By T.K. Randall
December 16, 2022 · 0 comments
Is ET only interested in technology ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 MjolnirPants
A new paper has put forward a new theory to explain why we have yet to hear from any extraterrestrial civilizations.
The question of whether we are alone in the universe remains one of the biggest philosophical conundrums of our time. While it seems almost inconceivable that our civilization is alone in the cosmos, the fact still remains that we have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.
The Fermi paradox, which highlights the contradiction between the likely existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the fact that we have still never encountered any, seems to suggest that either there are no aliens out there, or they are so rare that it is unlikely we would ever come across them.
Now in a new paper, astrophysicist Amri Wandel from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has put forward another possibility – what if life in the universe is so common that intelligent extraterrestrials are only interesting in communicating with civilizations in possession of advanced technology ?
While we certainly do have technology, the problem could be that evidence of this is likely to be particularly difficult to detect over the vast distances between inhabited worlds.
While megastructures in orbit around stars would be detectable over long distances, the type of technology we possess might not be – especially given that we’ve only been sending out radio waves (which are limited to traveling at the speed of light) for a relatively short period of time.
Unless there’s someone in our galactic neighborhood within a few dozen light years listening out for these types of signals, they are unlikely to be aware of our technology at all.
It could also be that our technology is simply too primitive to be of any interest.
In Star Trek, the United Federation of Planets refuses to make first contact with a civilization until it has reached a certain level of development (i.e. warp drive).
Who knows, perhaps there are aliens out there with similar principles.
Source: Live Science | Comments (0)
