P A N

"during human existence" is not an accurate measure at all.

earth is young. that doesn't mean the rest of the planets in the universe are.

the idea of space travel should also not be limited to the idea of limited means. it's likely that with an understanding of physics millions of times greater than our own (relative to our difference in age as a species), these civilizations don't have to deal with overcoming the problems we humans face as the pilots of jet-propelled craft.

then you need to consider the size of a UNIVERSE SOCIETY. i don't know exactly how long humans have been around. but i wouldn't call the notion impossible that a species, or very large group of different species co-mingling, could be millions of times older than humans. thus creating a possible population of numbers and vastness unimaginable. perhaps there are more of them than there are stars in the sky... perhaps enabling them, if they did not create all the planets in the universe themselves, that is, to keep tabs on all life-bearing planets.

and who knows, perhaps we're under an intergalactic quarantine, effectively disabling our evolutionary path... cuz we do SO MUCH STUPID SH*T.

Dom

By "during human existance" I meant that they would have to have become space-faring and find us by the time humans are alive. There may well have been a species with a space empire millions of years before humans but they got extinct by a gamma ray burst or something. What I'm saying is that depending on the frequency of life it is would be very unlikely to come into contact with aliens during our existance. Not ruling out the possiblity at all.

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noise

this conversation only works if we pretend that faster-than-light travel is actually possible.

are we allowed to pretend whatever we want? if so, i have some things to say about invisible emus and their plot to assassinate me (as predicted by the ancient mythology of the Kalahari)

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my flac collection

Dom

There are actually particles theorized to travel faster than the speed of light, and the theory of special relativity does not disallow faster-than-light travel.

Besides, you do not necessarily need faster-than-light travel for space exploration. For example, with technology we have now we could reach Mars within about 210 - 250 days. With technology in, say, 100 years time that time could be drastically reduced. Because of this, it means that, rather than using faster-than-light travel, you could just colonized each planet in turn, slowly getting further out. This is one of the reasons why actual contact with other life is so unlikely.

Edit: In fact, Barack Obama has said:

So space travel without faster-than-light travel is certainly not impossible.

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