February 20th, 2007
Podcast: The Fermi Paradox: Where are all the Aliens?
Written by Fraser Cain
We live in a mind bogglingly big Universe filled with countless stars. We know intelligent life evolved here on Earth. It must be common across the Universe, right? But if there's life out there, how come we haven't been visited by aliens yet? Why haven't we even picked up signals from alien television stations? Where's all the life?
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Filed under: Astrobiology, Podcasts
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July 27th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
It is logically more than likely that the universe is bubbling with life forms. Most probably microbial with a rare sprinkling of intelligence equal to or superior to man. Why haven't we been contacted? A guess is the intelligent beings, while rare, are separated from earth and each other by tens of thousands or more of light years. If so, there is little to no chance of contact directly or accidently becuse of the overwhelming distances involved. Radio frequency transmissions degrade to nothing detectable against the background of natural cosmic electromagnetic noise in just a light year or so depending on the original power level of the signal. Sublight speed space travel over the same tens of thousands or more of light years separation makes no sense no matter how it is viewed. If this conjecture is anywhere near accurate, mankind or any other intelligent life form will never ever meet their cosmic neighbors.