'I'm an Atheist': Stephen Hawking on God and Space Travel

[Fred Sanders]

2. Alien life is likely, as Hawking says, to be islands in a vast expanse of space and time. Space

and distance people understand, the vast distances folks can grasp in terms of light years of travel.

But what is more difficult to grasp is the influence of time. Even if a technological alien race existed on a nearby planet, how likely is it it exists in the same age, the sample technological time, as earthlings?

4,000,000,000 years have passed since Earth formed, a billion since life would have formed, humans technologically are able to communicate with another planet for only the last 50 years.

The odds are slim there is anybody around within hailing distance in the same space and the same time.