Aliens - Why we won't find them...

[Phenakist]

As far as time goes, considering another race would have started about the same time as ours, if they didn't have "dark ages" where technological and scientifical development stopped dead they'd be about 500 years ahead of us.

 

[Jandau]

As far as time goes, considering another race would have started about the same time as ours, if they didn't have "dark ages" where technological and scientifical development stopped dead they'd be about 500 years ahead of us.

And why would they have started at the same time as us? As time goes, that's not very likely. The could have started a billion years before us. They might start a billion years after us. That's the whole point, the scope of time and space in question is humongous.

*snip*

The likelyhood of life occuring is a bit of an unknown, that's why poits 1 and 2 go hand in hand. Also, as I mentioned, when we want aliens, we don't want some bacteria and ooze (which is what life on Earth was for a VERY long time), we want a civilization of some kind. So we need a life-bearing planet that then proceeds to evolve sentient life (also not guaranteed), and then has the resources and circumstances to support a space-faring civilization (a planet with no metals might make an industrial society a bit tricky, for instance).

Sure, it's going to happen, but it's not going to happen on every corner