3 ms·
There are so many variables. For example, if they can't travel faster than the speed of light, they might not even think it's worth colonizing. They could also
by nv-vn 8y ago
There are so many variables. For example, if they can't travel faster than the speed of light, they might not even think it's worth colonizing. They could also be on scales vastly different from our own, as microbes or as planets. We wouldn't even know what to look for in interstellar communications, let alone have the ability to make sense of anything they send. Our entire "search" has come with the assumption that alien life is going to communicate with radio waves, use sight (in the same range as our own), be similar in size to us, etc.
- roywiggins 8y agoIt just takes one weirdo civilization that decides to put up Ozymandias-style monuments to themselves everywhere- they don't even need to do it themselves. They can fire off a few Von Neumann probes and let them do the work to carve Mount Rushmores into every rocky body they can find. It's not much weirder than things humans get up to, and if spacefaring civilizations that can build such probes are common at all (even if short-lived), you might expect at least one of them to have initiated such a project and been successful enough to have built a giant "we wuz here" radioactive pyramid on the moon. Evidently, none of them did- and depending on how many there were, this is either unsurprising or deeply unlikely.
- mikec3010 8y agoOr if they were sufficiently advanced, they could entomb their bodies deep in a planet and observe the universe through VR and small undetectable probes. Or maybe the drake equation doesn't factor in drugs: that once a civilisation becomes advanced enough to stimulate their own pleasure receptors they quit bothering with growing and advancing?