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.
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.