Will we ever communicate with extraterrestial life in a reasonable time frame?

[DennisN]

Humans exhibit a high level of oxymoronic behaviour. On the one hand, some of them are desperate to meet space aliens but they don't a 'foreigner' moving in next door.

After frequent alien visits it might turn into NIMBY .
(this was actually the plot for the SF movie District 9)

 

[sbrothy]

I suspect it's will be with alien contact as it has been historically with "meetings" between cultures here on Earth. The party arriving and saying "Hi!" will have the upper hand. Just being able to bombard the contactee from orbit says it all I think.

"Oops, we lost a bunch of titanium "telephone" poles. Sorry guys!"

 

[sbrothy]

After frequent alien visits it might turn into NIMBY .
(this was actually the plot for the SF movie District 9)

Wasn't it also supposed to be some kind of allegory over the squalor and rampant racism in South Africa?

EDIT: And BTW, that NIMBY thing is a big thing here in Denmark when we're talking windmills. Everyone thinks they're a great idea until they ruin your seaview.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Everyone thinks they're a great idea until they ruin your seaview.

But not if you pay them enough compensation. If coal were very cheap / free and not frowned upon, people would still be happy to go down to their cellar and stoke the stove twice a day. Inconvenience is a relative quantity.
Everyone likes to moan.

 

[DennisN]

EDIT: And BTW, that NIMBY thing is a big thing here in Denmark when we're talking windmills. Everyone thinks they're a great idea until they ruin your seaview.

Pretty much the same here in Sweden.

 

[bob012345]

Pretty much the same here in Sweden.

Can’t they just be painted with sky colors?

 

[sbrothy]

Can’t they just be painted with sky colors?

Might be worth a suggestion, but then they'll claim they emit a low bandwidth noise which scares the livestock or something. Or the rotors are carcinogenic or cause Covid19.

As long as property prices fall the resistance will find new excuses. It's come to the point where people are starting to think nuclear energy might not be such a bad idea, but you try to find a place for a nuclear plant in Denmark.

 

[pinball1970]

This is something specific in terms of search for earth like planets

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-earth-small-planets.html

 

[pinball1970]

Even if we find planets that can harbor life today, what was the history of such planets? We do not know.

A study here suggests highly unlikely for some of the reasons discussed.

https://phys.org/news/2024-08-dim-odds-alien-civilizations.html