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Or we've been going at this for way too short a time to be able to draw definite conclusions. There are hundreds of plausible reasons why, if there is life out

by Renaud 13y ago

Or we've been going at this for way too short a time to be able to draw definite conclusions. There are hundreds of plausible reasons why, if there is life outside, we haven't been contacted. Maybe they know about us but we're not interesting, maybe they don't know about us, maybe they tried to contact us but we haven't been able to detect them, maybe we just don't have the right technology, or we're not looking in the right place, maybe we're all limited by these pesky laws of physics and there is no chance that we could ever meet or even know about each other, maybe they are not looking in the right place and missed us, maybe they are not yet aware of our existence since we've been emitting radio for such a short time, etc

Zigurd 13y ago
All those objections, have, I think, been factored in and yet the odds should be overwhelmingly in favor of life making itself known. For example "we've been going at this for way too short a time," but we know that millions to billions of stars are billions of years older than the Sun and that millions of those stars have planets. The thing about the scale of the universe is that the odds are always cosmically against "That just hasn't happened yet" being the right answer.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > The thing about the scale of the universe is that the odds are always cosmically against "That just hasn't happened yet" being the right answer. But there are many other constraints: It may have happened many times, but they may not currently be at a level where we'd be able to communicate. We have only been emitting radio for about hundred years, and only tried to detect others for a few decades. Maybe we evolve to a point where we lose interest in being known and stop "leaking" radio signals all over the place within the next hundred. Then we're not just talking about whether or not it "has happened yet", but our interest in finding others - perhaps that'll only be a hundred year timespan - must intersect with the couple of centuries that such civilizations broadcasts hit earth, and they'd need to be in the regions of sky we've tried to detect signals from. Suddenly there can be vast number of current or past civilisations out there that'd we'd never notice.

by Renaud 13y ago

Zigurd 13y ago

All those objections, have, I think, been factored in and yet the odds should be overwhelmingly in favor of life making itself known. For example "we've been going at this for way too short a time," but we know that millions to billions of stars are billions of years older than the Sun and that millions of those stars have planets. The thing about the scale of the universe is that the odds are always cosmically against "That just hasn't happened yet" being the right answer.

vidarh 13y ago
> The thing about the scale of the universe is that the odds are always cosmically against "That just hasn't happened yet" being the right answer. But there are many other constraints: It may have happened many times, but they may not currently be at a level where we'd be able to communicate. We have only been emitting radio for about hundred years, and only tried to detect others for a few decades. Maybe we evolve to a point where we lose interest in being known and stop "leaking" radio signals all over the place within the next hundred. Then we're not just talking about whether or not it "has happened yet", but our interest in finding others - perhaps that'll only be a hundred year timespan - must intersect with the couple of centuries that such civilizations broadcasts hit earth, and they'd need to be in the regions of sky we've tried to detect signals from. Suddenly there can be vast number of current or past civilisations out there that'd we'd never notice.