http://ufo-joe.tripod.com/aliens.html
http://ufo-joe.tripod.com (Look under ALIENS)
Probably.
Isaac Newton understood a lot of scientific principles and died in 1727.
I suppose it would depend on whether they had any scientific background or
not.
Please don't make the mistake that people living in 1805 were less
intelligent than we are.
They were just as equally intelligent then as we are now, as were the
Ancient Egyptians, and were capable of understanding many scientific
principles.
The only differences related to technology, not intelligence.
In fact, if you plucked a primitive child from , say, 50,000 years ago, and
placed him in a modern environment, it could grow up to be indistinguishable
from any modern human being, and as far as intelligence is concerned, it
could become a doctor, physicist or anything.
>What if some aliens
> are a billion years ahead of us?
Unlikely.
If the universe has been around for about 14 billion years, give or take a
billion or two, and it took intelligent life on this planet around 14
billion years to get where it is today, it's unlikely that there are any
aliens billions of years ahead of us.
Not enough time.
>Most likely all our scientific concepts
> would be obsolete; so might the very ideas of science and theory. The
> aliens
> would probably be completely incomprehensible to us. Maybe some are.
>
Some people on this newsgroup are incomrehensible to me, but they're not
aliens, so you could be right
>>What if some aliens
>> are a billion years ahead of us?
>
> Unlikely.
> If the universe has been around for about 14 billion years, give or take a
> billion or two, and it took intelligent life on this planet around 14
> billion years to get where it is today, it's unlikely that there are any
> aliens billions of years ahead of us.
> Not enough time.
>
Although we don't know for sure either way, saying that it's unlikely for an
alien species to be 1 billion years ahead of us because, "...it took
intelligent life on this planet around 14 billion years to get where it is
today..." is incorrect in principle. It took us 14 billion years to "get
where we are today" because our sun didn't even FORM until 4.5 billion years
ago. In effect, it only took us 4.5 billion years, give or take. Since
stars have been forming constantly for the past 12-15 billion years
(depending on whom you ask), if an intelligent alien race popped up around a
star that formed a MERE 6 billion years ago, they could very well be 1
billion years ahead of us technologically and culturally (and several
billion years farther along than that if you concede that their star formed
perhaps 9 or 10 billion years ago).
The point is, there has been PLENTY of time for SEVERAL intelligent species
to develop, each one a billion-or-so years more advanced than the previous
one.
Matty-o
No, that's not exactly right.
I realised that my statement could be misinterpreted as soon as I had posted
it.
What I should have said was that the universe has been around for about 14
billion years, and it took at least ten billion years before any form of
life even started to develop or had the opportunity to develop.
Given that timescale, it would be ublikely that any alien life form would be
"billions of years ahead of us" - unless , of course, they found a way to
develop faster within the 4 billion year window than we did.
This, again, is wrong in principle. Once again, it took 10 billion-or-so
years
for life to develop around our sun because our sun DIDN'T EVEN EXIST
for the first 10 billion-or-so years of the universe. Your argument is
based on
a VERY earth-centric view of how things came together.
The earliest stars and galaxies formed a mere 100,000,000 years after the
big bang,
and the largest of those stars probably started going supernova shortly
thereafter.
This means there could've been sufficient heavy elements to make planet
formation (and consequently life)
possible within 1 or 2 billion years. That's a full 8 BILLION YEARS before
the earth formed.
This, in theory, give the earliest intelligent species (if they ever even
came about) an 8 billion year head start
on humanity.
Your argument seems to be that since the earth formed 4.5 billion years ago,
NO OTHER PLANED
could've formed before that. That's nonsense.
Matty-o