Overview

• Dr Robin Corbet, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County based at NASA Goddard, outlines a Milky Way with a modest number of civilizations whose capabilities are not far beyond ours.
• He argues that energy costs and vast response times make long-duration high-power beacons, broad colonization, or sustained probe programs unlikely, leaving little for SETI to detect.
• The paper suggests Earth would be an unremarkable target for visits and says an invasion scenario is negligible under this framework.
• Corbet maintains there remains a reasonable chance of eventual contact, yet any detection could prove underwhelming because it would not be far beyond current human technology.
• The work is a newly reported preprint and not peer reviewed, drawing immediate critiques from Prof Michael Garrett, who favors post-biological explanations, and Prof Michael Bohlander, who points to UAP reports as possible empirical leads.