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The great silence or why haven’t we found any aliens yet? (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by neutronbumblebee@mander.xyz to c/science@mander.xyz

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A long read introduction to the topic - from We Want to Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream and Why It Matters

"The search for exoplanets is radically expanding our understanding of the cosmos. “We have learned that the universe is teeming with a fascinating variety of planets, more types than we could have imagined,” writes the astrobiologist Lisa Kaltenegger. But so far, it has found exactly as many extraterrestrials as radio astronomy has: zero. The more we learn about the universe, the more acute the Fermi paradox becomes."

Photo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi

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[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

It's impossible to be "realistic" about travel, as it is one of the things where we don't know how little we know. We theorize about alcubierre warp fields and wormholes or generation ships or machine intelligences but isn't that like saying you can't canoe to the moon without a better paddle? Do our paleo ancestors have anything to say about ion drives or plutonium energy sources?

I appreciate all the skeptics on space travel, but so many fall down on turning the same skepticism on our own limits to knowledge, and assume we know enough to make conclusive assumptions about something we have never tried.

[–] IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf 0 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

True, but we still have to try and understand the universe within the scientific framework we've built otherwise we're just indulging in science fiction. We know things like the distances involved, the time it would take to travel those distances even at a high percentage of the speed of light, the amount of energy needed to move a specific mass, and so on.

Maybe there are ways around this for sufficiently advanced beings but maybe there is intelligent life within 100 light years of us that is listening to the first radio broadcasts with no way of getting here.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago

Yes. My point is that the theoretical approach is

already sf inspired: cf. warp drives etc.
applying our limitations as universal is also a sf 'plot twist', as it's highly unlikely that we understand enough to be conclusive
slow travel is just the 'better canoe paddle' approach... probably near impossible
relativistic speeds are unlikely effective not so much because of on-board problems but because human society is so volatile, as more than a common sf trope
and most importantly: separate scientific framework descriptions from dogma, as science is provisional and assumes a better proof is simply waiting for better research; speculation is inspiration and goal-setting

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