![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
birguslatroWith our nearest star discovered to have an Earth-like planet, as apparently a high percentage of stars seem to have, it's time to get serious about the possibility of aliens out there.
If there are other technically advanced lifeforms in our galaxy, (to restrict our search), it's reasonable to assume they'd be thousands of years more advanced than us, and probably millions of years more advanced. So what they'd be like is probably beyond our imagination.
This makes it probably pointless to look for them, but it does suggest if they're keeping an eye on what's happening in their galaxy, they'll probably spot us before we spot them.
Assuming they've not already spotted us, that is. And there's probably only one reason they haven't, and that's because we've only recently started to make much of a din, technologically speaking. If they were keeping an eye out for just life on planets, then they would've noticed us long ago. But if life's common within the galaxy, that may not have been considered of any consequence.
So, if it's the sudden burst of radio waves or other signs of us getting technologically and scientifically competent that they'd be looking for, it's only in the last hundred or so years that we've reached a point where they'd bother to take an interest in us. And if our understanding of nature is more or less right and information about us can't escape at more than the speed of light, then a bubble of a hundred light years or so surrounding Earth is the current size of the signal of our presence that's being sent to any aliens out there.
Assuming that logic stacks up, we should be examining every star within that expanding bubble to the best of our ability, the better to spot any signs of aliens out there before they spot us - while we still have the element of surprise on our side...
If there are other technically advanced lifeforms in our galaxy, (to restrict our search), it's reasonable to assume they'd be thousands of years more advanced than us, and probably millions of years more advanced. So what they'd be like is probably beyond our imagination.
This makes it probably pointless to look for them, but it does suggest if they're keeping an eye on what's happening in their galaxy, they'll probably spot us before we spot them.
Assuming they've not already spotted us, that is. And there's probably only one reason they haven't, and that's because we've only recently started to make much of a din, technologically speaking. If they were keeping an eye out for just life on planets, then they would've noticed us long ago. But if life's common within the galaxy, that may not have been considered of any consequence.
So, if it's the sudden burst of radio waves or other signs of us getting technologically and scientifically competent that they'd be looking for, it's only in the last hundred or so years that we've reached a point where they'd bother to take an interest in us. And if our understanding of nature is more or less right and information about us can't escape at more than the speed of light, then a bubble of a hundred light years or so surrounding Earth is the current size of the signal of our presence that's being sent to any aliens out there.
Assuming that logic stacks up, we should be examining every star within that expanding bubble to the best of our ability, the better to spot any signs of aliens out there before they spot us - while we still have the element of surprise on our side...