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Fermi Paradox Paper: Aliens Could Take Their Time Settling the Galaxy

posted by chromas on Tuesday September 10 2019, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly

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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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 10 2019, @10:13PM (3 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @10:13PM (#892404)

    Though in that case we might find residue of mining out around Pluto, if we looked carefully...

    We have no real idea what is going on in our own Oort cloud, which is part of our own back yard.

    The last man left the Moon in 1972, and nobody has been even half that distance from Earth since.

    If we had decided the space race had only just started in 1972, we might have found those space mines already.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Tuesday September 10 2019, @11:09PM (2 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday September 10 2019, @11:09PM (#892440) Homepage Journal

    If we had decided the space race had only just started in 1972, we might have found those space mines already.

    This seems typical of humanity, doesn't it? Fleeting moments of enthusiasm, intense focus and brilliance, surrounded by decades of decline and self-destruction.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?

    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 11 2019, @12:32AM (1 child)

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday September 11 2019, @12:32AM (#892466)

      I think we decided (as a species, pretty much) that because there is no obvious financial gain to be made from space it became not worth bothering with.

      • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday September 11 2019, @01:20PM

        by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday September 11 2019, @01:20PM (#892666) Homepage Journal

        Yeah, that'll be it. And the pursuits that are built around financial gain very often aren't the ones that I'd consider moments of brilliance for humanity. I suppose you have charities and non-profit organizations doing great things and also billionaire pet projects like SpaceX but arguably nothing like that has been on quite the same scale as the space race.

        --
        If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?