Are We Alone?
by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
Introduction
This essay explores the question, "Are we alone in the universe?" Is
there life in other parts of the universe? If we are the only life in this vast
universe, that is astounding. If we are not, that is equally astounding. You
might think the only sane approach with the lack of evidence is to be agnostic.
I argue that we should presume there is life elsewhere until we find evidence
otherwise.
“Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not.
In either case, the thought is staggering.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller 1895-07-12—
1983-07-01
The Trend
Man has a collective ego that makes him want to believe he is terribly special
and unique. He lied to himself for centuries that the earth was the center of
the universe. He puffed himself claiming he was made in God’s image.
Galileo, Darwin and the VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array
radio telescope) successively humbled him and pointed out he was nothing special.
I expect this trend to continue. The earth is just as average run of the mill
planet in the backwater of an average galaxy, of no special cosmic siginificance.
We love it dearly, but that is only because we live here.
The Grand Assumption
Though we have only put foot on the moon, we confidently assert that the laws of
physics are the same throughout the universe. The rest of the universe is made
of the same elements as matter here on earth. We came to this conclusion by
careful study of spectral light from the stars. Physics is the same everywhere.
Biology is just a branch of physics/chemistry that studies carbon, so we should
expect the same biology in places in the universe with similar conditions to
earth.
The Fish Analogy
Let’s say you went to New Zealand and studied a mountain lake and
discovered lo, it had fish. What would be your natural assumption be about other
similar lakes? Most people would, as a working assumption, presume they too had
fish. Yet most humans do the opposite when it comes to extra-terrestrial life.
They claim "This is an holy lake blessed by God. It is impossible any other
lakes could have fish in them. Only crazy people believe in fish they haven’t
seen."
A scientist says, "We have only studied one lake so far. It has fish. The
odds of this being the only lake with fish is thus quite remote since there is
nothing special about this lake."
Life Is Easy
For many years, we believed that creating life was exceedingly difficult. It was
something only a God could do. Now, any undergraduate geneticist can create
simple organisms like an HIV virus or a polio virus using gene sequencing. We
have discovered organic molecules are common in space. We discovered that the
basic amino acid building blocks automatically form from the action of lightning
on a mixture of gasses similar to the early earth’s atmosphere. We
discovered that life appeared almost the instant the earth cooled. It looks like
either life was seeded from space like dandelions, or arose spontaneously. The
chemistry of carbon naturally gives rise to life with little prodding.
If it happened so easily on earth, it surely would happen pretty well anywhere
else.
Where Are the Little Green Men?
Keep in mind that earth has had life for hundreds of millions of years and only
in the last blink of a eye did it evolve little white men. Only in the last few
decades did it house ones capable of advertising their presence to the universe
by broadcasting I Love Lucy reruns.
I believe life is abundant in the universe, but technological life like ours is
rare.
We most likely will not be here in 100 years. We will either nuke ourselves back
to the stone age, kill ourselves with biological warfare, destroy our ecosystem
with global warming, or simply be unable to sustain the complex technology that
supports our huge populations. We are like monkeys experimenting in a fireworks
factory. We are smart enough to get into trouble, but not smart enough to use
restraint to avoid killing ourselves. We evolved our intelligence too quickly.
I presume this is a universal problem. Most intelligent species kill themselves
off within 100 years or so after attaining the ability to communicate across the
cosmos. It takes millions of years to evolve another stab at it. At any one time,
then, there are not many intelligent species out there.
Caution
What kinds of technological species would manage to hang in there for a million
years or so? They would have evolved their intelligence slowly. They would be
extremely cautious and conservative. They would know to keep well hidden to
avoid being attacked by predatory species. Any sane animal keeps a low profile
in a hostile or unfamiliar environment.
Humans are like sacrificial goats bleating to the universe. Come and get me! We
are so naive when we have absolutely no idea what dangers may lurk out there.
Won’t Anyone Talk To Us?
Advanced technology in the wrong hands will only harm. A wise extraterrestrial
civilisation would carefully encode any messages it broadcast so that a
primitive race like ours could not read them and misuse them. To us they would
just look like static.
Are We Being Observed?
Since it takes too long to physically travel interstellar distances, I would
imagine, if we were being monitored, it would be from a great distance, or via
miniaturised electronics disguised as various natural objects, perhaps as small
as grains of sand.
The extraterrestrials would look upon us the way we study the habits of some
endangered monkey. For them, the evolution of a technological species might be a
rare event, and something worthy of study, without interference. They would know
our odds are remote of us surviving more than another century, but we would be
interesting just the same, partly for the sheer entertainment value. Man has got
to be one of the strangest creatures. Perhaps we appear on the Milky Way’s
Funniest Home Videos or Wild Kingdom.
Summary
Though everyone should remain agnostic until we have at least investigated the
earth-like planets of a few other stars, I think the working assumption should
be that the rest of the universe works by the same physical and biological laws
as here. Since there are billions of earth-like planets, there have to be
billions of planets supporting life. Intelligent technological life on earth in
historic terms has been extremely rare. I suspect it is similarly rare in the
rest of the cosmos. However, all it would take would be for one technological
species with a million year head start on us, to basically have all the
inhabited planets in our galaxy sewn up. We well may be living on a nature
reserve called Planet Earth, kidding ourselves we alone.
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