Life In The Universe: The Great Filter.

[Dreaming Of Pandora]

Im certain that Mars harbours life, I was merely using that as an example of a Filter, which it is because Mars can't support complex life. The proof being that it doesn't now. A lack of an atmosphere and fierce solar radiation combined counts as a Filter, no matter if it's carbon, silicon or even hydrogen-based life-forms.

What Im getting at is that one of the reasons why we haven't interacted with other advanced civilisations could be that every species gets to a point where they become so complex that they end up becoming self-destructive, their 'Great Filters' and end up destroying themselves before they can make contact with other-worldly civilisations.

Humans may be approaching this Great Filter too with the invention of more and more devastating and destructive technology and only after we overcome this trait can we overcome our Great Filter.

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Dreaming Of Pandora

Im certain that Mars harbours life, I was merely using that as an example of a Filter, which it is because Mars can't support complex life. [...]
What Im getting at is that one of the reasons why we haven't interacted with other advanced civilisations could be that every species gets to a point where they become so complex that they end up becoming self-destructive, their 'Great Filters' and end up destroying themselves before they can make contact with other-worldly civilisations.

Indeed, I am also pretty sure Mars harbours life. If not by itself then probably carried there with the first space probes from Earth. But more likely it evolved in the first years when the planet was warmer and liquid water existed.

Amazingly, life is really fast in coming by. On Earth, it took only a couple of millions of years from the formation of liquid, relatively temperate oceans to the first life. From that it took billions of years to reach land animals of course, but that was more of a "terraforming" issue as the original atmosphere was not suitable and the solar radiation was too high and some other factors that change ofer hundreds of millions of years. The point is, that the initial development of the first microbial life took a really short time compared to the lifespan of the planet. This suggests strongly that if the conditions are right, life easily develops. And if the same conditions are present anywhere else, the same would happen. Of course, the origin of life is still unknown, but it is likely that such conditions exist in the universe again. From that, I can imagine that the universe is teaming with life.

Now why do we not find intelligent space aliens? I have my own theory on that and it very much has to do with the way a civilization works. It works on growth and use of resources. Such a system however cannot really keep going as non renewable resources eventually run out and that civilization collapses. An industrialized civilization at the same time seems to be prone to destroy landbase with it and even has the ability to even worse technological mishaps (nuclear devastation, failures in biotech or nanotech). Such a civilization needs to expand to continue existing. If a civilization can reach new resources before it depleted the ones it sits on, it can keep going. Discover new lands or mine asteroids or other planets. Each such step however is one such "filter" you talk about and if the civilization cannot develop the means of forcing further expansion (often destroying what was in these places before) it gets stuck and ends.
From that I see two possibilities: One is that each civilization based on extraction of resources ends at some point. And the second is, that we surely never want to contact a civilization that got beyond the filter of space travel to the point they can reach other planets as they would most likely behave in a less than friendly way (Earth could turn into a Pandora in an instant with humans beeing the ones fighting with projective weapons against "ionic space laser bombs" ). To the same conclusion, I would not really like to see humans become such a race. If expansionism and resource extraction is what a civilization is based on, it will carry this with it into space and basically continue on its course as it has done on its home planet. Find me a different base for a industrial technological civilization and I may support the idea that space travel is possible and desireable.

In the end it seems to me like this: If a civilization based on consumption of non renewable resources develops, it cannot last very long on a planet. The time period in which high tech development is possible is merely some decades or centuries until resources run out. I doubt (or maybe rather I hope) no other civilization with that foundation has passed that point. And I also doubt, there is another means of developing space travel and such than such an unsustainable civilization.