Where Are All The Civilisations?

What is going on? Where are they all? Are they here? Too many questions and literally too little time. It just seems so really boring that we can be the only ones in this universe.

Time is definitely a massive problem when looking for somebody alien to chat to. Does it matter that there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars? The distance between galaxies is so staggering that any civilization in another galaxy would have  become extinct during the time it would take to communicate with them or would it? What’s wrong with our own galaxy?

By measuring the total amount of light in our galaxy, and knowing the mass of the galaxy, scientists can estimate the number of stars that are in the galaxy. So, even though we cannot actually count the number of stars in the galaxy, we can estimate the number of stars as roughly 100 billion (100,000,000,000).  Distance is a problem here as well but not quite as big a problem as hopping over to the next galaxy. Can you imagine the kids  saying ” are we there yet?” how many times?

Of course we don’t have to necessarily travel around the galaxy. Information can travel the speed of light so why not listen for a message? SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), which you may have heard about, has been doing that for 50 years with still no sign except for one unexplainable signal called the “WOW” signal.

It really is like picking a needle out of a universal haystack and therefore SETI has a small chance just like alien civilisations have a small chance of picking up any signals we have transmitted to them (TV) by normal everyday means. Just imagine that you’re in the Arctic at the North Pole in your little house (or  igloo), how likely are you to see or hear somebody and you know how populated the earth is! Then just multiply the time by billions of years and hopefully you can see the problem (if you didn’t before). If you want to look for aliens yourself and help SETI then you can analyse the signals yourself by using your screensaver. These signals are then sent to SETI.

What is out there?

So what about sending a high powered signal? METI, for message to extra terrestrial intelligence, (or active SETI) has been proposed but there is a lot of  debate on this. Will an alien civilisation send the galactic fleet to wipe us out if they pick up the signal? As we begin to find new planets and with Kepler, hopefully earthlike planets, I think we should send a signal even if it just says ” what’s up?”.  The signal would reach the nearest planet outside our solar system in generations and by that time our technology should have improved to the point where we are not worried about a big baddie ET. For more interesting stuff on METI travel here.

Also as one civilisation dies another one would replace it so we are bound to come across something be it apes or Gods. We just have to be patient until we can advance enough so that we have the right tools to make the journey possible or another civilisation can get to us either by travelling or communication. If you haven’t seen the film Contact I can recommend it, it is something that could possibly happen right now.

It took a long  time for plant and animal life to come about on planet Earth but then the universe is going to be around for a very, very, very long time to come I believe. Everything may be expanding and getting further apart in the universe but technology is advancing at such a rate that really the universe is standing still and waiting for us to explore it. Perhaps we are one of the first to populate the Galaxy? If that is so we’d better get our skates on before anyone else does.

For more on the development of the Earth try here.

Also notice that plant and animal life occurred after a series of unlikely events. And, on top of all this, human life and other intelligent life is even rarer. Even if you take Earth as a model of a planet that exists throughout the galaxy there has to be a series of events to create a life like that which appears on Earth.

But does life have to be like it is on Earth ? We don’t really have a clue what is out there and life could take a form like our wildest dreams. We may not even recognize life, let alone communicate with it and it could be right on our doorstep. There could be another intelligent species other than humans on Earth and I’m not talking about little green men. What about dolphins? These have for a long time thought to be very close to intelligent, try here for more.

Universe Timeline

The existence of liquid water, and to a lesser extent its gaseous and solid forms, on Earth is vital to the existence of life on Earth as we know it. The Earth is located in the habitable zone of the solar system. If it were slightly closer to or further from the Sun (about 5%, or about 8 million kilometres) the conditions which allow the three forms of water to be present simultaneously would be far less likely to exist.

Earth’s mass allows gravity to hold an atmosphere. Water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere provide a greenhouse effect which helps maintain a relatively steady surface temperature. If  Earth were smaller, a thinner atmosphere would cause temperature extremes preventing the accumulation of water except in polar ice caps (as on Mars).

Alien

The state of water also depends on a planet’s gravity. If a planet is sufficiently massive, the water on it may be solid even at high temperatures, because of the high pressure caused by gravity.

We may need water and a decent temperature but who is to say that an alien on an alien world would need the same as us? There are some aliens, or life that looks like aliens could look and live where aliens may live, actually on good old planet Earth. NASA has come up with a few here.

Water has been found on another planet outside our solar system, here for more.

It may be that life itself changes the climate so that it may continue to live and evolve. If this turns out to be true then a load of planets will contain life.

Earth does sound a bit special sometimes and of course it would, we live on it, it is very special to us. That doesn’t mean to say that other planets may turn out to be special and contain life. When you think of the universe you are not thinking of the universe as it is so big nobody can. It is so enormously massively astronomically (you get the picture) big that there has to be life, the only trouble is finding it. ET if you are reading this show yourself now!

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