The thing that gets me is that even if we catch sight of what is indisputably signs of intelligent life from another planet, due to the magnitude of the universe and the comparatively slow speed of light, what we’re seeing is thousands or millions of years in the past. Even if we get a transmission from an alien species, they’re likely long extinct by the time we receive it, let alone the time it will take for a reply to get back to them.
Same for us too. Any life that can see us will not be from our time, they will be eons in the future by which our species will be long gone.
Indeed, and another point to consider is that it’s highly unlikely we’d observe a civilization at our level of development. Life on Earth appears around 4.5 billion years ago. Humans start evolving around 2.8 million years ago. Use of language appears around 100,000 years ago. Writing is invented around 5500 years ago.
Inventions of language and writing are the landmark moment here. Before language was invented the only way information could be passed down from ancestors to offspring was via mutations in our DNA. If an individual learned some new idea it would be lost with them when they died. Language allowed humans to communicate ideas to future generations and start accumulating knowledge beyond what a single individual could hold in their head. Writing made this process even more efficient.
So, after millions of years of life on Earth no technological development happened. Then when language was invented humans started creating technology, and in a blink of an eye on cosmological scale we went from living in caves to visiting space in our rocket ships. It’s worth taking a moment to really appreciate just how fast our technology evolved once we were able to start accumulating knowledge using language and writing.
Now let’s take a look at how technology itself has been evolving. Once we discovered radio communication we went through a noisy period where we were leaking a lot of our broadcasts into space, and within a span of a 100 years we started using more efficient communication, and encryption. If somebody intercepted our broadcasts today they would look like noise because they’re designed to look like noise. Our society today is utterly and completely unrecognizable to somebody from even a 100 years ago. If we don’t go extinct, I imagine that in another thousand years future humans will be completely alien to us as well.
So the period during which intelligent life would be recognizable to us during its course of evolution is infinitesimally small. The time between creating language and becoming an advanced technological society is measured in thousands of years, while evolution of life is measured in millions of years. The chance of two different intelligences finding each other at exact same stage of development where they might be able to communicate is incredibly unlikely.
I would also imagine that the biological phase for intelligent life is rather short. We’re likely to develop human style AIs within a century, and they will be the ones to go out and explore the universe. Meat did not evolve to live in space, we’re adapted to gravity wells. An artificial life form could be engineered to thrive in space without ever needing to visit planets. This is the kind of life that’s most likely to be prolific in space. Furthermore, post biological intelligences would likely be running at much faster speeds than our mental processes operate on. What we consider real-time would be might we consider to be geological scales. Such beings might consider what we view as real time akin to the way we look at continental drift. We’re aware that it’s happening, but it’s of little interest to use on day to day basis. It’s quite possible that advanced civilizations become solipsistic and care little for the outside universe.
For all we know the Universe may be teeming with intelligent life and we just don’t recognize it as such. We might be like an ant hill next to a highway looking to see if there are other ant hills around.
We can (pretty much) never leave our galaxy and there are possibly trillions of galaxies.
Chances that there is other intelligent life somewhere out there are pretty high, but the chances of us meeting it are slim to none.
How could we be alone if there’s other life in the universe? Say we’re isolated or something, a long way from that other life. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone, as alone would generally imply without others.
The human population is the highest it’s ever been and is only increasing, yet the average person has never felt more alone.
If at least two civilizations exist in the universe, but they can never interact, let alone communicate, how can you not describe both of them as alone?
Out of curiosity, what do you think the sentence “I’m home alone” means exactly?
That there’s no one else in the house as you. Not that there are other people in the house, but on the other side of it.
Great, now let’s extend this logic to a solar system and see how that works.
So there’s other life outside the universe?
No, there’s other life outside our solar system
(allegedly)Ok, but following the previous exchange that would mean we aren’t alone in the universe… Home alone= you are the only one in the house, but there are other people outside the house. So alone in the universe= we’re the only ones except for outside the universe
No, following the previous exchange that would mean we aren’t alone in the solar system:
Great, now let’s extend this logic to a solar system and see how that works.
… rather than:
Great, now let’s extend this logic to the universe and see how that works.
Out of range for communication, let alone visitation. Alone is appropriate.
Not out of range for moral support. I’m sure there’s an alien out there having a shitty day. Like, maybe his spaceship got towed and he lost his job at the Dyson sphere. I’m rooting for you, buddy!
