Quote:
Originally Posted by worth
I think our own galaxy is 100,000 light years across and consists of 400 billion stars. If there's not an intelligent civilization orbiting one of those 400 billion stars, i'd be suprised. And how many billions of galaxies are there? The odds are just too great for there not to be life.
All you need is a rock in a habitable zone orbit which makes for liquid water. Thats the basis for life right there.
|
True, but once that life gets off the rock and starts to colonize the surrounding area, it will start to grow pretty quickly.. similar to the exponential growth on earth. So while it may take humans tens to hundreds of thousands of years to get off the earth and start to colonize the solar system, it would only take another 500,000 years to have at least sent probes to the rest of the galaxy (through
Von Neumann probes). And given the age of the galaxy, there's been plenty of time for many many civilizations to have risen, colonized the galaxy, and gone away.. the question then becomes why haven't we found any remnants? Von Neumann probes, Dyson spheres, something.. Though there's lots of reasons why we couldn't see them, or maybe even intelligence almost always destroys itself before it reaches that point...