NASA Tests EM Drive

[Iroscato]

This picture may go some of the way towards explaining at least one of the many reasons why we haven't made contact yet. We tend to forget how huge the galaxy really is (let alone the rest of the universe), and how insignificant even our largest footprint in the universe - our radio signal sphere - really is.

So?

The initial Radio broadcast from a civilization that attained radio technology just 0.001% of the age universe before we did would by now be detectable within a sphere larger than the diameter of the disk of Milky Way.   So if radio is the persistent means by which civilizations advertise themselves, or detect others, then any civilization that attain radio technology would be known to the entire galaxy within less time than it took for archaic homo sapien to evolve into homo sapien sapiens.     If there are civilizations that attain radio technology 100,000 years or so earlier than we did, we ought to be hearing multiple overlapping signals from radio broadcasts of multiple technic civilizations that are more advanced than we by different amount.

The explanation why we don't would have to be either that there are no such civilizations within a distance from which our equipment could hear their leaking radio transmissions,  or that radio communication, or radio leakage, is a relatively transient stage in the technological development of cultures.

If radio or low energy EM is a transient means of advertisement and detection, than out signals may elicit no response simple because those who can intercept them and understand them wouldn't be listening for them.

Well like I said, it's hardly the deciding factor, it is part of the reason for one element. And a radio sphere with 100,000 light years would be extraordinarily faint, and I doubt we would ever pick up a signal from that or comparable distances.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

When the aliens do come, they'll come in peace.  It is my firm belief that there is a temple on Altair IV dedicated to the worship of Moe the Mighty, where the acolytes shave their heads and play the violin.

Hail Stooges.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

Our radio footprint might be rapidly decreasing, but our IR signature, roughly proportional to our total energy use, has always been much greater than our radio signiture, and has been rapidly increasing. Admittedly, IR signiture isn't nearly as conspicuous against ambient natural background of our planet and sun as radio frequency, but with sufficient resolving power, an advanced technic civilization ought to be able to pin point us simply by our inevitable thermal dynamic leakage as we use more and more energy.

[Pyrrho]

To be fair, science is not what journalists and self promoters say,  it is what the scientific community does, and scientific community doesn't seem to be rushing to discard the momentum conservation rule.

You'd think it would have shown up elsewhere...

Yet more proof that I am right, that a species intelligent enough for interstellar travel would view visiting the earth as a monumental waste of time.  I am already here, and even I wonder if I might be wasting my time conversing with people.  Imagine a species capable of interstellar travel, and we can be pretty well sure that they would be certain that the earth is not worth visiting, or wasting any time thinking about.

[Alex K]

You'd think it would have shown up elsewhere...

Yet more proof that I am right, that a species intelligent enough for interstellar travel would view visiting the earth as a monumental waste of time.  I am already here, and even I wonder if I might be wasting my time conversing with people.  Imagine a species capable of interstellar travel, and we can be pretty well sure that they would be certain that the earth is not worth visiting, or wasting any time thinking about.

What is proof of that?

[AFTT47]

When the aliens do come, they'll come in peace.  It is my firm belief that there is a temple on Altair IV dedicated to the worship of Moe the Mighty, where the acolytes shave their heads and play the violin.

Hail Stooges.

Boru

Wasn't it Larry that played the violin?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

When the aliens do come, they'll come in peace.  It is my firm belief that there is a temple on Altair IV dedicated to the worship of Moe the Mighty, where the acolytes shave their heads and play the violin.

Hail Stooges.

Boru

Wasn't it Larry that played the violin?

Indeed it was.  And when serious, he was quite good.

Boru

[Iroscato]

At worst, the aliens would recognise the broadcast of Three Stooges was an early form of entertainement as it was in black and white, and would deduce that the species at that time at least possessed a sense of humour, however primitive it may be.
An episode of The Only Way Is Essex, on the other hand...a grounds for interplanetery war if ever there was one

[AFTT47]

He didn't do so well when his bow snagged a man's toupee. A tarantula!!

Curly reacted favorably to his playing as KO Stradivarius.

[Pyrrho]

Yet more proof that I am right, that a species intelligent enough for interstellar travel would view visiting the earth as a monumental waste of time.  I am already here, and even I wonder if I might be wasting my time conversing with people.  Imagine a species capable of interstellar travel, and we can be pretty well sure that they would be certain that the earth is not worth visiting, or wasting any time thinking about.

What is proof of that?

Somehow I think we are going to get lost from the automatic omissions from the quoting system, but it is proof of why aliens would not want to visit us.  Basically, people get things very, very wrong, due to not being very smart.  This shows up in the way that science is reported and understood by most people (as just one example).

Being not very smart, means we are not worth visiting, by any beings intelligent enough to have figured out interstellar travel.

(Of course, if you were really in Germany, as you claim, then you would see a bit less of this than one sees in the U.S.  On the other hand, you say that you went to high school in the U.S., so you should remember how things are here, and should have no trouble understanding why aliens would have a bad opinion of us and not want to travel so very far to visit a bunch of morons.  Seriously, would you trouble yourself to engage in interstellar travel to meet us?  Seriously, not as a joke!)