I don’t think so Jan. If they are that advanced, they would have propagated across most of the galaxy and will number in the hundreds of billions (there are some serious academic papers about this - 10-50 million years to fill a galaxy). I think they’d be quite safe.
Then again, I am with the guys that say we’re probably the only ones in the Milky Way.
Then again, I am with the guys that say we’re probably the only ones in the Milky Way.
I think the question here is what constitutes a successful species. The most widespread? The most numerous? The best adapted? One that can adapt easily? A generalist species like us? Intelligence? Longest time as an identifiable species?
If it’s special longevity then the award goes to Cyanobacteria that were the only widespread life form for 2.2 billion years. Hell, even tyrannosaurs were around for 40 million years. Bacteria (and viruses) are highly successful because they have short individual lives but adapt quickly IF they have to. Cyanobacteria were around for a long time because they did not need to adapt. They found their niche and that was that.
If it’s special longevity then the award goes to Cyanobacteria that were the only widespread life form for 2.2 billion years. Hell, even tyrannosaurs were around for 40 million years. Bacteria (and viruses) are highly successful because they have short individual lives but adapt quickly IF they have to. Cyanobacteria were around for a long time because they did not need to adapt. They found their niche and that was that.
Bacteria a damn clever.
They do not age as such and each bacteria could theoretically live forever unless destroyed by outside influences.
That is because their DNA is arranged in a circle and so does not rely on telomeres like the DNA of creatures having theirs arranged in strings with end points.
They do not age as such and each bacteria could theoretically live forever unless destroyed by outside influences.
That is because their DNA is arranged in a circle and so does not rely on telomeres like the DNA of creatures having theirs arranged in strings with end points.
Being successful and survive is not, by a long shot, the same as dominant. Those two are confused here.
Humans are only around a short time, but we ARE dominant. Very much so.
Jan
Not exactly the question I asked, but awfully close.
Maybe you'll have better luck with responses.
That depends on who we are supposed to be dominant over.
We are clearly dominant over the other vertebrae but with bacteria it is at best a stalemate at the moment.
This is dependent upon whether or not one suspects that UFOs are of non-human origin. If not, then speculating about possible motivations is pointless. If one does suspect they are of non-human origin, how could they not then speculate about motivations? While the objects are technologically fascinating, the motivations of their creators is an elephant sitting in the room, so how could it be ignored?
Motivation speculation is not without some deductively logical basis. Available observation of the behavior of the objects can be used to logically deduce some likely things. Which is how intelligence analysis works. For one, if they were hostile, it's logical that they would likely have made that evident by now. I don't imagine that we have the technology to combat them. Also, if they weren't concerned over causing massive disruption to our civilization, and panic among our population, I doubt that they would be so patient in revealing their presence. Although that patience, perhaps, may be starting to run a bit thin, judging from the frequent U.S. Navy encounters. Suggesting that, perhaps, they believe that they need to nudge potential disclosure by our governments some.
Last edited:
Interesting metaphor choice. I was reading this just last evening:
"If there’s a planet that is amenable to life, surely given enough time evolution will produce an intelligent species like us, right? Wrong! As Carl Sagan said in another book, this is like elephants expecting evolution producing an extraterrestrial species with large trunks."
Smallpox and polio are viral diseases, not bacterial.
As Sofa pointed out smallpox and polio are viruses which are relatively easy to eradicate since they depend on a responsive host for replication.
However bacteria do not, they live and replicate quite happily outside of host bodies. The chance of eradicating bacteria is somewhere between nil and zero.
Even if we could that would just amount to scoring a massive own goal.
Our bodies contain more bacteria than human cells and we depend on them for our very survival. For example there are up to 500 different types of bacteria in our guts which enable us to digest food.
I’m not as up on the biology as you are
I guess what I should have said is they replicate quickly and through that process adapt more readily to their environment.
I guess they will also, but at a certain point I believe it's a matter of catching up.
Look at examples on earth, the US was the first to develop nuclear weapons and at that point had absolute military dominance over any other country.
But over time, other countries have caught up. So even while the US has developed further while the others played catch-up, they no longer have absolute dominance and are faced with potential enemies that could launch a nuclear attack themselves.
That was what I had in mind. Speculative, but plausible.
Jan
No, not everything humans think is anthropomorphic. There are some principles that are universal in the universe and that do not depend on human experiences or opinions. Overwhelmingly, things go on in the universe the same everywhere without our involvement or our approval.
But lets agree to disagree. I'll see you in a couple of centuries
Jan
But lets agree to disagree. I'll see you in a couple of centuries
Jan
This seems cheerfully optimistic at best. A lot of times what seems “likely” only seems that way because it’s speculation we are familiar with via our culture media. The joke about the engineers and the lost car keys comes to mind. SIGINT works because ones adversaries are more like them than they are different; in the case of ET visitors, I don’t see a shred of evidence that this is the case. In fact, the high strangeness of many accounts leads me to believe that if these are indeed NHEs (non-human entities) they are not like us at all.
Well, of course. Mine wasn't a declaration of their motivations, just some logical supposition. Which is the essence of intelligence analysis when lacking the complete facts. As is usually the case.
The apparent strangeness of their actions to us (assuming non-human entities, for moment), can also be due to our lacking a sufficiently wide perspective, and not an indication that they don't have logical, perhaps, benevolent motivations. We had better hope that they do. Do you suppose that human beings have a galactic monopoly on logic and reason? Do you suppose that 2+2 doesn't equal 4 for them as well? If they were like us, then they would be significantly irrational and an existential threat, so it would be fortunate for us if, indeed, we are not alike.
Of course there are things we experience which are universal but we are discussing the rate of technological advancement. For (supposed) alien beings that are way more advanced than we are, it is an uncharted territory for us to speculate what advancement rate is plausible. We can only reference off of our own to speculate thus anthropomorphic view. Who knows what the beings with multiple times the intelligence capacity of ours would go about advancing their technology.
Even if your hypothesis is valid, by the time we are able to understand the level of technology they let us have (lets assume they do for the discussion sake) initially and able to make a use of it, we may not be the same "primitive" beings anymore and thus not act up on our primal motives.