[JurijD]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Right. That's what I was trying to say in my Last post. I am in no way trying to say we will colonize the galaxy in 4,000, 15,000 or even a million years. I was just trying to put into numbers that even at sublight speeds it should be possible in an extremely short amount of time as compared to the life of the galaxy. The fact that despite this teh galaxy is not colonized doesn't prove anything, but it certainly gives weight to the probability that there are huge factors making interstellar travel hard. Factors beyond just needing some faster propulsion system.

Yes yes, I agree. It is VERY curious that we have not been overrun by aliens by now. I´ve been wondering about this simple fact for some time now.

I don´t think that we can explain it away with "technical problems" because one way or the other we can colonize other worlds its just a matter of time for the right tech to develop.

To be honest I really cannot think of a good reason why we haven´t been visited by aliens before... EXCEPT if I dip into the border-line things some others have come up with:

Maybe we were visited eons ago but our planet was already populated so they moved on... say they have a sort of "prime directive": don´t mess with other life forms until they develop warp drive or a VCR that lets you set the clock easily or whatever..

In any case I wouldn´t be at all surprised if we find out the galaxy is full of colonized worlds... and in reverse I wouldn´t be surprised if we find is scaresly populated.