This writer or commenter on imgur puts together one of the most well thought out analasys of the Fermi Paradox. In case you don’t know the Fermi Paradox is the question of if there are aliens, why haven’t we found them yet or have we not been visited yet? (assuming that the pyramids or any of the many ufo sightings don’t count)
Let’s imagine that after billions of years in existence, 1% of Earth-like planets develop life (if that’s true, every grain of sand would represent one planet with life on it). And imagine that on 1% of those planets, the life advances to an intelligent level like it did here on Earth. That would mean there were 10 quadrillion, or 10 million billion intelligent civilizations in the observable universe. Moving back to just our galaxy, and doing the same math on the lowest estimate for stars in the Milky Way (100 billion), we’d estimate that there are 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.[1] SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is an organization dedicated to listening for signals from other intelligent life. If we’re right that there are 100,000 or more intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, and even a fraction of them are sending out radio waves or laser beams or other modes of attempting to contact others, shouldn’t SETI’s satellite array pick up all kinds of signals? But it hasn’t. Not one. Ever. Where is everybody?
Let’s find out his 3 reasons on the next page:
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We have only found one earthlike planet, while scanning millions of stars. Also why do we $#%&!@*ume they use radio waves? Perhaps we are listing on the wrong hardware. (Am on an fm radio).
Correction. We have confirmed the existence of one earth like planet out of dozens of potential candidates. And Kepler has only been on the scene since 2009. We have not observed millions of stars using Kepler only several thousand. And as far as hardware goes.. said civilization would have to be within our technological grasp in order to pick up their message. In this you are correct. But you fail to realize that radio waves travel through space at the speed of light and the distance that requires. The milky way galaxy is 100, 000 light years across. Seeing as how we are on the outer arm of the glaxy, it would take 100, 000 years to receive that message. During that time they would have advanced exponentially but we would still pick it up. Have you ever heard of the WOW signal picked up in 1980ish? Look it up. Awesome stuff. But in all reality, they would find us before we find them.
Well you mention reletivly and that opens many new problems. I have heard of the wow signal. My point is, a planet has to have some 200 factors correct in order to ve earthlike. (One of which is having a jupiter like planet in it’s outer system to catch astroids). Even the newest Kepler planet is only a 98% match. I didnt fail to realise anything with the tike requirement for radio waves to travel, that was my point when I mentioned hardware incompatibility. Perhaps they use a system of communication such as quantum tethering which would provide faster than light communication. We would ve compleatly unable to detect that. Benjamin Michael
Or they are watching and we are not ready yet…… BUM!!!! BUM!!!! BUUUUMMMM!!!!