Our radio transmissions might appear to aliens as some indian smoke signals would appear to an F-16 pilot passing overhead.
See James Clerk Maxwell. The man who changed everything (Amazon).
He devised 200 field equations which no one understood until a self taught mama’s boy named Oliver Heaviside read them, change four of the field equations to vector equations and discarded the rest because they were “abominations”. From those four comes EVERYTHING we know about the electromagnetic spectrum - both Tesla and Einstein relied on Maxwell. Tesla tried to actually build things from Maxwell (free energy). Since then no one has paid the 200 field equations any mind.
Imagine an alien civilization where those same equations are not discarded or changed, but embraced and worked to the fullest. No one would need radio because communication over any distance is instantaneous, no one would need to make energy because it is freely available in unlimited quantities, no one would need space ships because going from point A to point B is just a matter of stepping across to it.
Imagine ...
...Our radio transmissions might appear to aliens as some indian smoke signals would appear to an F-16 pilot passing overhead...
..but what if the F-16 pilot was looking for smoke signals?
Primitive yes, but still recognizable.
An alien culture looking for intelligent life would not necessarily be looking for MORE intelligent life but any life, intelligent or otherwise, and would look through all the signals available.
And who’s to say that we are not the most intelligent life in the galaxy/universe (scary thought I know) which brings up another question.
Where are our outposts and colonies?