aliens #2

[Madame Adequate]

Do you know why I used that as an example? Because last year a paper was published that theorized an Earth-like planet was possibly found at that distance. Do you really think we haven't checked the space that near? There probably isn't even a solar system at that distance.

Wow, really? I was entirely unaware that we had accurately and conclusively mapped everything within an 800ly diameter sphere! I'm all about how awesome we humans and our technology are but this is fairly special even for us. Link to a map plz?

I think you're getting your ideas of scale wrong here. Space is big and empty, but not THAT empty. Within 100ly of Sol there are a lot of stars. cf. here, here, here, here, and here - there are almost 2000 stars identified there within 100ly of Sol. this number will increase exponentially every 100ly further out you go. Now I admit I'm no astrophysicist or anything but I know enough about space to know that we sure as hell fire haven't taken a peek at every single one of those few hundred stars within 50ly, nevermind the ones beyond that.

Oh, also, remember that one of the main reasons we only see huge gravitational bodies like super-Jupiters five miles from their sun is because our detection methods are crude. We don't see smaller bodies because they're below our resolution, as it were.