(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists first began looking for alien signals shortly after the advent of radio technology at the turn of the 20th century, but so far have not found anything conclusive. How can this be explained?
Research shows that humanity can be lonely in the entire galaxy and even the universe.
A team of researchers from the University of Oxford offers a new take on the Fermi Paradox. In early June 2018, Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, and Toby Ord of the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) published a paper that could solve the Fermi paradox the discrepancy between the expected existence of alien signals and their apparent absence in the universe once and for all.
Why haven’t we found aliens?
Using fresh statistical methods, the authors of the article ask themselves the question “Are we alone in the Universe?” and make some groundbreaking conclusions: not only are we earthlings likely the only intelligence in the Milky Way, but there is a 50 percent chance that we are alone in the entire observable universe.
While the findings are useful for thinking about the likelihood of aliens, they may be even more important for revisiting our approach to the extinction risk that life on Earth may face in the near future.
The authors of the article do not make any definitive statements about whether aliens exist or not; it’s just that our current knowledge of the seven parameters of the Drake equation (describes the probability of the existence of aliens) suggests a high probability that we are alone.
As new information becomes available, they will update this probability accordingly. For example, if we discover the second case of abiogenesis – the process of the origin of life from non-living matter – on a comet or another planet, then this will significantly reduce the uncertainty of one of the parameters of the equation.
Of course, many did not immediately accept the conclusions of scientists, saying that there simply cannot be one intelligent civilization in the Universe.
Regardless of which side you take, the idea that we can be alone in the universe raises serious scientific and philosophical questions. Is our scarcity a cause for joy or disappointment? What would it mean for humans to be the only conscious beings in the universe?
This last question is of great importance. Not only are we depleting our ecological resources at a rapid rate, but for the first time in human history we have reached a technological stage where the entire future of our species is in our own hands.
In a few years, we have created enough nuclear weapons to destroy every person on earth several times, and made these weapons available to the leaders of the countries. Each decade has brought us new technologies with ever-increasing potential for both good and destruction.
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