What’s going on with Neil deGrasse Tyson?

"Because basic science tells us that though intelligent life exists somewhere is likely, it seems extremely unlikely that it could get to us and we could detect it in what is a blip of time in the grand scale"

In my opinion, all it would take for an alien civilization to get here would be to have their society start 1000 years earlier than ours. With our insane technological boom the last 30 years, we've demonstrated an almost exponential nature to technological advances. Assuming another society experienced this uptick quite a bit earlier, I personally don't find it immensely improbable that another world has discovered us.

It may not even look like what we're expecting. If the alien race had a well developed AI that could make accurate assumptions about the universe's nature, they could run a quick simulation of all potential planets for life, based on their own planets characteristics. Suddenly, Earth is on a list with 10 other planets, instead of millions, and our theoretical growth can be fully observed.

/r/OutOfTheLoop Thread Parent