Cornell: Possibility of Alien Contact Could Be 1,500 Years Away

[bystander]

Possibility of Alien Contact Could Be 1,500 Years Away
Cornell University | 2016 Jun 14

If you’re expecting to hear from aliens from across the universe, it could be a while.

Deconstructing the Fermi Paradox and pairing it with the Mediocrity Principle into a fresh equation, Cornell astronomers say extraterrestrials likely won’t phone home – or Earth – for 1,500 years. ...

The Fermi Paradox says billions of Earth-like planets exist in our galaxy, yet no aliens have contacted or visited us. Thus the paradox: the cosmos teems with possibility. The mediocrity principle – originated by 16th-century mathematician Copernicus – says Earth’s physical attributes are not unique, as natural processes are likely common throughout the cosmos, and therefore aliens won’t discover us for a while. ...

Combining the equations for the Fermi Paradox and the mediocrity principle, the authors suggests Earth might hear from an alien civilization when approximately half of the Milky Way Galaxy has been signaled in about 1,500 years. “This is not to say that we must be reached by then or else we are, in fact, alone. We simply claim that it is somewhat unlikely that we will not hear anything before that time,” Solomonides said. ...

“We are on the third planet around a tediously boring star surrounded by other completely normal stars about two-thirds of the way along one of several arms of a remarkably average spiral galaxy. The mediocrity principle is the idea that because we are not in any special location in the universe, we should not be anything special in the universe.”

A Probabilistic Analysis of the Fermi Paradox - Evan Solomonides, Yervant Terzian

• arXiv.org > physics > arXiv:1604.07687 > 26 Apr 2016 (v1), 01 May 2016 (v2)

[Ann]

Solomonides said:
We are on the third planet around a tediously boring star surrounded by other completely normal stars about two-thirds of the way along one of several arms of a remarkably average spiral galaxy.

Hey! If you are so bored with your life here on tediously boring dime-a-dozen there-are-billions-like-it-in-the-Milky-Way Earth, I suggest you volunteer for the first manned trip to Mars. At least you will see and experience something different than boring, boring, humdrum predictable tedious old Earth!

Ann

[neufer]

We are on the third planet around a tediously boring star surrounded by other completely normal stars about two-thirds of the way along one of several arms of a remarkably average spiral galaxy.

Hey! If you are so bored with your life here on tediously boring dime-a-dozen there-are-billions-like-it-in-the-Milky-Way Earth, I suggest you volunteer for the first manned trip to Mars. At least you will see and experience something different than boring, boring, humdrum predictable tedious old Earth!

“I said, ‘Hey Donald, you got a script?’ and he pulled it out of his pocket. He said, ‘You know I hate scripts, they’re so boring.’ And I said, ‘Put me down in favor of boring.’”

[orin stepanek]

They wouldn't be so hard to find if they weren't so far away and weren't hidden among all those stars!

[Fred the Cat]

Maybe this was a better place to discuss possible alien life. 1,500 light "ears" away.