Is There Life Out There?
As I continue to avoid crypto news, we will dig into one of the great questions of our time, “Is there someone or something else out there in space?” The question has been in the news as of late, with even the US Congress wanting answers.
Probably the most famous attempt to quantify “are we alone?” is the Drake Equation. Essentially, it states there are X number of stars formed, with Y numbers of these stars having planets, with Z number capable of life and so on and so on. The formula finds that there are between 1000 and 100000 planets in the Milky Way galaxy with intelligent life on them. Now, the formula was mostly meant as a starting point for study and conversation, but, is often cited as proof that there must be life out there. Frank Drake came up with this formula in 1961, and since then, plenty of new information has come up. Just for one, scientist have discovered that Earth’s proximity to the gas giant Jupiter played a large role in intelligent life showing up here. The gravitation pull of the large planet has help keep space objects from pummeling earth over the last 3 million years, helping us grow and sustain life uninterrupted.
For argument, let’s just say, “Yep, life has happened elsewhere.” Why have we not run across it? The obvious reason is that it is too far from us, so we just haven’t crossed paths yet. That is a little too simple, though. We have been able to search many light years away for a while now, I will link below as to how to keep from bogging down here. To factor that with no one has dropped in on us here on Earth, at least since we have been keeping track, what does that mean? The actual answer may be that it is not a distance issue but a time problem. Estimates put the age of the solar system at around 5 billion years, the universe at 14 billion years. Human beings have only been around with the ability to record events (with the exceptions of parents telling kids stories) for around 10,000 years, or so. Civilizations could have come and gone multiple times on one planet long before us. At best, if we could ever get to a planet that could sustain intelligent beings, we could maybe find some remnant of previous life.
Now, what says that life dies out, aren’t humans here to stay? There are plenty of theories on this, one of the biggest says that intelligent life will always eventually learn to master the elements and that means they will create technology/weapons capable of destroying themselves, such as the hydrogen bomb. With this knowledge, the ultimate conclusion is a massive war leading to extinction. Google Fermi Paradox for more on this idea. The next theory says that nature, such as a virus, asteroid or volcano will reset life every few million years. The point is, with stars being created and dying out, on this huge timeline we are operating within, we just miss all the other guys out there.
The next idea, is that we are just on a different level of communication from the aliens. Michael Crichton’s book Sphere is a great explanation of the idea that we just can’t communicate with other life forms. It is not just a language barrier, but, that they might not use language at all. Alien life may talk to each other using a “thought” process that we not only don’t understand, but, might be completely incapable of every possessing the ability to “hear.”
Finally, other life might just be existing on a different plane than humans are. Think about the Langoloiers from Stephen King where they exist just slightly out of sync from the rest of civilization. Might be an oversimplification, but there might be life on Mars right now, we just don’t exist in a way to see or interact with them.
Who really knows? Stephen Hawking advises that if we ever reach appoint to interact with other life forms, we most definitely should not do it, for our own safety. One of my favorite writers, Arthur C Clarke, said it best, “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
And, if you are looking for a book by someone actually smart on this stuff, read:
Hyperspace : A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension-by Michio Kaku
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence