"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
– William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, 1897
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it …”
– Planck’s Principle
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
– Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke’s First Law
I think the “probes are observing us in secret right now” misses a very important thing.
If life is as abundant as the other assumptions make it sound like, then no civilization out there is going to send numerous probes to EVERY other civilization simply because there’s not enough material for them to do so. And if there’s a ton of civilizations, they’re going to send it to the interesting looking ones. What’s interesting about our civilization that can’t be answered with a computer simulation? Why would they NEED to send probes HERE?
Beetles. If you like beetles, one visit to Earth can’t possibly be enough…humans live here and are still trying to collect them all. And then we have a pretty good assortment of flies and moths and wasps too…
J.B.S. Haldane concluded that if a god or divine being had created all living organisms on Earth, then that creator must have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”
Did the aliens create life on Earth during their last visit, and are just now coming back for a quick check on how the beetles are doing?
“Aaa! One of the species developed chemistry and has been poisoning the beetles!”
“I told you the mammals were trouble. But no, you thought they were cool because they feed the scarabs.”
they’d have to send probes to figure that out is i think the point.
and there’s always this; still a bit mysterious
Using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, an international team of scientists have confirmed ′Oumuamua (oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah), the first known interstellar object to travel through our solar system, got an unexpected boost in speed and shift in trajectory as it passed
Why wouldn’t they? For all we know there are forms of life out there that have lifespans measured in millions of terrestrial years. Think crystalline life forms, beings with long-term stasis ability, machine intelligences or something else we haven’t even considered yet.
It’s kind of odd to assume everyone would need to send their own probes, though, instead of one local checking it out and sharing their findings. It doesn’t suppose good things about the interstellar community.
Presumably the same reason we send probes to explore other planets in our own solar system instead of just imagining what they are like via computer simulations based on the limited data we already have.
well… there was that big fallout after the interstellar consortium meeting back in '32 when the betelgeusean representative was overheard to say oumuamuain opera was overrated. things just haven’t been the same
Yeah, but there’s a difference between sending a probe to a planet that takes eight to ten months, and that can send back data with 5 to 10 minutes delay, and sending probes to a star 4.4 light years away that would take 18,000 years to get there and four years to send data back at all, if it got there. The fastest probes we’ve made would take 18,000 years to get to alpha centauri. If you’ve got the technological capability to send a probe to every single possible civilization in the local group, you’ve got more than enough scientific capability to know you don’t need to send probes anywhere.
That assumes that advanced science means you can predict actual outcomes based on minimal observations, rather than possible outcomes. I don’t believe that for a second. It ignores chaos, where small variations lead to larger ones.
At a a minimum, the moment you discover that Earth has a biosphere, you can’t possibly know what variety of organisms have developed there. Again, we’re still learning that and we live here. I can’t promise it would be interesting to enough to make the trip but you definitely would have to if you wanted to know.
Which is why we need an interstellar touristry board that transmits the right message:
“Earth, a great place to visit and trade technology, but our brains taste horrible”
