Brewster Rockit by Tim Rickard for February 23, 2020

That’s what they said about radio, and then about tv, …

“Why hadn’t they contacted us?” Are you nuts? Have you seen us? Any aliens smart enough to get this far would be smart enough to keep going.

I’ve been stagnating since the 70s.

They’re out there for sure. And stay out. Very, veeeery far out. #intelligent

They’ve seen our “Leader”.

Curioser and curioser…until Facebook, then furiouser and furiouser.

“Beam me up Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here.”

A kernel of truth there.

WATCH OUT FOR THAT LAMPPOST!

But according to the ancient astronaut theorists, the ancient aliens did make it earth, doc.

Well, they’d better be busy with their Spacebooks than with their COOKBOOKS!

We’re just a hopeless lot of people on a junkyard we created ourselves. So the aliens will just let us have our ways on our smartphones.

Yeah, pretty much.

They can’t get out of their solar system. They keep hitting asteroids while texting!

Perhaps they don’t want to tend to this terrarium.

I’ve always insisted we’d have been better off if technology had ceased advancing after the invention of the pipe organ.

Sadly, the truth maybe that, we are the most intelligent life form in the universe! Scary ain’t it.

Maybe light speed really is the limit and there are no shortcuts. I hope we’ll someday have the ability for inter-stellar travel, but perhaps it’s not possible (in a reasonable time frame).

I read a short story once where each world stopped developing when it discovered the of faster-than-light travel. Earth is invaded by musket-wielding aliens who have a very shot battle with the US Army. It ends with two of the aliens speculating on what will happen when we unlock the mystery of their spaceship engines.

It’s funny to talk about Fermi Paradox in this universe where people from different planets appear regularly.

Cell phones – the black hole of productivity!

I’m going to post this on my FB account.

“There’s a horror movie named Alien? That’s really offensive. No wonder everybody keeps invading you.”

—The Twelfth Doctor

Yeah, they appear to on a path of destruction.

Aliens probably don’t talk to us for pretty much the same reason we don’t talk to ants. I just hope they left the pesticide at home.

Seeing today’s strip made me realize that we haven’t had a “This Week In Rockit Science” strip in a while. I think we’re overdue for one. How about it, Tim?

Or they’re predators, avoiding giving away their position.

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.”

Calvin & Hobbes

This question came up a few months back, and I posted my alternate theory at that time. Being too lazy to go look it up and repost it verbatim, here it is in a condensed version:

All tongue in cheek about our comparative level of intelligence aside, I think a reason for lack of contact may be a much simpler one. We tend to forget how mind-bogglingly huge the universe is (re., Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). We’ve been pumping radio and video signals out into space for slightly over a century now. Assuming we have been sending radio messages out into space for 150 years (hasn’t been quite that long, but just to keep the numbers simple…) and further assuming that the earliest radio messages were powerful enough to reach into outer space (they weren’t), then, traveling at the speed of light, the furthest our communications could have possibly reached would be 150 light years. Anything further out than that will not have heard a single peep out of us. Our galaxy is over 100,000 light years across. Plus, practically everything in the galaxy is a natural radio emitter, meaning a weak deliberate signal would be easily lost in the noise, plus a receiver would have to have a technology compatible enough with our own to be able to detect and decode the signal, plus a receiver on some alien world would have to know PRECISELY where to point the antenna to pick us up, PLUS it would take at the minimum another 150 years just to say hello back.

Fact of the matter is, ET probably doesn’t even know we’re here to be contacted.

No one’s coming because Earth’s description has been changed from “Mostly Harmless” to “Don’t . Just . . . don’t.”

Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that we aren’t worth their time?

“Well, Humans were on Probation as to whether or not they are a Sentient Species but, did you see what they just elected President?”

“Based on that evidence, it’s going to be another 500,000 years before they need to be re-evaluated.”

Dr. Mel (and Dr. Fermi) is right; we should be able to detect these advanced alien civilizations. It’s not like heat can be concealed well in space.

Thank you, Dr. Isaac Arthur, for your extensive videos on the Fermi Paradox and possible solutions.