NASA: Countdown to the Very First CONTACT !

[VINYLONE]

If one of them can shoot 3's, I say sign him/it!

Well ****ing played. I'd give you rep but **** rep.

 

[VINYLONE]

What Siro said. You may also be interested in reading about the Drake Equation, which is fairly useless for numerical estimates but which might give you a sense of what might be required for intelligent life to exist elsewhere in the galaxy. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

Meh.

The Drake equation has proved controversial since several of its factors are currently unknown, and estimates of their values span a very wide range. This has led critics to label the equation a guesstimate, or even meaningless.

 

[LogGrad98]

Humanity's advancing knowledge has changed society profoundly. The question of whether an event affected the mundane details of your life is hardly relevant to the significance of the event to the big picture.

The question was whether anyone would be able to talk about anything else, not what the overall significance would be. For the vast majority of humans on earth if the only impact any such discovery had was people reading about it on the Internet or hearing about it in TV it will have the same staying power as the latest celebrity divorce or maybe that if another shooting but that's about it.

Now the overall implications are way greater than that obviously. Although realistically if our first indications of life on other celestial bodies was a bacteria what impact would that really have on anyone or anything?

Now if that first indication were actual first contact that changes everything. I think in that regard the movie Contact is a pretty good indication of the global impact. But even then with nothing new after that initial contact it will have virtually no impact on everyday life beyond water cooler talk. "hey remember when they picked up that alien signal 5 years ago?" "yeah, that was pretty cool." "yeah. So you going to the jazz game this weekend?" "he'll yeah... Three-peat baby!"

 

[Stoked]

I read about that. She goes on to say that she is talking about microbes and not advanced civilizations. That the first proof of extre terrestrial life will be on the microscopic level.

 

[VINYLONE]

Mr. Nye's recent discussion on the Daily Show was pretty interesting...well, regardless of the fact that they had some hacks sitting across the table from him.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars

 

[b_line]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...entists-talking-about-an-alien-megastructure/