Will we find aliens first or will they find us?

[longship]

16. Well, my good friend, the rocket equation is not likely to be overthrown any time soon.

If ever.

The reason why we don't have Klaatu and Gort landing at the Ellipse in Washington, DC is because interstellar travel is fucking expensive in time and energy.

And I would hope that people would not be hoping on warp drives because everybody knows that warp drives are merely a method to bring the plot of a story beyond the next commercial. Nothing more. It is somewhat more elegant than a hard cut.

All the physics we know -- much of this is basic physics, not likely to ever be overthrown by anybody anywhere -- says that interstellar travel is so difficult and resource expensive that it is likely that nobody in the galaxy is doing it. The laws of the universe protect everybody. The distances are just too fucking large.

Now unoccupied robotic space craft might be a different matter. After all we have five of them leaving our solar system right now, two Pioneers, two Voyagers, and the New Horizons craft.

If we find evidence for extraterrestrial life outside the solar system, it will be most likely be a probe, not life as we would recognize it. No Klaatu. But maybe Gort.

As always, my best to you.