I won’t promise to write a full post on it, but you might be interested in my pet theory saying that we do not observe any paper-clippers burning the cosmic commons because they are approaching us with the speed of light. I never wrote it up, but there are some short scattered comments about it here and here.
It’s pretty unlikely that there are space-faring aliens inside our own galaxy at all. If they were moving at near c they would take around 50,000 [edited] years to get here—next to no time. In which case it would be quite a coincidence that they evolved to the “space-travel” stage almost exactly when we did. So: it is more likely that we are locally first.
You are right. In the second thread I linked to it was Nick Tarleton who came up with this obvious counterpoint. But my reply convinced him that the idea is compatible with the existence of many civilizations. Check it out, it is an elegant argument, even if you don’t accept the premises.
If they were traveling here directly or expanding in uniform radius at near light speed, yes. But if they’re hopping from star to star in a grid network, the distance to travel is much greater. Plus, traveling at near c may not be a practical use of energy at any level of technological sophistication.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if intelligent life, let alone spacefaring life, is rare enough that you would expect to find less than one such species per average galaxy, but I don’t think the fact that we haven’t been encountered yet is very strong evidence for this.
I wouldn’t give up hope on space-faring aliens inside our own galaxy—but the argument still holds pretty well down to c/1,000. Those are some pretty slow-moving aliens. One begins to wonder why they would think they can dawdle around.
I won’t promise to write a full post on it, but you might be interested in my pet theory saying that we do not observe any paper-clippers burning the cosmic commons because they are approaching us with the speed of light. I never wrote it up, but there are some short scattered comments about it here and here.
It’s pretty unlikely that there are space-faring aliens inside our own galaxy at all. If they were moving at near c they would take around 50,000 [edited] years to get here—next to no time. In which case it would be quite a coincidence that they evolved to the “space-travel” stage almost exactly when we did. So: it is more likely that we are locally first.
Our galaxy’s radius is ~50,000 light years, not 50,000,000, which of course strengthens your point.
You are right. In the second thread I linked to it was Nick Tarleton who came up with this obvious counterpoint. But my reply convinced him that the idea is compatible with the existence of many civilizations. Check it out, it is an elegant argument, even if you don’t accept the premises.
If they were traveling here directly or expanding in uniform radius at near light speed, yes. But if they’re hopping from star to star in a grid network, the distance to travel is much greater. Plus, traveling at near c may not be a practical use of energy at any level of technological sophistication.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if intelligent life, let alone spacefaring life, is rare enough that you would expect to find less than one such species per average galaxy, but I don’t think the fact that we haven’t been encountered yet is very strong evidence for this.
I wouldn’t give up hope on space-faring aliens inside our own galaxy—but the argument still holds pretty well down to c/1,000. Those are some pretty slow-moving aliens. One begins to wonder why they would think they can dawdle around.