Is there life elsewhere in the Universe?

A lame answer to where is everyone else? And is there life on Planets?

I liked other answers here and too believe (without a proof or placing my faith) that universe is teeming with life, just like your nearest fish pond.

So why can’t we see them? The usual question? And the usual answers?

Well as you have already read in this thread itself, universe is too big a platform for us to answer this question so lets set some boundaries to play. Let’s focus on our Milky Way and suppose an intelligent civilization of Type III from Kardashev scale EXIST 🙂

In very recent technological advance we have started talking about how to upload our brains into a computer; well a Type III intelligent life by now would have converted the physical life into a virtual life; yes the usual social second life that we use to play just few years ago and one that we live now here on social media. Ok, but in this case they are inside it and have no physical body to support it from outside; lets answers this later.

And why would they do it? May be they are hiding for an upcoming or frequently occurring cataclysmic events (in their timescale) across our Milky Way or Universe, which would have an impact on our Milky Way. These events could be so devastating that even an advanced civilization of Type III could not survive.

Now why an advance civilization of Type III would need to hide? Any civilization advance enough to predict cataclysmic events across our galaxy Milky Way, say an eruption of GRB’s, could very well also find a way to shield itself from it?

A civilization that advance enough would find it futile to waste their resources in shielding themselves against multiple cataclysmic events like GRBs. What they will instead do is try to reduce their energy spending and efforts. The best way out would be to get rid of physical body like ours, which harbors life. They would instead try to put their life on something which is still unimaginable by us – and i have no guess to what that could be. The best way to look at it is through how software (OS and Apps) reside on Hardware (Hard drives), you can do a physical damage to hard drives by N number of different ways, but if you find a way to get rid of physical system you reduces (not eliminate) the chances of damages to software.

So a civilization can achieve eternity? Are we searching for Gods?

No or maybe yes. This is not a question completely within the realms of science, or may well be, depends upon how you handle difficult questions that we are afraid to ask.

Carl Sagan asked us to ask difficult questions, courageously.

Any civilization that would have gone that far would have grabbed the snake by his head; Do we need Religion(s)? Do we need a God? when did the Universe started? what was there before it? What will be after it? What will eventually happen to universe? is there a limit to universe? what the hell is infinity?

You have answers? No! Right? Well unless you are a Type III civilization, they would have answers to most of these questions specially the first few? to reach eternity you need to be an altruistic society, that’s what is my best guess!

This is a question for our collective wisdom! your guess could be better than anyone else, after all we are discussing strange things here.

So why have they not contacted us?

We need to look at the theory of evolution and trust it, please say loudly – It happened, not only courageously but hilariously. What would happen if you try to contact a single cell organism now? You can’t? right?

Ok call me dumb, nuts, whatever but some thousands of years ago we could be knowing how to contact Chimps? as we were just evolving from them at that time, not now. That’s a lost art or a skill, however, whatever you say.

Again you may say we are now a sentient creature and any type III civilization would still be a sentient creature. And all sentient civilizations would still want to talk to each other. Ok, but type III society may see us as a very primitive civilization, someone who would not understand them and with our current set of beliefs we could end up declaring them demons or maybe end up declaring a war of independence against them. Not a difficult situation for them and not a reason for not contacting us, but then that’s what we keep doing to all creatures with life. Kill those who are pesky to us and nurture who are friendly to us, or from those we can harness benefits and thousands of others we simply ignore.

Remember we all evolved from a single cell, so we are all brothers; but you would not like to call a donkey, a pig or a snake as your brother based on your beliefs. Got point?

A Type III civilization would have absolutely no interest left in us, whatever we think of our self, we maybe non-existent to them, even though we maybe crawling inside their nostrils, OK sorry about the nostril part.

How can we contact them?

It is not easy for a bacteria to contact us, they have to make big impacts on our life for us to get hold of them and by the time that happens they would have lived many generations or eons in their time scale, right? Again I am not going to elaborate how irrelevant we are in the great, large and big scheme of things for a civilization of Type III. Even if they are aware of our existence, they may find it unreasonable to contact us. For now answers are same as why they are not contacting us.

What will eventually happen?

Even for a civilization that achieves eternity it would still need to answer questions on infinity – what next? Maybe a Type IV civilization lingering on the top of them? It may go on for infinity, right? That’s where our brain need some extra processing power, we need to answers big questions by breaking the shackles of dimensions, who have bounded our vision.

I am amazed to see how many of us have already started feeling the 3D claustrophobia of space and time; OK you may tell me about multiple dimensions that scientist have already started talking of for last few decades, but we are still suffocated in our current view of space time.

Almost everyone of us believe and many by means of faith know that there is life on other planets and places in our Universe, all they are looking for is a proof. It may require a sight correction to just view correctly 🙂

Originally answered by Harsh on Quora -> link

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply