NASA Found the Death Star

[Fijimn]

The Kebbler telescope picked up strange dimming of light around a gigantic star. Is it a massive alien space colony...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/alien-megastructure-could-surround-giant-6632574

 

[cmanole]

Filthy prawns...

 

[fsu1jreed]

Read this the other day............very interesting, but I'll wait for more data

 

[Spearchucker87]

You guys didn't watch the Star Trek episode where Captain Picard found one of these, fully completed?



-------> It's not a death star, it's a Dyson Sphere in the early stages of construction

 

[fsu1jreed]

it's a Dyson Sphere in the early stages of construction

If it's not natural it probably is a Dyson Sphere.

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

You guys didn't watch the Star Trek episode where Captain Picard found one of these, fully completed?



-------> It's not a death star, it's a Dyson Sphere in the early stages of construction

great episode...remember who they found on it?

 

[noleit]

It's a galactic tumor.

 

[Fijimn]

It's a galactic tumor.

guanira?

 

[Spearchucker87]

great episode...remember who they found on it?

It's Scotty!

Yep, great ideas in that episode.

 

[Spearchucker87]

If it's not natural it probably is a Dyson Sphere.

BrooklynNole from the Raucus Caucus said he has a buddy at SETI project who's saying it's mostly likely a Dyson. Would certainly be stunning if true.

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

BrooklynNole from the Raucus Caucus said he has a buddy at SETI project who's saying it's mostly likely a Dyson. Would certainly be stunning if true.

it would change the way we feel about Life, The Universe and Everything

 

[Spearchucker87]

it would change the way we feel about Life, The Universe and Everything

Are you familiar with Peter Ward's book "Rare Earth"? There are some pretty good capsules on Amazon if you havn't. Ever since I heard him discuss his work I've leaned to the pessimistic side on the chances of there being much complex life out there. Here is an interesting essay from another guy who doesn't think there's much.


http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

 

[SoddyNole]

Since my neighbor got approval from the HOA to put a few solar panels on his house, I wonder if I can put one of these in my back yard?

 

[FSUTribe76]

BrooklynNole from the Raucus Caucus said he has a buddy at SETI project who's saying it's mostly likely a Dyson. Would certainly be stunning if true.

All of the SETI people are going to say that because it gins up more funding for them. The legitimate non financially interested scientists are saying that it's not a Dyson sphere instead it looks like a large collection of unknown objects in one spot. That doesn't mean a spacefleet or a starvase or whatever. It's likely a collection of comets or a destroyed planet blocking out the star put there because of a natural gravitational phenomena.

Having said that, it is interesting and I'll definitely be following the story.

 

[FSUTribe76]

Since my neighbor got approval from the HOA to put a few solar panels on his house, I wonder if I can put one of these in my back yard?

Actually the bigger REAL news that came out the last couple of days is somewhat tied to your post. They just developed completely see through/transparent solar collectors which means you can have windows, skylights or even whole large office buildings designed with it and generate a %*%+ ton of energy.

 

[fsu1jreed]

Here is an interesting essay from another guy who doesn't think there's much.


http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

After getting a good deal of the way in, I just don't agree with him. We are just scratching the surface on finding out how diverse life is just on this planet, so to even begin to speculate about what's NOT out there is somewhat arrogant (for want of a better world).

But I also lean far to the side of panspermia, so IMO, it's highly probable life was around LONG before this planet.

 

[fsu1jreed]

But I do agree with him, that if a higher intelligence found us then it in all likelihood wouldn't go well with the human species.

 

[Spearchucker87]

All of the SETI people are going to say that because it gins up more funding for them. The legitimate non financially interested scientists are saying that it's not a Dyson sphere instead it looks like a large collection of unknown objects in one spot. That doesn't mean a spacefleet or a starvase or whatever. It's likely a collection of comets or a destroyed planet blocking out the star put there because of a natural gravitational phenomena.

Having said that, it is interesting and I'll definitely be following the story.

If there's anybody there, if they have the ability to do interplanetary construction I'd say they are most certain to have developed advanced spectroscopic astronomy. That's something we humans will soon be doing. So they'd know that earth had a permanent oxygen atmosphere. If the basis of biology on their planet is similar to ours, they'd know that standing oxygen can only mean a thriving organic biosphere. Of course we'd be a dumb silent world to them, since we aren't sending messages in that direction. Our randomized TV broadcasts would have dissipated into the background radiation by the time they arrive there in another 1,300 years.

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

Are you familiar with Peter Ward's book "Rare Earth"? There are some pretty good capsules on Amazon if you havn't. Ever since I heard him discuss his work I've leaned to the pessimistic side on the chances of there being much complex life out there. Here is an interesting essay from another guy who doesn't think there's much.


http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

Ill check it out.

 

[Spearchucker87]

But I do agree with him, that if a higher intelligence found us then it in all likelihood wouldn't go well with the human species.

I think the likelihood of any kind of direct contact between different intelligent species is a super low probability event. Travel at anything close to light speed is just unlikely. Well, at least for a biology anything like on earth, it's most likely impossible. The velocity of impact would turn the interstellar hydrogen atoms into lethal high energy gamma radiation. You'd need a huge amount of heavy dense radiation shielding to not get fried. So then in turn have to convert an incredible amount of fuel mass into energy to obtain high velocities. But I lean to agreeing with Peter Ward that simple life is common, complex life rare, intelligent life more rare and high technology miraculous. It took billions of years of randomness to get complex life here. It took a fluke asteroid to stop super complex but dumb reptiles from being the dominant life form, and allow space for tiny mammals to become complex and adapt to the environment using intelligence instead of brute force and size .

 

[More Kirk Less Spock]

I vote for a digitized conveyance of data into already existing matter - see Altered Carbon sci fi... could work.

 

[fsu1jreed]

Hyper intelligent life would not travel the great distances in normal space (i.e. the normal 4 dimensions) anymore than today's humans would still use ships similar to Columbus to cross the Atlantic.

Look up the Drake equation........it's highly probable there's been hundred's, if not thousand's, of civilizations higher than human just in our galaxy/local group of galaxies. Now, maybe there's none right here, right now (highly unlikely).......but this yellow circle is all of the stars we can see without a telescope (and ANYTHING outside of that is very limited as well).

And I wouldn't call the KT event some "fluke" happening, we just don't have that much information about.........yes it helped humans out, but it wasn't the only mass extinction that's ever befell the Earth and there's a lot of evidence showing the dinosaurs where well on their way out.

And you can't call humans the ONLY intelligent life to live on this planet, MUCH less to have ever existed....how are you defining this? The thing that really set humans apart was not our brain, but our opposable thumb.

Yes, we both are kind of speaking on hypothetical situations, but you are ruling many out with no logical reasoning behind it.

 

[Spearchucker87]

Hyper intelligent life would not travel the great distances in normal space (i.e. the normal 4 dimensions) anymore than today's humans would still use ships similar to Columbus to cross the Atlantic.

Look up the Drake equation........it's highly probable there's been hundred's, if not thousand's, of civilizations higher than human just in our galaxy/local group of galaxies. Now, maybe there's none right here, right now (highly unlikely).......but this yellow circle is all of the stars we can see without a telescope (and ANYTHING outside of that is very limited as well).

And I wouldn't call the KT event some "fluke" happening, we just don't have that much information about.........yes it helped humans out, but it wasn't the only mass extinction that's ever befell the Earth and there's a lot of evidence showing the dinosaurs we well on their way out. And you can't call humans the ONLY intelligent life to live on this planet, MUCH less to have ever existed....how are you defining this? The thing that really set humans apart was not our brain, but our opposable thumb.

Yes, we both are kind of speaking on hypothetical situations, but you are ruling many out with no logical reasoning behind it.

This is a very big topic! My reading on space travel in something other than normal space is that all the theoretical possibilities requires just ENORMOUS, improbable amounts of energy. For instance scooping down into the super tiny world of the quantum foam, accessing a subatomic wormhole, expanding it up to macro size. Somehow creating a connection to other parts of the galaxy or universe -- Say you want to go to a particular star 30 LY away, how do you get it there? Or "space warping". All the ideas I know of, I thought were pretty fanciful and daydreamy. But I'd be interested in reading and evaluating if you have some favs that seem promising or that physicists really have some confidence in.

The drake equation is totally dependent on the values of all the different factors. If the value for any one factor approaches zero, a mathematician tells me that the final probability number collapses to zero. And we just don't know what the actual values to factor in are. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 10 intelligent species in this galaxy. But I also wouldn't be surprised if there were none (other than us). We simply don't know the probability of what happened on earth, and can't know the probability of it happening elsewhere. I'd expect that there are some in other galaxies. I don't think it's likely to be THAT improbable. Yet still we don't know.

 

[Spearchucker87]

......it's highly probable there's been hundred's, if not thousand's, of civilizations higher than human just in our galaxy/local group of galaxies.

I'm sorry I'm kind of rushed and multitasking. I skimmed over this at first. I would say your view is kind of from the Carl Sagan school of thought: Life just develops automatically, and intelligent life followed by higher and higher technology over time is inevitable. But my reading of the facts is that we have no reason to deduce that or expect it. We can hope I guess. If there are that many civilizations around though, it only highlights the fact that we haven't detected ANY of them even signaling around, let alone sending probes or ships. That would seem to indicate that it's hard to develop any really high energy technology beyond what we know.

 

[fsu1jreed]

This is a very big topic! My reading on space travel in something other than normal space is that all the theoretical possibilities requires just ENORMOUS, improbable amounts of energy. For instance scooping down into the super tiny world of the quantum foam, accessing a subatomic wormhole, expanding it up to macro size. Somehow creating a connection to other parts of the galaxy or universe -- Say you want to go to a particular star 30 LY away, how do you get it there? Or "space warping". All the ideas I know of, I thought were pretty fanciful and daydreamy. But I'd be interested reading and evaluating if you have some favs that seem promising or that physicists really have some confidence in.

You are still projecting OUR current technology on a species that could have hundred of thousands of years on us. Just look at where we were back just a couple of hundreds of years ago. and it's been years since I really read up on this, been far too busy the last couple of years teaching so I'm out of the loop, but if I have some time this weekend I'll see what I can dig up.

The drake equation is totally dependent on the values of all the different factors. If the value for any one factor approaches zero, a mathematician tells me that the final probability number collapses to zero. And we just don't know what the actual values to factor in are. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 10 intelligent species in this galaxy. But I also wouldn't be surprised if there were none (other than us). We simply don't know the probability of what happened on earth, and can't know the probability of it happening elsewhere. I'm expect that there are some in other galaxies. I don't think it's likely to be THAT improbable. Yet still we don't know.

Yes, you are completely correct..........but what happens when you multiply a very small number by an extremely large number? Let's say the final number is .0001, so times that by the number of stars just in our galaxy alone (~200-400 billion).......you get 20,000 to 40,000 possible civilizations in this galaxy alone right now (and that's assuming only one planet per star, which we KNOW is wrong). Even I don't think it's anywhere close to that number and yes, I may be way over estimating it, but I have a reason err on that side just on the shear number of stars and galaxies out there.

 

[Spearchucker87]

Yes, you are completely correct..........but what happens when you multiply a very small number by an extremely large number? Let's say the final number is .0001, so times that by the number of stars just in our galaxy alone (~200-400 billion).......you get 20,000 to 40,000 possible civilizations in this galaxy alone right now (and that's assuming only one planet per star, which we KNOW is wrong). Even I don't think it's anywhere close to that number and yes, I may be way over estimating it, but I have a reason err on that side just on the shear number of stars and galaxies out there.

Fair point, but we probably need to eliminate 50% plus of the stars or something like that. I would think that many are located either in the central 1/4 of the galaxy or in tight globular clusters, where they get bathed with too much radiation. Also many stars in the really thin outskirts of the galaxy probably didn't form with all the heavy elements available that our system has and that are possibly integral to the development of complex life. Just as there is a habitable zone in our solar system, a "goldilocks zone", so there might be in galaxies as well.

 

[fsu1jreed]

Fair point, but we probably need to eliminate 50% plus of the stars or something like that. I would think that many are located either in the central 1/4 of the galaxy or in tight globular clusters, where they get bathed with too much radiation. Also many stars in the really thin outskirts of the galaxy probably didn't form with all the heavy elements available that our system has and that are possibly integral to the development of complex life. Just as there is a habitable zone in our solar system, a "goldilocks zone", so there might be in galaxies as well.

I can get with that, but then again we are again forcing our thought constraints on life.........and what did Jeff Goldblum (along with Complexity Theory) teach us?

 

[Spearchucker87]

You are still projecting OUR current technology on a species that could have hundred of thousands of years on us. Just look at where we were back just a couple of hundreds of years ago. and it's been years since I really read up on this, been far too busy the last couple of years teaching so I'm out of the loop, but if I have some time this weekend I'll see what I can dig up.

I look forward to hearing more. I take the idea of continual advancement over time with restraint, as I know some things will likely prove to never be possible, regardless of time. Our physics and understanding of the nature of matter IMO is not sufficiently advanced to say whether space warping will ever be possible. I know when I was reading Kip Thorne, he indicated that realistic time travel into the past might never be possible. And I'd say that understanding the true nature of the universe and its origins in terms that the human mind can grasp is most likely impossible. Another question mark is AI. People presume that artificial intelligence can/will become sentient and/or smarter than people. But some researches into the mind believe we can never achieve it.

 

[Spearchucker87]

Love that scene with Jeff Goldbloom BTW !

 

[mjpwooo]

I don't really understand what you guys are talking about, but that Goldblum quote/line is hilarious; especially HOW he delivers it. Very rarely I will just say it randomly, and no one knkws what I am talking about.......

I can get with that, but then again we are again forcing our thought constraints on life.........and what did Jeff Goldblum (along with Complexity Theory) teach us?

 

[Spearchucker87]

I just came across something very relevant to the idea that there might be many civilizations out there much older and much more technologically advanced than us. Sort of "super civilizations", capable of producing the high energy levels you might need to create wormholes, etc. Apparently some team came up with a method for detecting galaxies that give off a greater amount of infrared energy than they should naturally, so a way to detect I guess the "bleedoff energy" of highly advanced civilizations. They looked at 100,000 galaxies, and found 50 that showed possible bleed off energy of a large scale advanced society. They will conduct follow up studies of those 50, attempting to detect whether the extra energy is 'natural' or possibly artificially generated. It's an imprecise measure, and I guess would only detect really advanced societies. Still, only finding one-twentieth of one percent that are even candidates is extremely low and not an optimistic sign.

http://www.cnet.com/news/search-of-100000-galaxies-finds-no-sign-of-advanced-civilizations/

Researchers scoured 100,000 galaxies and came up empty on finding any obvious signs of advanced civilizations. The research team studied data from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. "Whether an advanced spacefaring civilization uses the large amounts of energy from its galaxy's stars to power computers, space flight, communication or something we can't yet imagine, fundamental thermodynamics tells us that this energy must be radiated away as heat in the mid-infrared wavelengths," said Jason T. Wright, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds at Penn State University.

The scientists scoured the WISE data for signs of too much mid-infrared radiation. Out of 100,000 galaxy images, only 50 appeared to have unusually high levels of the radiation, but there were no obvious signs of activity that could be attributed to advanced civilizations. Follow-up studies of those 50 galaxies should be able to determine if the radiation levels are the result of natural processes.

As disappointing as this research may sound for people eager for signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life, there are a few points to remember. It could be there are some primitive civilizations out there that aren't generating mid-infrared emissions. "Either they don't exist, or they don't yet use enough energy for us to recognize them," said Wright.

"As we look more carefully at the light from galaxies, we should be able to push our sensitivity to alien technology down to much lower levels, and to better distinguish heat resulting from natural astronomical sources from heat produced by advanced technologies," said Wright.

 

[Spearchucker87]

............And you can't call humans the ONLY intelligent life to live on this planet, MUCH less to have ever existed....how are you defining this? The thing that really set humans apart was not our brain, but our opposable thumb.

I should have responded on this. Yeah my language was clumsy at best on the topic of intelligence. I guess the key question is how often do species arise with the necessary intelligence to create language and science. I know none of the other primates did except our species. Is it possible some sea creatures are intelligent enough, had they the proper digits to make tools /something to write with/on? I'm not sure. I've seen octopi do some pretty smart things. And certainly some of the marine mammals display hints of high intelligence. Still, it probably has to be land-based creature with hands that can grip to ultimately develop technology: I think you have to have the capacity to keep written records. The track record on earth is not decisive that it has to happen in the natural order of things. It did for this one species. But that doesn't indicate the probability.

 

[Spearchucker87]

There is more clarity on that search for Civis at the root article by Penn State:
http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2015-news/Wright4-2015

"The idea behind our research is that, if an entire galaxy had been colonized by an advanced spacefaring civilization, the energy produced by that civilization's technologies would be detectable in mid-infrared wavelengths -- exactly the radiation that the WISE satellite was designed to detect for other astronomical purposes,"

Ok, so it has to be either one civilization taking up close to the entire galaxy or multiple advanced civilizations in one galaxy so you get the equivalent in energy production. In either case, if spacefaring and high energy technology is natural/easy to develop given time to advance, we shouldn't see 99.95 % of galaxies surveyed showing no signs of it.

 

[Dr. Nole]

Morninglightmountain?

 

[Spearchucker87]

I believe Carl Sagan estimated there must be numerous so-called “Type III civilizations" in our own galaxy. From what I can tell, the Penn State study should have been able to detect not only Type IIIs, but even ones midway down to Type II. Scientific American discusses more on this “Fermi Paradox”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...izations-absent-from-100-000-nearby-galaxies/

Even if brimming with life, to us, the galaxy seems to be a very quiet, rather lonely place.

Now, new results suggest this loneliness may extend out into the universe far beyond our galaxy or, instead, that some of our preconceptions about the behaviors of alien civilizations are deeply flawed.

“On Kardashev’s scale, a type 3 civilization uses energy equal to all the starlight produced by one galaxy,” Wright says. That would equate to an infrared-bright galaxy seemingly bereft of stars. “We looked at the nearest, largest 100,000 galaxies we could find in the WISE catalogue and we never saw that. One hundred thousand galaxies and not one had that signature. We didn’t find any type 3s in our sample because there aren’t any.”

“Life, once it becomes spacefaring, looks like it could cross a galaxy in as little as 50 million years,” Annis says. “And 50 million years is a very short time compared to the billion-year timescales of planets and galaxies. You would expect life to crisscross a galaxy many times in the nearly 14 billion years the universe has been around. Maybe spacefaring civilizations are rare and isolated, but it only takes just one to want and be able to modify its galaxy for you to be able to see it. If you look at enough galaxies, you should eventually see something obviously artificial. That’s why it’s so uncomfortable that the more we look, the more natural everything appears.”

Annis suspects galaxy-sterilizing astrophysical explosions called gamma-ray bursts, which were more frequent in the cosmic past, until recently suppressed the rise of advanced civilizations and that we inhabit “the beginning of history.”

 

[Spearchucker87]

I'm on a roll, LOL. Can't help it I've just become fascinated with this. This is the last link though

This guy talks more about the "filters" that could make spacefaring civilizations rare. But even if the things he mentions are true filters/rare events, still just like Jreed said above you have billions and billions of chances, so it would happen many times. So maybe there are other filters later on. Otherwise we should be seeing definite evidence of high level civilization/high energy production SOMEWHERE in 100,000 galaxies. I've always taken a cautious view on it but even I think that is just a crazy absence. There's not even One? In that huge sample size of galaxies? Maybe per something about the physics or technology, it's just not possible to generate large amounts of energy artificially. Maybe it can only happen in stars......maybe nobody becomes a spacefaring species.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

One possibility: The Great Filter could be at the very beginning—it might be incredibly unusual for life to begin at all. This is a candidate because it took about a billion years of Earth’s existence to finally happen, and because we have tried extensively to replicate that event in labs and have never been able to do it. If this is indeed The Great Filter, it could mean that not only is there no intelligent life out there, there may be no other life at all.

Another possibility: The Great Filter could be the jump from the simple prokaryote cell to the complex eukaryote cell. After prokaryotes came into being, they remained that way for almost two billion years before making the evolutionary jump to being complex and having a nucleus. If this is The Great Filter, it would mean the universe is teeming with simple prokaryote cells and almost nothing beyond that.

There are a number of other possibilities—some even think the most recent leap we’ve made to our current intelligence is a Great Filter candidate. While the leap from moderate-intelligence (chimps) to human intelligence doesn’t at first seem like a miraculous step, Steven Pinker rejects the idea of an inevitable “climb upward” of evolution: “Since evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, it uses the adaptation most useful for a given ecological niche, and the fact that, on Earth, this led to technological intelligence only once so far may suggest that this outcome of natural selection is rare and hence by no means a certain development of the evolution of a tree of life.”

 

[FSUTribe76]

I think the likelihood of any kind of direct contact between different intelligent species is a super low probability event. Travel at anything close to light speed is just unlikely. Well, at least for a biology anything like on earth, it's most likely impossible. The velocity of impact would turn the interstellar hydrogen atoms into lethal high energy gamma radiation. You'd need a huge amount of heavy dense radiation shielding to not get fried. So then in turn have to convert an incredible amount of fuel mass into energy to obtain high velocities. But I lean to agreeing with Peter Ward that simple life is common, complex life rare, intelligent life more rare and high technology miraculous. It took billions of years of randomness to get complex life here. It took a fluke asteroid to stop super complex but dumb reptiles from being the dominant life form, and allow space for tiny mammals to become complex and adapt to the environment using intelligence instead of brute force and size .

Intelligent life could easily be created on Earth without the whole asteroid killing the dinosaurs type of event. Take the average small Atlantic octopus. It's got 500,000,000 neurons which makes it twice as brainy as a cat, three times as brainy as a dog and about on par with typical monkeys like spider monkeys and marmosets. In IQ tests it does even better than its brain size would indicate because it devotes most of its brain to problem solving getting prey and escaping predators as well as memorizing what it has learned and doesn't worry about things like communication, social groupings and "feelings" which are only useful in group settings as another form of communication. So while its brain is only three times the power (not size but actual neuron power in which size is only a part) of a dog, it's 20x as "smart" and is tool using, it just won't cuddle with you and be affectionate but it might learn if it forms a cute pose you'll give it food.

So there's only two things holding an octopus back from being the dominant life form on earth and taking to the stars. 1) They have notoriously short lifespans and most only live a year or two and 2) without communication you don't get the shared inventions leading to miraculously complicated machinery. So you need an octopus with a longer lifespan and complex communication, all of which you could get over time as there are some species of "lesser" cephalopods like certain squid and cuttlefish that are actually social with complex communication through "flashing" colors and patterns and some species that live substantially longer. So we COULD end up with long lived social octopus that fly spaceships millions of years from now which is a drop in the cosmic hourglass.

 

[DFSNOLE]

I can get with that, but then again we are again forcing our thought constraints on life.........and what did Jeff Goldblum (along with Complexity Theory) teach us?

Because I can add nothing intelligent to this discussion..... mathematician Ian Malcolm specialized in 'Chaos Theory'

 

[FSUTribe76]

I'm on a roll, LOL. Can't help it I've just become fascinated with this. This is the last link though

This guy talks more about the "filters" that could make spacefaring civilizations rare. But even if the things he mentions are true filters/rare events, still just like Jreed said above you have billions and billions of chances, so it would happen many times. So maybe there are other filters later on. Otherwise we should be seeing definite evidence of high level civilization/high energy production SOMEWHERE in 100,000 galaxies. I've always taken a cautious view on it but even I think that is just a crazy absence. There's not even One? In that huge sample size of galaxies? Maybe per something about the physics or technology, it's just not possible to generate large amounts of energy artificially. Maybe it can only happen in stars......maybe nobody becomes a spacefaring species.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

One possibility: The Great Filter could be at the very beginning—it might be incredibly unusual for life to begin at all. This is a candidate because it took about a billion years of Earth’s existence to finally happen, and because we have tried extensively to replicate that event in labs and have never been able to do it. If this is indeed The Great Filter, it could mean that not only is there no intelligent life out there, there may be no other life at all.

Another possibility: The Great Filter could be the jump from the simple prokaryote cell to the complex eukaryote cell. After prokaryotes came into being, they remained that way for almost two billion years before making the evolutionary jump to being complex and having a nucleus. If this is The Great Filter, it would mean the universe is teeming with simple prokaryote cells and almost nothing beyond that.

There are a number of other possibilities—some even think the most recent leap we’ve made to our current intelligence is a Great Filter candidate. While the leap from moderate-intelligence (chimps) to human intelligence doesn’t at first seem like a miraculous step, Steven Pinker rejects the idea of an inevitable “climb upward” of evolution: “Since evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, it uses the adaptation most useful for a given ecological niche, and the fact that, on Earth, this led to technological intelligence only once so far may suggest that this outcome of natural selection is rare and hence by no means a certain development of the evolution of a tree of life.”

We have no idea if we're the first species that were technologically advanced. There could very well have been dinosaur species that did so and we've lost all evidence. Keep in mind Everest eroding at 1mm a year would be completely gone in under 9 million years. How long ago did the dinosaurs disappear? Allegedly 65 million years ago after living for 165 million years ago. If Everest would disappear after less than 9 million there would be VERY little chance any tools or evidence of that would be preserved. So it's a GIANT assumption on his part that advanced life forms weren't around when the giant cataclysm wiped out the earth. We have only the most minute numbers of skeletons from a few tiny snapshots in time.

 

[fsu1jreed]

We have no idea if we're the first species that were technologically advanced. There could very well have been dinosaur species that did so and we've lost all evidence. Keep in mind Everest eroding at 1mm a year would be completely gone in under 9 million years. How long ago did the dinosaurs disappear? Allegedly 65 million years ago after living for 165 million years ago. If Everest would disappear after less than 9 million there would be VERY little chance any tools or evidence of that would be preserved. So it's a GIANT assumption on his part that advanced life forms weren't around when the giant cataclysm wiped out the earth. We have only the most minute numbers of skeletons from a few tiny snapshots in time.

Exactly.........or one was extremely intelligent, but had no way of "projecting" it into the real world. I think it's very arrogant, but no disrespect to anyone, to say that our species is the most intelligent.