Current Events > CE people that believe in aliens... how do you explain the Fermi Paradox?

(+) Yeah! (+)

For those too lazy to read it up, the paradox basically states that given:

1. how vast our universe is and just within our galaxy alone there are billions of stars and thus, planets ripe for life to be born
2. given how young the Earth is compared to other planets out there that's been around for millions of centuries, the odds of at least one intellectual civilisation emerging and being made known to us should have occured already
3. These civilizations have millions more years than us to have developed interstellar travel already, and even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years. Or even if the aliens can't... they should definitely be able to send out unmanned probes and space devices we'd have detected by now.

But we have never. Not ONCE have humans even detected even the slightest bit of confirmed foreign alien material out there in space. So why???

People like to argue that given how vast our universe is, the chances of alien life existing should be high.
But given this same arguement of how vast our universe is, the chances of alien life existing and being detected by us should be high as well.
This...is the paradox in a nutshell. It statistically makes no sense that we still haven't encountered alien life given the odds are so much in favour of such happening. There has been countless research papers written by astronomers and physicists on this and yet no one has been able to give any universally accepted solution or explanation.

What do you alien believers think?

I think the notion that aliens must be technologically advanced is absolutely ridiculous

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Not necessarily an alien believer, but a few counterpoints:
Because of how far away most galaxies are, even if there were habitable planets we would be seeing the light from so long ago that advanced civilizations may very well exist on those planets and we just can't see them. Basically, we'd be looking at their planet prior to civilization.

I don't know what percentage of space has actually been mapped, but I have to imagine it's an incredibly small one. So even if there were hundreds or thousands of advanced civilizations out in space, if we've only ever really looked at 1% of our own Galaxy then statistically it's possible we just haven't looked at the right place yet.

Lastly, any sufficiently advanced civilization may have the means of hiding its presence, and as is often the case in sci-fi there may in fact be directives to do so for developing planets. So the theory would go that we can't see them because they are hiding their presence to not interfere with our development.

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Not much of a paradox. We don't know how advance technology has to be to develop interstellar travel, or that it's even possible.

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I find fault in the 2nd premise. The universe is so incomprehensibly vast that there's no reason it would be likely for aliens civilisations to be especially apparent to us.

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Try_Another___ posted...

I think the notion that aliens must be technologically advanced is absolutely ridiculous

But it's the natural evolution of life. Humans aren't even that rare as beings evolved into intellectuals. We just happened to kill off all the other homo intellectual species like the neanderthals before us.

Also, again, let's go by statistical odds. Even if Planet 1 harbours alien life that's basic organisms that somehow never reached intellectual maturity even after billions of years, then what about Planet 2, or Planet 3 or Planet 4 or Planet 21423 or Planet 3453465346 or Planet 99999999999999999999 etc. etc. etc.???

See what I mean? The more life-sustaining planets we have out there, the higher the odds at least some planets should have already evolved an intellectual species similar or beyond us as humans

s0nicfan posted...

Not necessarily an alien believer, but a few counterpoints:
Because of how far away most galaxies are, even if there were habitable planets we would be seeing the light from so long ago that advanced civilizations may very well exist on those planets and we just can't see them. Basically, we'd be looking at their planet prior to civilization.

I don't know what percentage of space has actually been mapped, but I have to imagine it's an incredibly small one. So even if there were hundreds or thousands of advanced civilizations out in space, if we've only ever really looked at 1% of our own Galaxy then statistically it's possible we just haven't looked at the right place yet.

Lastly, any sufficiently advanced civilization may have the means of hiding its presence, and as is often the case in sci-fi there may in fact be directives to do so for developing planets. So the theory would go that we can't see them because they are hiding their presence to not interfere with our development.

Even if we looked at 1% of our own galaxy, there's still a s**** ton of solar systems out there. We're talking in the billions. It makes no sense not even a shred of alien object material. No, I'm not even talking about alien life but just the TRACE of alien life, can even be detected. For example, alien probes.

So the theory would go that we can't see them because they are hiding their presence to not interfere with our development.

No, this is a dumb theory IMO because you're literally applying it to literally all possible alien existences out there. Even if one alien species chooses to hide, what makes you think the other 9999999999 alien species out there would all universally do the same for?? You're saying every single alien species out there in the entire universe are all choosing to hide? Every. single. one. of. them??

Mackorov posted...

For those too lazy to read it up, the paradox basically states that given:

1. how vast our universe is and just within our galaxy alone there are billions of stars and thus, planets ripe for life to be born
2. given how young the Earth is compared to other planets out there that's been around for millions of centuries, the odds of at least one intellectual civilisation emerging and being made known to us should have occured already
3. These civilizations have millions more years than us to have developed interstellar travel already, and even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years. Or even if the aliens can't... they should definitely be able to send out unmanned probes and space devices we'd have detected by now.

But we have never. Not ONCE have humans even detected even the slightest bit of confirmed foreign alien material out there in space. So why???

People like to argue that given how vast our universe is, the chances of alien life existing should be high.
But given this same arguement of how vast our universe is, the chances of alien life existing and being detected by us should be high as well.
This...is the paradox in a nutshell. It statistically makes no sense that we still haven't encountered alien life given the odds are so much in favour of such happening. There has been countless research papers written by astronomers and physicists on this and yet no one has been able to give any universally accepted solution or explanation.

What do you alien believers think?

If the universe is that big then its also that much harder to find anyone. Also, the aliens would have this same problem.

This is a dumb paradox and Im deeply embarassed for Fermi.


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Anything out there smart enough to make it to space has probably wiped itself out by now

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divot1338 posted...

If the universe is that big then its also that much harder to find anyone. Also, the aliens would have this same problem.

This is a dumb paradox and Im deeply embarassed for Fermi.

who said it's about us finding them? It's about THEM finding us. Or at least, just making their presence known. That\s the whole point of Fermi's paradox. He asked why aliens havent visited us. If their planets are millions of years older, they should have more than sufficient time to actually reach Earth

Here's one excerpt for your reference
If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy.This is relatively brief on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one

Mackorov posted...

See what I mean? The more life-sustaining planets we have out there, the higher the odds at least some planets should have already evolved an intellectual species similar or beyond us as humans

Even if we take that as an inherently true given we still don't actually know what kind of distances we're talking about. We are missing a vital piece of information to be able to say that with any certainty. Even if the human race advances several degrees and we colonize every planet around our star we are still talking about the tiniest of ant hills barely breaking the surface of a field who knows how many miles wide.

We could very easily be the first or maybe just very few of our kind out there as of now and in our species lifespan we could miss the next intelligent race by a few thousand tens/hundreds of thousands or even a million years. It only took humanity a few hundred years to reach our current state technologically afterall.

And on a universal time frame that's nothing. That and....... things like intergalactic civilizations or empires, lightspeed travel, warp drives, or etc may not ever have been a thing, or even possible.

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Mackorov posted...

who said it's about us finding them? It's about THEM finding us. Or at least, just making their presence known. That\s the whole point of Fermi's paradox. He asked why aliens havent visited us. If their planets are millions of years older, they should have more than sufficient time to actually reach Earth

Here's one excerpt for your reference
If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy.This is relatively brief on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one

If were going to exempt ourselves of any exploratory responsibility then based on that we have to wait at least 5 million but at least 25 million years as a civilized species to have any chance at that happening.

Again this is a dumb paradox for people that assume the aliens even want to fly around. We ascribe our motives to everyone and everything.

Maybe the aliens are evolved from plants and so to them its perfectly normal just stay on their planet and look up at the stars.

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divot1338 posted...

Again this is a dumb paradox for people that assume the aliens even want to fly around. We ascribe our motives to everyone and everything.

Maybe the aliens are evolved from plants and so to them its perfectly normal just stay on their planet and look up at the stars.

That's really important to keep in mind for these kind of hypotheticals. We definitely have a tendency to act like any alien species must share humanity's desire to spread, dominate and consume.

Honestly we are either very early or given the sizes we know of the galaxy and the universe that if there is other species out there they are so far away we may never find them

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You're making too many assumption about intelligent life and us being able to detect them. There could millions of intelligent species on our level in the Milky Way, and absolutely nothing guarantees that we'd be catch anything.

Right now, the current estimate of intelligent species in the galaxy is 36. Even if it was 36 million over 14 billion years and 100 billion stars, there's still nothing that guarantees us detecting any of it.

You're also assuming that anything approaching c is even possible, let alone FTL. Even with millions of years, what guarantee is there that we'd detect it, if let's say one of these civilizations did send something out? It's gonna take half a million years for Voyager 2 to reach Sirius, which is only 8 light years from here.

And let's say the Milky Way was completely empty. Nothing from Andromeda would reach here, and that galaxy has 1 trillion stars. Forget that there's now an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the known universe.

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Tenlaar posted...

That's really important to keep in mind for these kind of hypotheticals. We definitely have a tendency to act like any alien species must share humanity's desire to spread, dominate and consume.

And keep in mind you're already falling for the paradox. Like what I replied to the other poste even if you were to assume the behaviour of aliens, can you seriously say the same for every single one of them? The potentially millions of other alien species out there? There's no way they all act and think the same, do they?

Also the need to spread and dominate is the genesis of any lifeform as we know it.
We were born to propagate. And even if we dont want to, we'd be forced to. Due to limited resources. Once we run out of resources on this earth, we'd have no choice but to abound for other planets. The same can be said for any life form that would have dominated any other planet. That's why preys and predators exist. And men as the apex predator is now killing off every other species slowly into extinction, unless they serve some use (eg. domestication)

InfinityMonster posted...

You're making too many assumption about intelligent life and us being able to detect them. There could millions of intelligent species on our level in the Milky Way, and absolutely nothing guarantees that we'd be catch anything.

Right now, the current estimate of intelligent species in the galaxy is 36. Even if it was 36 million over 14 billion years and 100 billion stars, there's still nothing that guarantees us detecting any of it.

You're also assuming that anything approaching c is even possible, let alone FTL. Even with millions of years, what guarantee is there that we'd detect it, if let's say one of these civilizations did send something out? It's gonna take half a million years for Voyager 2 to reach Sirius, which is only 8 light years from here.

And let's say the Milky Way was completely empty. Nothing from Andromeda would reach here, and that galaxy has 1 trillion stars. Forget that there's now an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the known universe.

I'm assuming, but so are you. You're assuming there's life out there. What if I were to ask you, can you also assume there's NO life out there at all?

That we are all alone in the universe?

All alien races reached the point of civilization where cold fusion has become reality and destroyed themselves.

We just are not at that point yet.

It's entirely believable that we've both not been discovered by aliens because the universe infinitely large, and that we've been discovered and don't know it because the aliens didn't want us to know for whatever reasons.

Was life on earth engineered or is it arbitrary? If it was engineered, great. If it was arbitrary, then it could have arbitrarily started shortly after the universe began.

Non-zero probability of that, in fact! And it's also a non-zero probability that they survived for billions of years and thus would have become as advanced as technology becomes after innovating for billions of years.

Probably at the top of this scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

The fact that our primitive tools (real tech is barely accessible and available for like only 50 years now) can't detect something is irrelevant to the probability of the matter. It says more about how young a species we are. Imagine what our tech will look like after 500 years, or 5,000, or 50,000, or five billion years.

There could be civilizations out there that have been around for 10 billion years.

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RadiantJoyrock posted...

It's entirely believable that we've both not been discovered by aliens because the universe infinitely large, and that we've been discovered and don't know it because the aliens didn't want us to know for whatever reasons.

like I replied...twice now... this kind of theories doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things because you're also making an assumption of all potential alien beings out there acting and behaving the same, which is ludicrous. Even if there are only a few dozen civilisations, why would they all want to hide for? Unless they've all contacted each other already and formed some kinda cartel collusion where they agree to avoid Earth for some reason and as you can see this idea is already so darn far-fetched???

Like detractors here have made the point of saying Fermi's Paradox makes assumptions (which is the whole point of any theory anyway...), the explanations to counter the Paradox ALSO makes assumptions. So who's to say who is right and who is wrong?

Mackorov posted...

like I replied...twice now... this kind of theories doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things because you're also making an assumption of all potential alien beings out there acting and behaving the same, which is ludicrous. Even if there are only a few dozen civilisations, why would they all want to hide for? Unless they've all contacted each other already and formed some kinda cartel collusion where they agree to avoid Earth for some reason and as you can see this idea is already so darn far-fetched???

Like detractors here have made the point of saying Fermi's Paradox makes assumptions (which is the whole point of any theory anyway...), the explanations to counter the Paradox ALSO makes assumptions. So who's to say who is right and who is wrong?

Nothing I said is wrong.

RadiantJoyrock posted...

Nothing I said is wrong.

yeah, but neither is the paradox 'cos it's all speculation. I mean, what can we do about it but speculate, amirite?

Interesting discussion

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This paradox comes across like a religious wacko who claims to have seen god so he must be real, and came up with this crap to debunk alien life.

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Mackorov posted...

I'm assuming, but so are you. You're assuming there's life out there. What if I were to ask you, can you also assume there's NO life out there at all?

That we are all alone in the universe?

We're both playing the numbers game, but yours is limited to this galaxy and mine, the universe. Nothing from outside the Milky Way and it's immediate satellites can just travel here from other galaxies and that's where the bulk of everything is.

Then there's also the fact that we can't detect things too far away. Your assumptions are kind of baseless. That these civilizations sprung up and sent out in the right directions for us to detect their presence. That since they could have existed over 14 billions years, the galaxy would be populated with evidence, which is again, kind of baseless.

This is more about being practical. Sure, we can assume life is sooooooo fucking rare that out of 2 trillion galaxies, we're the only ones out there. After all, the sample size is all of 1. But it would be foolish.

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Literally bacteria, and electrons. All is Alien life. How we define it, is entirely up to our imagination. The characteristic nor design of a species is not up to us entirely. I'm not convinced our experts know much about space.

Nor am I ultimately convinced of my own delusions of grandeur.

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Conception616 posted...

This paradox comes across like a religious wacko who claims to have seen god so he must be real, and came up with this crap to debunk alien life.

I mean what else is God except a highly advanced alien? What else could God be?

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I prefer Fermi's work on particles over his work on astrophysics
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Conception616 posted...

This paradox comes across like a religious wacko who claims to have seen god so he must be real, and came up with this crap to debunk alien life.

lol? IDK what god has to do with aliens here but OK

I recently read about something called the "Zoo Theory". Which in short argues that Earth and its inhabitants are basically a zoo for aliens to amuse themselves. The alien UFO sightings (a UFO is not necessarily alien) - to the extent they are credible are accidental and unintended.

Not sure I buy it but it does make one wonder.

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well an obvious answer is that alien civilizations that reach type2+ are just so advanced that they couldn't give two shits about communicating with a >=type1 civilization, it would be like us taking calls from a colony of ants.

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InfinityMonster posted...

We're both playing the numbers game, but yours is limited to this galaxy and mine, the universe. Nothing from outside the Milky Way and it's immediate satellites can just travel here from other galaxies and that's where the bulk of everything is.

Then there's also the fact that we can't detect things too far away. Your assumptions are kind of baseless. That these civilizations sprung up and sent out in the right directions for us to detect their presence. That since they could have existed over 14 billions years, the galaxy would be populated with evidence, which is again, kind of baseless.

This is more about being practical. Sure, we can assume life is sooooooo fucking rare that out of 2 trillion galaxies, we're the only ones out there. After all, the sample size is all of 1. But it would be foolish.

It's not baseless. It's substantiated by what we can observe and know about our own Earth and how life behaves.

The baseless ones are ironically, critics' theories to counter the paradox, because here you are...actually trying to assert aliens behave any differently from life on earth. Theories like 'they're hiding from us!' 'maybe they just dont want to explore!' 'maybe space is too far' are pure complete speculations that aren't constrained by anything whatsoever beyond our wildest imaginations and borders pure fiction.

All I need to do is ask, 'why?' to any of the theories presented and it all collapses because no one can provide an answer to that

Aliens not coming here is the same reason why we don't use Walmart's bathroom.

We just avoid it.

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What if it's just physically, scientifically, or whatever-cally impossible to travel that far for any being or life.
There could be other life but they can't get this far, just like we can't. Maybe there is a limit to how much advancement a civilization can make.

Mackorov posted...

yeah, but neither is the paradox 'cos it's all speculation. I mean, what can we do about it but speculate, amirite?

I don't think the paradox is particularly meaningful. given the size of the universe, there's essentially zero chance that we're the only life.

there's also essentially zero chance that we'll ever find anything beyond the molecular level

and regarding aliens finding us: it's perfectly possible that any extraterrestrial life is so different from us that it doesn't recognize us as life. this applies in the opposite direction too: we might find some form of life so different from anything we've encountered that we don't even recognize it as life. hell, we might have already done that

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ShotgunSilencer posted...

What if it's just physically, scientifically, or whatever-cally impossible to travel that far for any being or life.
There could be other life but they can't get this far, just like we can't. Maybe there is a limit to how much advancement a civilization can make.

If you believe that, then you believe humans can never traverse far into space at all but here we are.

Also to all you people calling out on the space distance problem, you all should seriously read this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Intelligent_life_may_be_too_far_away

A related speculation by Sagan and Newman suggests that if other civilizations exist, and are transmitting and exploring, their signals and probes simply have not arrived yet.[122] However, critics have noted that this is unlikely, since it requires that humanity's advancement has occurred at a very special point in time, while the Milky Way is in transition from empty to full. This is a tiny fraction of the lifespan of a galaxy under ordinary assumptions, so the likelihood that we are in the midst of this transition is considered low in the paradox

averagejoel posted...

I don't think the paradox is particularly meaningful. given the size of the universe, there's essentially zero chance that we're the only life.

there's also essentially zero chance that we'll ever find anything beyond the molecular level

and regarding aliens finding us: it's perfectly possible that any extraterrestrial life is so different from us that it doesn't recognize us as life. this applies in the opposite direction too: we might find some form of life so different from anything we've encountered that we don't even recognize it as life. hell, we might have already done that

I had an astrophysicist living next to me in grad school. I have been arguing this for nearly 2 decades since: we are looking for life as we know it. Life beyond this planet may be beyond our current comprehension of "life" nevermind "being". My astrophysicist friend said that while that may be true, it is easier [and much more easy to get funding] to model inquiry on life as we know it.

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Mackorov posted...

It's not baseless. It's substantiated by what we can observe and know about our own Earth and how life behaves.

The baseless ones are ironically, critics' theories to counter the paradox, because here you are...actually trying to assert aliens behave any differently from life on earth. Theories like 'they're hiding from us!' 'maybe they just dont want to explore!' 'maybe space is too far' are pure complete speculations that aren't constrained by anything whatsoever beyond our wildest imaginations

Please don't confuse me with those that are asserting how aliens behave, because I haven't done that.

I haven't really said much about how aliens behave. I'm literally saying that the distances between stars are too vast and c is a universal constant with absolutely zero proof it can be reached with something with mass, let alone exceed it. Nor can we detect things beyond a certain, very small distance. You're looking at this from a science fiction perspective.

I even conceded that just because the Milky Way could be empty, where the Fermi Paradox applies, it would be saying absolutely nothing about what can exist outside this galaxy because the 2 nearest galaxies are 2.5 million light years from here in different directions. To say anything can traverse that is shit even science fiction is shy on dealing with.

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Mackorov posted...

given how young the Earth is compared to other planets out there that's been around for millions of centuries, the odds of at least one intellectual civilisation emerging and being made known to us should have occured already

These civilizations have millions more years than us to have developed interstellar travel already, and even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years. Or even if the aliens can't... they should definitely be able to send out unmanned probes and space devices we'd have detected by now.

Don't see why aliens would want to interact with potentially hostile lifeforms they won't be able to communicate with. We'd be primitive if they were capable of that so it's just extreme hubris expecting them to actually contact us and then declaring that they don't exist when they don't do so.

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Mackorov posted...

A related speculation by Sagan and Newman suggests that if other civilizations exist, and are transmitting and exploring, their signals and probes simply have not arrived yet.[122] However, critics have noted that this is unlikely, since it requires that humanity's advancement has occurred at a very special point in time, while the Milky Way is in transition from empty to full. This is a tiny fraction of the lifespan of a galaxy under ordinary assumptions, so the likelihood that we are in the midst of this transition is considered low in the paradox

the speculation also assumes that they would be transmitting signals and probes that humans would recognize as such

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brestugo posted...

I had an astrophysicist living next to me in grad school. I have been arguing this for nearly 2 decades since: we are looking for life as we know it. Life beyond this planet may be beyond our current comprehension of "life" nevermind "being". My astrophysicist friend said that while that may be true, it is easier [and much more easy to get funding] to model inquiry on life as we know it.

The problem with this argument is that it completely rubs away our very defintion of life. If that's the case, you might as well call that random rock you saw on Mars as 'life'. Or your imaginary unicorn friend as 'life'.

What defines life then? If we can twist and turn the definition to whatever we see fit, we might as well call anything we want as 'alien', thus completely dismantling the whole pre-existing concept of what aliens mean to us anyway

InfinityMonster posted...

Please don't confuse me with those that are asserting how aliens behave, because I haven't done that.

I haven't really said much about how aliens behave. I'm literally saying that the distances between stars are too vast and c is a universal constant with absolutely zero proof it can be reached with something with mass, let alone exceed it. Nor can we detect things beyond a certain, very small distance. You're looking at this from a science fiction perspective.

I even conceded that just because the Milky Way could be empty, where the Fermi Paradox applies, it would be saying absolutely nothing about what can exist outside this galaxy because the 2 nearest galaxies are 2.5 million light years from here in different directions. To say anything can traverse that is shit even science fiction is shy on dealing with.

I found it funny after reading the Fermi paradox articles, that almost no scientific argument actually argues about the space distance thing. Until I read this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Intelligent_life_may_be_too_far_away

It's because this argument is too easy to refute.

A related speculation by Sagan and Newman suggests that if other civilizations exist, and are transmitting and exploring, their signals and probes simply have not arrived yet.[122] However, critics have noted that this is unlikely, since it requires that humanity's advancement has occurred at a very special point in time, while the Milky Way is in transition from empty to full. This is a tiny fraction of the lifespan of a galaxy under ordinary assumptions, so the likelihood that we are in the midst of this transition is considered low in the paradox.

Mackorov posted...

The problem with this argument is that it completely rubs away our very defintion of life. If that's the case, you might as well call that random rock you saw on Mars as 'life'. Or your imaginary unicorn friend as 'life'.

What defines life then? If we can twist and turn the definition to whatever we see fit, we might as well call anything we want as 'alien', thus completely dismantling the whole pre-existing concept of what aliens mean to us anyway

Well I assume some things are consistent: procreation, appetite, etc. but environments, chemical requirements? Not so sure.

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Mackorov posted...

People like to argue that given how vast our universe is, the chances of alien life existing should be high.

It is high but we have no metric for the chance of life intelligent enough to send shit into space. Maybe the galaxy is just full of space hamsters or something.

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Mackorov posted...

I found it funny after reading the Fermi paradox articles, that almost no scientific argument actually argues about the space distance thing. Until I read this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Intelligent_life_may_be_too_far_away

It's because this argument is too easy to refute.

A related speculation by Sagan and Newman suggests that if other civilizations exist, and are transmitting and exploring, their signals and probes simply have not arrived yet.[122] However, critics have noted that this is unlikely, since it requires that humanity's advancement has occurred at a very special point in time, while the Milky Way is in transition from empty to full. This is a tiny fraction of the lifespan of a galaxy under ordinary assumptions, so the likelihood that we are in the midst of this transition is considered low in the paradox.

So you understand now that the Fermi Paradox applies to the Milky Way galaxy and not the universe, so then why are you applying it to aliens all around the universe? As said, even if the galaxy is empty, how does it support anything for the whole universe, since you're asking opinions from "alien believers?".

And you haven't really answered what exactly we're able to detect that would coincidentally pass by in our solar system. What if something passed by the Oort Cloud and we missed it? You're asking why we haven't detected alien materials. How exactly do we do that?

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Mackorov posted...

odds of at least one intellectual civilisation emerging and being made known to us should have occured already

This is your fallacious premise. Why "should" it have occured [sic]?

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Mackorov posted...

If you believe that, then you believe humans can never traverse far into space at all but here we are.

Also to all you people calling out on the space distance problem, you all should seriously read this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Intelligent_life_may_be_too_far_away

We can travel far into space, but maybe not THAT far. Like I said, maybe there is just a limit on how far we can go and how are far they can go. And it's not far enough to meet eachother given how big space is.

I dunno. I'm just throwing ideas out there.