Impact of technological synchronicity on prospects for CETI

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the probability of technological synchronicity among extraterrestrial civilizations and its implications for SETI, suggesting that a significant number of civilizations must exist for a high likelihood of contact within 20 years.

Contribution

It introduces a mathematical framework to estimate the number of civilizations needed for synchronized technological development to enable contact, considering both leakage and deliberate signaling.

Findings

At least 138-4991 civilizations are needed for a 95% chance of detecting signals in 20 years.

Approximately 1497 civilizations are required for a high probability of deliberate communication.

The probability of contact depends heavily on the number of civilizations and their technological synchronicity.

Abstract

For over 50 years, astronomers have searched the skies for evidence of electromagnetic signals from extraterrestrial civilizations that have reached or surpassed our level of technological development. Although often overlooked or given as granted, the parallel use of an equivalent communication technology is a necessary prerequisite for establishing contact in both leakage and deliberate messaging strategies. Civilization advancements, especially accelerating change and exponential growth, lessen the perspective for a simultaneous technological status of civilizations thus putting hard constraints on the likelihood of a dialogue. In this paper we consider the mathematical probability of technological synchronicity of our own and a number of other hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations and explore the most likely scenarios for their concurrency. If SETI projects rely on a fortuitous detection of leaked interstellar signals (so called "eavesdropping") then without any prior assumptions N \geq 138-4991 Earth-like civilizations have to exist at this moment in the Galaxy for the technological usage synchronicity probability p \geq 0.95 in the next 20 years. We also show that since the emergence of complex life, coherent with the hypothesis of the Galactic habitable zone, N \geq 1497 extraterrestrial civilizations had to be created in the Galaxy in order to achieve the same estimated probability in the technological possession synchronicity which corresponds to the deliberate signaling scenario.