Loud Enough to Disappear

Let me try to paint you a picture of the universe that you may not have previously entertained. The picture begins on a much more "micro" level, at least in the scale of the macroscopic immensity of the cosmos. 

We must begin with our understanding of the evolution of species. If we are inclined to agree that all animals have evolved to become most adept at being either predator or prey, then we may also begin to comprehend a proposed fundamental truth of the universe. Imagine, then, a forest with all its life. Millions of years of evolution have led to a cacophonous symphony of sounds being emitted into the layers of undergrowth and canopy, 

surrounding an observer with all scales of predator and prey calling for mates or sending warnings to potential threats. In the forest you’re imagining, it’s bright and the daylight is at least vaguely detectable. I want you now to imagine an instantaneous transition. You blink your eyes and the entire forest becomes dark. You notice that everything is silent. Why?

In our theory of the universe, let us recall the vastness of the cosmos. Let us then imagine that our local galaxy is the forest, and that stars (suns) are trees. On one of the “branches” (planets) of these trees, we can say with certainty that human beings have a home. Imagine that we developed our first real way to “call out” when on Christmas Eve 1906, the first radio broadcast for entertainment and music was transmitted from Brant Rock, 

Massachusetts to the general public. That transmission was our “peep” into the night. Since then, the 512 or more stars that are currently believed to be located within 100 light-years of our tree have “heard” our chirp. 

Since that first sound, we have been unleashing a torrent of radio waves that are broadcasting every single piece of media from I Love Lucy to Game of Thrones. We have essentially been shrieking unendingly into the void; every transmission from 1906 until now is accessible to any civilization within that hundred light-year range that has even the most basic radio frequency transmission capability.

If we return to the analogy of the forest at night, we’ll notice a distinct incongruence between the micro and macro level of our forests, or at least the way we as a species seem to participation in the cosmic one. 

The theory I’ve been describing to is called the 'Dark Forest Theory'. Imagine that our galaxy is the forest, and it is always dark. Species that have not “evolved” to understand when and how to survive in this darkness are chirping away, unaware of the reason that the forest is quiet at night. Do you know why the forest is quiet at night? 

Because any sufficiently evolved prey knows that the nighttime is when predators hunt, and that they should remain entirely still and not make a single...peep. 

It's just a theory, though.