RE: The universe with its constants gives us physics, stars give us chemistry and planets give us biology
When we talk of aliens, we need to stipulate a) that it's 'intelligent life' we're talking about and b) that it's contemporaneous intelligent life we're talking about.
If mankind fails to reign-in its greed (more specifically, the greed of entrepreneurial monsters), the world will almost certainly continue to suffer. What the breaking point is, no-one knows and when it will happen, no-one can say, but the distance we've come since the industrial revolution (and the damage we've done to the planet in that period) hardly leaves me optimistic that we'll survive much more than a century.
Will we 'reach for the stars'? (Like in the films, say.) Maybe a few filthy rich entrepreneurs will time everything right to be able to leave the planet when we're knee-deep in a swamp by having craft ready, and take the opportunity to do so, but maybe they won't be prepared in time through lacking necessary technologies.
So, alien life, intelligent alien life, will they be around / still be around in this window of opportunity? If they've not yet discovered how to travel distances measured in lightyears, then maybe all this is a moot point as we'll never get to meet due to physics. My very smartest money is on the bet that we'll never discover extraterrestrial life wiser than an amoeba. But it captivates people and makes for great sci-fi so we can all still live intrigued by the prospect of others (preferably non-hostile others) being out there and en route to an as-of-yet unplanned rendez-vous with us some time in the not-so distant future.
Were we to detect intelligent life, communicate with them and even plan such a meet-up, I would expect it would require a generational thing. It would be the very distant descendants of the original pioneers who would get to enjoy the experience, I'd imagine. We'd need big craft, improved recycling works, willing participants and nuclear power powering it all. Not impossible, just hard to pull off, I'd say.
I'd say we need way more than that. We're going to have to invent stuff that defies the current "laws" of physics as we know them.
I agree we need to invent some things, but I don't think that it will necessarily defy our laws of physics, since we haven't reached an ultimate conclusion on what the laws of physics are, we have theories that express the laws. And some theories, such as Superstring theory, supports 10 dimensions that would allow for dimensional space and time travel if accessible through our technology. Seeing that quantom cumputers have already been invented, I would hope that humans survive long enough to explore our neighborhood of the milky way using non-propulsion systems versus our current rocket propulsion.
I, however, don't think humans will live long enough to create multiple dimensional travel. And even if we did have that, as said before, what are the chances of finding intelligent life during our spec of an existence.
I concede your semantic point, sir. I maybe didn't t spell it out clearly enough, but that's exactly what I was getting at regarding the "laws" of physics.
Haha, I kinda assumed, but always liked this topic and just wanted to throw some words into the ethos.
Yeah, new technologies. But in the meantime, we've got to avoid nuking ourselves into oblivion / poisoning oceans much more than we're already doing and leave some rainforest untouched and free from burger restaurants who'll want to raise cattle on the land, instead. Don't get me wrong, I think the odds of detecting alien life - let alone encountering them - are pretty much zero. Just got to keep an open mind on it all, I guess.
Yeah, keep an open mind and question everything.
I was going to elaborate on an amazing theory that I read about in a book called Shantaram, but then I discovered this post https://steemit.com/philosophy/@milinko/shantaram-theory-of-ultimate-complexity by @milinko
In the sequel of this book "The Mountain Shadow", the protagonist, Shantaram, meets Khaderbhai's teacher and they discuss consciousness. And how there may be beings of a higher level of consciousness that exist in the endless universe where they're probably technologically more advanced and understand better than human beings that working together as a collective and for the betterment of other beings is a far better rational strategy than working for individual gain. With all the hype about human beings being conscious beings as compared to animals, I agree with them that we are just at the primitive stages of our consciousness, and as we develop, as a collective we would understand the folly of war and power of kindness.
Kind of similar to this, at least with the consciousness aspect, is the idea brought forth by the movie Arrival.
SPOILER - DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO WATCH ARRIVAL
The movie presented an idea of higher consciousness achieved through learning a certain language that had no form (a sentence would happen all at once, in a single moment). Once learned and mastered, the person could then think in that language and actually travel through space time at will, seeing the future or traveling to events across the planet.
This is kinda similar to the weird aliens in the Kurt Vonnegut the Tralfamdore that has access to the 4th dimension and could perceive time at their own will.