[more_corn]

One thing we often fail to understand is just how small our time window is. I call it a window because as we look further away we look at a different sliver of time, but always a tiny sliver of galactic time. A civilization could last a million years and span half a galaxy and we could fail to see it because the window we look at is offset by a hundred million years. Our window is tiny. The universe could teem with intelligent life and we might just be missing it. Or turn it around. We started transmitting strong radio signals about 70 years ago. We’re visible to something like a dozen solar systems out of hundreds of billions of solar systems in our galaxy out of hundreds of billions of galaxies. It’s likely we won’t be transmitting radio signals for more than a hundred years given our current rates of self-destructive behavior. It’s unlikely that our radio signals will reach very far for very long when considered against the vastness of space and time.