If? If? HaHaHaHa...
An optimistic astronomer with feelings and a great big gubmint grant?
Please, tell me more!!
The likelihood of finding a planet with ALL the requirements to support life AND for that life to exist at all, much less to be intelligent enough to build a transmitter, are virtually nil. The odds are like 1:10e-300.
Ridiculous, we only have 11 years left.
Well we have 2 spacecrafts that have now traveled to the end of our solar system (42 years now) and so far no evidence of any aliens, at least that we have heard about.
There has not been enough time.
Shuffle a deck of cards. Deal five cards face up. If you do not deal a royal flush then re-shuffle and try again.
After you’ve dealt a royal flush buy a lottery ticket. If the lottery ticket doesn’t win the top prize then start over shuffling cards. If the lottery ticket wins the top prize then take a teaspoon of water from the world’s oceans, lakes and rivers and put aside.
Now, start from the beginning and repeat until the oceans, lakes and rivers are dry.
When the oceans, lakes, and rivers are dry place a sheet of paper on the ground.
Repeat all of the above steps placing the second sheet of paper atop the first and so on.
When you have a stack of papers that reaches to the moon then enough time will have passed to allow for life to arise spontaneously.
we already have plenty of valid evidence of aliens- there’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million of them here in the US- illegal ones!
In 1965 or so, an article in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science said we would have evidence of the Yeti within 20 years.
Still waiting.
And then, The Great Pumpkin will rise...
Consider that there maybe many extraterrestrial civilizations, but with the time required for radio waves or even light to reach us means we are looking at their past. For example our earliest radio transmissions are just now reaching interstellar distances. The puny radio transmissions from say the Titanic sinking might be too feeble to even be recognized by far off civilizations who might just now be receiving them. For us to find alien civilizations we would likely be looking for civilizations far more advanced than our own.
Baloney. Fat chance.
Greta has already informed us that Earth has less than 10 years to live.
How would any other life form outside of this solar system, looking at the Milky Way Galaxy , and how, if they happaned to be looking at our little neighborhood, The Virgo Super Cluster and viola! They happen to see our rather common garden variety sized star and then happen to see our tiny planet, a little smote of dust and water and say “There, that one! That one has life on it, lets go!’’. And they somehow have some miraculous, amazing craft to come light years through space just to see us. Nonsense.
So - 16 years from now, the question will have been settled and join the climate tragedy crap of ‘settled science’ as a way for idiots to pretend they’re smart because they’re “scientists”......”Ain’t no aliens and we should’ve all been dead 4 years ago - you can take that to the bank”....
If one accepts the scientists’ explanation of how life arose here on Earth, then it developed in an environment inhospitable to the vast majority of life now on the planet. And, who are we to say the path followed here is the only option? That seems utterly arrogant, to me.
If one accepts the Judeo-Christian explanation of how life arose (was created) here on Earth, then who on Earth (so to speak) is to say what God can or cannot do?
As for civilizations being short lived in terms of geologic time, that’s true, BUT, the pattern is of civilizations rising, collapsing, and then new ones replacing the old. Unless we utterly wipe ourselves out — fairly hard to do — once an Industrial Age has occurred, if just enough information survives each time to get subsequent civilizations into their own Industrial Age(s) fairly quickly, then the pattern will likely still be of rises and falls, but much faster than in the past.* At least some civilizations should be able to get out into and inhabit, at a minimum, interplanetary abodes (Earth’s Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, moons in the outer Solar System that have large quantities of water...). Heck, we are not THAT far from being able to do so, ourselves. Survival of any of those colonies makes recoveries even faster, as then technology retention is vastly enhanced.
Some civilizations last longer than others, too. In our case, say, a U.S. Constitution with certain inviolable additions near the front, could perhaps be better enduring. Learn from our mistakes, one might put it. Humans are adaptive and sometimes (sometimes) do learn from mistakes.
*I was watching a documentary the other day on how SLOWLY humankind had progressed for tens of thousands of years, and then we took off like a rocket once the Industrial Revolution began, with the Information Age providing sort of a “second stage” further boost.
The major problem is that over geologic time frames, the odds of Solar System-wide catastrophe go up. This would argue that civilizations reaching their own Industrial Ages need to last long enough, and be wise enough, to at least be capable of sending out generational “seed” ships.
Not any given year, but “maybe someday” would be the most honest answer. That’s “MAYBE” and “SOMEDAY”, not “for sure” and not by any set time frame.
OT, but noteworthy:
Apparent meteor shower flashes through the St. Louis sky
(Poor title: the vids are I believe, recorded as part of a mostly typical “shower, a single meteor that lit up the sky last night, followed by a boom, many witnesses say. Great backdrop of the St. Louis Arch & skyline in the 1st vid!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWuK0NUtQs4
This might be worth a thread of its own if someone wants to post...???