We need to open our mind, if there are other civilizations, they would probably destruct themselves or reach a very much more advanced technology/knowledge level.
With actual knowledge and technologies, we consider that we can't go faster than light only because we haven't observed yet something that go faster. Quantum physics do not prove this wrong but tell us that we are far from understanding how the things works, in fact we know nearly nothing and more we understand about quantum physics more this let us to open others questions and see that physics is WTF and sometime nearly not logic.
Personally, i can't imagine that time is not spending the same way depending the mass and speed of the space part and not more than trying to tell me that E-MC2, energy = mass*speedlight2.
Back to 100 years i think they would be even more surprised than me about knowing that. So i know that i don't know and i could be very surprised.
But if this stay true even in the future, this do not mean that it's impossible to travel, maybe they can do teleportation, sub-space traveling, maybe there is hidden spaces dimensions or something else how could we know ?
Comparing to our knowledge and technology level it's a bit like asking or trying to explain to an ant or a even a plant how do we went to the moon or how to run a nuclear reactor, maybe we're just not enough evolved to receive this knowledge or just image how this could be possible.
Maybe their exist univers guardian that that create, sow, observe and regulate life.
Everything is possible, imagination can be used, maybe reality exceeds fiction, however back to earth from a logical point of view, we only know that we don't know how it could be possible and this let us many possibility to think about it.
Don't get me wrong. I am hopeful that in future we will overcome the limitations of the speed of light be it whatever way that is.
What I am saying is a potential answer to the fermi paradox being that maybe it just isn't possible.
What you are saying is that I am basing this upon our current knowledge. I am fully aware that with strides there may be ways around distant travel to the stars
but
Perhaps there isn't. Perhaps that is why we have never heard.
I believe life exists out there but whether we will ever get to know if it I am not so sure. Technologies undreamt of by us may be possible. Perhaps the emergence of AI will circumvent many of these things by calculating ways for us. Perhaps using quantum teleportation we can send artificial life out there at speeds or through methods which would kill non mechanical life.
There is a world of possibilty but there is also that possibilty that we may never know.
Over a period of billions of years we might have missed them. They may have come and gone as you say. Destroyed themselves. Civilisations rise and fall. They might not exist yet. We might just be in an awkward time frame of in between.
In fact what if they exist but on a dimension or in a form that we do not recognise as life?
Another very large possibility is that we are looking at the issue from a human perspective. We seek evidence of life out there. Why would another sentient race do the same it feel the same need?
A very thought provoking article. I could talk about it for days on end ;0)
Yes possibly, everything is possible or can be true unless we prove it right (if it is possible) unless we prove it false (if possible too) so this might be the answer.
I personally think that maybe our knowledge do not permit us to understand a way to travel but not by the way we think about. Maybe we can access to a sub-space or something like that simply would make take us a shorter path a bit like when we say that to go at the opposide side of the earth it take 22'000 km, but if we pass trough the heart of the earth it only takes ~14000 km however we do not what is under-earth and how to do that.
This but at an other scale (of thought not distance).
I like to think of it as under space ;0)
If you prefer, i'm not a native speaker i don't always hold the right term, tank's for correction