Since ancient times, the idea of the possibility of excitement meet with representatives of other civilizations. There is even a whole subculture preoccupied with finding evidence that aliens have already visited our planet.
However, to representatives of this subculture, and people who just like the idea of aliens think about the obvious question – if aliens really regularly visit our planet, why until still we could not communicate with them?
There are several answers to this question. The five most popular and reasonable we cite in this article.
1. If they exist, they are probably too much … other
Our ideas about alien life, whether we like it or not, connected with our earthly experience. Almost every major an alien race in the world of fantasy and science fiction – humanoids. Star Trek Klingons are essentially evil cave savages, and Vulcans are generally difficult to distinguish from people. Luke Skywalker and Khan Solos are aliens, but look completely like Europeans-earthlings 70s.
Even Aliens from the movie of the same name, despite the awesome look, close enough to us that these roles could be played by people in appropriate costumes.
A photo from open sources
All the “witnesses” who spoke about their contacts with the aliens describe humanoids who always have heads, arms, legs and eyes. In short, the reference point of our concept of extraterrestrial intelligent life is its indispensable “humanity”. But who said that there should be something between us at all common?
In fact, we have no idea what life could have developed on a distant planet, warmed up unknown star. The dominant form of alien life is easy may be neon gas clouds or energy clots that communicate through a series of atonal whistles, change of temperature conditions or emission of certain smells.
If carbon is the basic element on Earth, then it’s not at all a fact, that on another planet it exists at all, and indeed on Many earthly laws may not apply to the universe. Quite it is possible that we still have not met with aliens just because they could recognize them even if they landed a meter away from us.
But if the likelihood that outwardly they are very similar to us – small, then the likelihood that their way of thinking at least somehow coincides with ours, and even less. We and each other are far from always able to agree, and here – alien education. So for deciphering a single alien phrase, most likely we would need days, months, or even decades.
2. Do not want to interfere
Suppose that aliens exist, that they are quite similar on us so that our communication is theoretically possible, and that they are not hatched insidious plans to take over our useful fossils and are not going to inhabit our bodies. Even in this in the case of representatives of extraterrestrial intelligence, there may be many reasons to refrain from communicating with us.
If you watched Star Trek, you probably remember one of the most important rules of the Enterprise, according to which each race supposed to go their own evolutionary path. No one has the right to climb into other worlds with their advanced technologies, medicine, culture and impose their moral principles. Beyond depending on the situation.
So: a similar hypothesis exists in all seriousness. She called the “Zoo Hypothesis” and was proposed in 1973 American astronomer John Ball. According to this hypothesis, the alien mind has long known about us, but prefers not intervene in the process of natural development, but simply observes by us, like animals in a zoo. But when we we reach their level, here they will appear and may even share with us the secret of time travel or some other stunning technology.
Good or bad is a big question. Best intentions sometimes lead to unexpected consequences. For example, somehow it was large-scale project aimed at raising the level the lives of poor Ethiopian families. During this project, Ethiopian huts plumbing was carried out. A wonderful project that really greatly facilitated the hard life of many people. As a result in Ethiopia reduced the number of babies dying immediately after birth. Consequently, families have increased. And since neither money nor work was gone, then these surviving children were doomed to grow in hunger. This, of course, does not mean that it was necessary to leave the poor Ethiopians without running water and let their babies die. But the world is already made, that the solution of one problem can completely unexpectedly lead to the emergence of another, no less acute.
Now imagine that the aliens flew to Earth, let’s say in the Middle Ages and decided to make humanity happy by giving him an inexhaustible source of energy and perfect technology irrigation. All! No struggle for resources – we are provided with them forever. And then what? The earth would quickly be overpopulated, and people would quickly adapt their energy to incineration each other to clear living space for themselves. Through one hundred years from the Earth there would be only firebrands, and to our “benefactors” would have to make excuses to the intergalactic community. Well why do they need it?
3. We are not interested in them.
According to the so-called Law of Progressive Return, as only civilization makes a technological breakthrough, its pace subsequent development begins to grow geometrically progression. To verify this, just compare the successes, which mankind has made in the last century (in medicine, computer technology, aviation, space) and in all previous millennia. And each new round of development requires less and less time. When we build a new, most modern house, we don’t have to reinvent the hammer and nails – we use tools that are invented and improved to us.
Now let’s try to apply the same logic to a super-advanced alien civilization.
We believe that the flying saucer civilization is much ahead of us in development, that is, they have this “Law of Progressive bestowal “acts much longer than ours.
Even at the most conservative estimates, we take the pace at which Earth technologies have evolved over the last 50 years and multiply, say, by 300 or 400. Well, what should they talk to us about?
It is possible that alien civilizations are not trying make contact with us for the same reason that we do not trying to make contact with the fish in the aquarium – to us, in entities, just nothing to say to each other.
4. We missed each other in time
When we reflect on the likelihood of intelligent beings outside our planet, millions and billions of planets seem to us – Well, this can’t be such that at least one of them doesn’t live some green men with whom one could to talk. But here we usually forget about how limited not only in space, but also in time.
Just think – before the first people appear on Earth, she existed for at least four billion years. Maybe at that time somewhere in the neighborhood and some alien flourished civilization. Maybe during this time they’re not looking for brothers in reason once visited our planet. And maybe even found on it prehistoric lizards. To make contact possible, civilizations must coincide not only in the degree of “rationality”, but also chronologically. And, apparently, the probability of this coincidence extremely small.
Skeptics from science who do not feed bread – give only spoil a cherished dream, came up with the so-called “Theorem of doomsday. “This probabilistic reasoning is an attempt to predict how much longer can the human race survive on this planet based on the number of people who were still born here. We will not go into details, we will only say that for these humanity is likely to run dry long before learn to fly to other stars. And before the aliens ripen for a visit to us.
More precisely – supporters of the “End of the World Theorems” believe that mankind with a probability of 95 percent will be able to live on Earth about 9 thousand years ago, which on a cosmic scale is completely different long.
Even if during this time we have time to invent intergalactic ships, it must be borne in mind that the “Doomsday Theorem” extends to those civilizations with which we assume to set up a contact. Based on this, even assuming that a planet with intelligent life and the truth is likely to exist having reached it, we will find only mountains of large skulls. Is it worth it to transfer valuable fuel for this?
5. They are not and cannot be
The so-called “Unique Earth Hypothesis” was formulated two scientists – paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownley. They wrote a book in which they proved that the Earth appeared thanks to a completely unique combination of such a huge amount of detail, what is the probability of their repetition anywhere in the universe is vanishingly small.
That is, it is possible that some bacterium, algae or cosmic fungus can show up under a stone on one of distant planets. But the chances that this form of life will develop to to such an extent that it will start building houses and launching space ships – no more than winning the lottery every day until the end own life.
First, the location of the solar systems – if it is too close to the center of the galaxy – will be exposed to harsh radiation exposure, if too far – that will not be able to sustain life. Now the star should not be too old, too bright or too big, otherwise life again does not arise. Next: the planet to become habitable, should rotate in an orbit ideally suited for this. When with the Earth, if the orbit we are moving in would decrease five percent or increased by fifteen, we would either right there would burn or freeze to death, respectively. Size and the location of our moon also plays an important role – they hold the planet in a stable position, protecting us from the rapid climate change and all sorts of other terrible disasters. If Earth there wasn’t such a valuable companion of precisely this size and shape, we would most likely not be here either.
The sequence of geological eras is also important – if, to for example, the Mesozoic era followed the Cenozoic, then the conditions for human development would never have arisen, evolution would have gone different by way of which, perhaps, some intelligent dinosaurs.
Even the arrangement of other planets of the solar system has value. For example, Jupiter helps us survive by protecting from space debris and deadly asteroids.
Besides that, there are countless circumstances the totality of which allowed intelligent life to appear on our planet – the only one in the entire Galaxy. Probability that all this combination will happen again somewhere, almost equal to zero.
Therefore, there is nothing to hope to establish contact with another rational civilization, since there is no other and cannot be can.
Time Universe Galaxy Life Zoos End of the World Solar Evolution system
