Extraterrestrials Probably Haven't Found Us - Yet

kasparn writes "The Guardian today has a story about the Danish astrophysicist Rasmus Bjoerk, who recently conducted simulations on how long it will take to colonize the Milky Way. The basic idea is to send out probes in different directions (including various heights above the galactic plane). He estimates that it will take some 10 billion years to explore 4 % of the Milky Way. Since the age of the Universe is of the same order, his conclusion is that aliens can't have had time required to find us yet."

Comments

Duh

[Reality Master 101]

Sheesh, talk about "proof by lack of imagination." This is supposed to answer the Fermi Paradox?

You can't explore a galaxy with a handful of probes. 72 probes??? First of all, if you're going to do it that way, you'd create hundreds of thousands of probes, if not millions of probes (mass production would reduce the cost). Second, you still probably wouldn't do it that way. You'd wait until you had the technology to make self-replicating probes, and the galaxy could potentially be explored in thousands of years.

Not impressed by this guy's argument.

Re:Based on poor assumptions

[QuantumG]

Yeah, imagine a civilization that, having discovered enlightenment, actually embraced it and dedicated their industrial base to further it, instead of shuffling it off to the minor specialists who they then make beg for funding, typically by militarizing their research.