re life everywhere and not being a rare occurrence
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
Thats just a hypothesis, still.  Romantic, but speculative. [...]
It might be that this would crush us and destroy us by collective despair more fundamentally than finding that there are hostile aliens coming to earth. |
To think that life forms are only to be found on one planet (earth) would be as terrifying for humanity as meeting extraterrestrial life. Whatever, the probability for being alone is infinitesimal scarce.
Radio waves are travelling quite slowly, it will take some more hundreds of years to reach the next planet, let alone an inhabited one.
If what remains of those signals is not totally garbled
a) the information sent has to be received
b) understood
c) interpreted
d) wake interest; if there is any sicentifically, socially or in regard to conquest, earth could get noticed, and maybe contacted.
But maybe no one is interested and earth is just another sh!thole among millions of more interesting places. There is just no reason to "fly" around and visit silent planets just so, far too much of those.
With FTL flight even reaching the ouskirts of this galaxy is impossible in a human lifetime. Travelling FTL should be possible though, but it would not be a "flight" at all.
I would also advise it is rather unwise to indisciminately broadcast all kinds of information. Some sentients might rather hide from predators, and with the latter i do not mean humanity.
Afaik only one science fiction author here ever mentioned the dark forest idea which is
1. All life desires to stay alive.
2. There is no way to know if other lifeforms can or will destroy you if given a chance.
3. Lacking assurances, the safest option for any species is to annihilate other life forms before they have a chance to do the same.
"Since all (lifeforms) [...] are risk-averse and willing to do anything to save themselves, contact of any kind is dangerous, as it almost assuredly would lead to the contacted race wiping out whoever was foolish enough to give away their location. This leads to all civilizations attempting to hide in radio silence"
Game theory, rather pessimistic.
https://bigthink.com/surprising-scie...om-aliens-yet/