Because when someone chimes in...
THIS GUY shows up.
1. Separated by vast distances
2. Incompatible communications technologies
3. They are already here but we do not have advanced enough technology to detect them consistently.
4. Look over your shoulder...: )
“Aliens? What is this, one of your Earth jokes?” My people do not approve of this sort of speculation.
Not much point. We have plentiful resources (despite the cries of oil shortage) right underneath us, and our technology will at some point reach the stage where solar power is viable. What are we going to mine some planet for precious stones? It would only decrease their value as the supply grew dramatically.
The distances traveled without the use of science fiction warp drives and the costs associated with launching even 1 man into space makes it a bad investment.
Besides, I have a feeling that our electronic technology and reliance on it will be our undoing in the next 100 years due to some cataclysm.
Icarus was a very good tale.
If that's the case, than expansion into just a portion our galaxy is a 'tough row to hoe'.
Expansion to another galaxy, virtually impossible.
See, the other races are smart enough to be quite so the Cylons/Klingons/Romulans/Daleks/Cybermen/Visitors/etc. don’t come kill them.
God made the universe for man both for now and the future. Science can't accept that as a workable theory yet at the same time they'll conclude based on meaningless theories that there MUST be life elsewhere.
Maybe radio is a short lived technological step on the way to quantum based communications for most civilizations. Something that only has a couple of dozen years of usefulness for all but the most retarded of species.
To get away from Obamacare?
With the recent events in the Middle East, it may be too late to get off-world. There should have been a thriving moon colony by now.
Maybe they’re scared. Maybe they have the common sense not to talk to strangers.
Do I detect some moral superiority and intellectual guilt for being humans?
We can determine the fate of the universe? How megalomanian of them to assume that we can do anything like that.
The sun puts out more energy in one solar blast than all our weapons combined.
Since there is no breathable air on any other planet, and we need oxygen/nitrogen to live, where are we going to get it on a large enough scale for colonization - Ghostbusters?
We are not going to the stars in any foreseeable future. Read some scifi books on this issue and you will see that it is presently beyond our technological capacity.
Hell, we can’t even fix a pothole (or pothead) in Washington, DC, or Spokane, Washington.
Obama can’t balance a budget or even tell us accurately how many states we have.
John Kerry couldn’t tell you what country he fought in, in Vietnam (Xmas in Cambodia? - don’t think so). Now he wants to fight in Syria. He’d probably end up ordering strikes on Kuwait.
Ambassador to the UN Samantha Rice can’t even find the building in order to attend work sessions.
NASA is busy spreading the word about Islam and technology instead of planning space missions.
Oh yes. We definitely are NOT going to the stars, and if there is any intelligent life out there (hattip to Walter Sullivan), they are smart enough to stay hidden and far away from our world’s leaders, esp. Obie and his marxist minions.
We need to clean up our own house before we even contemplate leaving it.
However, if we believe in the theory that there is alien life in the universe, there might be some proof in the persons of Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Ed Schulz, the late Helen Thomas, Rosanne Barr, Lurch, Princess Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama.
If they are not aliens, they may be, nevertheless, the closest thing we will ever see like alien life.
Some think the pyramids of Egypt are proof positive that ancient star travelers left their footprints here. You know, there aren't any hieroglyphs inside them?
Quite interesting, ping!
“As the only intelligence, or perhaps the only conscious minds, we could decide the fate of the entire universe.”
That is the height of arrogance.
When you consider that we are but a microbe on a piece of sand circling around one of tens of billions of stars in the backwaters of one of billions of galaxies, in what could be a myriads of universes, these guys have the unmitigated chutzpah to believe that we are going to decide the fate of the entire universe. Talk about being delusional.
We have no idea how prevalent or strong the drive to explore/colonize is among any other theoretical intelligences. Maybe it just doesn’t occur to them, or it’s taboo, or they figure that the galaxy is teeming with listening hostiles ready to pounce if somebody makes enough noise for long enough.
On the other hand I recall a sci-fi story where all the really interesting things like pulsars, quasars, black holes and so on are actually all artificial. When we tell the things that built them that we thought they were natural occurrences and built our physics science around them they are startled, having never considered that they would be looked at as other than beacons that would let everyone know that they weren’t alone.
Freegards
We are not nearly at the limit of the telescopes we can build. Space based telescopes can be built that can see city lights, oceans, forests, etc on nearby worlds, if they exist.
We will eventually find something we can colonize or use, and we can send robots to even hostile worlds for resources, but my opinion has always been we are the only intelligent species out there.
I started tuning out at the phrase “...the relative ease of crossing between galaxies”
Hunh? They need to ‘splain that one.
The universe is a really, really big place. Distances are vast and we are but tiny, tiny creatures. To travel just outside our galaxy would require a fuel tank bigger than earth, unless you just want to coast along at a snail's pace for, like, forever.