3 ms·
If you could travel at only 1% of c you could cross from one side to the other in only 10 million years. At evolutionary time scales you could have been there a
by svachalek 12y ago
If you could travel at only 1% of c you could cross from one side to the other in only 10 million years. At evolutionary time scales you could have been there and back three times since the dinosaurs disappeared. It's not hard to imagine that within a couple of centuries we could start a self-replicating robot project that would explore the entire galaxy in that time frame. We'd have the complete results within a mere 100,000 years of completion.
If you assume that aliens with the intelligence and drive to achieve star travel are common, it becomes pretty laughable to think that NONE of them had the curiosity to explore or meet other species or eradicate the competition. If you're arguing that we're the 5th such species in the galaxy then... maybe.
- mcguire 12y agoIf you are limited to travel at 1% of c, communications at c, and self replicating probes, you'll have to wait many times 10 million years before you get more than a tiny sampling of responses from your probes. How long is your curiosity willing to wait?
- ripter 12y agoIf you assume Humans are intelligent with a drive to achieve star travel, then why haven't we? We barely visit the planets in our own solar system and we are continually reducing our radio waves. So unless someone happened to be looking at us at the right time. They might assume we don't exist. All we know is that in the incredibly tiny parts of the universe we have looked, we haven't seen signs of US. We could have seen several signs of ET and never realized it.