I’m a big fan of Coyne, a moderate Canadian journalist. And I enjoyed this piece on the likelihood of extraterrestrial life, the low chance it would care about us despite our innate self-importance, the Drake equation and paying attention to those who follow exopolitics.
I’d never heard that term until this column. You heard anyone use it? Do you know any subscribers? Does Congress have nothing better to do?
We’ve been broadcasting radio frequencies out to the universe for over a century, so within a 100 light year radius thus far some other intelligent beings that are technologically advanced might notice us if they were looking, and if they are advanced enough to cross the distance betwixt us in whatever time they’d had since detecting the noise we emit, then there’s some slight possibility we’re been visited. But probably not. And if they were trying to hide from us they’d do a better job of it. So hypothetically possible, but in reality it hasn’t happened.
There is no reason an alien society needs to wait for a radio signal from earth to notice us.
They could have been randomly exploring. They might have noticed earth was a likely candidate to support life. They might consider any planet that has liquid water to be worth a look (Goldilocks zone). Things they could discern from a lot further away than 100 LY.
I am not saying we have been visited by aliens (I doubt we have) but we need not rely only on signals from earth to be detected to get a visit.
This is a tough question. I mean, I think it is very unlikely aliens have visited earth and congress chasing after it is a waste of time and money. Loads of better things congress could be doing.
BUT…if aliens are on earth then that would probably be a #1 thing they should look in to.
I didn’t say that was the only way we could have been detected, it’s just an easy one that would answer the question “Why us?”
I like to think we are not all alone, just that we will never see any others. And I really doubt they like to buttprobe us, if there was a need to butt spelunk us, they would notice 2 genders [trust me, I know we come in all sorts of flavors, but genitalia-wise we seem to be innies and outies whether born or surgically made] and need something like one of each gender ; an infant [birth to say 1 year] pre-kindergarten [1 year to 6 years] elementary school [6 years to puberty call it 12 years old?] young adult [12-21] adult [21-55] middle age [55-75] and old fart [older than] Really don’t need hundreds of people, or at most 4 of each age/gender set. If and that is a big if they were here at various points of our history, they would only need a sample set of non Homo Saps - one of each oddity.