So where is everyone?

[Moonliner]

Billions upon billions of possibilities.... So where is everyone? Why are there no signs civilization off this pathetic rock we live on? Where are you ET?

With all the recent developments in Cosmology, parallel universes probably do exist, black holes (at least some of them) might really be doorways to these alternate universes, etc... It makes me wonder. At some point in a species technological development does it become so easy to destroy itself that no society survives? Imagine if any backyard dabbler could open a doorway to an alternate universe full of anti-matter, or right on the heart of a star. How long would we survive? Are quasars really just civilizations bitting the big one?

[Snowflake]

ET went home?

[€uroMeinke]

I'm on my way to work, I leave the task of annihilating civilization as we know it to someone more industrious than myself.

[Capt Jack]

agreed. all that destroy the universe stuff just smacks of 'effort'


blech

[Moonliner]

I'm on my way to work, I leave the task of annihilating civilization as we know it to someone more industrious than myself.

That's just fine but don't come crying to me when your molecules get fused into deterium while you were at work and could have been at a nice Tiki bar instead.

[Alex]

Odds are that intelligent life capable of leaving indirect evidence of their existence is rare enough that temporal and spatial proximity are unlikely.

While the multiverse theories are interesting they really don't have much involvement in where the life is since none of the current theories allow for anything more than one way travel, just once, at the time of the local Big Bang.

Using conservative (but not extremely pessimistic) numbers in the Drake Equation suggests between 5 and 50 communicating civilizations in the galaxy at this time, so with the shortness of our search and its spottiness (making pretty narrow guesses on how we might expect to see communication/evidence) so not finding anything isn't a huge surprise to me unless it turns out the true Drake values are really huge.

So I'll just wait for the really good telescopes so that we can directly watch the aliens building their Dyson Spheres.