Invisible

To begin with, it’s really hard to square humanity’s status as perhaps the only intelligent species in all of time and space with the idea that we are insignificant.
Michael W. Clune "I Don’t Believe in Aliens Anymore" The Atlantic. Wednesday 8 August, 2018

Perhaps this is strange, but I don't find it at all difficult. The Solar System contains some unknown number of what are effectively random rocks and chunks of ice. They orbit around the Sun and the various planets, and most people rarely give them a second thought. But some percentage of these extraterrestrial objects are large enough that, were one to collide with the Earth, our civilization would end in a heartbeat. And within some number of years, there would be no sign that we were ever here. And the Universe would never notice our passing.

But here's the thing it turns out that it's really difficult to pick meaningful signals out the background noise of the Universe. People understand homo sapiens to be "perhaps the only intelligent species in all of time and space," because we haven't been able to verifiably find any trace of another "intelligent" species. But until the invention of radio, anyone farther away than the Moon would have had a very difficult time detecting that humanity was even here. It's been forty-one years to the day since Voyager 1 lifted off from the surface of the Earth, and it isn't even a light-day away yet. Our ability to project the signs of our presence into the cosmos are is limited. To presume that other intelligent life forms would be visible to us, if they were out there, would also be to presume that they're better at projecting their presence than we are. I don't know that I buy that second presumption.