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Comment by charonn0 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if anyone ever peers back at us as intensely as we peer out.

Us in particular, or just in our direction?

If you mean us in particular- doubtful. Hell, out of all the stars in the sky, I can name maybe two? Three?

If you mean in our direction, that depends on whether we are part of some cool space feature, ala the Horsehead Nebula. So maybe- but I have no idea what the odds of being in a cool space feature vs. not are. Only that they are better than Sol being picked out individually.

I mean both. When we look out into space, we're not looking at/for anyone in particular. I think all features of the Universe from any perspective are by definition worth peering at. Similar to the interesting number paradox.[1] Look at the Hubble Deep Field, for example[2]; that photo was taken of an evidently starless/empty patch of sky.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field

It seems unlikely that they would be peering in a way we would expect, considering that out of the billion-year history of life on a given planet, 100 years ago we weren't looking at all and 100 years from now we may be looking in entirely new ways.

I think "a way we would expect" would be kind of precluded by the fact that, if something were looking back, it probably would've had to develop or evolve some sort of perception/method of observation that we don't have access to, otherwise we'd have a much easier time accomplishing said feat. :)

That's true. I've never considered that before.

What limits space photography? I just realized I know nothing about digital photography either...

I've pondered this many times. My conclusion is that it took billions of years for a planet to get to a point for sustainable life, and then billions more to get where we are and considering we've only been here for a blink of an eye. There may be other areas of life but they are so far flung across the known universe we're not going to discover each other anytime soon.

It would be like a colony of ants in San Francisco looking for others but the nearest one is in Paris.

If those ants spent centuries or millennia building giant machines that could see Paris from San Francisco, they'll eventually succeed in making contact. Additionally, if anyone in Paris is looking, the ants in SF have made quite the attention-grabbing scene thus increasing the odds of being contacted. This also makes it seem likely that we'll never find living aliens, but will find plenty of million-year-old machines.

The problem is centuries and millennia are but fragments of time compared to the entire life of the universe...so it's kind of like the ant analogy of a colony in San Fran looking for one in Paris, but only looking from 2:10 pm and 5 seconds to 2:10 pm and 5.1 seconds. Even less than that, probably.

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