Maybe intelligent life is not so common out there
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And we might not hear from them for a while.
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Damn - maybe.
Alastair Reynolds is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Terribly dense writing, complicated plots.
He has some serious science credentials:
Link to videoHe completed a degree in astronomy at Newcastle, then a PhD in the same subject at St Andrews in Scotland. He left the UK in 1991 and spent the next sixteen years working in the Netherlands, mostly for the European Space Agency, although he also did a stint as a postdoctoral worker in Utrecht.
Fermi's paradox is explained as resulting from the activities of an inorganic alien race referred to by its victims as the Inhibitors, which exterminates sentient races if they proceed above a certain level of technology. The trilogy consisting of Revelation Space, Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap (the Inhibitor trilogy)[1] deals with humanity coming to the attention of the Inhibitors and the resultant war between them.
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To me, part of the thing is that what we are seeing on distant suns/planets happened many many years ago.
Some other civilization may have tried contacting us, but the radio beam (or whatever) came through 1000 years ago. No response from Earth, so the alien civilization moved to a different section of the sky.
So, not so sure it is so many light years away.
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