.
 
This has always been interesting to me. i was a firm believer that weve either been visited or we cant be because they arent allowed to interfere with us. then i started thinking in a different scope.

Time is against us. were in a universe thats 13.8 billion years old. on a planet thats 4.6 billion years old and that will be burnt to cinders in 1.8 billion years. we....awesome humans are only close to 200,000 years old. on a 24 hour scale we arent even a second old!

How many habitable planets never even made it to 4.6 billion years of existence? or made it, only to be decimated? How many civilizations made it through an evolutionary process that gave then a higher form of thinking? our evolution is a rarity that we cant 100% explain yet. i dont even think we'll be here 1000 years from now. :(
 
Considering the size of the universe, whatever could be of interest here could probably be found elsewhere too. So not only do they have to be able to get here, but then of all the places like ours they can get to they'd have to come to ours for whatever reason. Maybe we're not so special.
 
Who's to say they'ed even want to land on Earth? It could easily be like Invader Zim (I know it's a cartoon, I'm just using it as an example), where Earth is nothing to Aliens.

Also, on this note, I'm remided of the Wow Signal, still want to know what that was.
 
Even if there are aliens that are way older than us, it doesn't mean they have developed space travel. Hell, we couldn't even fly a little over hundred years ago. Space travel is an extremely difficult problem to solve. The fact that we have reached the level of technology to do what we have done has been the result of a handful of individuals when you consider the billions that have lived. What if Newton hadn't been born or he had died young? What if Einstien hadn't been born? I'm not saying these are the only two who matter (of course not), but just imagine of just these two hadn't been born. Well, the world would be a much different place right now. The amount of things that have to come together to make a planet habitable and then for life to grow there and then for it to become intelligent and then for it to actually advance..well it's taken the entire life of the universe for that to happen here on Earth. Perhaps everywhere else where there is intelligent life they are still living in straw houses and hunting with wooden spears like they still do in parts of this world.
 
The Real Abed said:
If there are "aliens" they are probably exactly the same as us and in the same boat. Whereas their space program is so far behind and they haven't invented super fast space travel yet. (Maybe it's literally not possible, in which case it means we'll never meet them unless a group of us or them decides to build a fast moving self sustaining "cruise ship" in space like in Wall-E where they live on it for generations upon generations looking for inhabitable or inhabited planets.)

I never understood why we assume aliens would be drastically different. If we all were created when the universe was created then we probably all evolved the same speed and developed similar religions and technology.

Basically when we do meet other lifeforms, it won't be until technology has evolved enough, and even then only the people on the mission will ever know.
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Because environmental factors help choose nature's winners and losers. A few degrees cooler or hotter and evolution spirals in a different direction. Thus, the chances of anything in the universe being like us is impossibly small.
 
Fermi Paradox.

Also I highly doubt that Earth would be "hospitable" for other life out there. I mean it took billions of years before life was able to adapt to earth, how long would it take for other life not from earth?
 
RustyNails said:
Come on, we can identify which bacterium lived in which dino's anus 200 million years ago. Don't you think if aliens already visited us, we wouldn't have found out?
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Man, we discover new species of animals on the sides of highways every now and then. I wouldn't put it past us.
 
CraigerGamer said:
Because environmental factors help choose nature's winners and losers. A few degrees cooler or hotter and evolution spirals in a different direction. Thus, the chances of anything in the universe being like us is impossibly small.
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Other planets are composed of things we know about, though in different amounts. So it is logical to assume that life requires the same things, right? If life requires the same things, then life is not likely to be that different.
 
Intelligent species will develop means to destroy themselves before they achieve the technological capacity to contact us. In other words, those who could reach us are extinct
 
1. Our galaxy is massive as fuck.
2. We really haven't been around that long
3. Why do people always assume aliens can do long distance space travel
4. We ain't got shit for them
5. Because you touch yourself at night
 
Otakumegane said:
Fermi Paradox.

Also I highly doubt that Earth would be "hospitable" for other life out there. I mean it took billions of years before life was able to adapt to earth, how long would it take for other life not from earth?
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Yeah, maybe to aliens, natural Earth is like a toxic dump.
 
Maybe it will be some tragic dying man upon the shore scenario wherein our planet burns away all life just as we develop the means to reach others, and right as they're close enough to reach us.

A little alien boy asks "$#@$@#$#@?", which is alien for "Do you think Earth could be inhabitable one day?" to which his alien father replies "I doubt it."
 
The universe is huge. Space travel would require so much time and energy. Why would they waste it visiting a backwards civilization when they would be busy finding even more advanced civilizations? Imagine making one long road trip and stopping in the middle of the road for some ant.
 
Speevy said:
What if there is life, but it's really boring, and only evolves into what we already have here?

I mean, what the hell leads us to assume Xenomorphs and green men are everywhere?
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Because we aren't even done evolving. Human society is constantly progressing.

OP: I'm sure aliens have been here already and you just didn't know it.
 
y2dvd said:
The universe is huge. Space travel would require so much time and energy. Why would they waste it visiting a backwards civilization when they would be busy finding even more advanced civilizations.
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I can't believe I've never seen anybody make that point before, and I generally lurk forums about this stuff.

But it's right. We're seeing it from our tainted perspective if we think that if aliens leave their planet, they'd be doing so as "masters of space." That's just an idea coming from the fact they'd be more advanced than us.

When the aliens go exploring, they're not thinking they're masters, they're basically just like us, looking for something bigger, MORE advanced.

Jeez, imagine the paranoia if you were, like, a race wanting to take over a galaxy or something. You never know if you'll bump into something that will just eat you. Everything is just so hidden.
 
Xe4 said:
I'm sorry, but what? Aliens (and us) can absolutely spread out across the galaxy. It may take millions of years, but it is possible. Just send one ship to a planet, about 40+ years, and have that planet develop (60-70) years, and send out another ship. Repeat.
Even if it took 500 million years, that's only 3% of the age of the galaxy. It can happen, and I would be surprised if it didn't.
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Lolwut? 40 years wouldn't be enough to get us anywhere near to the next closest star after sun even with some hypothetical future technology and completely ignoring the resource problems presented by such ultra long travel (it would take many millenia to even store enough fuel/energy for such trip, even before embarging on such quest), let alone surely finding a star with planets that could sustain (human) life. Unless we come up with some actual wormhole level shit, it's likelier that the human race will die out before we reach any other habitable planets, let alone alien life as intelligent or even more intelligent than we are.
 
The question isn't if there is intelligent life out there but rather if we ever will be able to meet each other. The size of the universe and the limit of the speed of light makes it seem pretty grim.
 
Either been and gone long ago or been and stayed.

The reasoning that they'd come in modern times is that they would have located us by following the signals we broadcast. But that doesn't rule out the idea of them simply exploring and finding us and finding us at literally any time in our history.
 
Recent discoveries are showing that there are way way more "Earth like" planets than we initially thought. Our earth is probably not that interesting to visit.

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Speevy said:
Other planets are composed of things we know about, though in different amounts. So it is logical to assume that life requires the same things, right? If life requires the same things, then life is not likely to be that different.
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Evolution on earth was in direct response to the environmental factors at that certain time and place. Space-time is impossible to recreate therefore so are the environmental factors that existed which created life in the first place.

DNA mutates randomly. Those mutations make the Indivudual either more likely to survive or more likely to die. But it's still random and the variables are nearly incalculable. I just don't think life on another planet will look, behave, or even exist as we do here on earth.
 
Honestly, if there is something out there with the means to find our planet and look at the life, it probably also has the means to do so stealthily. And I'm not talking Ancient Aliens shit; I mean coming and not leaving a single trace. I'm running with the idea that stealth and camouflage is actually key to advanced space travel. We're probably not being the most precautionary with our space presence but I suppose for all aliens could know we're secretly more advanced and what we're showing "publicly," could be like camouflage, and we're potentially a race of nasty reptilians or something trying to bait them.

Every intelligent race is probably paranoid as shit that it's going to get killed by another one, and has no idea what the rules are or what's possible out there.
 
RustyNails said:
I am getting frustrated. The earth has been habitable for 250 million years now and provides all sorts of sustenance. Why haven't they landed on Earth yet? Does this mean that aliens are probably not as advanced as we thought, or does it mean that they are so far advanced that they don't want to "pollute" our ecosystem by entering it? Come on aliens, come visit us.
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There are a range of possible scenarios. The only thing we can say for sure is:

There are no aliens who are close enough to have reached us, and who have the capability to reach us, and who want to reach us, and who have been detected by us.

You can break the possibilities down by type, i.e.

1. Space-faring alien civilizations not existing
2. Space-faring alien civilizations being too far away
3. Civilizations do exist, but do not want to visit
4. Civilizations have visited, but have not made themselves known publicly.

I consider #4 to be extremely implausible, fwiw.

You can break down each type further:

1.1. Alien life does not exist
1.2. Alien life does exist, but not complex alien life.
1.3. Complex alien life does exist, but not intelligent alien life.
1.4. Intelligent alien life does exist, but not social intelligent alien life.
1.5. Social intelligent alien life does exist, but the circumstances on their planet do not allow for civilizations to form over long periods of time.
1.6. Social intelligent alien life exists, and circumstances are conducive to them, but some characteristic of their nature prevents them from becoming space-faring.

2.1. Space-faring civilizations are extremely distant, such that travel of any kind of extremely unlikely
2.2. Space-faring civilizations are close enough to reach us at some point, but have not reached us yet.
2.3. Space-faring civilizations could have reached us by now at sub-light speeds, but practical limitations prevent interstellar travel from occurring at high fractions of C.

3.1. Civilizations are disinterested in us for some reason.
3.2. Civilizations are interested in us, but do not consider us "ready" for some reason.
3.3. Civilizations are interested in us, but are actively studying us, and so keep us deliberately isolated.
3.4. Civilizations would be interested in us, but do not know about us.
3.5. Civilizations would be interested in us, but are too scared to make themselves known to other civilizations.

4.1. Aliens have visited Earth at some point in the past, but not since.
4.2. Aliens have visited Earth recently, but concealed themselves.
4.3. Aliens have visited Earth recently, but this fact was kept secret by the gubment.


And so on, and so forth.

Theoretically, if other civilizations did exist in the milky way, and have been space-faring for tens of thousands of years (not entirely unreasonable), they could have created self-replicating machines or "machine civilizations" that spread throughout the galaxy, explore, contact others and return home. We have not seen any evidence of such things, although these are the "most plausible" mechanism by which an intelligent space-faring civilization would explore the galaxy quickly.

If you're relying on individual people doing round trips of the milky way, it will take an extremely long time to explore, however if you limit your search only to areas likely to contain life, that cuts down most of the star systems.

To elaborate on 3.5 above, there is a discussion via Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski's novel The Killing Star, and recorded on the extremely useful ProjectRHO site.

The great silence (i.e. absence of SETI signals from alien civilizations) is perhaps the strongest indicator of all that high relativistic velocities are attainable and that everybody out there knows it.

The sobering truth is that relativistic civilizations are a potential nightmare to anyone living within range of them. The problem is that objects traveling at an appreciable fraction of light speed are never where you see them when you see them (i.e., light-speed lag). Relativistic rockets, if their owners turn out to be less than benevolent, are both totally unstoppable and totally destructive. A starship weighing in at 1,500 tons (approximately the weight of a fully fueled space shuttle sitting on the launchpad) impacting an earthlike planet at "only" 30 percent of lightspeed will release 1.5 million megatons of energy -- an explosive force equivalent to 150 times today's global nuclear arsenal... (ed note: this means the freaking thing has about nine hundred mega-Ricks of damage!)

I'm not going to talk about ideas. I'm going to talk about reality. It will probably not be good for us ever to build and fire up an antimatter engine. According to Powell, given the proper detecting devices, a Valkyrie engine burn could be seen out to a radius of several light-years and may draw us into a game we'd rather not play, a game in which, if we appear to be even the vaguest threat to another civilization and if the resources are available to eliminate us, then it is logical to do so.

The game plan is, in its simplest terms, the relativistic inverse to the golden rule: "Do unto the other fellow as he would do unto you and do it first."...

When we put our heads together and tried to list everything we could say with certainty about other civilizations, without having actually met them, all that we knew boiled down to three simple laws of alien behavior:

THEIR SURVIVAL WILL BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR SURVIVAL.

If an alien species has to choose between them and us, they won't choose us. It is difficult to imagine a contrary case; species don't survive by being self-sacrificing.
WIMPS DON'T BECOME TOP DOGS.

No species makes it to the top by being passive. The species in charge of any given planet will be highly intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
THEY WILL ASSUME THAT THE FIRST TWO LAWS APPLY TO US.

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Your thinking still seems a bit narrow. Consider several broadening ideas:

Sure, relativistic bombs are powerful because the antagonist has already invested huge energies in them that can be released quickly, and they're hard to hit. But they are costly investments and necessarily reduce other activities the species could explore. For example:
Dispersal of the species into many small, hard-to-see targets, such as asteroids, buried civilizations, cometary nuclei, various space habitats. These are hard to wipe out.
But wait -- while relativistic bombs are readily visible to us in foresight, they hardly represent the end point in foreseeable technology. What will humans of, say, two centuries hence think of as the "obvious" lethal effect? Five centuries? A hundred? Personally I'd pick some rampaging self-reproducing thingy (mechanical or organic), then sneak it into all the biospheres I wanted to destroy. My point here is that no particular physical effect -- with its pluses, minuses, and trade-offs -- is likely to dominate the thinking of the galaxy.
So what might really aged civilizations do? Disperse, of course, and also not attack new arrivals in the galaxy, for fear that they might not get them all. Why? Because revenge is probably selected for in surviving species, and anybody truly looking out for long-term interests will not want to leave a youthful species with a grudge, sneaking around behind its back...

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I agree with most parts of points 2, 3, and 4. As for point 1, it is cheaper than you think. You mention self-replicating machines in point 3, and while it is true that relativistic rockets require planetary power supplies, it is also true that we can power the whole Earth with a field of solar cells adding up to barely more than 200-by-200 kilometers, drawn out into a narrow band around the Moon's equator. Self-replicating robots could accomplish this task with only the cost of developing the first twenty or thirty machines. And once we're powering the Earth practically free of charge, why not let the robots keep building panels on the Lunar far side? Add a few self-replicating linear accelerator-building factories, and plug the accelerators into the panels, and you could produce enough anti-hydrogen to launch a starship every year. But why stop at the Moon? Have you looked at Mercury lately? ...

Dr. Wells has obviously bought into the view of a friendly galaxy. This view is based upon the argument that unless we humans conquer our self-destructive warlike tendencies, we will wipe out our species and no longer be a threat to extrasolar civilizations. All well and good up to this point.

But then these optimists make the jump: If we are wise enough to survive and not wipe ourselves out, we will be peaceful -- so peaceful that we will not wipe anybody else out, and as we are below on Earth, so other people will be above.

This is a non sequitur, because there is no guarantee that one follows the other, and for a very important reason: "They" are not part of our species.

Before we proceed any further, try the following thought experiment: watch the films Platoon and Aliens together and ask yourself if the plot lines don't quickly blur and become indistinguishable. You'll recall that in Vietnam, American troops were taught to regard the enemy as "Charlie" or "Gook," dehumanizing words that made "them" easier to kill. In like manner, the British, Spanish, and French conquests of the discovery period were made easier by declaring dark- or red- or yellow-skinned people as something less than human, as a godless, faceless "them," as literally another species.

Presumably there is some sort of inhibition against killing another member of our own species, because we have to work to overcome it...

But the rules do not apply to other species. Both humans and wolves lack inhibitions against killing chickens.

Humans kill other species all the time, even those with which we share the common bond of high intelligence. As you read this, hundreds of dolphins are being killed by tuna fishermen and drift netters. The killing goes on and on, and dolphins are not even a threat to us.

As near as we can tell, there is no inhibition against killing another species simply because it displays a high intelligence. So, as much as we love him, Carl Sagan's theory that if a species makes it to the top and does not blow itself apart, then it will be nice to other intelligent species is probably wrong. Once you admit interstellar species will not necessarily be nice to one another simply by virtue of having survived, then you open up this whole nightmare of relativistic civilizations exterminating one another.

It's an entirely new situation, emerging from the physical possibilities that will face any species that can overcome the natural interstellar quarantine of its solar system. The choices seem unforgiving, and the mind struggles to imagine circumstances under which an interstellar species might make contact without triggering the realization that it can't afford to be proven wrong in its fears.

Got that? We can't afford to wait to be proven wrong.

They won't come to get our resources or our knowledge or our women or even because they're just mean and want power over us. They'll come to destroy us to insure their survival, even if we're no apparent threat, because species death is just too much to risk, however remote the risk...

The most humbling feature of the relativistic bomb is that even if you happen to see it coming, its exact motion and position can never be determined; and given a technology even a hundred orders of magnitude above our own, you cannot hope to intercept one of these weapons. It often happens, in these discussions, that an expression from the old west arises: "God made some men bigger and stronger than others, but Mr. Colt made all men equal." Variations on Mr. Colt's weapon are still popular today, even in a society that possesses hydrogen bombs. Similarly, no matter how advanced civilizations grow, the relativistic bomb is not likely to go away...

We ask that you try just one more thought experiment. Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides.

It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds.

Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body.

How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"

What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.

There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.

There is no policeman.

There is no way out.

And the night never ends.
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Illegal aliens are invading us from the south and now you want some from the sky - they'll soon be stealing the few jobs we have left!
 
Because they are not interested in a bunch of barely evolved poop-throwing primates?

The level of technology required to cross interstellar space pretty much guarantees that any alien civilization capable of that will be more or less on god level compared to us.
 
Maybe there isn't any other life. ._.
Humanity destined to be forever alone. That's a scary thought.

Good thing chances are pretty damn high that there's some sort of life out in the vast darkness.
Earth is but a needle within a enormous haystack. Pretty damn hard to find.
 
Because there probably are countless planets out there with intelligent life. And there's billions of unhabbited planets to better mine for resources.

So, they have no specific reason to visit us. There seems to be little benefit to them.
 
Sojgat said:
Probably because, to any outside observer, the human race would appear completely insane.

Any intelligent life would want to stay the fuck away.
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A variation on this, yes.

If they're peaceful aliens, they'd want nothing to do with us at this point. They'd stay the hell away and keep an eye on us, waiting to see if we settle down or get close to interstellar capability (in which case sabotaging efforts to slow that effort down...at least until we grow up as a species).

If they're conquering aliens (or looking to exploit resources)? Frankly, there are easier targets in the local cluster. unless they're a super warmongering race (so...kind of like us in which case how did they cooperate long enough to develop interstellar space travel)
they're going to be rational enough to realize there are easier, more practical targets to be had. Think of it this way: You have two choices for your new mine colony. One has what you need, but you have to dig it out of the ground yourself. The other has somewhat less of what you need because the locals have already dug some of it out of the ground and consumed it, and are violent enough to try to fight back. Their ability to resist may or may not be effective...but you still have to pacify them to get at the resources that while have been dug to somewhat, have also been partially used up. Heck, mining our asteroids before we get out there would be far more useful then trying to conquer Earth.

I'm not saying we'd win (we could lose, badly)...I'm saying there's an easier way to get resources then fighting the human race to get at them. Especially considering humans are good about the "if you interfere with the fight with my enemy, we'll both turn on you."

If they're just looking for slaves? I'd be willing to wager that any group advanced enough to have interstellar travel could make robots and AI, that would be far superior for that purpose.
 
A fellow gaffer posted this a while ago...

Wait But Why has written a really interesting article about this. The article is posted here the Fermi paradox

Here's a small part of the intro...
When confronted with the topic of stars and galaxies, a question that tantalizes most humans is, “Is there other intelligent life out there?” Let’s put some numbers to it (if you don’t like numbers, just read the bold)—

As many stars as there are in our galaxy (100 – 400 billion), there are roughly an equal number of galaxies in the observable universe—so for every star in the colossal Milky Way, there’s a whole galaxy out there. All together, that comes out to the typically quoted range of between 1022 and 1024 total stars, which means that for every grain of sand on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there.

The science world isn’t in total agreement about what percentage of those stars are “sun-like” (similar in size, temperature, and luminosity)—opinions typically range from 5% to 20%. Going with the most conservative side of that (5%), and the lower end for the number of total stars (1022), gives us 500 quintillion, or 500 billion billion sun-like stars.

There’s also a debate over what percentage of those sun-like stars might be orbited by an Earth-like planet (one with similar temperature conditions that could have liquid water and potentially support life similar to that on Earth). Some say it’s as high as 50%, but let’s go with the more conservative 22% that came out of a recent PNAS study. That suggests that there’s a potentially-habitable Earth-like planet orbiting at least 1% of the total stars in the universe—a total of 100 billion billion Earth-like planets.

So there are 100 Earth-like planets for every grain of sand in the world. Think about that next time you’re on the beach.

Moving forward, we have no choice but to get completely speculative. Let’s imagine that after billions of years in existence, 1% of Earth-like planets develop life (if that’s true, every grain of sand would represent one planet with life on it). And imagine that on 1% of those planets, the life advances to an intelligent level like it did here on Earth. That would mean there were 10 quadrillion, or 10 million billion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe.
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It's a great read.
 
We're too stupid. Or it's like that nut Zacharia Sitchin said and we were bred to mine gold for them and when they were done powering their gold powered ships they just left us here to rot and kill one another. Or like, we're the aliens man.
 
What makes you think they already haven't? They might be dumb like us and not be able to recognise intelligence in other beings. I mean you study ants and other insects, but do you try to communicate with them?

wdZZkks.jpg
 
Ants are not aware of when we look at an ant hill and contemplate stomping it. Its probably something like that.

Edit: what freddy said.
 
Our best bet for a benevolent higher tech race is one that encapsulates a primitive threat, ie us, and is inherently hedonistic and had no will to finish us off, they wait until we progress into hedonism as well. Fat chance.
 
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