Odd explanations on why humans haven't discovered aliens yet

Odd explanations on why humans haven't discovered aliens yet

There are millions, if not billions, of planets in the universe that potentially support life, according to current scientific knowledge. Why, then, hasn't any of this life survived long enough in space to shake hands (or claws … or tentacles) with humans? Perhaps the cosmos is simply too vast to explore.Or perhaps the aliens are consciously ignoring us. Any burgeoning civilisation may even be destined to annihilate itself—something to look forward to, fellow humans. Or it might be something far, far more bizarre. "Like what?" Scientists have come up with these odd solutions to the Fermi dilemma.

Perhaps the lack of alien life is due to the unsuitability of our cosmos for life. Perhaps Earth is a lucky blue dot in a huge ocean of dead worlds and darkness, an anomaly. Perhaps searching the next universe for life would be more fruitful. One study from 2024 is based on the last theory, which holds that the universe is a single reality among an infinite "multiverse" of realities, each of which is marginally distinct from the others. The scientists examined the star formation rates in this universe against those in a variety of hypothetical parallel universes with varying matter and energy concentrations to see whether our universe had the ideal circumstances for life to arise.

A universe's density of dark energy, an enigmatic force that propels the universe's continuous, accelerating expansion, was the primary consideration for the researchers. The expansion of a universe with excessive dark energy would disperse star-forming material and impede the creation of large-scale structures like as galaxy clusters. However, a universe with insufficient dark energy may experience overpowering gravity, leading to the collapse of huge structures before habitable planets have had a chance to emerge. Up to 27% of ordinary stuff may become stars in a universe with the ideal density of dark energy, according to the team's models. There are fewer stars in our universe than there could be since only about 23% of matter in it is thought to become stars.

Surely any extraterrestrial species requires a planet that is habitable? However, a 2024 study suggests that might not always be the case. In a study that was accepted for publication in the journal Astrobiology, scientists put up a theory that an extraterrestrial colony may live without a planet by floating freely in space. Although it sounds crazy, there are examples of people living on the International Space Station for hundreds of days without a planet (albeit with regular supplies of essential resources from their home planet), and resilient tardigrades can withstand the environment.

An alien colony without a planet would theoretically face numerous obstacles, such as a lack of supplies, exposure to cosmic radiation and space vacuum, and access to sufficient sunshine. In light of this, the researchers envision a species that might make it through these tests: a free-floating colony of organisms up to 330 feet (100 meters) across, protected by a thin, transparent, hard shell that could use the greenhouse effect to maintain a habitable temperature and pressure. While unlikely, it is conceivable to find such a species. The lack of intelligent aliens responding to our calls may potentially be explained by a free-floating alien colony: They don't have access to a landline.

We will need some icebreakers if we want to communicate with ET. Seriously, it's likely that alien life is confined to hidden waters tucked away in the interior of cold worlds. According to astronomers, subterranean oceans of liquid water flow beneath many of our solar system's moons and might be widespread throughout the Milky Way. Despite the harsh surface circumstances that those plants confront, NASA physicist Alan Stern believes that covert water worlds like these could offer the ideal environment for the evolution of life. Stern told Space.com that "none of those things matter" for subterranean life, including "impacts and solar flares, and nearby supernovae, and what orbit you're in, and whether you have a magnetosphere, and whether there's a poisonous atmosphere."

The aliens will be happy about it, but humans will never be able to identify them by just using a telescope to look at their worlds. Can we anticipate hearing from them? Heck, Stern remarked, "We can't even expect these creatures to know that there is a sky above their heads because they live so deep." Thankfully, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is headed to one of these moons to gather firsthand evidence of life. In 2030, the Clipper is scheduled to land on Europa, Jupiter's frozen moon.

"Super-Earth" is not Captain Planet's peculiar relative. According to astronomy, the phrase describes a kind of planet that has a mass up to ten times that of Earth. Numerous such worlds have been discovered by star surveys, and they may contain the ideal circumstances for liquid water. Accordingly, it is possible that extraterrestrial life is developing on super-Earths throughout the cosmos. We'll probably never get to meet these aliens, which is unfortunate. A planet with ten times Earth's mass would also have an escape velocity that is 2.4 times greater than Earth's, according to a 2018 study. If that pull is overcome, rocket launches and space travel may become nearly impossible.

Around 1900, humans created the first radio, in 1945, and are currently mass-producing portable computers that can perform billions of operations per second. Seth Shostak, a futurist, said that we should redefine our hunt for intelligent aliens because full-fledged artificial intelligence might appear soon. Simply put, rather than searching for small green men, we should be searching for machines. At the 2016 Dent:Space conference in San Francisco, Shostak stated, "Any [alien] society that invents radio, so we can hear them, within a few centuries, they've invented their successors." "And I think that's important, because the successors are machines."