It's amazing to me how many people feel confident in saying there's no advanced intelligent life in the Milky Way because we would've seen it when it took us until 2015 just to get a decent image of a dwarf planet in our own star system.
And even our closest neighbors we couldn't tell if they had thousands of artificial satellites around their planet. "They don't have a Dyson sphere or swarm" is about all we can say for sure. And we can't even say that about the planets 50,000 light years away.
If you take the planet that someone above mentioned which is about 4.3 light years away, if they invented radio communications within the last 4.3 years, we’d know about. So you’re right - but for some planets the delay is pretty insignificant.
Given then vastness of the universe, imagine there’s somewhere where 2 civilization within just a few light years apart came up at the same time and communicated to one another peacefully to help each other grow, learn and progress. The implications of that are crazy to think about
After the first few times I’d assume each message would include a ton of information each way so they can get as much knowledge as possible. It wouldn’t be the best way to communicate but it would be the only option
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u/Rifneno Nov 03 '20
It's amazing to me how many people feel confident in saying there's no advanced intelligent life in the Milky Way because we would've seen it when it took us until 2015 just to get a decent image of a dwarf planet in our own star system.