Yes, but maybe we are at the upper end.
True. No way to know. Yet.
Intelligence community.
OK, so spend a thousand years improving our technology, and then try it.
There is no “Secret Truth” that They are among us.
Sure, we could possibly send a manned colonization mission to a planet we thin doesnt have intelligent life and is suitable- But we we fly around half hidden, picking up natives and giving them Anal probes? No, we’d land and set up.
But look at those list-
Gliese 667Cc is a 'mere" 20 LY away, but there are issues- we could solve them, I am guessing. We already know Proxima Centauri may indeed have life- but it would not be suitable for us. The rest are like 500 ly to 2700 ly away. So, yeah we might be able to colonize another planet.
So, in order for there to be intelligence star faring FTL aliens, they really need a FTL drive, super advanced tech- and then they wouldnt remain half hidden.
That’s assuming we last another thousand years which is by no means assured.
Mesopotamia is generally regarded as one the earliest civilizations. According to historical records, the first documented war took place in Mesopotamia around 2700 BCE between the Sumerians and the Elamites. We’ve been warring since we’ve been ‘civilized’ - that’s almost 5000 years. During that time the longest acknowledged period of peace is about 200 years. And new wars are cropping up with regularity still. New technology will almost undoubtedly bring new weapons. Sadly, the last 5000 years have led us to more people like Trump and Putin than Jean-Luc Picard.
Also, there’s no guarantee that there won’t be an upper threshold to speed in space regardless of how much technology we develop. I believe there will be.
Nor do politicians or the general public at large seem that interested in colonizing space so, at this point, I don’t see a lot of resources being thrown at it. I’m not sure that will change.
Anything is possible I suppose, and maybe there are some long lived beings out there living on a resource-rich planet that might expand into their planetary system, but my money is against galactic colonization.
A Red Martian would say that about the Greens. Long live Tars Tarkas!
My take is that we are indeed being monitored by non-Earthling alien intelligences. Just as we monitor them with… telescopes. Though of course our methods are not advanced enough to identify which stars have intelligent life yet.
My other take is that if there are multiple methods for learning about us, aliens will typically choose the cheaper method, especially if the cost differences are orders of magnitude apart. Starships inspired by the age of sail seem likely to be at the expensive end, but who knows? Aliens might learn all they want to know via remote viewing. Or sending self-replicating, self repairing, 2 kilogram Sol-orbiting space probes. Or something else. It’s difficult to speculate about technology 500 years from our time, never mind 500,000 years.
Mandatory XKCD
It’s generally assumed that there is. But we don’t have to get anywhere close to that. Fusion drives would be plenty good enough. Now, we may or may not someday discover something even better than fusion, but we know fusion exists.
That kind of stuff is above my pay grade but from what I read it would still take several centuries. Now you are back to generation ships not to mention that there are several not so minor challenges of going that fast through space.
And there is still the issue of terraforming, infrastructure and habitability once you get there.
That’s the easy part, which is guaranteed to be solved by the time we get there. If you can survive in a tin can in deep space, then you can survive in a tin can in a solar system, or (if for some bizarre reason you want to) in a tin can on a planet.
Terraforming a planet many light years from earth is easy?
No, infrastructure and habitability is easy. Terraforming is one way to get that, but why would you choose that particular way?
And even that had revolts and border skirmishes, which today we would likely count.
Great one.
And besides that some of the “Unsolved” UFO sightings were over large cities, etc- and somehow, only the one person uploading the still or video captured it or even saw it. Which says to me- camera issues…
I see that as a version of the well-known IT helpdesk problem called PEBKAC. But in e-photography it’s slightly different: PEBCAC.
I know I’m late to the party but the answer to the OP lies in the nature of the search (and the searchers) itself.
There is that rueful observation that the outcome of one’s search for a missing item is always that one finds it in the last place one looks – but of course this is inevitable because one stops looking once one finds the missing item. The process of the enquiry by its very nature dictates this outcome.
The search for evidence of cryptids by True Believers inevitably results in obsession with evidence in a place that can’t be effectively searched - because if they are wedded to the conclusion that the cryptid exists and they’ve searched everywhere that is available to search all they have left is the conclusion that the evidence lies somewhere they cannot search.
Non-classified “UFO related stuff” could be everywhere but because it isn’t inaccessible and doesn’t provide evidence of what UFOlogists are sure must exist, they are obsessed with what they can’t access.
Over history, you would have written “fairies”, “evil spirits”, “gods”, “witches” or what-the-hell-ever-else where today you write “aliens”. It’s all the same thing - the cryptid-de-jour.
All true. I’m sure there are plenty of secrets the president doesn’t know because he didn’t think to ask. Do you think UFOs are in that category? It’s probably one of the first things every president since Eisenhower has asked about. I know I would know within the first day I became president.
Each time I was deployed I had a SIPR computer on my desk. Most of what is on the SECRET net shouldn’t be classified. The problem is if it goes on SIPR it’s classified whether it should be or not. And you can’t take those documents and use them in anything unclassified even if they shouldn’t be classified to begin with. It was always my biggest headache.
Well, you can, but you have to go through a rather tedious examination/paperwork process before removing them from the network/computer.
There are certainly secrets the President doesn’t know about because he didn’t ask, or perhaps knows not to ask (specific operatives names/covers might fall into that category). And I wouldn’t be shocked at all to find out that there are programs in various agencies that are at least somewhat intentionally obfuscated or otherwise obscured from the President’s vision. Particularly this President-elect.
the Fermi paradox is also wrong because of another premise that it assumes: the idea that population increases forever.
This was what Thomas Malthus suggested back in 1798, and predicted the doom of civilization. He was the first to say that human population was outgrowing it’s ability to grow food.
Fermi assumes the same thing: people–and aliens-- will reproduce forever, and therefor overcrowd their planet and leave, till they populate the entire galaxy.
It may have seemed logical back in the 1950’s.
But today we have hard scientific evidence to disprove Fermi.
In every single place on earth which has the technology for space travel, the population is decreasing, not growing.
So there could be a simple answer to Fermi’s paradox: the aliens aren’t spread all over the galaxy because there aren’t enough of them. They are all sitting comfortably at home on their own planets.