The diameter of the observable universe is about 93 billion light-years or 8.8X10^23 km. There are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe and to think that only ours is a habitable one makes us a highly narcissist race. There is a very high possibility of life on more than 1 out of the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. However, we haven’t been able to have the ‘first contact’ with an intelligent civilization so far. What could be the reason for that? Here are 5 of them.
1. There are no aliens
2. Technological Limitation
For all the technological progress we’ve made in the last century, we still haven't invented interstellar travel which could be a major barrier for us in finding alien civilization. The possibility of them sending signals and our inability in decoding them could be another reason as well. Maybe they perceive and interact with the universe in a different way than we do?
3. Advanced civilizations are known to kill themselves off.
Look at the Mayan civilization, a race so ahead of its time that they measured the accurate length of a solar year while others were having trouble growing crops. This civilization with all the others great ones came to an end when at their technological and philosophical peak. This could be true for every civilization in the universe making them go extinct when on the verge of interstellar travel or finding extraterrestrial life. I mean look at us for instance. We are doing great in our space exploration and in the next century we could well be traveling across the solar system, from earth to Mars on a regular basis but every country acquiring nuclear weapons puts a huge question mark on that very future.
4. We aren't evolved enough to join their intergalactic society yet.
Let's be real about this, we haven't been an ideal organism in the past millennium or so. We fight about having the best imaginary friend. We lie! What if they don’t have a concept of it? All the information transmitted through TV stations and through the Internet would be a big unsolved mystery to them if they try to understand humans from it. We are slowly killing the planet off. What if we do the same to their society if joined? For now, I think we're kept on the surveillance list and will be invited when we reach enough maturity to join their society.
5. They are already here, undetected.
Conspiracy theories aside, there could well be UFOs going unnoticed or undisclosed by space agencies and government. There are many proofs of government hiding information mostly as revealing it would create total chaos in the world, which is often the subject of many movies. We, humans, are unacceptable of different skin color, imagine what would happen if there’s an advanced species living in the universe with us. Though it would take time, I think contacting alien species is inevitable. The question however is, are we ready to know our place in the universe?
I think you leeft out the most probable. The universe is huge (in terms of time and of space) and space travel is slow (as far as we understand lightspeed is the limit) and complex. The chances of two or more species evolving around the same time period, achieving interstellar space travel and being close enough to actually meet... may be statistically very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, unlikely.
Yes that might be one of the reasons why we haven't encountered any alien life but any such intelligent life must be able to find the evidence of another life capable of interstellar travel even if they're not present at the same time, don't you think? I mean there must be a lot of data and information created by intelligent life in the universe. Voyager 1 and 2 come to mind.
But yeah as you said, that is statistically very unlikely.
I think its a combination of #3 and #5, look at what the endpoint of evolution is, not us but the self aware machines we create will be what inherits the Earth, one imagines that the same process would occur on other planets. And in terms of #5 they did recently release a bunch of classified military UFO sightings but it seems to me that alien life is all around us in the form of tardigrades and some biologists think that the initial bacterium that sparked life on earth came from mars or elsewhere in the solar system, in that case all life on earth is alien life.
Singularity doesn't seem possible until a very distant future I think. We might have a better luck in encountering alien life way before that. The possibility of us being the alien life that we seek is also very high. There's one episode in the cosmos that shows this beautifully. I just hope that any encounter brings peace and not chaos. Cheers!
when we do find alien life it will probably be a letdown anyways, some bacteria or something.
An interesting hypothesis @littlevoice.
Since i have come from the year 2628 I can tell you a little about this and perhaps add a few points. Whilst i can't reveal too much detail about this due to the temporal prime directive, here is what I can tell you:
Many aliens are already orbiting and integrated in Earth. Most are here to help your development and are quite highly evolved beings.
Many alien races live on a different vibrational level, even in the same space and are therefore not observable from this 3rd dimensional perspective
Most alien races that are known on Earth only revel themselves to specific individuals. Those who do discover extraterrestrial life will rarely share this information publicly, and if they do it will most likely be silenced due to the prime directive
Aliens have no interest in monitoring radio waves since any data would likely be millions of years old and from a very primitive civilization.
These are just a few reasons that I am able to share with you. i hope you have found this information useful.
Live long and prosper!
Hello time traveller. Lmao! Thanks for sharing these valuable informations with us. Can you shed light on the mode of communication they're having in future. Is it vocal, written or imagery or some other mode we've not yet discovered? Also, how has the encounter changed the food chain on earth. How have the governments responded to them eating some of our species. That would be interesting.
I'm afraid I really can't tell you the detail of communication in the future not only because the prime directive forbids it, but also because it would require a deep understanding of 25th Century physics and concepts not yet discovered. I can say that it is instantaneous, irrespective of the distance.
I'm not sure I understand your second question. Perhaps you could re-phrase it!
And here I am having difficulty in understating some of Newtonian physics smh
The second question was regarding their food. What do they eat and if they eat something controversial like say a dog then would we allow it?
Tolerance and a rich diversity of cultures are very important foundations to a healthy society. In our time there is a great richness of culture and religion, each with its own peculiarities. When we dine with the Klingon's we may be presented with food that is very far from palatable. Nevertheless, we honor them and their traditions and are happy to entertain their ways, if only for a brief time.
Laws are only required when morals and ethics have failed us. In our time we have relinquished laws in exchange for what you call Anarchy today. We do not have centralized power structures, but rather a consensus formed by the opinions and desires of self managed and small micro-cities...
I believe #5 may be much more likely than we'd care to believe. We can only see about 15% of the measurable spectrum of light. Add the ideas of quantum mechanics and the space between things and they could occupying our same time and space, with us completely unaware of their existence. Interesting post. @markrmorrisjr
That is one interesting analogy. Having a fewer sense organs restricts us from accessing a lot of information in the atmosphere. Just the thought of some alien life living in this same environment sends shivers down my spine. I hope they're more peaceful than us. Cheers!
Interesting side note, I had a friend that claimed to have a seen a device that read a larger spectrum of light waves. Attached to a monitor, it seemed to show shapes moving in between clearly visible, living beings. No idea how legit that idea was, but weird.
Whoa! That must be awesome and a bit creepy. It might be hot air that's visible in the screen. Need to check on that. If you have any more information regarding that device, please share. Thanks!
From what he said, it was in the form of a humanoid shape and didn't move like anyone there was moving, so not an "echo" type static.
a bunch of little ultraviolet men?
Yeah, something like that.
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