IMHO, the whole enterprise is “beyond imagining”. The reality of these distances conquers any notion we may rationally maintain of traversing them. I may cite the Fermi paradox ... where is everybody?
There was a time when humans couldn't imagine distances we routinely travel today. The same will hold for the future, which is endless. We've literally got forever to figure this stuff out - and we will.
“where is everybody?”
The vast majority of extraterrestrial Life can be expected to be single cell like forms, which you cannot expect to be attempting to communicate. Where the more complex multicellular lifeforms exist and developed into sentient beings, there is still the problem with overlap in time and space. Humans have been aware of the radio spectrum for only an instant in time. There are innumerable reasons why the Universe is teeming with Life and we would not yet detect it.
“IMHO, the whole enterprise is “beyond imaginingâ€. The reality of these distances conquers any notion we may rationally maintain of traversing them. I may cite the Fermi paradox ... where is everybody?”
The Solar System is really, really big. It will take a long time to occupy it. Then in 500 years, traversing the stars may not seem like such a big deal. Look at the world in 1615 A.D., five hundred years ago.
OTOH, we may be hard up against physics. But I wouldn’t draw that conclusion yet.
Somebody's gotta be first! Might as well be us!
P.S. If we lived on a planet somewhere in the Orion Nebula, would we even know that some ‘star’ on the outer edge of a nearby galaxy(Milky Way) even had planets ? What would make that one star stand out amongst the millions of other stars , such that we would even pay attention to it ?
There could be billions of civiliations on billions of planets, and none of them would probably ever know any others existed.
P.S. If we lived on a planet somewhere in the Orion Nebula, would we even know that some ‘star’ on the outer edge of a nearby galaxy(Milky Way) even had planets ? What would make that one star stand out amongst the millions of other stars , such that we would even pay attention to it ?
There could be billions of civiliations on billions of planets, and none of them would probably ever know any others existed.