Tag Archives: alien contact
I actively try to avoid “the buzz” — for most definitions of the word (“beer buzz” is a whole other thing than I’m talking about here). I mean the buzz of current memes and all the popular things I’m supposed to think, feel, and be. As I’ve said before, I’m deliberately allergic to trendy — I refuse to swim in the main stream.
That applies especially to the books, TV shows, or movies, that I’m supposed to see. I’m even more resistant to things I’m supposed to either hate or love. (I still have never seen ET — never will.) I generally don’t read or watch reviews until after I’ve read or watched what they review.
Which brings me to Axiom’s End (2020) a debut novel by Lindsay Ellis.
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18 Comments | tags: alien contact, alien races, alien vistors, aliens, first contact, Lindsay Ellis, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
I’ve written before about Drake’s Equation and the Fermi Paradox. The former suggests the possibility of lots of alien life. The latter asks okay, so where the heck are they? Given that the universe just started, it’s possible we’re simply the first. Maybe the crowd comes later. (Maybe we create the crowd!)
Recently, one of my favorite YouTube channels, PBS Space Time, began a series of videos about this. The first one (see below) talks about the Rare Earth Hypothesis, a topic that has long fascinated me.
The synchronicity in this is that I’d just had a thought about basic probability and how it applies to our being here…
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16 Comments | tags: alien contact, alien races, alien vistors, aliens, ancient alien races, ancient aliens, anthropic principle, Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, PBS Space Time, Rare Earth Hypothesis | posted in Opinion, Science
You may know about the Drake Equation, which is an attempt to quantify the number of intelligent species that evolve in a galaxy. Depending on how you set the parameters, the answer varies from “lots!” to “almost none.” The first answer leads to Fermi’s Paradox: Okay, if there are lots of aliens… where are they? So far we’ve seen no signs (pardon the reference).
If you read science fiction you may also be familiar with the idea of Ancient Alien Ancestors (AAA) who are now long gone leaving only a legend. Sometimes there are The Ancients (now long absent), the current Elder Races (powerful, not always wise, not always kind), and the Younger Races (which Earthlings invariably belong to).
But what if we are those Ancient Ancestors?
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30 Comments | tags: alien contact, alien races, alien vistors, aliens, ancient alien races, ancient aliens, Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, Rare Earth Hypothesis, science fiction | posted in Brain Bubble, Sci-Fi Saturday
It was never the plan for this blog, but I’ve found myself several times writing about morals (for example: here, here, and very recently here). In those posts I touched on what morality means and how we might define it. I make no claim to breaking new ground or having anything particularly insightful to say — just my 1/50th of a buck based on my own observations, thoughts, and experiences.
The last week or so a set of three thought threads wound through the loom of my mind and seemed to form an interesting fabric. They have to do with the nature of morals, the usefulness of reason, and our modern sense of otherness.
Today I’m going to try to make something out of that fabric.
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53 Comments | tags: alien contact, David Brin, Dogma of Otherness, dolphins, Ernest Hemingway, Immanuel Kant, intelligence, is and ought, mathematics, morality, morals, Otherness, rational thought, reason, Rebecca Goldstein, Rodin, Steven Pinker, The Thinker | posted in Philosophy, Sunday Sermons
The other day I was Wiki Walking and ended up reading about the Rare Earth Hypothesis in reference to the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation. We’ve discovered that most stars in our galaxy appear to have planets of some kind, although ones with human-friendly environments may be quite rare. The presence of a plethora of planets presumably provides a potentially large factor for at least one part of the professor’s pretty problem.
But it’s possible that some of its other factors are extremely small. They may be much smaller than anyone had imagined. They may be so small as to ensure that we are alone in the galaxy.
It’s even possible we are alone — or nearly alone — in the universe!
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8 Comments | tags: alien contact, alien vistors, aliens, Captain Kirk, Captain Picard, Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox, Golgafrincham, Hitchhikers Guide, Prime Directive, Rare Earth Hypothesis, Star Trek | posted in Basics, Science
I want aliens to come to earth.
It’s going to be a very long time (if ever) that we go traipsing around the galaxy visiting others. If we do, of course we’ll be the aliens (which has made for some good SF stories and a recent cute film). Our tech is a long way from a galactic bus, so that’s one thing. Another thing is that we have no idea where to go. So far SETI hasn’t SEEN; for all we know we’re alone in the local universe.
You may have heard of the Drake Equation, which starts with the huge number of stars and calculates that even if a fraction of a fraction of a fraction (and so on, several times) of them have the conditions necessary, there are still many possible worlds with intelligent life.
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8 Comments | tags: alien contact, aliens, Contact (book), Contact (movie), first contact, Planet 51, The Day the Earth Stood Still | posted in Books, Movies, Philosophy
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