On the contrary, I’d recommend looking up the Fermi paradox. It exists because if we assume that ftl is impossible, both in a literal and effective sense, a civilization with the capability of long-range subluminal travel would still have the ability to colonize the galaxy within a few million years.
Now, you might be tempted to think, “okay, so a few million years from now is when we’ll start seeing them”, but that’s assuming they took as long as we did to evolve intelligence. If I’m not mistaken, there’s some speculation that dinosaurs were a significant contributor to delaying the rise of mammals, and those were around for over 100 million years. What if a civilization skipped the “oppressed by giant lizard-birds” stage? The result is that they’d potentially be millions of years ahead of us technologically.
Also, because I regularly see this question pop up in any conversation involving aliens,
“why would they come to our world? They’ve probably got everything they want!”
Why does a human want to explore the ocean? Why does a human want to explore space? Curiosity. Maybe they want to see it for themselves instead of looking at pictures that their friends posted on Spacebook. Maybe we’re small and adorable to them. There are plenty of reasons why they might check our world out that don’t involve conquest, genocide, slavery or other symptoms of rampant capitalism and authoritarianism.
No? If you think that’s actually an option, then you need to go outside and touch grass; and I mean that seriously. If you really think that looking at something from so far away that it literally takes light years to reach you is a suitable replacement for being there in person, then you desperately need to touch grass.
If an alien wanted to visit the Earth, they would actually die hundreds to thousands of years before they would ever get here.
It’s simply just not worth the trip, when only your thousandth generation descendants would actually survive to make it.
Now, if aliens actually had warp drive technology, millions of years in the future from our technology, they probably aren’t even going to bother visiting us because we’re so archaic.
If an alien wanted to visit the Earth, they would actually die hundreds to thousands of years before they would ever get here.
Not necessarily.
A) that’s assuming they have similar lifespans to humans. They could be significantly shorter. They could be significantly longer. They could be artificially extended via medical science.
B) that’s assuming they’re travelling on a small ship and not a multi-generation colony ship. Such a ship would be designed for people to be born, live and die in space.
Now, if aliens actually had warp drive technology, millions of years in the future from our technology, they probably aren’t even going to bother visiting us because we’re so archaic.
Not necessarily. First of all, humans nowadays aren’t a whole lot more intelligent than humans 6,000 years ago. The reason why we seem to be more intelligent is because there is more which is known about our universe, we put more emphasis on knowledge, and because we have more ways of expressing that intelligence.
Secondly, I’m skeptical that it’d truly take millions of years to develop warp/warp-like technology. Tbh I think it’s more likely that we’re far closer to developing it ourselves than we realize, it’s just that we have to be more active in space to see what we’re missing.
However to connect this to my previous statement about intelligence, most scientists put ftl-like travel (I’m talking about the FTL-but-not-really technologies like warp or wormholes) a couple thousand years away. Now, again, I’m skeptical that it’d really take us that long, and I’m pretty sure they’re just throwing out a really big number to make the point that you shouldn’t hold your breath, but let’s pretend that they really meant it. If ftl-like tech is really thousands of years in the future, that still potentially puts aliens in the realm of “near human-like intelligence”.
At the end of the day though, this is all conjecture. None of it can be proven (yet), so it’s all speculative. That being said, open your mind. Imagine other possibilities. There’s so much stuff around aliens and future tech where people assume this, or assume that, but the truth is that we don’t know shit. Aliens could be exactly the same as us. They could be so different that they can’t be understood by us. They could be somewhere inbetween. They could be far more advanced than us. They could be less advanced overall, but got very lucky with a handful of technologies. We don’t know.
On the contrary, I’d recommend looking up the Fermi paradox. It exists because if we assume that ftl is impossible, both in a literal and effective sense, a civilization with the capability of long-range subluminal travel would still have the ability to colonize the galaxy within a few million years.
Now, you might be tempted to think, “okay, so a few million years from now is when we’ll start seeing them”, but that’s assuming they took as long as we did to evolve intelligence. If I’m not mistaken, there’s some speculation that dinosaurs were a significant contributor to delaying the rise of mammals, and those were around for over 100 million years. What if a civilization skipped the “oppressed by giant lizard-birds” stage? The result is that they’d potentially be millions of years ahead of us technologically.
Also, because I regularly see this question pop up in any conversation involving aliens,
“why would they come to our world? They’ve probably got everything they want!”
Why does a human want to explore the ocean? Why does a human want to explore space? Curiosity. Maybe they want to see it for themselves instead of looking at pictures that their friends posted on Spacebook. Maybe we’re small and adorable to them. There are plenty of reasons why they might check our world out that don’t involve conquest, genocide, slavery or other symptoms of rampant capitalism and authoritarianism.
Why would they send a probe to inspect ships from a visible distance? They could fulfill all their curiosity from lightyears away
No? If you think that’s actually an option, then you need to go outside and touch grass; and I mean that seriously. If you really think that looking at something from so far away that it literally takes light years to reach you is a suitable replacement for being there in person, then you desperately need to touch grass.
If an alien wanted to visit the Earth, they would actually die hundreds to thousands of years before they would ever get here.
It’s simply just not worth the trip, when only your thousandth generation descendants would actually survive to make it.
Now, if aliens actually had warp drive technology, millions of years in the future from our technology, they probably aren’t even going to bother visiting us because we’re so archaic.
Not necessarily.
A) that’s assuming they have similar lifespans to humans. They could be significantly shorter. They could be significantly longer. They could be artificially extended via medical science.
B) that’s assuming they’re travelling on a small ship and not a multi-generation colony ship. Such a ship would be designed for people to be born, live and die in space.
Not necessarily. First of all, humans nowadays aren’t a whole lot more intelligent than humans 6,000 years ago. The reason why we seem to be more intelligent is because there is more which is known about our universe, we put more emphasis on knowledge, and because we have more ways of expressing that intelligence.
Secondly, I’m skeptical that it’d truly take millions of years to develop warp/warp-like technology. Tbh I think it’s more likely that we’re far closer to developing it ourselves than we realize, it’s just that we have to be more active in space to see what we’re missing.
However to connect this to my previous statement about intelligence, most scientists put ftl-like travel (I’m talking about the FTL-but-not-really technologies like warp or wormholes) a couple thousand years away. Now, again, I’m skeptical that it’d really take us that long, and I’m pretty sure they’re just throwing out a really big number to make the point that you shouldn’t hold your breath, but let’s pretend that they really meant it. If ftl-like tech is really thousands of years in the future, that still potentially puts aliens in the realm of “near human-like intelligence”.
At the end of the day though, this is all conjecture. None of it can be proven (yet), so it’s all speculative. That being said, open your mind. Imagine other possibilities. There’s so much stuff around aliens and future tech where people assume this, or assume that, but the truth is that we don’t know shit. Aliens could be exactly the same as us. They could be so different that they can’t be understood by us. They could be somewhere inbetween. They could be far more advanced than us. They could be less advanced overall, but got very lucky with a handful of technologies. We don’t know.