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Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction
The chances are astronomically unlikely. Just look at all the things that had to go right for us
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The thing is, this is just... wrong. The probabilities work in the opposite way than what your intuitions seem to tell you. Because of the scale of just the observable universe (to say nothing of other areas), it's almost certain that many, many other worlds would generate intelligent life. You're talking about several hundred million stars in the milky way, multiplied by two trillion galaxies. The scale of it suggests that there would be plenty of civilizations like ours, to say nothing (again) of many that are not at all like ours but still have something we would recognize as intelligence. There's absolutely nothing to suggest that an Earth-like setting is essential to the development of intelligent life. Our particular evolutionary path is not the only path to a life form that ultimately will move, expand, explore, or otherwise get to a point where it encounters other planets and solar systems.
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Now consider the time frames. Even if intelligent life evolved and wanted to explore us, and survived long enough to develop the technology, they could have risen and fallen long before we were here.
I feel the chances of two intelligent civilizations coming into contact is probably so incredibly remote, it's not even worth thinking about.
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This is also wrong, or at least, partly wrong (the last part is possible). The observable universe is about 14 billion years old. However, it would only take about 50 million years to move across the galaxy over generations even at relatively slow speeds, so there's actually been plenty of time for this to occur, and occur again and again. That's what the Fermi paradox is all about
: given the math, there actually
should be contact between intelligent species. So... where is everyone?
There are lots of explanations for why we haven't contacted aliens, given the foregoing. Maybe it's a rule of advanced civilizations that they tend to destroy themselves at some point. Maybe travel at distances of the scale of a galaxy turns out to be more difficult than expected because there's a scarcity of resources to allow for that sort of expansion and movement. It seems most likely, though, that we just haven't waited anywhere near long enough as a society to have actually had any contact ourselves. We've had radio telescopes for less than 100 years. Reliable historical records only extend a few thousand years, and even then, have major gaps. That's a very short period of time in the grand scheme of things for us to have any evidence. Maybe we'll find out that one of these things, or something else, explains why there aren't aliens around, but it'll probably take some time to know for sure. In the meantime, though, the probabilities suggest that there is life out there, somewhere.