The Drake Equation includes 7 variables. Assigning a value to any of the last 4 of them necessitates wild, mostly baseless speculation, approaching the theological. It does make things look scientific, though, being an equation, and all.
Galaxy Quest
They saw we were looking and turned off the power just to fool us.
Radio waves? Tosh, we quit using them eons ago once
direct thought transfer came in.
Only stupid civilizations want themselves to be discovered. When one looks how species operate one can easily see that the “Independence Day” scenario is much more likely than the “Day The Earth Stood Still” one.
The idea that technologically advanced civilizations would be kinder than less advanced ones has no basis in observation.
Exactly. What they're doing is like pointing Hubble at a big pot of boiling water to see if any advanced civilizations have evolved in there and are giving off technosignatures.
Maybe the aliens are smart enough to hide. They do not dress all sexy, get lubed up, and then go shouting around the neighborhood looking to be raped.
Maybe the aliens avoid us because they think our radio signals are a trap or that we are as dumb as a sack of hammers.....
There’s so many “holes” & “what ifs” related to this study that it is just barely worth reading about...
Frequency/wavelengths evaluated?
What if messages are being sent to us via drumbeat?
What range of the distant past does this data represent?
Will they repeat the every 1000000 years from now and update us?
I’m still waiting...
Also, what did they do with the thousands of hours of SETI data my computers acquired and sent to them?
Just because we can or did not “detect no signals” in no way, shape, or form proves or invalidates that alien civilizations have not, did not, or do not exist. Period. However, it does prove that our current level of technology is unable to “detect no signals.” In short, we/us enlightened and intelligence Earth beings could not detect our way out of wet paper bag with our current level of technology. OK. Got it.
They should try looking at planets not stars.
Berserkers kill anything that makes itself known or something just points a gamma ray burst at the cockroaches when they get themselves noticed.
Or everyone invariably falls into a virtual reality hole when they become technologically advanced enough.
I once read a story with the premise that the aliens were shocked we created all these natural explanations for things like quasars and pulsars. “What do you mean you thought you were alone? Didn’t you see our beacons?!
Freegards
As soon as we find them the democrats will invite them to America and put them on government assistance.
Maybe aliens don’t broadcast on the same frequencies we use.
Suppose you have an old fashioned AM transistor radio. It cannot pick up FM radio signals.
And this presupposes that aliens would use radio frequencies in the first place. Maybe advanced aliens communicate in some other manner that we can’t conceive of.
They aren’t there.
Though I would point out that the galactic center is generally very radioactive. Not a hospitable place.
The reason broadcasting went digital is that it transmits information more efficiently. It also means any alien signal is going to look like noise because of that.
The biggest misconception in science. The odds that life could have randomly developed on earth are so astronomically huge that for all intents they are zero. In fact that odds that life could have randomly appeared in this UNIVERSE are so huge that science has had to create the multiverse theory to explain it.
So quoting the number of stars implies that gee with so many stars life HAD to develop elsewhere. Nope. There was only one way life appeared on earth: The universe was created for it. Man, and earth, really are the center of the universe. We were created specifically by God.
Maybe they lower the volume at night.
Ever get the feeling that we are all alone? Einstein said it best when he said there may be others out there, but if they are, we will never know. I tend to agree.