As far as I'm concerned, and have decided....if there really had been or are aliens (other than the Earth ones)...we all would've known by now. There's no way that certain current elements of our government would be able to keep their mouths shut. ZERO PERCENT CHANCE.

Psh...even AT light speed, you'd be talking an almost NINE YEAR round trip to the nearest star....and we're nowhere CLOSE to being able to sustain humans in space for that long, much less capable of creating a vessel and powering it and hitting a speed target anywhere but a moderate fraction of that.

Remember, as you increase velocity, you're also vastly increasing the amount of damage that things like dust and other tiny debris can do. Things like 'deflector shields' are a necessity at some point, you can't just keep making thicker and thicker plating...

You're assuming that what we can produce would survive the trip, which hasn't been tested, nor is there any currently known method of producing a stable wormhole, nor can we reach any place that it could be tested. For your theory to work, we'd have to be able to produce either a stable wormhole in a semi-permanent state with static entrance AND exit location, or find a naturally occuring or alien-tech-produced one. This is all infinitesimal chance of occurrence, basically to the point of not even worth wasting mental energy on. We can barely create black holes that exist for more than fractions of a second. We have no bloody clue how to make a wormhole.

We live on Earth, not in Star Trek, or on Arrakis.

As much as I love the concept of folding space (and especially Herbert's son going back and giving an origin to the spacing guild and how they got that ability), it ain't real until it's real. IDGAF what's possible 400 years from now. I'll be dead. And frankly, my money is on humanity's extinction or vast depopulation and going back to agrarian low-tech society long before any of us have a chance to permanently escape this rock.

Imagine the dimples from asteroids hitting you travelling at light speed. That clear is going to be THE BOMB.

While I am VERY glad I'll be dead before anything except maybe an oil war or two comes to pass (I guess technically we could already count both Gulf Wars, so I mean one or two major multicountry wars...not that.), I still try to at least be conscious of the decisions I'm making today.....but without government that gives a shit and a half, I really question how much it matters, especially when other people in poorer countries want (and why shouldn't they?) what we have had...money, power, prosperi...oh wait, we still don't have that last one. Oops.

Oh man, I love this debate. Let's go over again how there's been about 20,000 Captain Picards in the run of STTNG!

I love how you got downvoted for basically saying "Occam's Razor". Still doesn't beat me getting kicked out of a jury pool for defining it during voir dire though.

Classic Pinside.