Bullgrit
Adventurer
What are your thoughts on the Fermi paradox?
Assuming that the speed of light truly is the limit for travel and communication, couldn't the galaxy/universe be full of hundreds or millions of civilizations, but none of them/us can contact with one another, or even find/acknowledge one another because of the distances?
Is the search for other civilizations moot because of the distances and physics?
Bullgrit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox said:The Fermi paradox (or Fermi's paradox) is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilization and humanity's lack of contact with, or evidence for, such civilizations. The basic points of the argument, made by physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael H. Hart, are:
The Sun is a young star. There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are billions of years older;
some of these stars probably have Earth-like planets which, if the Earth is typical, may develop intelligent life;
presumably, some of these civilizations will develop interstellar travel, a technology Earth is investigating even now;
at any practical pace of interstellar travel, the galaxy can be completely colonized in a few tens of millions of years.
According to this line of thinking, the Earth should already have been colonized, or at least visited. But no convincing evidence of this exists. Furthermore, no confirmed signs of intelligence elsewhere have been spotted, either in our galaxy or in the more than 80 billion other galaxies of the observable universe. Hence Fermi's question, "Where is everybody?"
Say there was another planet with a civilization at least equal to our own out there rather close -- like only a few hundred light years away, (right next door by galactic distances) -- could we even detect them? Would they have to wait for our electromagnetic signals to reach them in another hundred-plus years before they'd know we were here?Italian physicist Enrico Fermi suggested in the 1950s that if technologically advanced civilizations are common in the universe, then they should be detectable in one way or another. (According to those who were there,[65] Fermi either asked "Where are they?" or "Where is everybody?")
The Fermi paradox can be stated more completely as follows:
The size and age of the universe incline us to believe that many technologically advanced civilizations must exist. However, this belief seems logically inconsistent with our lack of observational evidence to support it. Either
(1) the initial assumption is incorrect and technologically advanced intelligent life is much rarer than we believe, or
(2) our current observations are incomplete and we simply have not detected them yet, or
(3) our search methodologies are flawed and we are not searching for the correct indicators.
Assuming that the speed of light truly is the limit for travel and communication, couldn't the galaxy/universe be full of hundreds or millions of civilizations, but none of them/us can contact with one another, or even find/acknowledge one another because of the distances?
Is the search for other civilizations moot because of the distances and physics?
Bullgrit