Comment on HD 137010 b

• ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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  • dreamkeeper@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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    • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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    • tomiant@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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. 

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      • dreamkeeper@literature.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        If the rare earth hypothesis is true, which I personally think it is because of how many coincidences it took to make Earth habitable, then I do think they would be interested.

        I mean we’d be very interested if we found another Earth-like planet with a civilization on it, so why wouldn’t aliens? Presumably any species capable of that discovery would at least have a need to pursue new knowledge, otherwise they would not be able to advance scientifically.

        It’s not about humans being special at all, rather the opposite. Intelligent life is likely to share at least some things in common with us. For example it’s possible that they’re also violent assholes like we are, and destroyed their own planet, so now they a need one and we fit the bill.

        If the rare earth hypothesis is false, then things simultaneously become more and less interesting. More interesting in that there’s suddenly a whole galaxy of life-rich planets to explore, less interesting in that there would be nothing rare about an Earth-like planet and aliens may be less interested in us.

        But even then, I feel that someone’s going to be interested. We have millions of species on this planet and that doesn’t stop people from looking for new species.

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  • tomiant@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    We should also better be lucky they’re not gonna be like those Krikkit robots from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

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• Thorry@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ 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.

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