About 400 billions stars in the Milky Way galaxy, so the Alpha Quadrant would have somewhere around 100 billion. Earth (and Vulcan and Q'onos) are all located in rather sleepy backwaters, where the lack of intense stellar activity lends itself to long periods of relative peace in which intelligent life could develop. The denser star areas could hide any number of life-sustaining environments, but might not be candidates for intense SETI for that reason. We're on the slow-moving Ferris Wheel. They're on the roller-coaster of death. That and any number of civilizations that are nearing the brink of FTL. However, I suspect Babylon 5 had it right - you would find more dead civilizations than living ones. And their technology could be very dangerous to handle. I like the idea of different space and energy technologies - so alien that they're almost indistinguishable from natural (non-artificial) phenomena. So far, SETI hasn't turned up much. There's talk about the Great Filter, but the filter might actually be more about us not having a clue what we're looking for. Alien life could be so alien that we have trouble identifying it as life, much less figuring out if it's intelligent. Thanks!! rbs
Centuries. Several centuries. Especially if you assume that brown dwarfs might support habitable planets. Thanks!! rbs
Here is a quick, informal chart I made for my stories. It estimates some basic times and distances. Note: this data does not take into account Relativistic time compression or other possible temporal dilations. Technical Information: Warp factor (WF) and speed in multiples of the speed of light (Xc) is defined as: Xc = WF^3 where c=the speed of light This gives a speed of 1c for Warp 1, 512c at Warp 8, 1000c at Warp 10, and so on. Alpha Centauri is 4.3 LY from Earth. Serius is 8.6 LY. The Orion-Cygnus arm is about 3500 LY thick and 10,000 LY long. (This is the arm of the Milky Way in which the Earth Solar system resides) 1 LY (light year) takes a year to travel at WF 1. Warp Factor 1 = 1y -> 1 LY. Warp Factor 2 = 1y -> 8 LYs. Warp Factor 3 = 1y -> 27 LYs. Warp Factor 4 = 1y -> 64 LYs. Warp Factor 5 = 1y -> 125 LYs. WF 6 = 1y -> 216LYs. WF 7 = 1y -> 343 LYs. (1d = 1LY) WF 8 = 1y -> 512 LYs. WF 9 = 1y -> 729 LYs. (1/2d = 1LY) 10 = 1y -> 1000 LYs. (1/3d = 1LY, (3 LY/d). 11 = 1y -> 1331 LYs. (1/4d = 1LY, (4 LY/d). 12 = 1y -> 1728 LYs. (5hr = 1LY). {Estimates in approximations}. Notice how long it would take to travel just across the width of the Orion-Cygnus arm at warp factor ten; approximately 2 years. -Will
Will you, please, stop pointing your telescopes at my home planet? We don't believe in trick or treat.