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Anonymous Coward writes:
https://www.businessinsider.com/alien-civilizations-may-have-already-colonized-galaxy-study-2019-8
The Milky Way could be teeming with interstellar alien civilizations — we just don't know about it because they haven't paid us a visit in 10 million years.
A study published last month in The Astronomical Journal[$] posits that intelligent extraterrestrial life could be taking its time to explore the galaxy, harnessing star systems' movement to make star-hopping easier.
The work is a new response to a question known as the Fermi paradox, which asks why we haven't detected signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
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Fermi Paradox Paper: Aliens Could Take Their Time Settling the Galaxy
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday September 10 2019, @03:32PM
Quite so. It may well be that life is far easier to detect across interstellar distances than civilizations, At least life that re-engineers planets the way it did here - would we recognize the environmental signature of methane-breathing life? But as I recall even an ideal future telescope using the sun as a gravitational lens would have trouble resolving individual building on an planet around the closest star, so we'll likely be limited to detecting seasonal changes, and large-scale flocking behavior and have to infer the rest. Easily good enough for two-way communication if they knew we were here, but otherwise difficult to conclusively identify a technological civilization unless they were similarly big fans of artificial lighting at night.
At present though our technology is only good enough to barely dip our toes in that ocean.