Where’s my alien civilisation?

(Russell is guestblogging for George)  I’m sure my readers are familiar with Fermi’s paradox. Some of you may even feel it’s debated to death lately, but in this great memorial year (Darwin’s 200th birthday, among other things) we’ll be hearing a lot more about the origins of life and the trajectory of evolution. Fermi’s paradox connects with all that.

...

Complete entry

Posted by Garry  on  01/20  at  12:57 AM

Any beings with any intelligence have enough brains not to come near this planet that's in purpetual war with itself.

What would be alien motivation for getting in between generations of rabid dogs fighting ? Because we want them to ?

If aliens have any genetic similarity with humans, and all life on earth, surely survival of the spieces would be high on the list.

If I saw aliens at war, I'd wait until they stopped before telling them they are not alone anymore.

Posted by Brian  on  01/20  at  09:21 AM

Or they might be curious about how we'll develop. If we took a different route of development to theirs, (eg biotech vs mechanical, etc), observing our development could be of real value to their sciences. "Hey, if we had followed up this theory instead of that one a few thousand years ago, here's some stuff we might have made!" "Cool."
Given that if bacteriopahges had been more popular than antibiotics less than a century ago, we could be in a quite different situation now, then imagine the changes that could be observed between two civilizations that took a different day one approach to science.
Oh, Mr Blackford? Keep up the good work.

Posted by Steven M. Puma  on  01/20  at  11:22 AM

Given the discovery of methane on Mars, it is very possible that life is abundant in the galaxy, but advanced technological civilizations are much less so. Your analysis seems like a very plausible explanation. Perhaps advanced civilizations are so rare that they only occur on the order of once per galaxy. This would give a good reason why they haven't expanded to our neighborhood yet. The great distance between galaxies could be the limiting factor.

Posted by Ben Sand  on  01/21  at  12:29 PM

The Drake Equation:
http://xkcd.com/384/

---

Add your comment here:

Name:

Email:

Location:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below: