An astrophysicist says we might not be able to distinguish aliens from the laws of physics

An astrophysicist has put forward an interesting thought experiment this week: what if a civilisation of extraterrestrial life was advanced enough, it’s possible that we might confuse its presence with the laws of physics.

More…

surely aliens follow the laws of physics just as we do

undefined said:

surely aliens follow the laws of physics just as we do

no they use beam me up scotty technology

CrazyNeutrino said:

An astrophysicist says we might not be able to distinguish aliens from the laws of physics

An astrophysicist has put forward an interesting thought experiment this week: what if a civilisation of extraterrestrial life was advanced enough, it’s possible that we might confuse its presence with the laws of physics.

More…

Not news. There are actually two parts to this. The one part is collecting so much data that real signals get lost amongst the statistical outliers expected as part of the random noise of natural signals.

The other part is that the more advanced an alien civilization is, the more its communication signals resemble random natural noise.

I suppose a third part is that we expect alien communications to be tightly beamed, so unless we happen by extremely rare chance to be along the direction of the beam we’ll hear nothing.

That’s communications. But suppose we’re actually looking at an alien intelligence a couple of metres away. Would we recognise it? This was a big topic in science fiction some 50 to 60 years ago.

Now reading article in OP.

It suggests that dark matter could be the result of alien intelligence.

No way.

But I personally haven’t completely eliminated the possibilities that some supernovae and/or interstellar matter have been generated by an intelligent civilization.

mollwollfumble said:

Now reading article in OP.

It suggests that dark matter could be the result of alien intelligence.

No way.

Unless we’re all a simulation inside some alien computer

Would aliens who have become so advanced stay confined to planets or move around in space time?

if you became so advanced what would you change?

ditch the need to be confined to a planet

ditch the need for biological bodies

ditch the need for spaceships

CrazyNeutrino said:

Would aliens who have become so advanced stay confined to planets or move around in space time?

if you became so advanced what would you change?

ditch the need to be confined to a planet

ditch the need for biological bodies

ditch the need for spaceships

Aliens would have a level of freedom unknown to us.

mollwollfumble said:

But suppose we’re actually looking at an alien intelligence a couple of metres away. Would we recognise it? This was a big topic in science fiction some 50 to 60 years ago.

eg: The Black Cloud – Fred Hoyle

CrazyNeutrino said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

Would aliens who have become so advanced stay confined to planets or move around in space time?

if you became so advanced what would you change?

ditch the need to be confined to a planet

ditch the need for biological bodies

ditch the need for spaceships

Aliens would have a level of freedom unknown to us.

ditch the need to be confined to a galaxy

ditch the need to traverse space time

ditch the need for energy / particles