ok. i love topics like these. i feel like everyone kind of has a narrow view on exactly what alien contact would be and if it was even possible. i love astronomy and wanted to be an astrophysicist. i also freak my therapist out talking about this stuff lol
for aliens to reach us they would have to be far more advanced than us for a few reasons.
light speed. the closest star to us is 4.3 light years away. meaning that if they were sitting at that star it would take them 4.3 years if they could reach light speed. our furthest planet or dwarf planet pluto is .000628 light years away to put that in perspective.
this is one people dont ever think about. Being able to see us. sight is based on light. when looking at something light years away, you see it x light years before its current age / life cycle. so if they were 1 million light years away and had light speed, which is the fastest form of speed without adding in science fiction, they would see earth as it was 1 million years ago. so they would have to be in the perfect spot and distance away to see us how we currently are. also something else people dont think about is our location relative to our sun. we are actually quite close to our sun and if you were to look in our direction you would only see our sun because of how bright it is if they were far enough away. they wouldnt see other planets. just our suns light.
thinking about this stuff kind of drives me nuts because people are on the right track but i dont think they take it beyond a certain point. the odds of meeting “aliens” is such a low fraction that we couldnt even comprehend it unless they were so advanced that they could warp reality. then at that level of advancement why even contact us? they would look, think, and act on a level we could never perceive. we would be less than ants compared to them.
seeing us on planet earth by itself is absolutely so far fetched. ill give you another example because i want this to sink in to anyone reading this.
they would have to be close enough for the suns light to not cover us up. have light speed. be actively looking at us within THE 200,000 YEAR timeframe homosapiens have existed which this alone would require pinpoint accuracy. AND for the first 10s of thousands of years homosapiens had less than a 1 million total population.
i love the idea of meeting other intelligent life but the chances are so inconceivably low. they would never be remotely close to us intelligence wise. people assume this means they would be a few levels higher when in reality it would be near omnipotence or omniscience. they would have no need to interact with humans and yes this includes as zoo animals or slaves. this is all based on if they even had greater than light speed alone. us getting to them or seeing them is even lower because we havent obtained anything close to light speed. we cant even perceive how low the chances of contacting intelligent life would be and for people saying we sent stuff out. im sorry but those things arent going to magically bump in to aliens millions or even trillions of light years away. if they did. the aliens would need to have greater than light speed. be able to even understand what we are saying which is also unlikely because we assume they are bipedal and talk with vocal chords and mouths which might not be remotely likely at all. and on top of that. plus if our message managed to make it there with no damage and they could decipher it. we would have been dead as a species for millions of years.
but who knows. im not a god. im just a loser on the internet.