An archive of the South African PCFormat forums.
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It's impossible to capture the scale of our galaxy on your computer screen, but darned if the European Southern Observatory isn't going to try. The observatory has released a 108500×81500 pixel mosaic of the central parts of the Milky Way. You weren't planning on doing anything else with your weekend, right?
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Assuming the theoretical possibility of sentient life in other star systems, said life would not be looking at us per se, unless the star system is within a few thousand light years from us (keep in mind that nothing currently known to us moves faster than this speed). A sentient alien culture located ~65 million light years from us and observing our planet at this point in time would, in reality, be witnessing the K–T extinction event.GreyWolf wrote:I wonder in how many of those systems there are people looking right back at us?
Well thanks for that, Captain Murderfun!Ron2K wrote:Assuming the theoretical possibility of sentient life in other star systems, said life would not be looking at us per se, unless the star system is within a few thousand light years from us (keep in mind that nothing currently known to us moves faster than this speed). A sentient alien culture located ~65 million light years from us and observing our planet at this point in time would, in reality, be witnessing the K–T extinction event.
Of course, the inverse is also true -- which is why I personally view searches for extraterrestrial life as a waste of time and resources. Assuming that extraterrestrial life developed in other star systems in the first place, we still aren't going to detect it unless it developed considerably earlier than us, and as I've already pointed out, age of civilization and distance from us is directly related.
Considering that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (Milky Way around 13.2 billion years old) and the first humans only emerged 200k years ago (our solar system being around 4.5 billion years old), I'd say that leaves plenty of time for other civilizations to rival and even far exceed us, even when we look out thousands of light years. Detection is one thing though, but communication is another.Ron2K wrote:
Of course, the inverse is also true -- which is why I personally view searches for extraterrestrial life as a waste of time and resources. Assuming that extraterrestrial life developed in other star systems in the first place, we still aren't going to detect it unless it developed considerably earlier than us, and as I've already pointed out, age of civilization and distance from us is directly related.
It's still a narrow window of opportunity -- keeping in mind that at those distances, detecting a potentially habitable celestial body is exceptionally difficult, let alone detecting whether it is indeed being habited.KALSTER wrote:Considering that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (Milky Way around 13.2 billion years old) and the first humans only emerged 200k years ago (our solar system being around 4.5 billion years old), I'd say that leaves plenty of time for other civilizations to rival and even far exceed us, even when we look out thousands of light years. Detection is one thing though, but communication is another.
GreyWolf wrote:Well thanks for that, Captain Murderfun!
