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Originally Posted by worth
It takes over 8 minutes for the photons from the Sun to reach earth. The photons travel at the speed of light, obviously. So traveling at the maximum allowable relativistic speed it still takes minutes for them to get here and that's from the nearest star to our planet.
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That's all fine and dandy, (and yes I am up on the vastness of space and the speed of light and all that) but they guy is proposing hundreds of millions of civilizations. Surely a few of them would have conquered stellar or interstellar travel now. Surely a few of them would have colonized other planets or built giant stations we could see. Surely a few would have come visiting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by worth
The milky way is 100,000 light years in diameter. It will take you 100,000 years to get from one end to the other traveling at the speed of light. We're talking about one galaxy here. There are over 100 billion galaxies in the universe from estimates. The numbers are too enormous for us to comprehend. The distances are so vast, the possibility of there being hundreds of intelligent life forms in our own galaxy and not run into each other is still plausible.
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Yes but he said, in OUR galaxy. Again I am well aware of he vastness of space, and the sheer number of stars and galaxies, but we're not even arguing the universe here when he is suggesting hundreds of millions in our galaxy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by worth
Also, we're giving ourselves a lot of credit here. Why would an advanced civilization that can travel thousands of light years want to bother with us anyway? To them, we're nothing special. I'm sure they have other concerns to look after. Not one measly tiny planet. If i'm running a galactic civilization, i'm probably gonna be more worried about the Andromedans that are harvesting the energy from black holes to run their super massive collider weapons than the teeny weeny earthlings.
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Again true, but you'd think we would have crossed paths, much like the species on this planet have. But most of all, you think that we would have seen evidence of them. If they are harvesting black hole energy or terraforming worlds or colonizing or whatever, we'd probably see some evidence of it. Maybe we're not be able to reach them, maybe not even communicate with them, but if we can see the outer edges of the universe and gaze into other galaxies I'm sure we would have seen galatic civilazations if they were so common.
Again, I'm not saying there is nothing out there at all, but if it was truly common, I'm thinking we would have noticed something. Sure, maybe we are missing one of two, or even 1000 or 2000. But hundreds of millions? Doubt it. Doesn't make sense.