Okay, with that "come-on" headline, let's talk. The seed for this blog was an article in the June 12 Sunday New York Times. The summary of the piece is this: Aliens may not exist near Earth, but new discoveries imply that they once did, at least somewhere in the universe. In addition, the July, 2016 issue of Scientific American has a major article called "Our Place in the Cosmos." Both articles use recent data from the Hubble Observatory and the power of super-computers. Both articles confirm/suggest/show/postulate the number of galaxies now is so large as to be mind-boggling.
Current estimates by the world's (Earth's) leading astrophysics researchers indicate we in our "little" solar system are part of a much, much larger universe. Our sun is part of the "Orion Spur," one segment of one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The Milky Way itself is part of something called the Local Group, a gathering of fifty galaxies covering seven million light years of space. If that doesn't leave you breathless, the Local Group of galaxies is itself part of the Virgo Cluster, a huge collection of one thousand galaxies that spans fifty million light years. Hmmm. Just think of that. Even if intelligent beings could transport themselves at the speed of light, it would take them fifty million years to reach us to check us out. That's a pretty long journey!
But wait, there's more! If the Virgo Cluster doesn't impress you with immensity and distance, it's a "small part" of the "Local Supercluster," a giant collection of hundreds of galaxy groups sprawled across more than 100-400 million light years. In other words, it's big (and cold) out there, and the distances are finite, but infinite in terms of any of sort of intelligent beings from most all of these areas able to reach others and interact.
Coming back to the NYT article, we now know for sure, based on the Hubble telescope, that every star in the sky (at least as far as we can see) hosts at least one planet. Of course in order for life to exist as we know it, water must exist, thus the temperature must be in a moderate range (which can be quite broad). But what are the chances of other life? Frank Drake, an astronomer, was asked by the National Academy of Sciences to host a scientific meeting to address the question of possibilities of "interstellar communication." The meeting defined seven questions including the number of new stars being born (formed) each year and the number with planets that travel in locations suitable for life to be formed. These were followed by fractions where life actually got started, and of those, where advanced intelligent life (including the ability to transmit radio signals) developed. The final question was fascinating: what was the average lifetime of a technological civilization?
Think about this last one for a minute. Humans have had the ability to use radio technology only for about a hundred years at this point. How much longer will our civilization last? A thousand years? A hundred thousand? With advances in space technology, along with population pressures and strife, its clear that the human species will expand to other locations than Earth at some point. If the average lifetime of a civilization is relatively short, and all the other speculations in this discussion are correct, then it's clear that the galaxy is likely to be unpopulated for most of the time in nearly all of the vast space.
The "punch lines" in the NYT article are twofold. First, it's almost certain that we are not the first technological civilization ... anywhere. Second, a trillion (that's a thousand billion) civilizations probably have developed to be technologically advanced over all time over all the galaxies. How many exist at this point? How far away are they?
At this point, I'd like to add one more element to this blog, so far a commentary based on the best minds of our generation. Another article in the New York Times, published Sunday, June 26 of this year, described a massive effort to construct a modern replica of Noah's Ark. The project, located in Williamstown, KY, is based on a literalist reading of the Bible, an interpretation that the Earth is only six thousand years old, and that the Bible is word-for-word, from God. These people, called "Earthers," believe that God created the universe in six twenty-four hour days, and since all history is only six thousand years old, humans co-existed with dinosaurs. That's important to the exhibit since two smiling children are depicted playing in a lush garden next to two petite Tyrannosaurus rexes.
To each their own, I guess, is where we will leave this discussion on intelligent species.