7 ms·
Given the history of life on earth (3.5 B years of life, 100.000 or so of human covilization), I think it's much more likely that any alien life we discover wou
by f_allwein 10y ago
Given the history of life on earth (3.5 B years of life, 100.000 or so of human covilization), I think it's much more likely that any alien life we discover would be very primitive - say, bacteria living on a moon in the solar system, or maybe plants on a planet somewhere.
- beambot 10y agoProbably true for alien life we discover. But also possible: any life that discovers us may very well be more advanced than us by a similar margin.
- wruza 10y agoOtoh, most evolutional progress happened after global catastrophes, and maybe some worlds had it earlier. For example 3.3 B years of life, 800.000 or so of alien civilization.
- pault 10y agoThat was part of the premise of the Three Body Problem (slight spoilers ahead): technology advances so quickly on a universal timeline, that in the time span between detecting an alien civilization and being able to do anything about it (assuming no FTL communication/travel), the detected civilization will have advanced to the point of being an existential threat to your own civilization, so the only logical response to detecting another civilization is to immediately destroy it if possible, or remain hidden otherwise. This is his answer to the Fermi paradox. I thought it was quite clever.
- f_allwein 10y ago... or the detected civilization will just have died out in the same time span. How much time do we have left as a species? Given climate change and our current consumption of non renewable resources, I doubt any civilization that detects us today would be able to reach us on time. Three Body Problem sounds interesting. Will check it out.