Why do I believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Pure numbers. There are an estimated 500 billion galaxies estimated to be in the observable universe. In each one of those galaxies, there are an estimated 200 billion stars. If you multiply that out using low-end numbers you get 100,000 billion billion (or 100 sextillion) stars.
A new study suggests there are a mind-blowing 300 sextillion of them [stars], or three times as many as scientists previously calculated.
Associated Press
December 1, 2010
If only 1 in a million have at least 1 planet, that gives us 300 quadrillion planets. If only 1 in a million of those have life, that leaves 300 billion planets with life. If only 1 in a million of those have intelligent life, that leaves 300,000 planets with intelligent life.
Think about that…300,000 other earths. And that’s if we use very conservative numbers. The numbers are probably (in my opinion) much higher. If we use a higher ratio, like 1 in a 1,000 instead of 1 in a million, the final number would be 300,000,000,000,000 (300 trillion) earths. My guess (somewhere in the middle) is that there are millions, if not billions, of intelligent life civilizations in the universe.
But the truth is that we really don’t know the ratios. We have only started discovering other planets and we have no idea if any of them have life. We just recently found out they exist. It’s frustrating to hear people say that since we haven’t found any evidence of life beyond earth so far, there must not be any.
To that I say…smack! We’ve only been looking for about 50 years, only 20-25 with any real technology. So, 20-25 out of 13.7 billion years that the universe has been in existence. And we’ve found, what…500 planets so far? How many of those have we actually sent probes to? Five? Six? How many of those have we studied closely? One? Two? (All within our Solar System.)
Heck, we’re still discovering things about our moon. We have yet to step foot on another planet. How can we possibly know that there’s no life elsewhere in our galaxy, let alone the universe? We have only seen a speck of what’s out there, one grain of sand from an entire coastline of beach…a mere sliver of possibilities. It would be like collecting an eye dropper of water from the ocean and from that determining that there’s no fish in the sea.
There’s a philosophical notion (I forget the name) that says if we are the only life in the universe, then we must be special, and hence, our part of the universe must be special as well. But that’s not what we see. The universe everywhere is very similar to what we have here.
So why do we believe ourselves to be special? Hubris. People want to believe that we humans are special, divine, the pinnacle of creation.
Balderdash, codswallop, wishful thinking I say. Delusions of granduer that arise from a mixture of mortality and abstract thought. It is likely that intelligent life elsewhere feels that they are special and divine, that they have a unique place among the stars, that they are their creator’s chosen ones (assuming they have religions), just as we humans do.
Having said that…
There is a more realistic question of whether we will ever contact another intelligent lifeform. While there may be millions or even billions of other civilizations in the universe, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. So it is possible that there are not that many, if any others, within our own galaxy.
When we achieve efficient means of inter-stellar travel (yes, I said when), it is possible that we could travel our own galaxy for many lifetimes without bumping into any other beings. It’s that big. And at the moment, inter-galactic travel is so far beyond inter-stellar travel that civilizations in other galaxies don’t even merit consideration.
Even more, there is an element of time to consider. What’s to say that all civilizations are developing at the same point in history?
If an alien civilization did try to contact us at anytime in the past 4.5 billion years (other than right now), they would have found nothing here on this planet. We have only had the technology to send and receive communication signals from space for about 50 years (advent of communication satellites). Reversing that, what are the odds that we will be able to contact another planet during the exact time period that intelligent life exists there as well? Slim, very slim.
If we do ever contact intelligent alien life, it will truly be one of the greatest moments in human history. And we’ll probably have to reconsider how common life really is.
But to assume that we are the only ones in the entire universe is just absurd. Life is part of nature and there’s just too much nature for there not to be more.
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