Nevertheless, Laughlin outlined at least one possible explanation for the apparent dearth of aliens as smart, or smarter, than us in the universe. It has to do with what can seem like a counter-intuitive result of our technological advance—the “signal leakage” of our communications is becoming more and more scarce, not more abundant. He brought to bear the example of a famous ego: the then-real estate mogul and now-president of the United States.
“If we look at what’s going on, here on Earth, even Donald Trump—one of the most self-promoting guys out there—is making no effort whatsoever to send his message to the stars,” Laughlin said. “He’s not building radio telescopes, he’s not broadcasting lists of his accomplishments to anyone but the people whose opinion he cares about—namely, everybody in the United States. And so, there’s nothing that we’re doing that would lead to our footprint being evident at interstellar distances. Indeed, a lot of the things we’re doing—even as we improve our technology—are leading to less and less of a signal leakage.” Broadcast television and radio leak information about us into the cosmos, but those means of communicating, Laughlin said, “are going away quickly, replaced by transmissions through fiber optic cable.”
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