if theres intelligent life elsewhere why dont we receive radio transmissions from them?

Answer 1

Radio transmissions travel at the speed of light so if they sent a message now it could takes 4 to 4 million years to receive depending on their distance.

Answer 2

There are thousands of reasons.

1. If they were in another galaxy, the signal would take millions of years to reach us.
2. It's not so easy picking up signals from space. There's a lot of noise. Not only can the transmission get screwed it, there is a chance that you could completely miss a signal sent from space if you didn't know it was coming. Also, if the signal is millions of years old it could be highly disturbed, and chances are even if we heard it, we might not even know it was sent by aliens.
3. They might not use radio waves.
4. Maybe they don't want to make contact
5. Seti hasn't even checked for signals from more than 99.9999% of this galaxy.
6. They could be sending out messages using a different form of communication we arn't looking for.
7. Lots of other reasons I can't think of right now.

Answer 3

Well you have to remember if they are out there they are probably far away. SETI, the program that searches the skies looking for possible extraterrestrial signals since it's beginning in the 1970s or so starting with Frank Drake, probably earlier than that, have only looked at a very minuscule part of the sky maybe a percent or so. So there is a lot of sky that has yet to be surveyed for signals.

Also the vastness of space is quite a travel from galaxy to galaxy. Those transmissions take time to get to one place to another, just like if the sun were to die and stop emitting light we wouldn't know until 8 minutes after it stopped.

Answer 4

So far we've seen no verifiable evidence of other sentient species. That said, I believe with some certainty that somewhere in our galaxy at some past, present, or future time, a sentient species did/does/will exist.

Why haven't we heard from them?

Perhaps they are not technologically advanced enough to be heard. They may be mastering stone knives right now, or experiencing their own Rennaisance.

Perhaps they are here right now. Any species sufficiently advanced to travel interstellar distances would be able to hide or masquerade with ease. That Boeing 737 that just flew by may be a surveillance craft.

Perhaps they are so far away they will never notice us and vice versa.

Perhaps they existed a million years ago and died out.

Perhaps they will exist a million years from now.

It is really impossible to know for sure.

The Drake Equation suggests that there is sentient life out there. The Fermi Paradox casts doubt. Play around with the calculation form at the second link and see what you think.

Answer 5

Great question!!Hang onto your socks, 'cause here's the answer.Why should they communicate with us? We attempted for years to establish contact (even a hi!) with extraterrestrial life (the SETI program and project OZMA)
Doing so would prove we are not alone, but so what?
Maybe they exist and went through this phase long enough ago that their signals arrived before we had the means to detect them.Remember, this technology is really less than 100 years old. That's a pretty marrow window of space that signals could be coming from-------within 100 light years--------a dust speck in the cosmos.

Answer 6

Because they are intelligent!! They are monitering the happenings on Earth. They saw a news report with Michael Jackson and one with Paris Hilton and Brittney Spears. Then they saw a documentary about the Royal family. They also saw an episode of Steve Irwin wrestling with alligators. They said why would we want to contact people that stupid?

Simple as that- I mean if you were intelligent, would you wnat to contact us?

Answer 7

There is no doubt there is intelligent life elsewhere,it may be that a technological society that could communicate with us is very short lived.
Some where less than 500 years!

Answer 8

Because any civilization that broadcasts its presence makes itself a target to aggressive neighboring civilizations. Most intelligent life knows to keep its mouth shut when traveling through a wolf-infested forest.
Read
The Killing Star
by Charles Pellegrino
for a rather compelling argument for why we should stop broadcasting.

Answer 9

We may well be receiving them. Our problem is in trying to detect them, then if we do, to interpret them. See the movie "Contact" or look at the SETI website. The more logical answer may be that there hasn't been enough time in galaxy evolution for even the nearest intelligient life forms radiation to have reached us yet. Likewise, ours hasn't reached them either.
Unless they are from Vega.

Answer 10

Radio waves travel at the speed of light and we have been sending them for about 60 years so the first one is only 60 light years away.

Here is a map of everything within 50 light years that could hear our radio waves if they are able to hear them.
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html