That is so close tho
Comment on HD 137010 b
Microw@piefed.zip 4 weeks ago
“Only” 150 light years away
mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
HaiZhung@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
It’s not that far away IF we discover a method to perpetually accelerate in space with 1g
Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
We could start sending radio waves there and if something happens to be alive there, the response wouldn’t arrive until 300 years from now. 🫠
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
And not only would something have to be alive there, they would have to have be intelligence and have formed civilization that is currently using radio technology, AND be at a point where they are actively listening at the point in which the signal arrives there, assuming we can send a signal strong enough to be received at all at that distance, which may be doubtful unless we put in a lot of effort as a species to send a super-signal to a distant star.
For reference, Earth has had life for somewhere between 3.5 to 4 billion years. Our entire species has lived for around a million years at most, and out of that time we only figured out electromagnetism in the last couple centuries, and only started actively using radio in the last century.
A hundred years out of ~4,000,000,000 is microscopically small. If another species developed their technology a century or two before or after us we have no way to know if they would possibly notice or recieve a radio signal., but it’s far more likely if the planet had intelligent life that it would have developed some number of millions of years before or after us. We don’t even know if other intelligent beings would use radio.
I’m sure there are or have been plenty of sapient beings emerging in the galaxy but they could have had entire, multi-million year epic stories play out and rise to glorious intergalactic heights with grand stellar-empires, and then either collapse in a million-year war or evolve past material consciousness, and still have been just a pinpoint in the timeline somewhere between the extinction of our dinosaurs and like, the evolution of early whales.
To say we are ships passing in the night would be a vast understatement of the problem.
dreamkeeper@literature.cafe 4 weeks ago
This is the main reason I’ve never taken the Fermi paradox seriously. I know it’s only supposed to be a thought experiment, but way too many casual readers interpret it as some kind of scientific theory.
ameancow@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Additionally, imagine if it’s true that the universe is actually infinite. There’s no real reason to believe it’s not, and if it is, that means we cannot possibly predict some things about it. Such as the chances of us living in a densely populated region versus being literally a trillion light-years from the nearest occupied planet. Large-scale patterns of distribution of just about anything could look like anything imaginable over any given area, and there may never be a scale in which homogeneity becomes stable and perpetual.
tomiant@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
I always found it arrogant to presume aliens wanted anything to do with us. If life exists one other planet, then life will exist fucking everywhere and we wouldn’t be special.
tomiant@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
We should also better be lucky they’re not gonna be like those Krikkit robots from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Thorry@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
I don’t think we have the technology or will have the technology any time soon to send a focused enough powerful enough radio signal over 150 light years. As radio is subject to the inverse square law, the amount of power you’d need is gigantic. Like black hole swallowing a bunch of stars levels of energy. Iirc anything over 25 light years is pretty much a no-go for radio as the detectors get ridiculous and the signal to noise ratio makes it indistinguishable from background levels.