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Maybe we have figured it out, and just don't like the answer. (Short answer: we're alone, or at best among the very first tech civilizations in our galaxy. Lo
by pklausler 10y ago
Maybe we have figured it out, and just don't like the answer.
(Short answer: we're alone, or at best among the very first tech civilizations in our galaxy. Longer version: given sufficient time and space, even the most unlikely possibility will take place with probability near 1. If there have been technical civilizations in galactic history at a level slightly above our own or better, it's near certain that somebody would have launched a self-replicating interstellar "Bracewell - von Neumann" probe, and they'd saturate the galaxy for the rest of time. We don't see them, though.)
- AbrahamParangi 10y agoThere's also the Three-body problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem) answer: anyone who knows what's good for them is hiding. Any interstellar-civilization which reveals its presence is destroyed in a first strike by another civilization in hiding. Any self-replicating probes are also hiding (because there's no meaningful distinction between a self-replicating probe and an interstellar civilization anyway).
- jacobush 10y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem you mean