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Aliens haven't contacted us. Scientists found a compelling reason why. (mashable.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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tectonic planet are rare

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Time.

Timeline wise, we could be at the beginning of when other species are becoming sentient. Or we could have missed them by a billion years. The gap to get in contact is so massive that the odds are stacked against it ever happening.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Distance and time. No one seems to have a clue how far a light year is ... I mean maybe ur finding someone in ur own galaxy over a big enough timeline but sorry 2000 light years to the nearest galaxy? Not a chance.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yep, relativity is a bitch. Even if we could do the speed of light, our time here would pass so quickly that by the time we reached some place that had life, ours might have stopped existing.

And yes, I know a light year is not a measure of time, but distance, but it still takes time.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I think this is part of it. If the speed of light is the speed limit of matter, it would be very difficult to travel anywhere within reasonable amount of time considering norminal life spans of even the longest living things on Earth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

This is the answer,

100 different civilizations could have happened in our galaxy in the last 1 million years with only a few centuries of them emitting detectable signals.

And it could be worse, it could be 10 civilizations in the last 1 billion years.