Alien contact in our lifetime

I was watching a show on the discovery channel that was explaining how far the very first radio signal we sent out has travelled since it was first put out, and the distance was pretty astonishing. It makes me wonder, do you think sometime in the next 60 or 70 years we could make contact with an advanced alien civilization. Or if not recieving a signal, do you think they would recieve one of ours? It's very possible that aliens have been sending signals for millions of years but we've only recently (relatively, that is) started searching the skies for them. I just want to know your oppinions on this.

 

Well I personally think of it this way. If there are intelligent lifeforms out there that are aware of us or have at least been looking for other lifeforms then they would have found us. Once they found us they would destroy us and take our natural resources, thats at least what has happened when an advanced civilization met a inferior civilization on our own earth.

My personal belief is that there are other life forms out there, but they are not as advanced as we would like to think, bacteria is a life form and I believe there may be thousands of planets out there (out of the trillions) that can harbor life that might eventually turn into intelligent life.

 

Lookup "Nasa alien radio waves"
There's this video from the official nasa site on "voices" from aliens near the planet venus.

Pretty legit, i will link it when i get home.

 

What if the closest (intelligent) life forms were 1million light years away? That means they would have no way to know we are here until around a million years from now because it would take that long for any form of signal (whether it be light or radio waves) to get there. It's true that life has existed on earth in some form for billions of years. But only recently in the past hundred years have we actually been sending out signs of our existance.

Another thing is that you can't look at things that happen on earth and say that those things will happen outside of earth. When your thinking of exo planets, you're thinking of a subject that is entirely unknown. It is extremely unlikely that an exo planet would be similar to ours as far as how our ecosystem works (i.e. the food chain/cohabitation methods).

However the idea that an alien civilization would kill us off and take our recources if we ever come in contact with them is a bit of a cliche nowadays. I think they wouldn't do that at all. I think truely advanced civilizations would have no need for fossil fuels or the heavy elements we have here within the earths crust. I believe that they would have developed a much more efficient technology than what we have today that powers their civilization, such as harnessing antimatter.

 

It may happen or not. UFO's have been visiting us for a long time.

 

Say they are a million light years away then I doubt contact will even matter since most likely the human race will have become extinct/close to non existent by that time. We are using up natural resources faster than they can be replenished, by the time we have technology to even attempt to relocate to another planet we would have used up all of earths natural resources.

So there might be intelligent life out there, but more than likely they are way too far away to ever even consider making contact I mean 1 million lightyears away might seem far but in universal terms thats really nothing since the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light and its 13.75 billion years old you do the math, 1 million light years isn't that far.

But for any lifeform 1 million lightyears is very far considering that you would have to travel for 1 million years at light speed to even get there and aliens do not posses anything that can travel that fast because that would be breaking a fundamental law of physics that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

 

I hope that we don't make contact with any intelligent life forms. I have to agree with Steven Hawkins, he essentially said that if another humanoid race came to visit they would not stay for tea. It's more likely that they will be aggressive and dangerous as we have seen over and over again in history. Those who explore aim to conquer.

 

Why wouldn't you want to meet extra terrestrials? They would probably have better technology than we do. (i'm not speaking star wars type of stuff.) They would probably advance us in transportation, efficient energy and medicine.

 

I think "advance civilization" is extremely rare and it does make you wonder if it even exists, especially when one looks at the unique circumstances the Earth formed and the way things evolved.

However, the chances of "Alien life" is certainly plausible.

 

Although advanced civilizations of aliens would probably be rare, I hope we can meet them somehow peacefully, however I am aware that they would most likely be aggressive and came to conquer, even if they didnt we, as humans would probably not take their differences very well and would try to kill them to spark conflicts, I know not everyone is like this but Im sure a majority of conservative people are.

 

So basically, every single one of you assumes the following:
If there is alien life, It will resemble humans quite alot. They will have a need for technology, they will want to kill things, and they live decently close to people.

Think of the following situation:
There are aliens. there is no doubt about that. In an infinitely large universe, every object in that universe must, as a product of random chance, occur twice. this includes life.

However, evolution and survival on a different planet are very different things to what they are on earth. If aliens were to have a culture, It would be unimaginably different. They probably have no use for any technology, like a computer or radio, that we do. They would have there own ways of doing this.

In addition, let me quote a book: "The most dangerous thing in this country is us" - Granny Weatherwax in "Witches Abroad" (Terry Pratchett). Now think of humans in place of Granny, and pity the aliens who may or may not find us.

ALSO: SETI can only receive analogue signals. any aliens with a decent level of technology would use Digital encoding, which sounds just like cosmic background, making all that money practically useless.

 

That's right. More intelligent species have always taken advatage of less intelligent ones. If we discovered an alien species, it would almost certainly be terrible.

 

Interesting video here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw&feature=player_embedded

 

no-one really knows if its ufo's or what....

Infracted.

 

I've always felt that there was something out there.. Somewhere. The solar system is FAR too large for earth to be the only planet capable of sustaining life...

 

Our Solar System only comprises of 8 planets (excluding pluto) and extends to near the kuiper belt. I think you mean Universe. We have looked tirelessly throughout the Universe, and to my knowledge we have found numerous planets within the so called 'hospitable zone', not too close, and not too far from the sun. Having said that, take into account we are trying to observe things happening millions of light years away, in the past. Chances are if we do somehow find extraterrestrial life, it would probably be long extinct, unless it was intelligent enough to self-sustain for millions of years.

 

Yeah I meant universe, sorry. I've been up about 26 hours now.

 

I believe we've already been visited by other forms out there in the universe. I also think they are benign and are not trying to harm us.

 

I believe that with how rapidly technology advances, it could be possible for us to reach other forms of life sometime in our generation's lifetime.

 

Well i see it this way..

Go outside at night and look up at the stars... and think that each star is a galaxy etc etc Then think about have MASSIVE space truely is.. i say chance are high there is other intellegent life forms out there, but as far us us meeting them.. i doubt i'll ever know in my lifetime.