No Phone Home—Part 2

Some SETI researchers have asked an intriguing question: If there are civilizations out there, why haven't we received a message by now? In other words, where are they? Well, a mismatch in technology could well be one reason. How do we get in touch with a civilization that may be thousands of years behind or ahead of us? What chance would intelligent creatures on Mars 2500 years ago have had of talking to the ancient Greeks by EM signals from that planet?

I believe that the lack of contact may be explained in a different way, however: simply due to the vast distances involved. I have written a couple of times on this blog about the enormous distances of stellar space. (As a reminder, one of my analogies was to collapse our solar system into something the size of a basketball. On this scale, the nearest star would be five miles away and the nearest galaxy—Andromeda-- would be 360,000 miles away!) It is a huge challenge for us to fathom the actual interstellar distances. 

For example, Andromeda is 1.5 million light years away. To send and receive an EM signal from any creatures in that closest galaxy would require three million years round trip! That's just too long a time span to “phone home” and wait for an answer.

Thus, there may indeed by “life out there”, but it could likely be just too far away for us ever to discover—let alone communicate with. We indeed may not be alone in the universe, but we may never find that out. The universe is simply too big. Would an ant in my back yard have any chance of finding out about similar critters in the rain forests of Brazil?

Let's face it: Earth and its life forms are but the tiniest blip in the universe—in both time and space. We do not amount to much in the grand scheme of things. We are not the center of the cosmos. We are a flash in the pan that will most likely soon be gone.

I think the more relevant question is: Does it matter whether or not there's life out there? We would love to know, but we may well remain ignorant. It matters to some people, because if we were to discover some kind of civilization beyond Earth, it would surely rattle some cages—especially those which contain anthropocentric people, or people tightly attached to religious beliefs that would have us at the center of it all. It's a fascinating question to ponder, but don't hold your breath for an answer any time soon. Maybe in three million years.