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Originally Posted by golfing eagles
True. But I think the whole issue of alien encounters hinges on whether there is any possible way to achieve faster (and probably much faster) that light travel---whether it be wormholes/stargates, hyperspace/subspace, or warp drive. An extension of the Drake equation with all the new information from the Hubble and James Webb telescopes would suggest there are upwards of 40 TRILLION civilizations at least as advanced as ours in the observable universe. However, without FTL travel, the only ones that could ever interact with each other would be in the same solar system as each other.
Now, if FTL travel is possible and aliens were looking for other "intelligent" life, our only detectable signals are now only about 90 light years out, and quite faint at that. Five thousand years ago we were "dark". So now, on our little rock orbiting an insignificant star on the edge of one of the spiral arms of an insignificant galaxy, the aliens would have to have stumbled upon us, and curious enough not to be repulsed by our primitive behavior. The odds are pretty low when you put all this together. But in the unlikely case that it was true, it certainly would shed light on some of the mysteries of our past.
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Only if you limit yourself to current human technology for detection of life and ability to travel through space. I like to think humans are just starting out with such things. Given a million more years of innovation and I bet we can detect life in vastly superior ways than we do today and travel through the cosmos in ways we have yet to even create in science fiction.
I accept that you disagree and think humans and all other life forms are incapable of inventing new things that appear to be break what we call rules today, just like humans did with so many other rules we claimed are impossible to break.
Heck, just a few decades ago, War of the Worlds has the aliens using MASERS. We have since invented them even though it was soundly science fiction.