12-23-2020, 07:30 AM
I can buy any of those arguments w/r/t a particular civilization, but I can't get behind the idea that any of them might apply to all civilizations.
So the civilization at Denebola considers it wasteful and barbaric to build out a Dyson Swarm. Fine. But we don't seriously believe, do we, that every possible civilization everywhere feels the same way? Or runs into the same limitations or problems?
Even if 99% of all civilizations don't build big obvious things we could spot from another galaxy, the fact that we see a million galaxies without such things would strongly imply that civilizations don't exist at all in 99.99% of all galaxies.
The only reason I'd consider this particular signal to be a possibility is that the Milky Way is a special case, because we're here.
The possibility of panspermia - the idea that we and some other life may have a common origin - means our own existence implies that the odds of finding other life in the Milky Way is considerably higher than elsewhere. And for the same reason the chance of finding it in our own neighborhood considerably higher than in the rest of the Milky Way. So, Proxima is among the highest possible probabilities of the stars we can see.
But that's kind of like being the tallest earthworm. As burrowing creatures their height is usually negative.
But....
So the civilization at Denebola considers it wasteful and barbaric to build out a Dyson Swarm. Fine. But we don't seriously believe, do we, that every possible civilization everywhere feels the same way? Or runs into the same limitations or problems?
Even if 99% of all civilizations don't build big obvious things we could spot from another galaxy, the fact that we see a million galaxies without such things would strongly imply that civilizations don't exist at all in 99.99% of all galaxies.
The only reason I'd consider this particular signal to be a possibility is that the Milky Way is a special case, because we're here.
The possibility of panspermia - the idea that we and some other life may have a common origin - means our own existence implies that the odds of finding other life in the Milky Way is considerably higher than elsewhere. And for the same reason the chance of finding it in our own neighborhood considerably higher than in the rest of the Milky Way. So, Proxima is among the highest possible probabilities of the stars we can see.
But that's kind of like being the tallest earthworm. As burrowing creatures their height is usually negative.
But....