I spend a lot of time whining (for lack of a better word) about the state of affairs in our world. Our sensationalist news and the internet has brought us a never ending tsunami of injustice, suffering, fear, and the general horribleness that exists with selfish humans.
But there is more out there. Recent publications by NASA using the Kepler spacecraft (now useless because of some broken gyroscopes), estimate that there are several billion “Earth-like” planets in our galaxy.
By Earth-like, we mean a rocky planet (not a gas giant) that is in the habitable zone for it’s star. The habitable zone is the zone in which liquid water could exist. I say ‘could’ because there are many more variable than just the energy output of the star involved.
For example, the sun’s habitable zone includes part of the orbit of Venus, the entire orbits of Earth, Mars and even the asteroid Ceres. Venus with a much thinner atmosphere might be on the edge of survivable for humans (in terms of temperature), while Mars would need a much thicker atmosphere.
The only reason Earth isn’t a frozen (Hoth-like) world is the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere acts like a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and keeping the planet warm.
But the estimate (I’ve seen reports in the range of five billion to 8.8 billion) of habitable planets gives us something fascinating. Maybe we aren’t alone in the universe. Maybe there’s a place when we go after we totally screw up this planet. Of course, maybe not. Maybe we’ll slowly descend into fractious squabbles that will use up our resources, poisoning our planet and reducing us to little more than weak animals without the technology that let’s us survive.
If there are alien intelligences out there, where are they?
One thing that I rarely see anyone else mention with regards to alien life is just how large the galaxy is and how big a time scale we’re talking about.
We’re used to science fiction shows (Star Trek, for example) that shows dozens of alien species all at about the same level of development. The people who wrote that never even studied the history of our planet, much less considered the time and special circumstances on Earth.
The Sun is a third generation star. That means it has some heavier elements in it that came from supernovas of previous stars. It’s been fusing hydrogen for about 4.5 billion years and will continue to do so for another 4.5 billion years.
Humans could theoretically destroy almost every living thing on the entire planet and there would still be sufficient time for an entirely new system of life to evolve.
But humans, as intelligent organisms, have only been around for about 200,000 years. Dinosaurs were around for over 135 million years and showed no signs of developing intelligence. It’s a total fluke that the dinosaurs were wiped out, but the K/T event wasn’t big enough to kill every living thing. That gave mammals a chance and, relatively quickly, one of the results is a creature that can think, develop technology, and plan for the future… and we came from that (along with chimpanzees and some other apes).
Entire civilizations could have come and gone while dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Galactic empires could have risen and fallen in the time between dinosaurs and humans. Wars across the cosmos could have occurred while our ancestors tried to survive without claws, armor, or strength… using only the brain.
Many science fiction writers are starting to delve into this* and a little bit appears on TV. I love the Stargate mythos for this reason.
Even with a billion habitable worlds, the chances of two intelligent species being around at the same time and close enough to communicate (or visit) are very small. I would honestly be more surprised by alien signals and visitation than I would be by them not occurring.
I think it highly likely, I’d say the odds are 100%, that there is some kind of life on other planets. But if we’re hoping for Vulcans or other aliens at about our level of technology, we will be greatly disappointed.
It is much more likely that archaeologists and paleontologists will be more useful in the study of alien life (especially intelligences) than biologists.
Even with all of that, there is a wonder about the other planets. It’s the same wonder that drives humans to explore and hopefully, we will go to the stars to explore someday.
P.S. A huge congrats to India for launching their first Mars mission! Good Luck!!!
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I recommend Empire From the Ashes (Dahak)
