Why have Alien species not made contact with Humans? (Poll)

[ArchedThunder]

We're a backwater planet in the space boonies, if any race is capable of traveling here they have no reason to. I also imagine most intelligent aliens are probably in a situation similar to ours where technology and location limits their potential for interaction with others.

 

[Tygre]

As we spread into the cosmos we too will find that the further we go it's just too much fucking effort for too little benefit.

Our own orbit? Absolutely, extremely useful, been doing it for 50 years, will keep doing it.
The moon? Totally, useful for science stuff, maybe some resources, plus easy commute.
NEOs? Yup, we'll grab a few of those, if only to prove we can.
Inner planets? Mars is probably worth a go, and there's some weird possibilities that even make Venus plausible.
Asteroid belt? Nah. Unless we find something real funky on Ceres or something.
Outer planets? This is a stretch. Maybe a Jovian moon or two is worth a look, but man, it starts getting HARD at this point.
Kuiper Belt? Oort Cloud? Lol, no, why would we. It's all useless junk that is VERY far away. If I told you there was a free Pontiac Fiero waiting for you at the South Pole, how eager would you be to go get it?

At the point where this sort of Solar System level expansion is plausible it's much more likely that we look inwards rather than continuing to struggle outwards. There's nothing for us out there. It's hard, and there's little to no reward.

 

[RedSonja]

As we spread into the cosmos we too will find that the further we go it's just too much fucking effort for too little benefit.

Our own orbit? Absolutely, extremely useful, been doing it for 50 years, will keep doing it.
The moon? Totally, useful for science stuff, maybe some resources, plus easy commute.
NEOs? Yup, we'll grab a few of those, if only to prove we can.
Inner planets? Mars is probably worth a go, and there's some weird possibilities that even make Venus plausible.
Asteroid belt? Nah. Unless we find something real funky on Ceres or something.
Outer planets? This is a stretch. Maybe a Jovian moon or two is worth a look, but man, it starts getting HARD at this point.
Kuiper Belt? Oort Cloud? Lol, no, why would we. It's all useless junk that is VERY far away. If I told you there was a free Pontiac Fiero waiting for you at the South Pole, how eager would you be to go get it?

At the point where this sort of Solar System level expansion is plausible it's much more likely that we look inwards rather than continuing to struggle outwards. There's nothing for us out there. It's hard, and there's little to no reward.

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We'll never explore the Outer Wilds with an attitude like that!

 

[AtomicShroom]

I read an interesting thing some years ago. Apparently it's possible for two planets to share the same orbit if they are at opposite points of the orbit. But in such a case the sun would block the view of the other planet and we'd have no way of knowing it even existed before sending probes into space. So we could have had a twin planet with intelligent life on the other side of the sun and first found out about it in the 1960s or whatever. Obviously physicists would have known *something* was there because of the gravitational pull and so on but that's like knowing about planet x or whatever. This idea would make for a really interesting sci-fi story.


travel yes but if an advanced nearby civilization could detect our existence then it seems possible they would be able to contact us as well.

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Even reasonably close solar systems are hundreds and thousands of lightyears away. Over just a hundred years ago, we didn't even have the technological means to even detect any alien communication attempt, much less respond. How can you expect any meaningful communication when any round trip would take hundreds or thousands of years?

 

[Sargerus]

Because our solar system's mass relay is inactive.

 

[FliX]

As we spread into the cosmos we too will find that the further we go it's just too much fucking effort for too little benefit.

Our own orbit? Absolutely, extremely useful, been doing it for 50 years, will keep doing it.
The moon? Totally, useful for science stuff, maybe some resources, plus easy commute.
NEOs? Yup, we'll grab a few of those, if only to prove we can.
Inner planets? Mars is probably worth a go, and there's some weird possibilities that even make Venus plausible.
Asteroid belt? Nah. Unless we find something real funky on Ceres or something.
Outer planets? This is a stretch. Maybe a Jovian moon or two is worth a look, but man, it starts getting HARD at this point.
Kuiper Belt? Oort Cloud? Lol, no, why would we. It's all useless junk that is VERY far away. If I told you there was a free Pontiac Fiero waiting for you at the South Pole, how eager would you be to go get it?

At the point where this sort of Solar System level expansion is plausible it's much more likely that we look inwards rather than continuing to struggle outwards. There's nothing for us out there. It's hard, and there's little to no reward.

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Without FTL or something equivalent this is almost certainly true.
Even with things like stasis flight it seems kinda pointless...

 

[Torpedo Vegas]

If these where the most powerful people on an alien planet, would we be in a hurry to make contact with them?

 

[Ciao]

 

[NotVeryFriendly]

Without FTL or something equivalent this is almost certainly true.
Even with things like stasis flight it seems kinda pointless...

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Even if it can be justified in terms of 'effort' something which isn't even touched on there is the ethical issues of sending people on decade (assuming we get within percentage-points of lights-speed which is far, far out of reach)-long journeys; that's slightly easier to digest when people can choose to partake in journeys and it will end within a lifetime, but much tougher to swallow when you condemn generations (much more likely) to life imprisonment in a ship which almost necessitates a fully autonomous vehicle that can survive for generations (which, in the best case, could not report back for years).

 

[T002 Tyrant]

They're way too far away to make contact even with near light speed travel it'd be next to near impossible without spending decades if not hundreds of years traveling, and then finding us is a needle in a haystack. It's unlikely aliens have ever visited Earth. If anything Earth is more likely to receive unmanned alien space probes. Or we just live in a really quiet neighbourhood and somewhere thousands of lightyears away there's a whole bunch of intelligent life and because this part is so lifeless, no-one has bothered looking for us.

 

[Arebours]

Even reasonably close solar systems are hundreds and thousands of lightyears away. Over just a hundred years ago, we didn't even have the technological means to even detect any alien communication attempt, much less respond. How can you expect any meaningful communication when any round trip would take hundreds or thousands of years?

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yes obviously. I already responded to that. I said "nearby" in my post and by that I mean near enough that communication would be possible. AFAIK there's hundreds of stars within 50 ly and if life supporting planets are common then who knows. Could be every damn star within our neighborhood has a planet with life. Could be we are alone in the entire universe. I think 100 year communication round trips are doable. Even 200 years and beyond are reasonable to me. One communication cycle might be enough to say everything worth saying.

 

[Weltall Zero]

They dont exist, every alien out there is less advanced than us

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That would mean the Great Filter is behind us, which is certainly a much better scenario than it still being ahead of us ("every alien out there is not much more advanced than us because something (e.g. climate change) kills them before they can reach interstellarity").

 

[lmcfigs]

Maybe they're not very smart

 

[thevid]

I really like the anthill analogy. An anthill is a fairly complex society of living beings, and yet it's so far beneath us that almost no person will go out of their way to interact with it (possibly other than to kick it over if it is in our way). Ants are so far beneath us, we simply don't care about trying to interact with them or making them aware of us. An incredibly advanced alien civilization could view Earth like we view an anthill.

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I don't like this analogy because we do study and interact with ants. Sure, individually people generally don't take notice of ants, but as a species we study and interact with ants and even smaller, less significant things. If we saw ants who seemed like they could communicate with us, we would absolutely try to communicate back.

 

[Deleted member 3010]

They're looking at us and they're like "Fuck this, species on this planet are way too primitive."

 

[RadzPrower]

I mean, look at this miserable, dying mudball...would you come here if you were them?

 

[jerf]

Hey OP, imagine you are driving down a long and lonesome empty highway and come across a lone house along the road. You can tell the house used to be really nice but has rotted due to years of abuse and neglect. There is also a giant trash fire in the front yard. Do you stop and say hello?

 

[Shifty360]

The size of the ever expanding Universe and the laws of physics are the barrier to exploration, plus markers for our existence don't stand out against a backdrop of billions of other possible inhabited Planets.

Sheer pool of possibilities plus distance apart equals a lot of luck is going be required to even notice each other, visiting is something will take leaps in Science that may not ever happen.

We are alone, we just live really far apart.

 

[MechaMarmaset]

I think it's naive to ever expect interaction with another intelligent life form outside our own planet. Humans have been around for 200K years. We just figured out radio waves 130 years ago and we'll all probably be dead or not using radio in another 100 or so. We blipped onto the cosmic frontier for 0.0000015% of the universe's life and expect to intersect with other intelligent life knowing how massive and sparse the universe is? It's like dropping two people in the ocean at opposite ends of the world and expecting them to swim past each other at some point, except like a kajillion times less likely. Or just wait a few hundred million years for those future squids to evolve and that'll be the closest thing we get.

 

[MIMIC]

I feel like it's a combination of the first and last options. We may be alone presently, but it's possible that an alien civilization already existed and already vanished prior to human existence.

 

[mutantmagnet]

Why visit what would be relatively a backwater planet if we don't have any unique attributes as a tourist attraction?

 

[8byte]

I believe any life form that is sentient will also have a strong instinct for self preservation (much like humanity). I think because of this, any advancements they make in technology will ultimately (like humanity) lead to their demise prior to technological discoveries that would allow them to travel to meet us.

I don't see civilizations being selfless and peaceful long enough to gain the ability to reach other solar systems within our galaxy. Just ain't happening.

 

[RedSwirl]

Who says that any intelligent civilization will sooner or later discover modern technology? Maybe our human development was sheer luck and the exception and all other intelligent life forms are stuck and never develop

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I've had this thought too. The only reason we are where we are now technologically is because of fossil fuels. Fossil Fuels exist because a bunch of other species went extinct so long ago that their remains turned into oil. What if some other planet out there has life that actually has greater brain capacity than us, but they just don't have the right set of natural resources to advance to a point of launching themselves into space?

And our intelligent species showed up after five mass extinctions -- five resets on life on Earth. What if some other planet with intelligent life has had fewer mass extinctions, or none? That would certainly change up the calculations on how much time it takes for an intelligent species to evolve on a planet.

They might have made contact but we don't have the technology to receive the call / understand it. Same reason why they are not interested in visiting us, the low-tech human planet.

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This is one of the answers I prefer too.

I think it's naive to ever expect interaction with another intelligent life form outside our own planet. Humans have been around for 200K years. We just figured out radio waves 130 years ago and we'll all probably be dead or not using radio in another 100 or so. We blipped onto the cosmic frontier for 0.0000015% of the universe's life and expect to intersect with other intelligent life knowing how massive and sparse the universe is? It's like dropping two people in the ocean at opposite ends of the world and expecting them to swim past each other at some point, except like a kajillion times less likely. Or just wait a few hundred million years for those future squids to evolve and that'll be the closest thing we get.

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People keep bringing this up to point out that it's more likely aliens will reach/contact this planet long after we're gone, but I also think it proves it's entire possible aliens have already contacted/reached this planet long before humans showed up, and simply left without a trace (detectible to us). Scientists right now think any trace of an industrialized civilization that dies out on (or leaves) Earth would be completely erased within a few million years.

If Aliens had for instance actually colonized Earth 68 million years ago and then that colony got wiped out by that asteroid, no trace of it would survive today. There'd be no way for us to know they were there, but by the same token there's no way for us to know that they weren't there either. MAYBE there would be a thin layer of some odd artificial material in the soil, but that's the best we'd ever be able to hope for.

 

[Biteren]

why haven't aliens talked to us yet?

cause we suck.

 

[Kelsdesu]

It could be any one of those options. I tend to believe that any life or sign of it will be Von Neuman machines that self replicate.

 

[Poppy]

the amount of resources it seems to take to achieve even basic dominance over your local solar system is utterly ginormous, no reason to expect that most civilizations even make it to that point just because we are trying to

mostly i just wonder about a theoretical scenario where two neighboring planets support life and how insane that must be for them if they both develop some form of civilization by the time one of them achieves spaceflight, that shit must be ridiculous

 

[HockeyBird]

They visited. Saw that Trump was president and determined that there was no intelligent life.

Real answer is that space is really big and intelligent life is probably incredibly rare. There may not even be another space traveling civilization in our galaxy. Even then, without the ability to travel faster than light, visiting other solar systems takes years, thousands of years, and millions of year. So given that, the probability that an alien race would visit us during our short time as an intelligent race is super super low.

 

[jett]

Shit is really far fucking away in the universe.

There's no point to bother "visiting" us.

 

[hechicero]

too far away from each other . we will never get out of our own solar system

 

[Mido]

We are their Truman Show.

 

[Agent Unknown]

We're a backwater planet in the space boonies, if any race is capable of traveling here they have no reason to. I also imagine most intelligent aliens are probably in a situation similar to ours where technology and location limits their potential for interaction with others.

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You're right that as of right now, the earth and our solar system is seen as a random, dull, backwater area of the galaxy with little strategic value. But once the Centauri find out we have lots of cultural trinkets and fun, goofy human junk that they'll want to buy they'll make contact with us and offer to sell us jumpgate technology in return for some trade deals. There will be a few hijinks along the way with the Centauri telling us that humans are a "long lost Centauri tribe" and bragging to us that they practically run the known galaxy. But then we'll get our hands on some Centauri DNA and find out despite outward appearances we're actual nothing alike biologically and that they haven't been in a position of serious power in the eyes of the other races for over a 100 years. They did try to warn us though about being super careful when we make first contact with the Minbari and they're fun to have a drink with now and then in the Zocolo, I'll give 'em that.

 

[Mage_of_Cinder]

I'm gonna go with Fermi Paradox and just not advanced enough yet.

We humans have come a long way in a short time since the invention of ac/dc currents and computers. That being said, it took in the neighborhood of six extinction events for intelligent life to take hold, and thousands of years of civilization before electricity.

It just might be possible that alien civilizations observed our planet hundreds of thousands years ago (maybe millions) and moved on when no intelligent life was spotted and forgot about Earth believing nothing would come of it.

 

[Yourfawthaaa]

Pretty sure they watched what went on today and said "They aint ready for us yet".

 

[mikeys_legendary]

Because they see how we behave and decided it isn't worth it.

 

[SindbadtheSailor]

They're still waiting for some sign of intelligent life

 

[GenTask]

Because we would be like Ants compared to a species that discovered the secrets to space travel. A species simply to observe and study to see if we make it or not. We think we know everything but that's so naive to me.

All those reports of UFOs hovering over and fucking with Nuclear weapons made by Humans should give anyone a clue.

We are a childish, arrogant, destructive species on one coin while on the other capable of empathy and great achievements. And if we end up colonizing space, The Expanse may as well be a documentary if that bad behavior side of the coin doesn't change.

 

[Raskol]

Space is far too big to traverse. I don't see this ever changing.

 

[Mokujin]

Distance, the universe is just stupidly large. I got kind of sad after I learnt about Local Groups and how they are getting further from each others all the time.

 

[Kemal86]

Dark Forest. We (could be) behaving with incredible stupidity by being so loud - probably a good thing space is so vast and no one has heard us yet.

 

[Deleted member 59109]

I went with the limitations. In the entire universe, I think there are aliens which are about as advanced or more advanced than humans, but they might not have the capability to travel to other solar systems or galaxies yet. I mean we can't even make it to the edge of our solar system yet

 

[MadMike]

Aliens have observed Earth, and concluded that there is no sign of intelligent life.

 

[loco]

Maybe our biomes are considered garbage tier to them and are not worth harvesting? We could be the re-roll planet of this universe to these advanced civilizations.

 

[Parthenios]

I don't think the math works out on there being an energy source that could pilot sentient beings interstellar. I don't think the economics work out either (what society would expend resources on what is likely a one way trip with no benefit).

Basically, why we don't to the moon or anywhere else.

 

[daveo42]

Space is so infinite that we may never actually meet aliens because of the distances needed to travel to meet them and most civilizations will likely die out before reaching 1.0 on the Kardashev Scale.

Real reason though is aliens did a fly by, took a look at our planet, and decided to come back in a few centuries to take all our resources after we've killed ourselves out.

 

[Van Bur3n]

Because we still eat ass.

 

[Unleash the Flutes]

The dark forest theory is why imo.

 

[RedSwirl]

I'm gonna go with Fermi Paradox and just not advanced enough yet.

We humans have come a long way in a short time since the invention of ac/dc currents and computers. That being said, it took in the neighborhood of six extinction events for intelligent life to take hold, and thousands of years of civilization before electricity.

It just might be possible that alien civilizations observed our planet hundreds of thousands years ago (maybe millions) and moved on when no intelligent life was spotted and forgot about Earth believing nothing would come of it.

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Is this really the "accepted" or "most popular" answer to the Fermi Paradox?

 

[hateradio]

space boonies

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What isn't a space boonie though.

If these where the most powerful people on an alien planet, would we be in a hurry to make contact with them?

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Adorable, so yes!

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

I think it's naive to ever expect interaction with another intelligent life form outside our own planet. Humans have been around for 200K years. We just figured out radio waves 130 years ago and we'll all probably be dead or not using radio in another 100 or so. We blipped onto the cosmic frontier for 0.0000015% of the universe's life and expect to intersect with other intelligent life knowing how massive and sparse the universe is? It's like dropping two people in the ocean at opposite ends of the world and expecting them to swim past each other at some point, except like a kajillion times less likely. Or just wait a few hundred million years for those future squids to evolve and that'll be the closest thing we get.

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NoFunAllowed.jpg

 

[Kalel114]

Too many glasses full of contaminated water.