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triffid_hunter t1_ja3myig wrote

We could barely see evidence of our own existence with current tech from more than a few dozen light years away - and the most obvious evidence for sapient life here that's distantly visible is the radical change in atmospheric composition over the past hundred years or so, which is only visible (with our tech) from locations that lie exactly on our equatorial plane such that Earth passes between those locations and our sun every year.

In terms of radio transmissions, we're struggling to communicate with the Voyager craft and they've only just passed the heliopause…

We'd never detect alien tv/radio transmissions even from the nearest stars, and that's assuming that we're even listening at the right time to catch the narrow high-power transmission window - terrestrial communications have invested hard into more efficient methods as well as widespread encryption, meaning that 1) there's dramatically less RF blasted into space compared to 50 years ago, and 2) what is broadcast is essentially meaningless noise.

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BitterDropToSwallow t1_ja3nzdm wrote

Exactly..and this is what baffles me of people who defend the Fermi Paradox and swear aliens don't or can't exist because we've never seen them. IT's such a mind boggingly large, vast universe, I'd be more stunned and flabberghasted that we did see evidence so quicly.

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