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I've pondered this many times. My conclusion is that it took billions of years for a planet to get to a point for sustainable life, and then billions more to ge
by alex_doom 13y ago
I've pondered this many times. My conclusion is that it took billions of years for a planet to get to a point for sustainable life, and then billions more to get where we are and considering we've only been here for a blink of an eye. There may be other areas of life but they are so far flung across the known universe we're not going to discover each other anytime soon.
It would be like a colony of ants in San Francisco looking for others but the nearest one is in Paris.
- cryptoz 13y agoIf those ants spent centuries or millennia building giant machines that could see Paris from San Francisco, they'll eventually succeed in making contact. Additionally, if anyone in Paris is looking, the ants in SF have made quite the attention-grabbing scene thus increasing the odds of being contacted. This also makes it seem likely that we'll never find living aliens, but will find plenty of million-year-old machines.
- rooker 13y agoThe problem is centuries and millennia are but fragments of time compared to the entire life of the universe...so it's kind of like the ant analogy of a colony in San Fran looking for one in Paris, but only looking from 2:10 pm and 5 seconds to 2:10 pm and 5.1 seconds. Even less than that, probably.