This isn't likely. The Milky Way is 100k light years in diameter. That's tiny relative to the age of life. Animals comparable to humans in complexity have existed for something like 250 million years on Earth, and could have on planets of stars that formed billions of years before our sun. The possible timespan for signal-emitting life to have developed is many multiples of the timespan that signals take to cross the galaxy.
It's far more likely that signal-emitting life is so rare (or short-lived) so that they are separated by distances where their signals weaken to undetectability, than that we are the one fantastically lucky star to be the first among a hundred billion.
Star Trek showing all the rival civilizations exploring the galaxy at the same time makes no sense at all. It's far more likely that civilizations would arise separated by time of millions or billions of years, than that they would all be concentrated within a few centuries. (Trek does hint strongly that the explanation is panspermia, that life was seeded everywhere at the same time to account for the time-concentrated development.)
What we don't know is what makes signal-emitting civilizations cease to do so. But (if we aren't the fantastically unlikely first one) either something must, or they're so far apart that signals can't be detected between them.
Isn’t it likely that radio waves beyond a certain distance will just become indistinguishable from background noise? They’re travelling hundreds of thousands if not more light years
From our 1 datapoint set I’m leaning towards the “earth is an aberration” theory. This was a dinosaur planet. There was a reset some time ago that cleared the path for mammals. It’s unlikely that this timing is common.
> It seems equally likely to me that conditions in the Universe just weren't amenable to life until relatively recently.
It's at least 4b years old on earth, that's not "relatively recently"
We've been technologically capable for less than 200 years, that's nothing in the grand scheme of things.
We could have just missed them by a few millions years and we would have no ideas at all. There might be 10 ancient Egypt tier civilisations out there right now that might develop radio tech by the time we're extinct or back to low tech.
Not really. Microbes have been around for a long time. And there are more of them today than there are stars in the sky. No intelligence required. Plus they change so fast that what Life looked like yday can look totally different tomorrow.
As Lynn Margulis would say the chimps aren't the main show. Intelligence maybe an over rated and very buggy feature of Life. And the bugs get amplified as the minds interact with each other and group size increases.
The philosophers have talked about the bugs for a long time (see Plato's chariot, Hobbes passion vs reason, Freuds id-ego-superego, Kahnemann's system 1 vs system 2, Haidt's Elephant Rider). The mind needs stories to handle the bugs. And there is no dearth of stories on Earth to keep the 3 inch chimp brain occupied forever.
~5% matter and energy. The stuff you and I, dollhouses, dogs, and sugarcubes are made up of. Of that about 99.9% of it is very hot stars.
~20% dark matter. This is currently under investigation, but really all we know about it is that it is incredibly sparse and falls down.
~75% dark energy. We know nearly nothing about it except that it falls up (?!)
Point is, if there are other civilizations out there, and they have been existing for even a few thousand years longer than our has, a cosmic eyeblink, they are probably not just using matter and energy anymore. Heck, their understanding of physics is so much more than ours, even comparing us to Plato and them to Devoret is an insult.
What continues to vex me is the tedious inevitability with which hypothetical extraterrestrial civilisations are assessed through the narrow prism of human failings – namely, self-destruction and aggression. Intelligence, a term we are so fond of bandying about, encompasses a spectrum of attributes, yet it is fundamentally anchored in two core tenets: logic and reason. An entity truly in possession of such faculties would, by necessity, also cultivate the ability to prevent its own annihilation – or the obliteration of others – in the face of tension or conflict. This, naturally, is a lesson the species inhabiting this planet has yet to comprehend, let alone apply.
It is hardly inconceivable that another world might offer an abundance of energy and materials so vast that the primitive notion of competition becomes irrelevant – an absence that would, I imagine, deeply offend the instincts of Earth’s more belligerent inhabitants.
Unless humanity is prepared to extricate itself from its parochial assumptions and entertain the possibility of wildly divergent modes of existence, it is unlikely we shall ever encounter a species with whom a meaningful exchange is even possible. Worse still – though entirely within the realm of plausibility – we may one day confront a civilisation whose moral and ethical framework is so colossally alien to our own that the mere act of contact would not enlighten, but unsettle, fracture and shatter.
I would push back on the idea that alien civilizations might somehow be more enlightened so as to avoid internal conflict altogether. Unless they were artificially designed by a creator who explicitly factored out these traits, they likely also evolved from primitive beginnings. If we know anything from our single sample of living organisms is that competition and survival play a key role in driving evolution. Even if their planet had ample resources for everyone—which can also be said about Earth—those resources might not be accessible to everyone equally. This would inevitably lead to hoarding, tribalism, and conflicts. Besides, physical resources aren't the only cause for conflict. If they're social creatures, relationships, hierarchies, and politics also play a role.
So all of these things would be embedded in their organisms even after they've evolved to a technological civilization, just like they are in ours. Therefore it is not difficult to imagine that they would also struggle to balance their use of technology with their nature to distrust each other. I don't think this is a human-centrist viewpoint, but one we observe from nature itself. However limited that may be, it's the only place we can draw any kind of conclusions from. Thinking otherwise is interesting, but the realm of science fiction.
I read a paper a long while back that used purely numerical arguments to first show a common rate in the growth of complexity across biological and non-biological systems under similar conditions. It then plotted this exponential growth backwards in time, showing that life's origins were prior to the formation of earth by about 1.5 billion years. No guesswork, it was quite solid; the same math applied to human technology traces back to roughly its known start on earth. It was convincing that life is prolific in the universe but intellgent life took about 6-9 billion years to go from single cell to us.
That paper used a horribly faulty logical argument because it has been well known for quite a while that most of the time evolution is quite slow, but there are short bursts of rapid change. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
I figure the odds are there is other life out there but it's really hard to go visit or communicate. In sci fi you engage warp drive and zap there but real world spacecraft may take centuries.
The aliens are probably out there wasting time on social media and saying stuff like We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.
This paper doesn't account the possibility of a civilization to spread itself and to fill eventually the whole galaxy. But in such case it's practically impossible for such civilization to extinct. Since we see no intelligent signatures everywhere, it's certain that no such civilization was formed in our galaxy.
It’s not really possible to say that it is certain given we haven’t looked very hard or for very long. We don’t even know if there’s life in nearby places like Enceladus.
"Can advanced beings evolve beyond the need for civilization?"
Future Star Trek episode:
The crew arrives at what appears to be a completely lifeless planet, and sees the empty buildings of a futuristic city...
Crew member: "These warlike people must have annihilated themselves... nuclear war with advanced energy devices that penetrate buildings with high energy radiation, that leave the buildings but destroy all life..."
Beings in light bodies (who suddenly appear out of nowhere!): "No, it's totally cool -- all of us are still alive! We simply evolved beyond the need for civilization!"
Dumbfounded crew member (whose sociologic theory about civilizational collapse is now proven utterly and completely wrong!): "Oh..."
Looks like a bullshit paper. This big question mark is: assuming life evolves on a suitable planet, what are the odds that something like an intelligent technological species would ever evolve? We only have one example: us. You can't extrapolate from that, so they just made up numbers.
Define "technological". We've recently accepted that there are several tool-using species other than us.
We have a head start on other apes, but they might catch up if we weren't in the picture. If octopi stopped dying so young, they might give us a run for our money. Orcas have fashion trends ("did you see Becky's dead salmon hat? I'm getting one of those!"). Mess with corvids at your own risk.
By this criteria - all papers that extrapolate are BS papers.
There’s a ridiculous number of stars in the sky - no matter how low you put the odds of intelligent life, you will still end up with more than 1 civilized species in the universe.
This is, at least for me, the primary utility of such extrapolations. And eventually - extrapolations will be tested.
thomassmith65|3 months ago
Radio waves take time to travel; there could be many civilisations out there whose signals haven't had time to reach us.
If that's the case, we're just the first intelligent civilisation to evolve in our immediate vicinity.
vikingerik|3 months ago
It's far more likely that signal-emitting life is so rare (or short-lived) so that they are separated by distances where their signals weaken to undetectability, than that we are the one fantastically lucky star to be the first among a hundred billion.
Star Trek showing all the rival civilizations exploring the galaxy at the same time makes no sense at all. It's far more likely that civilizations would arise separated by time of millions or billions of years, than that they would all be concentrated within a few centuries. (Trek does hint strongly that the explanation is panspermia, that life was seeded everywhere at the same time to account for the time-concentrated development.)
What we don't know is what makes signal-emitting civilizations cease to do so. But (if we aren't the fantastically unlikely first one) either something must, or they're so far apart that signals can't be detected between them.
Madmallard|3 months ago
CheeseFromLidl|3 months ago
lm28469|3 months ago
It's at least 4b years old on earth, that's not "relatively recently"
We've been technologically capable for less than 200 years, that's nothing in the grand scheme of things.
We could have just missed them by a few millions years and we would have no ideas at all. There might be 10 ancient Egypt tier civilisations out there right now that might develop radio tech by the time we're extinct or back to low tech.
pols45|3 months ago
As Lynn Margulis would say the chimps aren't the main show. Intelligence maybe an over rated and very buggy feature of Life. And the bugs get amplified as the minds interact with each other and group size increases.
The philosophers have talked about the bugs for a long time (see Plato's chariot, Hobbes passion vs reason, Freuds id-ego-superego, Kahnemann's system 1 vs system 2, Haidt's Elephant Rider). The mind needs stories to handle the bugs. And there is no dearth of stories on Earth to keep the 3 inch chimp brain occupied forever.
Balgair|3 months ago
~5% matter and energy. The stuff you and I, dollhouses, dogs, and sugarcubes are made up of. Of that about 99.9% of it is very hot stars.
~20% dark matter. This is currently under investigation, but really all we know about it is that it is incredibly sparse and falls down.
~75% dark energy. We know nearly nothing about it except that it falls up (?!)
Point is, if there are other civilizations out there, and they have been existing for even a few thousand years longer than our has, a cosmic eyeblink, they are probably not just using matter and energy anymore. Heck, their understanding of physics is so much more than ours, even comparing us to Plato and them to Devoret is an insult.
inkyoto|3 months ago
It is hardly inconceivable that another world might offer an abundance of energy and materials so vast that the primitive notion of competition becomes irrelevant – an absence that would, I imagine, deeply offend the instincts of Earth’s more belligerent inhabitants.
Unless humanity is prepared to extricate itself from its parochial assumptions and entertain the possibility of wildly divergent modes of existence, it is unlikely we shall ever encounter a species with whom a meaningful exchange is even possible. Worse still – though entirely within the realm of plausibility – we may one day confront a civilisation whose moral and ethical framework is so colossally alien to our own that the mere act of contact would not enlighten, but unsettle, fracture and shatter.
imiric|3 months ago
I would push back on the idea that alien civilizations might somehow be more enlightened so as to avoid internal conflict altogether. Unless they were artificially designed by a creator who explicitly factored out these traits, they likely also evolved from primitive beginnings. If we know anything from our single sample of living organisms is that competition and survival play a key role in driving evolution. Even if their planet had ample resources for everyone—which can also be said about Earth—those resources might not be accessible to everyone equally. This would inevitably lead to hoarding, tribalism, and conflicts. Besides, physical resources aren't the only cause for conflict. If they're social creatures, relationships, hierarchies, and politics also play a role.
So all of these things would be embedded in their organisms even after they've evolved to a technological civilization, just like they are in ours. Therefore it is not difficult to imagine that they would also struggle to balance their use of technology with their nature to distrust each other. I don't think this is a human-centrist viewpoint, but one we observe from nature itself. However limited that may be, it's the only place we can draw any kind of conclusions from. Thinking otherwise is interesting, but the realm of science fiction.
d4rkn0d3z|3 months ago
jiggawatts|3 months ago
That paper used a horribly faulty logical argument because it has been well known for quite a while that most of the time evolution is quite slow, but there are short bursts of rapid change. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
tim333|3 months ago
The aliens are probably out there wasting time on social media and saying stuff like We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.
Panzerschrek|3 months ago
gizajob|3 months ago
sema4hacker|3 months ago
fithisux|3 months ago
No reason to spend money on searching "aliens"
just look near Cuba.
peter_d_sherman|3 months ago
"Can advanced beings evolve beyond the need for civilization?"
Future Star Trek episode:
The crew arrives at what appears to be a completely lifeless planet, and sees the empty buildings of a futuristic city...
Crew member: "These warlike people must have annihilated themselves... nuclear war with advanced energy devices that penetrate buildings with high energy radiation, that leave the buildings but destroy all life..."
Beings in light bodies (who suddenly appear out of nowhere!): "No, it's totally cool -- all of us are still alive! We simply evolved beyond the need for civilization!"
Dumbfounded crew member (whose sociologic theory about civilizational collapse is now proven utterly and completely wrong!): "Oh..."
:-)
micahcc|3 months ago
amanaplanacanal|3 months ago
kstrauser|3 months ago
We have a head start on other apes, but they might catch up if we weren't in the picture. If octopi stopped dying so young, they might give us a run for our money. Orcas have fashion trends ("did you see Becky's dead salmon hat? I'm getting one of those!"). Mess with corvids at your own risk.
gregbot|3 months ago
intended|3 months ago
There’s a ridiculous number of stars in the sky - no matter how low you put the odds of intelligent life, you will still end up with more than 1 civilized species in the universe.
This is, at least for me, the primary utility of such extrapolations. And eventually - extrapolations will be tested.
excalibur|3 months ago