Probably Dance

I just finished a science fiction book (The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks) in which people travel through space, but there is no faster than light travel. That is except if there is a wormhole connecting the solar system that you’re in with where you want to go. If there isn’t, it will probably take hundreds of years to transport the other end of a wormhole to where you want to go.

The long travel times offer another explanation for the Fermi Paradox. (in addition to all the explanations already in that article) If you lived in a spaceship and heard that there might be a young civilization on a rocky planet somewhere that is just emerging out of their evolutionary phase, would you spend hundreds of years to have a look? (While knowing that that new species is probably pretty boring and that you’ve probably seen five other species like it before and you already don’t like hanging out with those all that much)

You probably wouldn’t. Nobody would. And the proof lies in the fact that there are still hundreds of uncontacted tribes around the world. (Wikipedia) Now that I’ve told you that there are hundreds of uncontacted tribes around the world, will you go out and try to contact them? Probably not. Too many reasons against it, too few reasons for it.

And in space everything takes a heck of a lot longer, so no wonder that nobody has bothered to say hi.