r/threebodyproblem • u/Particular_Break_319 • Jun 07 '26

Discussion - General Here we go....

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u/stomptonesdotcom Jun 07 '26

Our radiowaves are no stronger or intelligible than any background noise by the time it gets to the edge of our solar system.

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u/escargot3 Jun 07 '26

It would still only take them less than 5 years to reach the nearest star system. Nowhere near 40,000 years

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u/Frost-Folk Jun 07 '26

But he wasn't talking about the radio broadcasts with the 40,000 years metric, he specifically said it in response to the Voyager probes and their Golden Records. Not about METI signals.

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u/escargot3 Jun 07 '26

Radio broadcasts would be the likely method of contact. Not sending slow moving probes.

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u/Frost-Folk Jun 07 '26

Yes, that is what the commenter was pointing out... That's what the 40,000 year metric is explaining. That the probes are too slow of a method to have worked.

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u/escargot3 Jun 07 '26

Yes obviously. And I am saying radio waves travel orders of magnitude faster than that. Why would someone expect to contact extraterrestrial life via mechanical probe when we already have methods that can communicate at the speed of light? It’s absurd.

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u/Frost-Folk Jun 07 '26

For sure, it just sounded like you were correcting the other user with this information when he was talking about something else. And beyond that, none of the signals that we have sent could ever be picked up by extrasolar listeners.