Aliens Might Just Be Too Far Away

[AndyLeeGraham]

I enjoyed that the majority of people add a God like aspect to everything. For example something can travel faster than the speed of light. And, the same people would deny the possiblity of a God; and then use God. Astrology, vampire, etc.

[rideroftheweek]

People always focus on the dimension of space, but for me it's the time dimension that makes it virtually impossible to make contact with alien species. We've only been around for 100 000 years. Even if we're around for 1 million years (unlikely in my opinion), that's a tiny fragment of time in the universe. The chance of them being close enough to make contact AND being around at the about same time as us is highly unlikely if you ask me. Maybe we're close enough, but we miss them by 10 000 years.

[tothphu]

An interesting tidbit is that there are many more different branches of bacteria than plants or animals. Which could partially explain that there was evolution during that 2.5B year period.

Also multicellular life is hardly a standalone branch. We have 10x more bacteria living in and on us to keep us alive. Wouldn't be possible otherwise.

[Utkarsh]

Not only is the universe reeeeally big and almost entirely empty, it is ALSO expanding! And that too at an accelerating rate! So the faraway aliens might just... never reach us, even if they manage to travel at lightspeed or beyond. It makes me quite sad. :(

[Niven]

Not enough is taught about the "Boring Billion" - that long, long period of Earth's history where almost NOTHING happened. The oceans' pH was wrong, all the landmass was on one side of the globe, temperature-regulating currents and winds weren't working like they do today yet, and massive mountains blocked rain from reaching scorching hot deserts. In short, Earth was an alien wasteland for about a billion years during the Precambrian, with conditions that were very challenging to anything but the most hardy of bacteria.
Also, Naval says we don't have even anything like a theory about how we might travel faster than light, but we still haven't ruled out Einstein-Rosen bridge theory.

[Ivan.A.Trollyouski]

When we are the smartest creature we’ve found and by far.. why would we expect to find smarter creatures?

[MosesRabuka]

Rare Earth, why Complex life is Uncommon in the Universe

[RajPatilPune]

Speed of consciousness > Speed of light