The silent treatment

Science tells us there may be tens of billions of Earthlike planets in our galaxy alone. But, hello, why has nobody called us?

We have a lot to offer. Our Timbits alone are worth the trip. But all we get is silence. Sure, some planets may be so advanced that their inhabitants devote themselves to mysterious questions we can’t even hope to fathom, like why does a video of, say, a dog stuck in a tuba warrant 1.4 million Youtube hits while an equally funny cat stuck in a toaster gets zip. Yes, these super-aliens built the Pyramids, but they’ve obviously moved on. They have no reason to stay in contact with us.

The most evolved life forms on a great many other planets probably rank well below our level of achievement — languishing in their version of the Middle Ages, perhaps, or still at the stage of an ambitious mould. They’ve got nothing to say to us, and no way to tell us if they did.

But simple math alone dictates that there should be plenty of worlds right at our level, or maybe a little ahead, reachable with a well-directed signal that could be picked up by a radio telescope.

The opportunities are mind-boggling. European astronomers announced on Wednesday that about 40 per cent of our galaxy’s red dwarf stars are orbited by rocky planets with the right temperature to support life. Given that the galaxy has about 160 billion red dwarfs, the likelihood of sister planets is better than beating the lottery. But still the silent treatment. Was it something we said? Maybe they’ve been monitoring our not-so-stellar TV signals all along.

Yikes! No wonder we’re being shunned.