Relevant article.

Unless I'm missing something, the chances of intelligent alien life seem pretty good. The next question is: How do we summon them to Earth to bring space communism and/or anal probing?

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    If FTL travel isn't possible, I think one day we'll be in a position where we can "see" life on other planets with powerful telescopes but not be able to reach them or communicate with them (and vice versa).

    Then again there may very well be a larger than Earth sized rocky planet just outside Pluto's orbit, and we can't see that yet, so we might be a ways off from seeing aliens.

    • pooh [she/her, love/loves]
      ·
      4 years ago

      From what I understand, the Webb telescope is expected to be a pretty big jump in capability, and is supposed to go up October of this year:

      The more distant an object is, the younger it appears: its light has taken longer to reach human observers. Because the universe is expanding, as the light travels it becomes red-shifted, and objects at extreme distances are therefore easier to see if viewed in the infrared.[136] JWST's infrared capabilities are expected to let it see back in time to the first galaxies forming just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.[137]

      Infrared radiation can pass more freely through regions of cosmic dust that scatter visible light. Observations in infrared allow the study of objects and regions of space which would be obscured by gas and dust in the visible spectrum,[136] such as the molecular clouds where stars are born, the circumstellar disks that give rise to planets, and the cores of active galaxies.[136]

      Relatively cool objects (temperatures less than several thousand degrees) emit their radiation primarily in the infrared, as described by Planck's law. As a result, most objects that are cooler than stars are better studied in the infrared.[136] This includes the clouds of the interstellar medium, brown dwarfs, planets both in our own and other solar systems, comets, and Kuiper belt objects that will be observed with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).[45][137]

      Maybe this could lead us to new evidence of life on other planets?