(May 14, 2014 at 4:09 pm)Ksa Wrote: For an advanced alien species to get to us it would require both capability and motive, and they may not have either one. We know that the fastest you can travel is the speed of light, and if they are a million light years away, they will never make it here in our lifetime. Also, because of what would happen if you hit anything at that speed, traveling at the speed of light would be a stupid thing to do.
If we take the amount of time that elasped on earth between the first single cell Prokaryotes and the first creature that can use fire and work metal to be roughly typical of how long this sort of things generally take in the universe, then we can expect a large number of earth like planets able to bear life would have evolved technological civilizations when the planet reaches 4-5 billion years old.
Based on our current understanding of cosmology, the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, and conditions would have existed to form earth like planets for at least 10 billion years in a typical galaxy like the Milky way.
This suggests the most advanced civilization would be roughly 5 billion years more advanced then we are. They would have been traveling in space when earth was still settling out of the dust of the primordial solar nebula.
Now ask yourself this, can you anticipate how a creature as much more advanced than us, as we are more advanced than the most primitive bacteria, would behave?
