Consider this. An intelligent technological civilization may exist for a very long time in our universe. We are such a civilization, but so far our detectible "bubble globular surface" radio signal wave front is only about 120 light years in radius around our Star. We are seeking other civilizations by listening for signals in those same radio frequency bands because we assume that’s what they’d use to communicate. . . Same as we do.
But we didn’t before 120 years ago. . . and even now we, in many ways are moving away from broadcasting to narrowcasting (it’s more efficient and less wasteful of energy) to even using laser light point-to-point communications that has zero leakage. What if a breakthrough were to be made tomorrow in macle paired electron communication, where two electron’s spins are opposite and when one is reversed, the other instantly reverses, no matter how much distance separates the two, and this phenomenon is applied to communications over any distance, including interstellar distances, with zero time lag, making radio wave communications completely obsolete overnight?
The point I’m making is that it’s certainly possible that we are akin to native tribesmen listening for signal drums and watching for smoke signals on the horizon to find neighboring tribes, but because we don’t grasp that the neighbors around us are using radios and more advanced means to communicate, we conclude we are alone.
To return to the bubble analogy. . . for a short time, a technologically advanced civilization may shine and glow brightly in the radio spectrum, sending their entertainment and communications out into the universe. . . but once they realize how wasteful of energy (and perhaps dangerous) that is, and as better more advanced non-radiative means of distributing their data spread (cable anyone?), the amount of radio waves shirink to minuscule and then with breakthrough tech, back to none at all. So instead of a sphere of constantly expanding radio noise emanating from their civilization, they’ve created a hollow ball with no radio signals inside it as they moved on to other means of communication that did not radiate.
For a very brief time, each civilization may announce itself with its soap bubble wave front of data, which gets larger, but also weaker and harder to discern from the background noise the farther it gets from its creation point.
But we SETI seekers would have to be just in exactly the right place and THE RIGHT TIME PERIOD of that civilization’s development to hear them, sense them, receive them, whatever them, before the ever expanding, perhaps 100 to 500 year thick soap bubble wall, passes us by at the speed of light, and it goes into technologically advanced silence.
Since the Universe is 13,000,000,000 years old, there is no guarantee that any civilization is the same age as us. . . some may already be millions of years more advanced. Finding one that had their age of radio transmission at exactly the right time for their soap bubble wall to reach us WHILE our age of radio listening is ripe to catch it on its way by is almost impossible . . . Especially one that still has a strong enough signal which we could detect.
Those are the real high astronomically high odds against finding other intelligent neighbors.
Thanks for the post. Mine could have been better since I do believe there is intelligent life in this universe of ours that is beyond Earth. But way beyond.
And I agree with your comments about the long odds against our being in the right time and place to actually make a detection. Those RF filled spheres traveling at light spreed may last centuries or millinea, a relatively short period for a universe that counts time in billions of years.
Bottom line: I’m on your side. But our chances of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe are, at least in the near term, very slim.