This is what you keep coming back to, yet keep failing to support. You bring up these numbers, but even if there were 1.8 million civilizations who have used radio within the last 5,000 years, the odds of us catching one of those signals within such a short span are very low. We would have to be listening as those signals reached us, presuming we had the technology to pick up those signals. Given the time it takes for those signals to traverse space, and the length of time that the universe has been around, assuming that we should have heard something within a 50 year span is absurd.
You dismiss the idea that they only broadcast for a short amount of time, or that such civilizations go bust, but those things happen. We've only been broadcasting for 100 years, and we're already getting away from it, so what if that's the norm throughout the universe? What if radio really is a totally primitive means of broadcasting? And who says advanced civilizations must exist indefinitely? A sizable asteroid would collapse our own civilization back to the stone age; you don't think that can happen elsewhere?
Fact is, you've got a notion and you don't want to budge from it. That's all this is. That's what you can't articulate your points, and fill your posts up with noise. That's why you call Shostack a joke when he explains why we haven't gotten a signal yet, then try to appeal to his authority when you can't answer my rebuttals. There's no serious thought behind your theory, just emotion. You point out that the article doesn't say it's "impossible" to detect most signals, just difficult, so you simply assume that such signals would be picked up. You "support" this claim by saying that our technology is meant to pick up patterns, as if that makes a difference. Clearly what you fail to understand is that the difficulty in picking up those signals is that it would be hard to even see the pattern in them they'd be so ruined by the travel. But again, you know nothing about this stuff, you're just grasping at straws.
18 million. Not 1.8 million. I was sleepy. And I corrected myself within 10 minutes of posting that ...
I am pretty sure I never said Shostak was a "joke". I did say he was making excuses, and the excuses were flimsy. I explained why.
Nor have I "appealed to his authority". I did, however, note that we were attempting to detect radio signals, and he clearly thinks we would if they were there ... faint or not. I further noted we have made huge strides in the last 50 years ...vastly improving our ability to detect artificial signals.
That said, I have asserted Shostak and others have not considered other, eminently plausible reasons for our failure to detect signals. Such as the reason I have hypothesized.
The "time it takes to traverse space" is not especially germane. If signals could
not be detected, we wouldn't be listening for them. You have failed to "back up" your assertions.
We have zero evidence that radio-capable civilizations "go bust". We know of one, and we haven't gone bust. That was just a hypothesis put forth by Drake and others as one of many
possible reasons for not detecting any signals over the last half a century.
No evidence we are "getting away from (radio)" either. That is also fantasy. Until we come up with some other form of communication, we may NEVER get away from it. What if radio is the ONLY way to communicate? You have no evidence there is some more 'advanced' form, other than pure conjecture and speculation from people like Shostak, Kaku and science fiction movies and books.
If an asteroid threw us back to the stone age, we'd eventually recover and start broadcasting again. Since the laws of physics would not have changed, we would not have much choice.
Your entire argument is based on "what if?" You know nothing about alien civilizations, other than fictional tales, which you (and an awful lot of other people) have apparently confused with fact. Warp drives? Tachyon transmissions? Worm holes? Super-advanced civilizations flitting around the universe? No evidence for their existence. NONE.
At least I have provided
some evidence to back my hypothesis: our own planet.
Like I said before ... I'm sorry for trampling on your "beliefs" ... because that's all they are. Beliefs based on years and years of Star Trek, Star Wars, and endless speculation from popular scientists.
I repeat ... we have NO evidence there are 'super' technological ways to communicate. Regardless of what "spooky" things happen on the quantum level, regardless of all the idle conjecture, everything we have observed in the macro universe follows strict laws.
Thought you said you were done. Several times.
But I don't mind.
