[keg in kc]

Originally Posted by Dave Lane

Here's the problem. I have no problem believing that there are Aliens capable of such feats of travel. But lets just say they sent 10 probes that could hit 3 star systems a day to explore JUST the Milky Way. There are about 300 billion stars plus billions more in globular clusters around the Milky Way. If each of the 10 probes could scan 3 star systems a day for life it would take on average 13,600,000 years to find us. Thats scanning only 1 galaxy. It there are 250,000,000,000 galaxies this would literally take an infinite amount of time to scan half the galaxies (on average to find ours) and then almost 14 million years to find us once they started on the Milky way. Plus ever other galaxy our size would take 28 million years to explore.

And thats assuming instant teleportation between star systems.

You're approaching this as if life is such an incredibly rare thing that it would require searching the entire cosmos just to find anything other than us. Which may be the case.

Another possibility is that life teems and said search is, was or will be conducted by a nearby civilization. Or perhaps we ourselves conduct said search in a few hundred or thousand years, and the labor produces fruit quickly. Or perhaps we ourselves already conducted said search in a remote past forgotten to history. Or perhaps life only exists in one in a trillion habitable worlds and looking for it at all is a complete and total waste of time, at least until some day in the distant future we spread to the empty stars and populate them ourselves, and the extraterrestrials are us.

I should note that I try to avoid using the term 'alien' in this discussion because the meaning can be unclear. Something from Earth itself can be alien to our understanding. Also the term has basically become a pejorative, much as 'UFO' itself has, a way to mock by its very use, which is why you've seen the development of acronyms like UAP. So I try to run with extraterrestrial. Although sometimes I forget. Not saying anybody else should, just clarifying myself...