At the start of Birthright, Jor-El is concerned Kal-El will die because they have been searching for a very long time to find other intelligences, and have had no luck.

Given how populated the DCU is, not to mention the green lantern corp, how does this make sense?

In the same sense it does in our Universe. If you think that even with that high population everything has to be crowded your dead wrong. There are moons, planets, stars, solar systems and finally galaxies. We can barely visit the entirety of our solar system. It could be possible for life to be existing and flourishing in the next solar system or even galaxy.

It makes no sense to compare Krypton of the DCU with Earth in the real world.

Krypton was significantly more advanced in a universe teeming with life. We are not, and our universe may not be.

They had advanced space travel, had visited other solar systems and galaxies. The green lantern corps were active and know about kryptonians.

How did they not realize they were not alone? It's just a poor plot point.

The Universe is a huge place, you could search for one thing for a million years and never find it even if it was the size of Jupiter, or if there were billions of whatever it was you were searching for.

He may not have meant people like Kryptonians...not just any intelligent life. And loneliness doesn't mean not having others around, but rather not having others around that you can connect with. Also, depending on the canon the Kryptonians haven't space traveled in quite a while. It is possible that when Kryptonians were space travelers there were no other intelligent life and the universe wasn't as teeming as it is now in the DCU. Keep in mind for all the high tech civs out there they almost all seem to be pretty ghetto-ish so another meaning could be that there are no other civilizations aren't degenerates. Krypton and Earth seem very unique in the DCU in that sense.

There is any evidence of this?

They didnt want to leave his planet, that dont mean they dont belive in alien life.

Just dont care to contact them.

For Aliens, Humans are Aliens.

I'm referencing the first issue of Birthright, where Jor-El says they never found any other life....

The Universe is a big, huge, massive, enormous, larger-than-is-comprehendable place. Even in the DCU with thousands of species across the universe that still leaves billions of stars and planets without life. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that since Jor-El's scans have just detected non-inhabited planets.

I just read Birthright recently and I don't remember any reference of Krypton having inter-solar system space faring technology.

Despite the GL corps existing, they don't neccessarily interact with every planet in their sectors. Maybe they have observed and were aware of Krypton, but that doesn't mean Krypton was aware of the GLs.

@rdclip: They had been traveling in space for 100,00 years or something. How could Kryptonians be exploring so muchof the universe and send scans as far as earth and not be aware of other life in the universe? It just doesn't make sense to me...

well then it's a flaw you discovered. That pretty much sums it up to be honest

@muyjingo said:

How long they've been exploring doesn't mean anything.

It's pretty much the case that we evolved on Earth as soon as intelligent Life could have possibly evolved in the universe.

This means that it might be the case that we could search the cosmos for millions of years and we could find no intelligent life, not because it's unlikely to evolve or some nonsense like that but because we just happen to have all our ducks line up to evolve into intelligent life far earlier than anyone else. And while homo sapiens have been around for around 2 million years an alien civilization would likely just say we had potential to evolve into intelligent life due to several characteristics up until around 10,000 years ago. We haven't evolved, but before that point we'd have just been considered another animal by aliens.

And even if we search for millions of years, at the speed of most transport in DC that wouldn't be enough to get much explored of the universe. With our universe if you travel 10x the speed of light and explore for a million years... that's only 6% of a 2 dimensional universe after 100,000,000 years, much less in a 3d universe. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even be outside our local cluster...so less that 4 galaxies and we're first and we don't know by how much... It's not unreasonable to think it's possible that they could explore for that long and find no intelligent life.

Like above post says, the Universe is a very, very, very, really, really, really huge place. If the Krytonians discovered 100 solar systems per year over 100,000 years, it is entirely possible (if not expected) that they didn't discover a one with advanced life. Like I said before there are billions of stars in just our galaxy even if there were 10,000 advanced species across that galaxy, that would still leave billions of dead solar systems.

I should point out that if you take all the numbers we know now roughly and estimate from there, assuming that civilization advances at the same speed we do then it is likely that there is a civ within something like 100 or 200 light years of us and we'll likely make contact with them in about 100 to 200 years... Simply because warp drive ships are a goal for NASA by 2100 (and we are working on drives right now) These drives will be able to travel between 10 and 30 times the speed of light and providing we build ships and explore significantly a civilization will be reachable within 20 years of the point we develop it and we should be putting out probes in all directions which means we should be able to do it by 2150 and no later than probably 2300.

As to why I'm not stating all the factors that we know now for planets and such it's because it's a decent chunk of math and data and intelligent life that develops radio technology is a thing which we don't know the statistics for and we can only assume equal outcome for each possibility and I simply don't think that's the case.

Well, no. Just no. They would most definitely detect signs through transmissions, archeological remains, the other species space programs etc. I appreciate how you're trying to look at it, but it just doesn't make sense in the DCU.

It doesn't make sense in present day DCU if you know very little about what you're talking about.

#1 We don't know when Krypton was blown up exactly and when Kryptonians stopped exploring space or how populated their sector of space is.

#2 Transmissions that people think would come off a civilization is just nonsense nowadays. Radiowaves go at the speed of light and it's thought now that the bubble of radiowaves we used to think existed doesn't because the energy levels we use simply don't go out that far, but more importantly, by the time they get to any other civilization that might one day or have been able to receive them, the radio they'd about 160 years, at least for us, after the ability to blow ourselves up, and 100 years after most radio broadcasts stopped and right about the same time that we would be able to reach them fairly quickly.

That means you have roughly 100 years to catch those broadcasts. That seems like a lot of time. It's not. Our planet has had the ability to develop Radio telescopes for 2 million years and yet we've only had it for 100 years and will be capable of using it until the time our civ dies out but in all that future time we will likely use Radio waves less and less and stop looking for radio signals more and more. Assuming our civ goes on for 2 million years that would mean that only a small fraction of the time when there was intelligent life on Earth that we'd actually receive any message. Just realizing that time span creates a huge problem match a civilization at just the right time and distance intervals.

Of course none of that matters because the Radio bubble only has enough energy to go to like 4light years out so yeah... not really something you can work with.

What? It doesn't make sense if I don't know what I'm talking about?

That's fine, as it does make sense since I do know what I'm talking about.

Trying to argue based on our universe and technology is ridiculous. The DCU is not the same as our universe, and the DCU is teeming with live and advanced technology. It would be very difficult for any advanced space faring civilization not to detect the hundreds of other space faring advanced civilizations.

Transmissions wouldn't have to be radio waves...distances don't matter so much with technology like boom tubes ftl travel.....it's just a flaw in the book. Which I can accept,was just hoping for a good explanation

@muyjingo: But, MoS doesn't take place in the DCU. It takes place in Snyder's/Goyer's/Nolan's 'realistic' universe which is much closer to our universe than the DCU.

If you want to continue to argue, you do the research because I'm too lazy to. Find out how many planets there are with sufficiently advanced species in the DCU. Then find out how big the universe is, how big the milky way galaxy is, how many stars there are in the milky way, what is the average distance between the stars. Then try to figure out the probability of finding one of those advanced species by just randomly searching.

There's your good explination.

If you're a programmer all you have to do to see how futile it is to find intelligent life with radiowaves is all you have yo do is make a program where you have some number of dots that will turn color when they start emitting radio waves and then another color when they start attempting to receive them and have this set for roughly 200 years of time however you calculating time with the dots... And then programs the dots to advance towards intelligent life, but have it set so the advancements are random intervals. You can also ignore all the negative outcomes too if you want. You then have it set that if any sphere of radiowaves hits a receiving planet it turns another color. I doubt you will get even 1 unless you run the program hundreds of thousands of times.

As to the idea that radiowaves don't matter. Yes they do. We and our envisioned future tech as well as everyone in DCU as far as we know use more advance forms of communication which don't radiate. If they don't radiate you can't detect them. It's really that simple.

There is also the possibility that the Kryptonians forgot or made to believe differently through dogma. It's wouldn't be that surprising because Krypton, as much as it is a "scientific" culture what it always shows up as is a heavily religiously indoctrinated and traditionalist culture with a lot of scientific knowledge that often gets suppressed.

Even in a universe teeming with life, the vast distances still are mindboggling.

Take ten long steps in any direction. Then take an ant and look how long it takes for that tiny little ant to cover a distance we cover in seconds. Now imagine you are the same size to that ant as the ant is to our size and try to cover the distance of ten ant steps, which may take hours. Then imagine having to travel the distance between New York and Los Angeles at that scale. Then imagine how much time it would take to cover that distance a thousand times. If that sounds like you went pretty far, now scale the whole thing back to our size and you only reached the edge of our own solar system ... The distance to the next planet is millions of times further away. Most people have no clue how big the universe really is.

Even if there is life out there, even with FTL technology it's likely the Kryptonians only explored a tiny fraction of their surrounding space

@muyjingo: Dont listen to the answers ''the universe is a big place, yada, yada, yada'' its just a lazy explanation!

Its stupid thats what it is, it doesnt make sense. I HATED that they even had to say that line in Birthright. I loved the explanation that Kryptonians didnt travel away from theyr planet because of religious beliefs, that make sense. They could know about other races and be aware of what happened around them, but they choose to stay because of cultural and religous reasons, ill buy that.

But when a civilization as advancened as Krypton who exists in a comic book setting (where there IS literally aliens beaming at every corner!, i mean we even have aliens in OUR solar system) its just stupid. The whole idea that kryptonians didnt know about life just makes them seem incompetent and stupid as a race. Man! I hated that line so much!

And its not about traveling around looking at individual planets, even if you traveled lightspeed that would take... well that would be impossible technically, or it would take billions of years! But scanners! Even as primitive as we are, we have traveled to the moon and have probes at some pretty far places in the solar system, but we are already scanning MILLIONS and billions of miles away, not very good mind you, but still, we have only done this for really 60-80ish years... imagine in 10.000 years, we would be kings of the galaxy(if were still alive), we would know EXACTLY what happended around us in a very, very, very, very far radius!

You're also forgetting things like Religious dogma often censor things and erase things from history and we know that Kryptonians in the universe were feared and stayed away from. So it is possible that at one point they expanded conquering and killing and decimated all the space in their territory and then that civilization crumbled losing a ton of that knowledge and if any survived it was hidden and then in time as they readvanced and started exploring they found nothing in their search, because there literally was nothing because they had destroyed it in a previous civilization.

You have to realize that a lot of modern technology and concepts that we have today isn't "new" in the sense that we're the first to invent or think of the principals behind it. Many things all the way up to around the early 1900s were invented more than 2000 years ago, but because of various political reasons and the thoughts of the times they simply weren't used and advanced or were forgotten. So when we say things like "we came up with the idea of the atom in 1930s" we mean our current western civilization. Atomic theory was a thing in Greece and Rome 2000 years ago. Taking that sort of view you can see easily how it's possible that Kryptonians who did fall and did have multiple empires and such could not have found other intelligent civilizations in much the same way due to the same reasons.

Not to mention the idea that the DCU is all teeming with life is just wrong to begin with consider you simply don't know where Krypton is located nor do you know whether it is in an active or dead zone which there are dead zones in the DCU and I'm pretty sure you don't know the absolute position in time these 100,000 years happened in which means they could have been in present day or thousands to millions of years in the past... all of the above effects whether or not they'd actually find others.

"You've taken up the sword against your own people." - If not against his own people then who? Zod is a general who marshals forces against what? Krypton knows its not alone in the universe. Jor-El is hardly blown over by the fact Earth is inhabited by sentient people who might worship his son. This tends to suggest Krypton is aware of other peoples amongst the stars besides just humanity (otherwise Jor-El would consider them extraordinary and special just for existing). The prequel comic seems to implicitly declare this by mentioning the Thanagarians. That means there are other alien worlds and peoples out there that Krypton was aware of....

I dont buy it, sure if we talk about technological advancement then a lot of what you say is truth, and sure you can hyperbole the idea that Krypton dont know of any other living race.

But my point is that its bad writing, whenever someone has to go so such extreme lengths to actually rethink the whole kryptonian history in ''fan fiction'' proves my point. It just makes this crazy advanced civilization that is Krypton seem stupid, ignorant and naive... which is kinda the opposite of everything the DC universe is trying to make the Kryptonian civilization out to be.

In the main DC universe, Krypton is very close to earth, in a cosmic sense. In Birthright its VERY far from Earth, so the deal with not knowing life makes a bit more sense in that story! Still that sentence annoys me!

It is badly written. Never denied that ^.^

Krypton is stupid, ignorant, and naive for the the most part. That's is why there is Superman is the last son of krypton after all. If they were smarter, they'd still be alive.

Krypton and Earth are really unique in the DCU as far as we have ever seen. The whole rest of the universe seems to be down trodden urban ghettos for the most part. Earth and Krypton seem to be the only bastions of non-degenerate civilization in the universe. Even Oa and all the other capital planets and cities we see they tend to be degenerate or utilitarian to the extreme. This is true of Marvel too. We only see a real civilization in the case of Earth and Krypton. Which brings the question what makes them so unique but meh.

Also something to think about about the detecting life out there... The only reason Earth knows there are aliens out there is because Superman is there and then aliens start appearing. As far as we have ever been told about the DCU they are in the same circumstances as far as connecting with other civilizations out there as we are. Even with all the civilizations we know that are out there... of course from various books Earth has been described as an out of the way backwater world that hasn't got anything else around it...which again goes to show that there are fairly dead zones in the DCU where something like 100,000 years of searching could turn up nothing.

@muyjingo: dude just cause. Also birthright is just one of so many origin tales for supes. Right now Krypton knew of other life in the universe they just didn't have space travel

I was talking about Birthright, not MoS.

I am a programmer, I get your point. It's just irrelevant.

Radiowaves don't matter because that's just what we happen to use on Earth in the real world. In the DCU with the hundreds or thousands of alien races, there will be all sorts of transmissions. It isn't just limited to radiowaves.

If they "forgot" or were made to believe differently that's an even bigger problem, given how advanced they are meant to be.

Krypton is stupid, ignorant and naive because their planet exploded? That's ridiculous reasoning.

And what are you basind most planets being degenerate civilizations on? Thanagar. New Genesis. Korugar. There are so many more.....

We know Aliens exist even if Clark never came to earth. Abin Sur for one.

i hate public forums and am no longer here.

They knew about other lifes, they just simply don care to talk with them.

The Kryptonians look to belive they should saty in his planet every moment and were careless to the outside.

They're stupid, ignorant, and naive because they didn't get off the planet, not because it exploded

It depends on the canon, but it has been shown that Superman coming to Earth redirected aliens towards Earth. Weird yes, but it's been shown thus it works!

As far as non-degenerate worlds. Korugar may be another one at some point, but after Sinestro's rule they were no longer. Thanaga is ruled by the military and is by definition class stratified and is degenerate. New Genesis is degenerate due to mother box providing everything they need and the fact that they see nothing wrong with living on a planet in a city that is thousands of times more advanced than the rest of it's inhabitants...so the city itself is degenerate in a way, the rest of the planet is a ghetto... a pretty one, but still a ghetto.

i hate public forums and am no longer here.

Is Krypton in the DCNU still only 30 light years from earth? Or is this the "Krypton is in the Andromeda Galaxy" version I've heard of? If it's the one Neal Degrasse Tyson was hired to find, a red dwarf star within 30 light years of Earth, then it is a simple plot point they neglected.
These are people who didn't do the research that Coast City can only be "between San Franciso and Oakland" if one intends to drive from one city to the other without bothering to use the bridge that directly connects the two.From Atlas of the DC Universe, written by DC staffer Paul Kupperberg.
When superman walked across America, they mentioned "the south side of Philly". Uh, BOSTON has a south side. Phila has south street. They made other major errors in their descriptions as well. These people aren't bothering to be scientifically accurate, they just want to get out scifi stories and draw women with ample cleavage and very little - or no - costumes. We the readers are the ones who want them to be consistent. They don't. They don't want to do the hard work it would take, and they don't care if they are wildly inaccurate from one issue to another as long as we buy them.

Sorry to sound so negative, but that's my viewpoint.

@eschrammbo: Krypton is 20ish light years away and Birthright was written in 2003 so the inconsistencies don't apply. I believe when Birthright was written Krypton was in the Andromeda Galaxy.