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Post by Enderminion on May 4, 2017 12:11:06 GMT
A different answer to the Great Slience is a metaphor, a savage in a jungle is listening for drum beats of communication, oblivious to the radio waves screaming by overhead. Substuide savage for SETI and radiowaves for something we can't detect and you get what I'm aiming for Good poem. Now, if you could translate it into simple English. all the aliens are communicating is ways we can't listen to, FTL or STL we can't hear their life
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Post by Durandal on May 4, 2017 18:18:28 GMT
Good poem. Now, if you could translate it into simple English. all the aliens are communicating is ways we can't listen to, FTL or STL we can't hear their life I've read theoris that an advanced civilization may not use radio at all on a planetary scale. We already use fiber optic for mass communication. In a few decades radio for "mundane" uses may be obsolete. It may be possible that an advanced civilization may use something like tight-beam lasers for interplanetary/interstellar communications. But that's all moot. An interplanetary civilization would need powerful interplanetary drives, and as we've established those would be detectable from lightyear away.
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Post by Enderminion on May 4, 2017 18:28:21 GMT
yes from light-years, but how many? also they may have drives that violate the laws of physics and thermodynamics as we know them and might not produce heat visible from light-years
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Post by Durandal on May 4, 2017 19:48:17 GMT
yes from light-years, but how many? also they may have drives that violate the laws of physics and thermodynamics as we know them and might not produce heat visible from light-years That could be true, but I wouldn't say that we should base our assumptions on this. The galaxy could rest on the back of a quartet of cosmic elephants, but that doesn't mean we should search for the turtle they stand on.
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Post by nerd1000 on May 4, 2017 22:39:07 GMT
My feelings regarding the Fermi Paradox are that life is common but technological civilization is rare. There are other species even on our own planet that have rational intelligence, the ability to invent new tools and culture (e.g. New Caladonian crows) but I suspect that it took a special level of min-maxing and some happy accidents to make us so both so capable in those areas and so dependent on them that we developed a technology base that could expand over time.
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Post by Enderminion on May 4, 2017 22:41:09 GMT
we may be more war-like then anyone else, and all tech has uses to win wars
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