UFO from the Pentagon and 36 extraterrestrial civilizations: do aliens exist?

Points of View on the Existence of Intelligent Life in the Milky Way

Humans have never encountered an extraterrestrial

life.At the moment there is no guaranteed evidence that they live somewhere on other planets. Despite this, scientists have tried different ways to calculate the probability of their presence in our galaxy, as well as to derive a formula for calculating the number of species. In 1960, astronomer Frank Drake developed an equation that can be used to calculate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations, as well as estimate the chances of contact with them. Drake's calculations showed that there should be a lot of them, so humanity will definitely meet them someday. 

Drake Formula

However, time passed, and such contacts neveroccurred, so scientists doubted the Drake formula. Among them was Enrico Fermi, after whom the “Fermi paradox” was named. It is formulated as follows: if alien civilizations exist, why can't we find traces of their presence?

There is still no definite answer to this question. There is a point of view that there were unique conditions on Earth for the origin of life: such can hardly be repeated. However, today science has discovered many earth-like planets at the stars closest to us.

How did British scientists work?

British astrophysicists took as their basiscomputing the hypothesis that intelligent life on other planets of our galaxy could have formed in the same time and under similar conditions as on Earth.

All calculations were based on the assumption that the possibility of life developing depends on several parameters: these are called Copernican astrobiological limits.

The first parameter is the age of the planets, it must beat least 5 billion years. The second parameter is the high metallicity of the stars in whose orbit there are planets. For life to arise, there must be a star nearby the planet, similar to the Sun, due to which a large concentration of heavy elements appears. Based on these two conditions, scientists came up with a hypothetical number of civilizations that live in the Milky Way: approximately 36 different species.

I think this is extremely important and exciting: for the first time, we have an estimate for the number of active developed civilizations that we could potentially contact and discover that there is another life in the universe.

Christopher Conselis, professor of astrophysics at the University of Nottingham and co-author of the study

How did scientists get around the Fermi paradox?

The researchers at the University of Nottingham and his colleagues approached the paradox from the perspective of chemical and biological evolution.We do not see extraterrestrial civilizations, as the main constraint on their formation can beIt is not the specific conditions on the individual planets that are to be determined, but the general level of chemical evolution of the universe and the rate of development of life.

At the first stages of development, the Universe consisted onlyof the three elements - hydrogen, helium and lithium. Oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and other elements making up proteins were absent. They began to accumulate after the first stars were lit and burnt out. This means that in the galaxy in the first stages of its development there were not enough elements necessary for the origin of life.

If there are really about 36 species, then how can I contact them?

36 is, of course, an approximate amount. It very much depends on how long intelligent civilizations are at a sufficiently high level of development to send signals about their existence into space. The lifetime of an active intelligent civilization on Earth, for example, is only about 100 years.

Nearest Suspected Intelligent Civilizationis located at a distance of several thousand light years from us. Our observation instruments cannot detect radio signals or flashes of light from such a distance. More precisely, they can, but these signals will take several millennia. The situation is the same with aliens: we launched signals into space about our existence, but they will not arrive soon. Until this moment, no one will know that we live on Earth.

If humanity receives such signals in the future, it will mean that highly developed civilizations can exist for a long time.

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