A photo from open sources
Last week, scientists announced the discovery of the Kepler-186f , planets in 492 light years in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-186fspecial because it marks the opening of the first planet of almost such the same size as the Earth in a potentially habitable zone – on the distance from the star, within which there may be liquid water, and it means life.
The news said little that this discovery is increasing the chances of the extinction of humanity in the short term. This the concept is called the Great Filter.
Great filter is an argument that tries to resolve Fermi’s paradox: why we did not find aliens, despite the existence of hundreds of billions of solar systems in the vicinity of our galaxy, in which life could develop? Physicist Enrico Fermi noted that it was rather unusual that no one alien signal or engineering project.
This apparent lack of prosperous extraterrestrial civilizations suggests that even one step from a modest planet to an interstellar civilization is extremely unlikely. Also this lack may be caused by the fact that intelligent life is either extremely rare or possesses tendency to extinction. It’s a bottleneck going through which appears alien civilization on one of the billions planets, and is called a great filter.
Are we alone?
What exactly causes the appearance of this bottleneck, remains a topic of debate for the past 50 years. Explanations include lack of Earth-like planets or self-reproducing molecules. Among other options – the incredibility of a jump from simple prokaryotes (cells without specialized parts) to a more complex eukaryotic life – even on Earth this transition took a billion years.
A proponent of this “rare earth” hypothesis also claims that the evolution of complex life requires an extremely large number ideal conditions. In addition to the fact that the Earth is in inhabited area by the sun, our star should be far enough from the center of the galaxy to avoid destructive radiation; our gas giants must be massive enough to clean asteroids from the trajectory of the Earth, and our unusually large moon – stabilize axis tilts, providing different times of the year.
These are just a few of the prerequisites for complex life forms. The emergence of symbolic language, tools and reason requires other “ideal conditions”.
Maybe the filter is still waiting for us?
Although the development of intelligent life may be rare, silence may be the result of the impossibility of a long existence rational of life. Perhaps any sufficiently developed civilization stumbles on suicidal technologies. We know that the “great filter” prevents the transition to interstellar civilization but we don’t know it lies in the past of mankind or in its future.
For 200,000 years, humanity has survived the eruptions of supervolcanoes, collisions with asteroids and natural pandemics. But our track record survival list is limited to several decades in the presence of nuclear weapons. And we have no survival experience with radically new technologies, which, in all likelihood, will appear in this century.
Scientists represented by Martin Reese of the Cambridge Center for the Study of existential risks, assess the achievements of biotechnology as potentially catastrophic. Others, like Stephen Hawking, Max Tegmark and Stuart Russell, also from the Cambridge Center, express serious concern about exotic but insufficiently understood capabilities of the machine superintelligence.
Let’s hope that no one lives on the Kepler-186f.
When the Fermi paradox was first voiced, everyone thought that planets themselves are rare. Since then, however, astronomy tools showed us only the tip of the iceberg – hundreds of exoplanets.
But every new discovery of an Earth-like planet in an inhabited an area like Kepler-186f reduces the chance that planets that can sustain life does not exist. Great filter shifted toward the arithmetic mean between inhabited planet and prosperous civilization.
If Kepler-186f is awash with intelligent life, it will be bad news to humanity. This will move the “great filter” further to technological era of the development of civilization. Then we can expect disasters against our alien comrades and us, actually.
In the case of the Kepler-186f, we have too many reasons to Do not believe in the emergence of intelligent alien life. Atmosphere may be too thin to prevent freezing; planet may be blocked by tides that will cause relative static environment. The discovery of these hostile conditions could become occasion for celebration.
However, whether there is life there or not, we may never find out.
“Unfortunately, the system is too far and too far dim so we can learn more, ”says Heike Rauer of German Institute for Planetary Research in an interview with AFP.
“We can’t know for sure whether it is rocky or not, we don’t we know if she has an atmosphere, what it consists of, whether the planet has water, the researcher emphasizes. – We know how measure it all: consider the atmospheric spectrum, but with affordable today it’s not possible with technology. ”
Sean Raymond, Astrophysicist, National Research Center France, who was a member of the team that discovered the planet, notes that we do not know how long the Kepler-186f has been hospitable for life. If at all.
“We don’t even have the means to help us. make these measurements. We will have to wait for the next generation space telescopes, which is 10 or 20 years. ”
Galaxy Water Life Stephen Hawking Exoplanets
