Sorry I’d im way off here. But if we are looking at other systems and galaxies such as the andromeda system, why should we expect contact? If the light we are seeing from andromeda is two million years old, wouldn’t any communication take much longer?
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There is a theory, that even given the size of our galaxy, there has been enough time and enough opportunities for life to develop that a space faring race should have developed expanded outward and explored by now.
As far as distant galaxies go, we don’t seriously expect contact in the sense of two-way communication, just aspire to pick up signals that other intelligent life might’ve sent out long ago; and likewise send out our own signals that maybe intelligent life picks up on far in the future. It’s more an academic research venture than a real short-term attempt to communicate. Any life we may truly discover and communicate with during our lifetimes would have to be somewhere else in the solar system that the explorer probes pick up on.
First, people don’t generally look at other galaxies when searching for life. That is just way too far away to get enough information. But when looking at relatively nearby star systems within our galaxy for signs of life they aren’t seeking two-way communication. Instead they are looking for things such as radio signals, or atmospheric traces that indicate life could exist.
For example an alien species looking at Earth could notice that as soon as we discovered radio we started constantly blasting radio signals in every direction. Anyone listening could pick those up, and if aliens similarly discovered radio then we might expect to detect similar encoded signals. Life on Earth has also significantly altered our atmosphere; even more than our modern pollution, we have an atmosphere rich in oxygen which is a good sign biological activity is happening. Even an extremely distant observer could look at light reflecting off Earth or passing through the atmosphere and determine our atmospheric composition, and from that deduce something was living here.
Most forms of evidence we’re looking for are relayed by electromagnetic radiation, i.e. light. That includes things like radio transmissions (radio waves, like visible light, are a form of electromagnetic radiation) as well as interpretations of the wavelengths of light we receive from a certain planet which can indicate the presence of oxygen or water or even things like pollutants from fossil fuel combustion which might suggest the presence of heavy industry.
So if an alien civilization in Andromeda existed two million years ago and used radio communications or had fossil fuel energy systems, we might be able to detect by pointing a telescope at it and reading such signals in the electromagnetic radiation coming from that source.
We’ve been unintentionally broadcasting radio signals into space for a couple decades now and actually sending proper messages to outer space for anyone who might catch it from time to time, just because it’s cool.
You are correct, we can’t “chat” with aliens, but some people are hearing just in case we catch their radio stations or an actual message sent into the void.
We are not really looking for direct two way communication.
Things we are looking for are two fold signs of life and signs of intelligent life.
Life we can guess from such things as the light passing through the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets and then arriving here with the tell tale markers of whatever chemicals are in that atmosphere. If a planet has something like Oxygen in its atmosphere that tells us something.
It is not fool proof and our tech is not really good enough yet, but we already know how to build bigger and better telescopes to look for such bio-signatures.
The thing is that our planet has had such a bio-signature for maybe 2 billion years.
If any alien civilization was looking for signs of life in this galaxy they would have known about earth long before the first fish crawled out of the water. Any alien civilization in our galaxy that reached the same tech level we have now at some point in the past will two billion years will have known about our planet having life and the potential to evolve intelligent life.
We have only been sending radio waves out for a few generations but we gave away our presence long before we evolved multicellularity.
So if they are there and have sufficient headstart on us tech wise, chances are they know about us and if they want contact they can always send us a welcome message in case we have evolved intelligence and build receivers yet.
Of course with enough of a headstart it might make more sense to simply place a 2001 style probe in any solar system capable of evolving intelligent life as an observer.
They obviously have not colonized the entire galaxy, which is worrying to us because that is what we might do if we live for long enough and the fact that the galaxy looks uncolonized hints that not many like us came before us or reached that point.
Even if the aliens are sufficiently alien form us that they do not look for intelligent life like we do and don’t colonize the galaxy as we at least might if given the chance, they should still be visible to our telescopes if they are advanced enough.
We have ideas about building Dyson spheres or swarms and similar mega-structures and those would be quite obvious even from very far away.
Even if they don’t send out signals or von-Neuman probes to colonize the galaxy. we should be able to see any civilization that got big enough, just by looking at it.
> Sorry I’d im way off here. But if we are looking at other systems and galaxies such as the andromeda system, why should we expect contact? If the light we are seeing from andromeda is two million years old, wouldn’t any communication take much longer?
Yes, the 2-million year delay would be a major hamper to two-way *communication*… but just listening out for noises that might be intelligent can be done here in real-time.
Consider camping in a vast forest where it seems like you’re the only person for miles and miles. If you start to hear a radio blaring rock music from a valley over you basically have proof that you aren’t *actually* the only person around even though it would take you a while to get close enough to yell *”Hey can you keep it down!”*.
Organizations like SETI and whatnot are basically just listening to other galaxies and hoping to be the first people to hear Alien rock music.
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