I came across two stories about "The Great Filter" this weekend:
NASA Scientists Present Theory About Why We Haven't Met Other Intelligent Life - Huffington Post
NASA Says We Can Avoid "The Great Filter" - Daily Mail
Both stories were based on a paper printed-
You know what? You can read the paper on the link below:
For being a bunch of scientists, they sure missed the core tenants of science.
First, their argument. They posit that since we Earthlings haven't found aliens, they must not exist. Why don't they exist? Because they must have existed and then wiped themselves out. Their evidence? Well since we can't get along on this planet, maybe it is ingrained in intelligent life to wipe itself out.
The paper seemed to be a cautionary tale instead of science.
You know why we haven't found life, the real scientific explanation? It is very simple even for a layman. If the analog computer was developed only a hundred years ago, and assuming that intelligent life evolved along a similar time frame as us, that means we could only spot life within 100 light years of our planet.
Just last week at NASA.gov released this spectacular photo from the Orion Nebula. "The nebula is only 1,500 light-years away, making it the closest large star-forming region to Earth and giving it a relatively bright apparent magnitude of 4."
If that cloud produces stars in the future, that means life is still, potentially, millions of years away. Even if life in the Orion Nebula evolved parallel with us, the snapshot of this cloud would exist in the equivalent of the year 700, because every light year away from earth is going back back a year in time.
Physics 101.
So when we look at a star a billion light years away, that's what the star looked like a billion years ago. Of course we're not getting radio signals from that star, radio waves don't travel faster than the speed of light.
Let's say that the chances of life organically springing up around a star is 1 in a billon. According to space.com, there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Simple math, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 divided by 1,000,000,000 = (about a quadrillion)
Editor's note: Yeah, there's a reason we're not mathematicians.
Meaning that the universe is teaming with life, the evidence just hasn't reached us yet due to the obstacle of time. Maybe up to a quadrillion civilizations, which returns us to the Great Filter article. I'm sure some civilizations took off, then destroyed themselves, I'm not arguing that isn't possible.
What I'm saying is the reason for this specific article is a warning that other civilizations must have destroyed themselves, we shouldn't destroy ourselves. But that's not science, that's politics.
I have a theory. Most aliens are lizard based instead of mammal based because meteors unnaturally wiped out the dinosaurs.
How can the Great Filter article exist knowing that radio waves aren't faster than the speed of light?
I declare the non-existence of the Great Filter article. What do you mean it surely exists, its link is at the top of this article? It exists, yet it doesn't exist.
