Comments by "Digital Footballer" (@digitalfootballer9032) on "The Fermi Paradox With Neil deGrasse Tyson - Where Are All The Aliens?" video.

Let's put it all in prospective. It would take us about 30 years to get to Pluto in the fastest possible vessel using current technology. Our solar system, which reaches well beyond Pluto (roughly one light year in diameter), in comparison to the Milky Way galaxy, to scale would roughly be like comparing a DVD to the earth. Milky Way galaxy has billions of stars, and is one galaxy of estimated trillions in the observable universe. And we don't even know how much more there is beyond the observable universe, it could be trillions of times more. So I think it is a pretty safe bet to think there are probably countless other civilizations.
8
We can analyze it to death, but what it comes down to is time and distance. First of all, even to exist at the same time as another civilization is unlikely, and even if you did, they would likely be so far away you could not detect them, and even if you could, you would be detecting them long after they were gone.
1
@tomgunnz007 If this were the case, and not saying it's impossible because just about anything is possible, then their physical characteristics would be vastly different from ours. Imagine a tiny Earth, it would have very little gravity and life there would either have to live underground or have a large mass in ratio to their size in order to not drift away. On the other hand, a massive earth would have huge gravity force and life would have to be very stout and strong in order to move about.
1
I think so. The only intelligence that likely could travel any kind of significant distance, colonize, and self replicate, would almost certainly be AI. Organic beings are too fragile and short lived. Even if you have a species that's members live several thousand years, that's still a drop in the bucket in comparison to traversing interstellar space, assuming C is a speed that cannot be broken and there is no loopholes (e.g. warp drive, stable wormholes).
1
Alpha Centauri would be doable in a human lifetime if we could reach about 20% C. That's about 20 years each way if you could speed up instantaneously and stop on a dime, which of course you can't, so you would add some years for getting up to speed and slowing down, so probably closer to 60 years round trip. But even that level is almost unfathomable to achieve. Just getting to a few percent would be an amazing achievement.
1
"There are only two possibilities, either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both possibilities are equally terrifying" ~ Arthur C. Clarke
1
@nyabomtalom2033 If the universe is infinite, then it is certain also that there are infinite exact copies of us out there.
1