From Gunslinger:
"The chances of us actually ever meeting an alien race are slim to none. Consider these three factors. Time, space, and society.
A scientist once created a formula involving many factors to include:
1. The amount of time the known galaxy has been known to exist vrs the amount of time the earth has been able to support life.
2. The relative pinsalamander in the timline that humans have been here.
3. The micronic proportion of that pinsalamander that humans have actually had advanced sciences and space travel
Then you take those factors and compare them to society's general desire to destroy itself.
Then you consider the amount of time it takes to travel in space. Considering that there are planets that support life out there their time may have come and gone long before life sprouted from a pool of goop.
The ODDS of two identical timelines matching up and the technology being available, they'd still have to have the slim chance to point themselves in the same direction to meet. Again miniscule odds of that happening considering the vastness of the known universe."
A very good read IMHO.
BUT.... IF there is other "intelligent" lifeforms (our calibre or more), radio traffic could be spotted. It travels very far, and IF there are cultureS over the vast amounts of space, even overlapping each other in rise & fall, - listening long and widely enough would be bound to bring some results.
Get a message sent from a rather old and remote end of our Galaxy could mean as much as 50.000 years ago for the transmission.
And that's just within our Galaxy....Milky way....
