Could we be one of the OLDEST civilizations in the galaxy?

On Jan 23, 2007, at 23:34 UTC, Jake wrote:

> I'm not buying this theory that if they were out there we would know
> already.. We've only been seriously looking for less than 50 years..
> It takes way longer than that for most detectable signs (i.e. radio
> and microwaves being the method SETI uses to look)to get across the
> galaxy..

But they don't have to get across the galaxy, do they? If they're out
there, they're right next door (just outside of whatever area they've
declared to be our nature preserve).

> Even the closest star Alpha Centauri lies 4.35 light-years
> from the Sun..

Right. So signals from there would only take 4.35 years to get here.
Searching for 50 years should be way overkill. As would searching at
all, for that matter -- if they wanted to say hello, no searching would
be necessary. (Not that SETI wasn't worth a shot, just in case.)

> It doesn't take a
> mathematician to figure out that even just the light waves traveling
> from another occupied solar system on the other side of the galaxy
> will not reach the earth for 10s of thousands of years..

Yeah, but perhaps it takes a mathematician to understand that the above
point is irrelevant, because the first spacefaring civilization to
arise is going to fill the entire galaxy in fairly short order. What
do the rest of you think? Is this point clear enough, or still obscure?

> Even here on our own planet people kept wanting to believe that they
> were "special".. Until they explored and kept finding more people who
> thought they were "special" too..

And notice, everywhere they went, they found life. Heck, everywhere
they went they found *people*. There was no great open expanse of
juicy, resource-rich land that simply hadn't been colonized yet (I
don't count Antarctica because it was uninhabitable until recently).
As soon as life arose that was able to colonize a niche, it did so.
This is just how life works.

> I think the same is probably true
> all over the universe.. And YES here in the Milkyway too..

Yes, exactly. There will not be great open expanses of resource-rich
star systems that are empty, unless no life has yet arisen which is
able to colonize it. And once such life arises, those systems will be
colonized in fairly short order -- by us, if we're the first such
civilization to develop. If not, then they've already been settled by
somebody else.

Your Earth analogy is a good one, and illustrates why the SETI picture
of thousands of advanced civilizations, separated by thousands of
light-years full of uninhabited, resource-rich stars, is just plain
silly.

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...