Thread: "The Great Silence"

Originally Posted by sycld

First, you wouldn't need a single 500 mile wide dish. You can construct arrays of much smaller radio telescopes that combined have effectively enormous collecting areas. In fact, LOFAR is going to have an effective diameter of more than 500 miles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lofar

Yes I know, you'll note I have already mentioned multi-aperture (multi-dish array) radio telescopes earlier in this thread. I was being broad when I spoke of aliens constructing 500-mile-wide dishes. Obviously they would actually use distributed arrays like we do.

I don't really want this thread to become bogged down into the technical merits of laser vs. radio for interstellar communications. Both methods are possible (whether you believe it or not). What I'm interested in talking about in this thread is the "Great Silence" problem and the question of why, if life is common throughout the universe (which many people think it should be), we don't see any evidence of alien civilizations.

Originally Posted by Atmoscheer

And when there are an infinite number of thousand-planet groups, the limit on the equations both approach infinity.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. There aren't an infinite number of thousand-planet groups. Large, but not infinite. Again, using human history thus far as a model, intelligent life in general will be vastly more common than intelligent life capable of engaging in interstellar communications. For every alien civilization out there that's shooting radio waves into space and listening to radio waves from space, there are ~1,000 that aren't. How does that not put the lie to your claim that, if we were to find a planet that has life, the odds of finding communication-capable life there should be "pretty much the same" as finding intelligent life in general there?