Antique Memes Roadshow

but is it really inconceivable that aliens visited earth? Or that they influenced our culture?

Actually. yes.
Okay, so lets take this one thing at a time.

the solar system is actually quite boring. It's pretty typical. there's no surprising elements. there's no materials that we haven't detected in several other worlds and such. as far as we know, it's a pretty bog standard star, with a pretty bog standard system. the ONLY thing worthing noting- that makes this system unique is us. More specifically. Life. it has life. As far as we know, it's totally unique. (we don't know all that far.)

This means, we're the only reason any society would come here. it's easy to assume there are resources much closer to home, much more easily harvested and exploited.

now, establishing that, lets look at how they'd know we'd exist:

• the JWST is our most sensitive space borne telescope. it's capable of identifying atmospheric compounds of exoplanets. some of those compounds, we associate heavily with the presence of life; it's reasonable to assume any species capable of coming here would have such technology. It's detected such things on several worlds over the past year that it's been active; and has been answering questions and opening new ones for that year.

It's therefore possible that some hypothetical society could identify our presence from such a similar telescope. This gives the outer bound of detection of life at something like four million years. Lots of stars exist in that bubble. Lots. I mean, I don't know that we actually have a count on how many. JWST is finding more all the time

This assumes they're looking at it. maybe those 'earliest life' compounds are... how shall we say super common. Maybe they'r emore interested in say industrial pollutants? The industrial revolution started in 1760- about 250 years ago. Lets say those pollutants weren't really concentrated enough to be highly obvious, until 50 years after the start. that would mean 200 lightyears is the minimum distance to know that humans were altering the enviroment, specifically.

• alternatively, they could have detected our radio transmissions. We're a noisy species. the Arecebo message was sent to messier 13 in '74- about 50 years ago. it wasn't a serious attempt to contact anyone, but it's a powerful signal that could attract attention. We've been broadcasting into space for about a hundred years. here's a picture of just how small 200LY's is,

but that article fails to talk about detectability. Most signals we transmit would be indistinguisable from background radiation. probably the oldest signals that would reliably be detectable are military radar signals intended for detection of ballistic missiles.- creating a bubble with a 60ly radius. 40 for a steady stream of soaps and reality tv.

lets be honest hear. aliens watching Days of Our Lives Reruns probably get a bad impression. And lets not talk about all the, uh, premium, channels.

ALL THAT to say, it's extremely unlikely they actually know we're here.

Now, we need to consider would they come here. Hypothetically, they could be curious about us. Hypothetically, they want to know how Land Before Time Saga ends. (hey, the last one was in 2016. unless they're at proxima centauri, no chance they've seen it yet!)

it would be a serious undertaking to even have the ability to get here in a reasonable time frame... it would take a shit load of energy. Like, on the order of global annual energy consumption. And that's just for the payload. Forget about the size and mass of the fuel tanks necessary- and just to get up to speed. This doesn't include the whole 'slowing down so we can moon them' thing.

basically... any species capable of getting here, and motivated by curiosity about us enough to get here, is probably going to abstain simply because they have the ability to realize we're psychotic fucks who nuked ourselves. multiple times. It's extremely unlikely that any society capable of getting here won't have enough social control in place to prevent idiots from joyriding and mooning the psychotic primitive apes. because if you think nuking people is bad, we won't even need nukes. Just take their giant rocket and point it at the planet- no need to even slow down. (actually, it works better if you don't!)

Do I believe aliens Exist? I believe it's probable.
Do I believe they've come here- ever? Highly unlikely.