Re The Guardian view on alien life: what if it's not there?

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Ed Gerck, Ph.D." <egerck () gmail com>
> Date: July 16, 2018 at 7:34:13 AM GMT+9
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] The Guardian view on alien life: what if it's not there?
>
> Dear Dave and list,
>
> This seems like a hit piece.The Guardian has less credibility than NASA, and Caltech JPL, even on Earth, much less in 
> the universe. The political engagement of The Guardian is their option, science is not.
>
> Their own results  "can vary by 12 or more orders of magnitude" -- which no credible journalist would take as good 
> odds to talk about, any result is highly dubious. 
>
> Expect allien life, and intelligence, has been NASA and SETI bet for years, and getting stronger, as we find 
> dipeptides even in the Bubble Nebula, 8.000 light years away. The Guardian is defending ignorance. 
>
> Cheers, Ed Gerck
>
>
> > On Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 21:04 Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Begin forwarded message:
> >
> > > From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> > > Date: July 15, 2018 at 6:39:50 AM GMT+9
> > > To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> > > Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Guardian view on alien life: what if it's not there?
> > > Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
> > >
> > > The Guardian view on alien life: what if it’s not there?
> > > The universe is so big and full of stars that it seems obvious some must have evolved intelligent life. But it 
> > > turns out we know so little we can’t know what’s obvious. Quite likely we are alone.
> > > By Editorial Board
> > > Jul 13 2018
> > > <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/13/the-guardian-view-on-alien-life-what-if-its-not-there>
> > >
> > > Are we alone in the universe? Of all the billions of stars out there, is there none around which intelligent life 
> > > has arisen, no other conscious beings who have looked at their sky and asked themselves whether there was anyone 
> > > else out here? All we can know is that we don’t know of any others. But that has not stopped more or less 
> > > well-informed speculation. The universe is so unthinkably enormous and old that it seems almost impossible that 
> > > only one of the quintillion or so stars in the universe has actually developed intelligent life.
> > >
> > > So where are they? So asked the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. If other intelligent species are out there, why 
> > > haven’t we seen them yet? The mismatch between what we’d expect from the numbers, which is a universe full of 
> > > spacefaring civilisations, and what we observe – nothing – is known as the Fermi paradox. Few of the explanations 
> > > proposed for it are cheering. Perhaps all civilisations advanced enough to develop space travel are also 
> > > technologically capable of annihilating themselves as well, and perhaps they all do. Perhaps the first culture to 
> > > develop interstellar travel has already snuffed out all its rival species as they emerge, and is at this moment 
> > > watching our first tentative explorations of the solar system as a cat might watch a fledgling on the ground. Or 
> > > perhaps we have simply got the numbers wrong. 
> > >
> > > This last explanation comes from three Oxford philosophers, whose recently published paper examines the equations 
> > > that make the Fermi paradox look real. These have to do partly with the number of stars with Earth-like planets in 
> > > the universe, and, more crucially, with the probabilities of life evolving there, then becoming intelligent, and 
> > > finally exploring space. None of these are known and we don’t yet know enough to make well-informed guesses. So the 
> > > numbers that are plugged into all seven terms of the equations that estimate the likelihood of other life in the 
> > > universe can vary by 12 or more orders of magnitude.
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> > > Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp
> >
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