ETs May Be Much Closer To Us Than We Ever Before Thought

[Harry_Bagpipe]

Really? explain yourself...

We are well on our way to destroying ourselves currently. On its current path, Earth will not be habitable by humans in a few hundred years, if not sooner. Not to mention some other man-made thing could put us on the path to extinction even before that, be it bioterrorism or nuclear war.

Then there are the more fantastical scenarios such as creating an AI that has no need for humans that wipes us out either accidentally (by say sucking all the air out of the atmosphere or even the "grey goo" scenario) or out of some protective mechanism.

That is not even to say all the uncontrollable natural events that could take us out before we are capable of interstellar travel, such as massive asteroid impact or Yellowstone blowing up.

So, if we humans, as the only sapient species we are currently aware of, exist in such a perilous manner, what are the odds that another such species exists in our same area code, during the same overlapping time period, and also having survived all the numerous landmines that come with existence, not to mention civilization, would also be capable of interstellar travel and have the resources necessary to ever reach us?

That probability is astoundingly remote.

your statement was that most sapient species eventually kill themselves off. There was no qualification as to their proximity to earth or the timeframe it occurred. Maybe I misunderstood but it read to me like a generalization. The universe is judged to be approximately 14 billion years old. In that time, billions upon billions of galaxies formed and are still present. Within those galaxies are billions upon billions of stars. The Milky Way itself is thought to have stars in the hundreds of billions. The amount of planets that must exist in this universe is barely comprehensible. Even if we use conservative measurements to estimate the planets that could theoretically exist in the "goldilocks zone", the number is still enormous.

In this time period of billions of years, encompassing billions of galaxies, we don't have the slightest inkling as to the potential evolutionary paths other forms of life could of taken. Not an inkling. To try to use a species who a few thousand years ago was just leaving the Stone Age and only a number of decades ago started using electricity as a model as to what path a species, let alone a majority of sapient species that you postulated, millions of light years away would take is extremely arrogant. A few hundred years ago we couldn't imagine what the world would be like today. It's hardly a reach saying that its extremely difficult to see where we are going to be 400 years from now. How can we possibly imagine what 1000 years, 10000 years, a million years of evolution would bring to a sapient species. So how can we possibly imagine the paths that other species on planets throughout this vast universe would take. The possibilities are near endless due to the vastness of the universe and its time of being. Species could of evolved in a manner that are so alien to our way if thinking that we can barely comprehend it. So to look at a species that just very recently were using rocks and spears to catch their dinner and were living in caves and to try to use them as a model as to what is going on upon billions of light years of space is extremely arrogant to me.

Think about it. Youre theorizing about what is happening to most species over a distance of billions of light years and using man as a paradigm. You're saying "well, even though the universe is 14 billion years old and my species has only been living out of caves a few thousand, I think most sapient species in the universe did x because a few billion members of a species on a rock on the outer edges of a galaxy which consists of hundreds of billions of stars are doing y". It's the epitome of arrogance. Its analogous as a person trying to prove or disprove the existence of a higher power by using what they personally would do as their main rationale.