Random idea #355.

I am neither a Trekkie, Nasa Space Buff or active S.E.T.I. enthusiast - but there are some ideas about our place in this universe that have been making the rounds in the neural pathways that make up the network that is my brain ...

Imagine for one moment somewhere out there is a highly developed alien civilization existing one billion light years from earth. Now let's say for curiosities sake, this alien race is searching for any sentient life forms in the universe and is so technologically advanced they have in their possession a powerful telescope that could enable them to easily gaze over the surface of a given planet and deduce whether or not it was inhabited by any suitable candidacy.

Given our coordinates, I wonder whether they would see any tell-tale signs at all of complex organised intelligence. I highly doubt they would see any of our collective cultures greatest achievements, like 'The Great Wall of China' the 'The Nasca Lines' the 'Pyramids' etc (and providing they were advanced enough to see-through the walls of my house) I don't think they would be able to see me typing these words right now.

No. It is my belief and therefore conclusion that because of the great distances involved and the time it would take for the light from our planet to reach them, they wouldn't see our planet in any 'Real time' sense relative to 'our' existence.
Any alien observers would in fact merely see our world as it existed one billion years ago, which is a shame because depending on whether you actually believe it or not, the most complicated life forms around at that time were a couple of large colonies of algae ... To Be continued.

In any case, this half baked, half pieced together idea is a work in progress and a window into some of the processes that have been going on in my upstairs dept.
I may come back to this later and either refine or scrap it altogether.
Any and all comments and/or insights are of course always welcomed.
BTW my regular readers may have noticed that despite my best efforts I missed yesterdays daily post. Whoops.

[Technorati][Ideas],[Sentient Lifeforms],[1 Billion Light Years]

By Erueti Brown with No comments