Time is the enemy that prevents contact.

[Shadowprophet]

I was doing a little math, Thinking about the cosmos, as I tend to do. Full knowing that in the vastness of this universe, we are not alone.

Still. Space time is the enemy here, even at the speed of light, our oldest radio broadcasts have only traveled 125 light year's. The problem is, just the observable part of our universe is 93 billion light years across. The sad reality is, we know intelligent life must be out there, I mean, here we are, we exist. We can't be the only life in existence. However, intelligent life could very likely be so very far away that even communication at the speed of light could take millions if not billions of year's... It begs the question. If intelligent life exists out there, but its so very far away that even communication is impossible, then philosophically speaking, wouldn't we still be alone? The poll question is, if highly intelligent life exists out there somewhere, but it's so incredibly far away that any form of communication or interaction were impossible, then, would it even matter?

 

[pigfarmer]

Interesting.

If we were talking about oh, say Bigfoot(s) there would be discussion about the size and nature of the area it inhabits required to support a population. I'd concentrate just on our galaxy alone, it's plenty big enough for me to ponder.

Statistically Life is plentiful, I doubt anyone would argue that. When you're playing a numbers game that big maybe intelligent Life capable of space travel it isn't as rare as we think. What if our isolation is part of an Intelligent Design - keep us away from one another to allow development ? A built in safeguard.