The space telescope Kepler has found more than 500 million planets in our galaxy suitable for life. In this connection, astronomers and mathematicians suggest that only in our galaxy, there might be thousands, if not tens of thousands of advanced alien civilizations.

And as in the rest of the universe, they must be uncountable. However, skeptics argue that there is no one but us, referring to the famous Fermi paradox.

According to legend, the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi once at dinner was listening to his fellow physicists who argued that other forms of life are not uncommon in the universe.

And in turn, he asked: “Well, where are they?” Physicists could not find an answer. This apparent contradiction – a huge universe with no contact among its inhabitants – then was called the Fermi paradox.

A quarter-century later, English scientist Michael Hart said that if there were thousands of alien civilizations, they would have got to us millions of years ago.

To date, no one from other worlds has reached us. And this, according to the skeptics, is the most convincing argument in favor of the fact that aliens just do not exist and we are alone, all alone in the vast depths of space…

I can almost feel the abyss of this cosmic loneliness, can you?

The timeline of the universe and the emergence of life

Recently, astronomer Dimitar Sasselov, Harvard professor, one of the leaders of the scientific program of the telescope “Kepler”, estimated how many years would have to pass from the formation of the universe to the emergence of intelligent life.

So, it took about 1 billion years for the young stars to gather enough hydrogen and helium to form planets. Another 8 – 9 billion years left on the very formation of rocky planets and the creation of conditions suitable for life.

In total, 9 – 10 billion years are needed, while the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years. It turns out that the Earth, which has the age of about 4.5 billion years, fits well into this time frame.

It means that there is a high probability that our planet is the first to host life. So we are the first intelligent beings in the universe.

Sasselov believes that the time needed for the emergence of even the simplest organisms may be commensurate with the age of the universe. Consequently, if there is life somewhere else, their civilization is unlikely to be more advanced than ours.

Now, let’s look at the future. Life on our planet is estimated to die in about 2.8 billion years when the Earth will be destroyed by the growing Sun. But about a billion years before that, it will still be inhabited.

Who will be living on it? Our supramental descendants or some hideous monsters? Neither one nor the other.

Intelligent alien civilizations? No, bacteria!

Bacteria – single-celled organisms floating in small lakes with hot salt water – will be the remaining population of our planet, believe Jack O’Malley-James and his colleagues at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

These results, taken from a mathematical model, show that any habitable planet orbiting a star like ours awaits such a sad fate.

The researchers used their model on various Earth-like planets, and it turned out that the newborn life usually continues a primitive existence for about 3 billion years.

Then it becomes more and more complicated up to the emergence of intelligent life. And after a relatively short period of time, it starts getting simplified again until it dies out.

The results of the research show that the probability of finding other intelligent beings in the universe is slight because most of them are likely to exist in bacterial form.

So, it turns out that after all, intelligent alien civilizations simply don’t exist yet.


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This Post Has One Comment

  1. z0so

    Ask Richard Doland

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