apprenticeearthwiz
This sounds a lot like all the religious concepts that the universe revolves around us. So many ludicrous assumptions.
Spod
No evidence of their existence? Holy crap, open your eyes, there's a vast repository of evidence that they are here and have been for centuries. I'm so tired of supposedly educated people having such closed minds that they ignore blatant evidence just because it doesn't fit their world view. It's sad, pathetic and it isn't in the spirit of scientific endeavour.
BobMunck
"Whitmire concludes that, if Earth is typical, then it isn't possible for any other technological civilizations to exist at the same time as us."
Whitmire is a mathematician; there's no way he would have said something that stupid. Anyone trained in science or math knows there's a significant and important difference between "not possible" and "extremely unlikely." Science articles should be written by people who know science.
fen
It could be possible that once a civilization hits a certain point, they assume life exists all over the place but accept they can not travel to it without wasting enormous resources. If you are truly advanced the ethical question of not being able to reach the life in one lifetime becomes an issue. Can you force people to breed and force them children to carry out the mission? Your tech has probably become very efficient so has your food and energy use, can you bottle up such vast quantities of energy for the trip, food etc. It seems to me that if there is life out there, once they hit a certain point, they will just vanish, wont send out signals, wont look for them, and will live in self sufficient peace I could only see them traveling a vast distance if their star was going to end, and likely they would just park in a habitable zone of a near one and go no further.
PG
Okay, so we've destroyed our planet and it's looking desperately like we are going to need another one to live on. Where do we go? where do we look? Why, in our own backyard of course! So we find a planet that's not quite there yet but we can help it along with the technology we've developed to terraform a world so it happens in mere decades instead of a millenia. So we launch our ships and travel with many of our noted scientists,to a world lush and beautiful, rich in oxygen. We've erradicated any dangerous beasts and replaced them with a more docile and manageable lot, through dna encoding and production. What a beautiful place we've created, and now,millions of years later after we've totally forgotten our roots, we can look back upon the world that once was and consider terraforming that,because ,God knows,we've ruined THIS one! How many times has this happened? Who knows? And why must we PRESUME that any other race in the galaxy or Universe would be as STUPID as we are??? 60 years we've been searching...a mere speck in the eternity of the universe. Are we so ARROGANT as to assume that we have been searching for long enough,so where is everyone??? HAHAHAH AND to add insult to injury, we ASSUME that any other civilization will be using primitive RADIO waves!!! We are such an ignorant,arrogant race. With all the war,politics,famine,pestillence,pollution and just plain bad people, WHO,in their right mind would WANT to contact us???
Augure
Like anyone else, I think these are beyond idiotic pseudo-scientist claim. So because the "Fermi paradox" theory which has no-ground in actual physical science or reality, if we apply the "principle of mediocrity" which has no-ground in reality either, we can "statistically" conclude that something we don't and possibly CAN'T know anything about doesn't exist. These scientist are great cruncher but TERRIBLE and mediocre thinkers, and I'd would leave such a topic to any legitimate domain of study wether it evolutionary biology and anthropology or technological and sociological prospective who of course can easily, more rationally and logically conclude the opposite of this study.
Bob
The interesting thing about probability is the fact that it will always give an answer. Whether that answer is meaningful is another problem. First, there are so many unique things about earth that the probability of another one out there is pretty low. Then you have the problem that our most advanced science is driven by war and weaponry. This is a self canceling technology since it makes it possible to reach the point where we totally annihilate ourselves. If there is another civilization like us, they will do it too. For those that like to hang their hat on probability proving other civilizations exist consider this. There is a mathematical probability that every air molecule in the room with you will be in just one half of the room at a given moment. Does this ever really happen. No.
PaulLescault
I wish I could watch science fiction movie from other worlds. If the principle of mediocrity applies, we are all toasted !
Buzzclick
With the incredible vastness of the cosmos, how can we possibly be alone? Civilizations who haven't managed to destroy themselves (like we will) will know enough not to disturb other places and just observe (and perhaps impregnate our world with an influence). If they have been here (and they have), time has no meaning for them. A hundred and even a thousand of our years is but a blip. It is even possible that we are someone's property like a herd or science experiment. Advanced civilizations quite likely communicate with each other easily, and have witnessed that beings in other planets (like us) are possibly crazy enough to kill themselves before the advancement gets developed to the point of knowing better. It must be a fascinating pastime for them to see what others do. Anyone who believes that we are alone is navel-gazing.
watersworm
I was always thinking that, though billions of stars with zillions of planets all around the Universe, maybe none are "the same". Just look at solar system, rocky ou gaseous planets, ans no one like the other. No mmons of the planets are the same somtimes very different. I think that "Life" DO exist somewhere in the Universe, but "slightly different than on Earth. Anyway as soon as Light Speed remains the absolute maximum speed we'll probably never know !