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Earth-like Planets Very Close & Number In The Billions

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Foolish Earthling
We may live in a crowded universe after all.

Kepler Space Telescope Data Reveals Billions Of Earth-Like Planets Near Earth

With this many possible life bearing planets, it makes me wonder how we are not hearing any radio chatter. Even taking into account the chances of a civilization reaching a tech level to produce radio, microwave, radar or any other form of electromagnetic radiation within a comparable time range with us. Think rise and falls of civilizations, and advances in science may make radio seem like smoke signals so we would not hear them.

I just thought of something. SETI is looking in those radio bands of neutral hydrogen which are naturally relatively quiet in the universe. Why not look in the AM or FM bands? Or any other common radio frequencies? Wouldn't that be where the real radio signals would be?
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other life forms might use telepathic types of communication that may not be generating any signal to pick up.
 
There is no identifiable signal with facial expressions and body language either, yet that is something like, what, 80 percent of human communication?

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Derik said:
There is no identifiable signal with facial expressions and body language either, yet that is something like, what, 80 percent of human communication?

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Click to expand...

Well of course there is an identifiable signal in that case. It is modulated on the ambient light reflected from the body of the signaller.
 
I am thinking that their communication could be a tech we couldn't even imagine. What if they are using some form of light communication like we do with fiber optics, only theirs may be on a grander scale? Do you think they might be measuring lightwaves with their light dishes wondering why, if there are so many planets out there, aren't they seeing more light waves. Hehe, just a thought.

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PCarr said:
Well of course there is an identifiable signal in that case. It is modulated on the ambient light reflected from the body of the signaller.
Click to expand...

Tell that to a being 8 lightyears away.

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With so many potential planets, one would think the odds good some intelligent species to evolve and advance their technology similiar to our own- enough so, that we would be able to pick up some signal. Perhaps we are unique in the way we communicate, and the devices we've conjured up?
 
Maybe. I would imagine culture and resources play a large part in developing tech.

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Stagger Lee said:
With so many potential planets, one would think the odds good some intelligent species to evolve and advance their technology similiar to our own- enough so, that we would be able to pick up some signal. Perhaps we are unique in the way we communicate, and the devices we've conjured up?
Click to expand...

It's completely reasonable to conjecture that to develop an advanced technology, you would have to master electromagnetism fairly early on. Radio pretty much falls right out of that. For an advanced civilization it may be old fashioned, but it would something they could do easily if they wanted to communicate with less advanced civilizations. That, and radio goes through the dust and gas in our galaxy much better than its shorter wavelength siblings.
 
blowfish said:
Maybe they don't like us if there is any other intelligent life forms out there in space?
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I gots a few theories about that.
All things being equal, I'd say the universe has it's share of evil assholes, angelic saints, and indifferent couch potatoes....and everything in between.
Some may find us barbaric morons.
Some may find us beautiful, others ugly, .....others as tonights menu special.
Some may even understand we are a very young race, still in it's infancy, and have a lot of growing up to do before they decide to make formal contact with humans. Maybe like the Prime Directive from Star Trek. Or maybe that's total bunk and we just do not interest them.

Speculation aside, I think there is something we are overlooking in listening for cosmic neighbors. The noise should be there, but how do we find it?
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There could also just be no "intelligence" similar to ours in the near universe or universe at large. Our family line was the only one to spawn such a thing on this planet, and the conditions required to make it necessary were pretty specific.

For instance, we're the only mammals whose primary locomotion is carried out upright. Something very specific happened to our very specifically species to make that necessary for survival. Before this event, there isn't any trace of our brand of intelligence existing on the planet. It's not unreasonable to think that these two hominid distinct traits, within the context of the specific sub traits (mammalian, land dwelling, etc), have a cause and effect relationship. Our brand of intelligence may have only become a necessary tool for survival because something about walking upright as a mammal makes it harder to survive when you have the brand of intelligence possessed by monkeys, tigers or squirrels.

Our brand of intelligence is unique to our species' requirements for survival. It is apparently completely useless and unnecessary as far as every other family line on the tree is concerned. Which is to say, on the one known planet in the universe where the kind of intelligence that necessitates the invention of the spear and the toaster can be found, it is completely superfluous to %99.99999999999999[etc] of the species that have ever existed there.

Is it more sensible to assume that this brand of intelligence would be just as unnecessary and unlikely on every other planet, statistically precluding the existence of radio signals for us to find, or that we don't find radio signals because the creatures on other planets have lasers for brains that require a form of communication beyond the grasps of our own development and technology?

Call me sane, but I kind of lean toward the former.
 
Some people may not get this, but I think to place such low odds on our own existence is as anthropocentric as asserting that the earth has the unique position of being at the center of the universe with nothing else like it (medieval cosmology aka "geocentrism"). Oddly enough, the other position (human "brand" of intelligence is ubiquitous) is fashionably labelled as anthropocentric.

Plenty of mammals walk upright and don't have our "brand" of intelligence: e.g.,kangaroo rats, certain lemurs, etc. Also the "hardware" behind our own intelligence isn't just some isolated freakshow, but still has the basis components present in lower forms.

Also, you are misusing the word "necessary" -- what does it mean to say that toaster-building intelligence lifeforms are completely superfluous or unnecessary? Obviously they are necessary for the lifeforms that built them! To say that the toaster-building lifeform is unnecessary to the biosphere is devoid of meaning unless you wish to attribute intentionality to the biosphere. Other lifeforms on this planet developed mechanisms that are %99.9999.... useless to other lifeforms on the same, but that does not say anything about the probability of that lifeform developed independently on some other biosphere.
 
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