Alien Life

[Welsh cake]

The one thing that I never really hear proposed about technologically advanced alien life is the fact that it only takes one species to spread beyond the confines of its own world and start populating other worlds within and beyond its own star system and the whole process becomes practically unstoppable.

Granted, the debate at the Royal Society questioned "contact" with intelligent life outside our own planet, it didn't necessarily depict a scenario that alien life would be able to bridge the vast distances between their world and ours, then establish contact.

Obviously a major obstacle to your premise is that with regards to evolutionary theory outside Earth is a given when the universe is theorised at only being between 13.5 and 14 billion years old, not that old really considering at how long some Red Dwarfs and Black Holes are estimated to last (trillions of years).

Its taken us a long time to get to where we are now - we're a relatively young race, our actions often bordering on the self-destructive, and when people aren't trying to annihilate themselves in some world war do we briefly gaze at the stars to ponder at the possibilities before rejoining the rat race so as to survive.

Our world-view hasn't really changed all that much, we can't evolve beyond our biological needs or be immune to natural pressures. We're currently successful in our natural environment, but existing, let alone living outside the biosphere is just too hostile for us life-forms to cope with, for instance, we can't adapt to life on the Moon anytime soon. Technology has limits too, since it's unable to break the laws of thermodynamics so consequently devising interstellar machinery capable of travelling faster than the speed of light is beyond our capabilities, it may even be impossible (note that I said "may", I wouldn't dare assert that I know it can't be done, but given the laws of physics as they stand, its not looking realistic).

We can't be sure if intelligent alien life (if any) isn't in the same boat as us, or worse off even. The only kind of life that could *conceivably* reach us is not that which started off on the confines of a terrestrial world, that evolved in space and doesn't need technology, but alas, this is all speculation since such a life-form isn't conceivable outside the imagination to start with. >_>

I'm starting to think this whole body of study is a complete waste of time and money...