Another possibility is that they’ve gone through their own singularity, and no longer have a significant visible (to us) presence in physical space (or at least don’t use radio waves any more), i.e. they’ve transcended.
Naturally we can only speculate about what new laws of physics become identifiable post-singularity, but string theory suggests there’s a lot of extra dimensions around to which we don’t have direct access (yet?). What if civilisations that transcend tend to find 4D spacetime too limiting and stretch out into the wider universe, like a small-town kid making it big?
It look like, if it happens for us, that it will happen within the next hundred years or so. Considering that we’ve only been using radio for a bit over a hundred years, that gives a roughly two hundred year window for any two pre-singularity civilisations to spot each other before one or both of them transcend.
0.4 seconds in the year of the cosmos.
Another possibility is that they’ve gone through their own singularity, and no longer have a significant visible (to us) presence in physical space (or at least don’t use radio waves any more), i.e. they’ve transcended.
Naturally we can only speculate about what new laws of physics become identifiable post-singularity, but string theory suggests there’s a lot of extra dimensions around to which we don’t have direct access (yet?). What if civilisations that transcend tend to find 4D spacetime too limiting and stretch out into the wider universe, like a small-town kid making it big?
It look like, if it happens for us, that it will happen within the next hundred years or so. Considering that we’ve only been using radio for a bit over a hundred years, that gives a roughly two hundred year window for any two pre-singularity civilisations to spot each other before one or both of them transcend. 0.4 seconds in the year of the cosmos.