(July 11, 2014 at 12:55 am)ignoramus Wrote: I also believe that intelligent life is so rare that even if there was other life, they themselves may not find the others. Warp drive or not.
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As it turns out, even 'slow' interstellar flight can fill a galaxy with colonies. As noted above, in a 13 billion year old universe, there is plenty of time for even craft capable of 10% light speed to go 'everywhere'.
Once a colony has the capability to build their own colonizing starship(s) you have an exponentiating situation. The colonies establish colonies, and those colonies establish colonies, and so on.
This is the essence of the Fermi Paradox. It takes only one (1 !!) planet that produces a life form capable of interstellar flight to accomplish a fully colonized galaxy in a few million years.
When Fermi asked "Where are they??", he was posing a profound question. Despite 13 billion years passing, there is demonstrably not a single life form capable of colonizing the galaxy yet.
I know the proving a negative thing, but the fact that there are no aliens in our solar system from another star is telling us something EXTREMELY significant about our entire galaxy. As of just a few million years ago, there are no other intelligent beings capable of interstellar flight and motivated to use it to establish colonies, ANYWHERE in our galaxy.
It is stunning to contemplate.
