\nDo Aliens exist? Are we alone in the universe? Where is everyone? Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation: Where is everyone? You probably already know that there are more stars in the universe than all the sands on all the beaches of earth. In...\nDo Aliens exist? Are we alone in the universe? Where is everyone? Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation: Where is everyone? You probably already know that there are more stars in the universe than all the sands on all the beaches of earth. In fact, Keppler data shows that just within our own Milky Way galaxy, there may be 10 billion earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars in the habitable zone of its solar system.
Physicist Enrico Fermi, in the 1950’s, asked why, given the vast number of potential planets with life, haven’t we been contacted by aliens yet? Fermi reasoned that any civilization could colonize the galaxy by building AI robot probes that could self-replicate as they journeyed beyond their home planet. Even though the distances between habitable planets are much too vast to be traversed in a human lifetime, the theoretical robots would have had millions or even billions of years to make the journey.
This seems to be a reasonable assessment because when our instruments look out into the universe, we can see that the materials and conditions for life that are present here on earth, But the fact is that our instruments can see no evidence from all our observations of any tell-tale signs of intelligent life anywhere in our solar system, our galaxy or the rest of the observable universe.
In order to detect the kind of signal that Fermi was talking about, that life also has to be super intelligent…One that sends out electromagnetic signals. And in order for us to detect intelligent life on other galaxies, that species would have to be a space colonizing species. Such a galaxy should light up unnaturally. So even having intelligent beings on a planet is not enough, because many intelligent beings have evolved on earth, but super intelligence – space-faring species, like us humans, only evolved only once over 4 billion year on earth.
The Observation selection effect creates a bias in our thinking because no matter how unlikely super intelligence in the universe is, because it has happened here on earth, we are biased to think that it should be easy and can happen anywhere, no matter how unlikely it actually is.
There are several features of our evolution that makes it reasonable to assume that we got here due to extreme circumstances. For example going from simple single cell bacteria to complex organelle-containing cells from which all complex animal life came took about 1.5 billion years on earth to evolve. But maybe the natural progression of such an evolutionary leap is on the order of 20 bilion or more years.
There is no evolutionary reason for life forms to be a space colonizing species. There is nothing that it does to our species to help us eat or reproduce better. We don’t seem to have evidence that this intelligent life form will continue to evolve into a super intelligent life form like we did.
We can look at the fermi paradox mathematically. The Drake Equation shows the many variables used to estimate the number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in the milky way galaxy.
N = R Fp Ne Fl Fi Fc L
R= average rate of star formation in our galaxy Fp = fraction of those stars that have planets Ne = avg number of planets that can support life per star that has planets Fl = Fraction of planets that can support life that actually develop life Fi = fraction of planets with life that go on to develop super-intelligent life Fc = fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that release detectable signs into space L = length of time that such civilizations release detectable signs into space
Fi – is an utter guess, and may be an extremely small number. Fp is large, nearly 1, but our failure to detect intelligent life tells us that there may be a filter or several filters that prevents super intelligent life from emerging.
There is a possibility that there is a great filter between where we are now and the beginning of earth. Or there is a great filter between where we are now and some event in the future that prevents intelligent life from colonizing the galaxy.
This is why finding life on one of the other planets in our solar system would spell doom for us. Why? Because Finding a life form that evolved independently of earth on a planet in our own solar system, would mean that life is likely very easy to evolve. This would mean that we are probably staring straight down into the barrel of the gun that is about to fire in our face. The great filter – would be an event that is likely to spell the death of our civilization and technology. So let’s hope that there is no other life on our own solar system.
There are theorists that say that aliens are keeping us like in an alien zoo and have conspired to make us unaware of it.
The simplest explanation is that Intelligent life is very difficult to evolve. It fits all the evidence. But given the size of the universe, even if life is extremely rare, it can still be abundant. \n
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