this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
114 points (84.3% liked)
Space
8341 readers
1 users here now
Share & discuss informative content on: Astrophysics, Cosmology, Space Exploration, Planetary Science and Astrobiology.
Rules
- Be respectful and inclusive.
- No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
- Engage in constructive discussions.
- Share relevant content.
- Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
- Use appropriate language and tone.
- Report violations.
- Foster a continuous learning environment.
Picture of the Day
The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula
Related Communities
๐ญ Science
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
๐ Engineering
๐ Art and Photography
Other Cool Links
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What, it wasn't enough to just gesture meaningfully at the state of the entire godamn planet when looking for reasons why aliens might want to avoid us?
I was going to say this. To those species who are capable of interplanetary colonization, we look like savage war goblins who can only negotiate transaction-based societies and are compelled by number-go-uo at the expense of letting children starve.
Couldn't the aliens be the same way?
I mean if they're interplanetary colonizers...
The space is huge and FTL travel is impossible. The only reason someone will visit us is if they built a generational space ship. And the only reason to do that is if you have destroyed your own planet and have to colonise another one. We will only see those, who came for our planet and don't care about us.
Yup. It's the answer that conflicts with sci-fi, but fits out best understanding of how things work. It's also the answer people don't want to hear.
Also we only know of one planet that has life on it. There's really nothing we can do with statistics with a sample size of one. So it's just as likely that we're the only sentient life in the universe as it is there's millions of of sentient lifeforms out there. That is to say we simply don't know.
But I still like sci-fi where there's a lot of interesting aliens that can fairly easily warp around the universe to hang out. But it is fiction.