Intelligent Life in the Universe

Intelligent Life in the Universe


Humans have an insatiable need to assign a cause, no matter how far-fetched, to most anything we do not understand. Deadly diseases such as smallpox, the plague and others were assigned causes such as humors, bile and blood that needed to be purged from the body. This same need probably resulted in innumerable gods that humans have created through out our history.  Ancient Egyptians, the Incas, the Magadha in India, the Greeks and Romans and many more societies created gods and goddesses for every occasion. This need to explain the unexplainable was doubtless also behind an array of superstitions, religions and countless conspiracy theories. On the upside it also motivated scientific discoveries from Galileo to Newton to Niels Bohr.

One area of endless interest and speculation has been the skies. Perhaps because they are so familiar and available (just look up day or night) and yet for most of human history so inaccessible.

Just as we have tended to create gods in our own image we tend to expect that intelligent life in the universe will be like us. That means technologically advanced with the infrastructure, capability and interest to explore the universe. But just as there's highly intelligent life on Earth, such as whales, octopus, and dolphins, that require no constructed infrastructure or technological capabilities perhaps there is even more highly intelligent life on other planets of a similar nature. Given that 35% of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) are water-based (no land at the surface as was once case for the earth) perhaps water dwelling creatures create great art and literature (or video games) completely in their minds and share it telepathically, in essence creating a digital world and a digital culture that humans  are moving toward, but without the need for elaborate computing structures, data clouds and fiber optic networks.
 
The idea of intelligent life in the universe has long captivated human imagination and especially so since WW II and the advent of rockets that could reach ever greater heights in the skies.  As earthlings have developed the rudiments of space travel it has became increasingly popular to speculate that alien life has visited earth and, of course, there have been great efforts to hide this fact.  This seemed to culminate in the recent Congressional hearing (what better venue for fantasy-based speculation) featuring a whistleblower alleging an elaborate cover-up.  In classic urban myth fashion the whistleblower had not himself seen the evidence of aliens but knew people who had.  The folks with the goods somehow are never heard from directly. 

I am not a scientist but my many years working with computer systems taught me two essential things about data and logic. One, if you don't have the logic correct it doesn't matter how much you curse at it, demand a different answer or claim you did it right, the answer is still wrong. And two, if the data is wrong the answer is wrong.  So consider some basic facts and logic.

If you think of the 13 billion plus years of the universe as having occurred in a single Earth calendar year then human life has existed for less than a minute of that year and humans with a technical capability of communicating beyond earth have existed for only one second. So what are the odds that some other intelligent life form might have been looking at us in that one second when we might have been aware of it? About 1 in 31.5 billion. And what are the odds they are looking at the earth rather than another planet?  Given a working estimate of 300 billion planets just in the Milky Way (one of 54 such "near" galaxies) that suggests that the odds of someone on another planet in the Milky Way looking at this planet is 1 in 300 billion.  Now if you combine those two probabilities together the functional likelihood of intelligent life on another planet (without even considering the odds of that existing) looking at, let alone visiting earth, is functionally zero. Your odds are better not just of winning the lottery but of winning it everyday for the rest of your life.  I haven't won the lottery yet and probably you haven't either but someone has so if there's life out there looking for other life they may have found it elsewhere.
 
But if someone was looking what would they see?  Given that the earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is 13.7 billion years old that means that for two thirds of the stars and potential planets that might look our way, the earth does not yet exist. (It's that speed of light thing). But even if the closest habitable planet (believed to be Kepler - 22b) at 600 light years away has intelligent life and is looking at us they would see the earth as we looked 600 years ago in 1423. At that time not only was there no internet, telephone or radio but the printing press had not yet been invented.  In short if an intelligent life form was looking at Earth and tried to communicate with us, we had no way to receive communications or respond unless the aliens showed up in on earth face to face (perhaps to build the pyramids). 
 
In all likelihood the idea that intelligent life from outside our solar system has been visiting earth is a indication of human hubris. Like children we seem to be jumping up and down yelling "Look at me, look at me!" but Mom probably is not looking back.