The universe is 13,700,000,000 years old. Homo sapiens evolved only 200,000 years ago. What are the chances...

Question

... that, if intelligent life has evolved elsewhere, it has already gone extinct, or that it is yet to emerge, and we will be extinct before before we can make contact?

In other words, what are the chances that, even if intelligent life were to exist, the Universe keeps us apart not only by distance, but also by time?

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Answer 1

There is no doubt in my mind, AT ALL, that there is intelligent life out there somewhere. Now whether they are still around, extinct or just starting their 'stone age' so to speak...I do not know.
You have an interesting point. Not only do we need to consider distance, but time as well. We may very well have missed thousands of civilizations already, and we may miss hundreds of thousands in the far future. I'm afraid we will never know. We humans seem so desperate to kill each other off and destroy our planet that we will never make it to a true space age where we travel to other planets.

So, until the end comes, I'll just scuba dive. :-)

Answer 2

Exactly. That is why it really makes much more sense that other intelligent life developed here on Earth in the past. Heck, many different intelligent tool-using primates existed at the same time. The 'aliens' are lying to us. They did not come from outer space. They live inside the Earth. They probably developed on the surface, at some point, and migrated inside. Of course the availability of food and water deep in the earth would be issues for such a civilization, but is it so strange. It is stranger than saying Space Brothers from Zeta Reticula have traveled here to act all mysterious and elusive?

Answer 3

You make it sound like someone is directing this cosmological circus. What are the chances that a coin will come up tails six times in a row? Pretty good, actually, if the series is long enough. An effectively infinite universe, diluted by effectively infinite distances and durations. The chances of making any meaningful contact with another intelligent species are completely unpredictable. Do we feel lucky?

Answer 4

The chances that the universe keeps us apart by distance and by time are EXCELLENT, so long as we continue to view the universe strictly in terms of Newtonian physics (i.e. electromagnetism as the medium for observation and communication.)

Radio waves, visible light waves, x-rays, gamma rays, cosmic rays, etc, etc, are all limited to the maximum speed of approx 186 thousand miles per second. This seriously limits us from communicating in any practical fashion with potential interstellar neighbors. It also limits our ability to scan the vastness that is the universe.

Quantum theory (specifically entanglement) implies that "something" can occur at FTL speeds, but how this can be applied practically is at this time unknown.

One thing is certain... so long as we are stuck playing in the Einsteinian universe, there little chance we'll ever be communicating with other life forms. Perhaps, if we are very, very fortunate, we may one day intercept a signal sent out into space from a distant intelligence, but we'll be be listening to a message that could be anywhere from hundreds to billions of years old, and there's no way we'd be able to answer such a message in anyones lifetime.

Personally, I think out best chance will be to focus on building ever more powerful computers, and hopefully, at some point A.I. will exceed human intelligence and figure out how to exceed the lightspeed barrier for us.

Answer 5

Yeah I know. Perhaps that is why we haven't heard from them yet. Most likely though that it has emerged but we are separated by hundreds of thousands of light years. The Universe for the most part evolved at different parts around the same time. Judging from that, an equal civilization (one that is capable of speech and at the same technology) is probably frantically looking for us. Maybe not earth-like but perhaps very much like dinosaurs or lizards. (It's all SF to me). So, give it time, we will be sure to get a signal or two within the next 5yrs. or so.

Answer 6

interior the Bible God made mankind on the 6th day. yet an afternoon with God is nearly one thousand years, so the six day advent in Genesis is truthfully a six thousand 3 hundred and sixty 5 days prophecy, to be precise its Gods redemption plan as God makes the top widespread from the commencing up. the classes of the bible let us know we are angelic beings that sinned in heaven and have been forged all the way down to this earth as a consequence commencing 6,000 years in the past. people have been in basic terms time-honored being in this earth till religious beings from heaven have been positioned into the bodies. we are in a position to determine this while there became in basic terms Adam and Eve, that they had 2 sons, and cain killed abel, leaving in basic terms 3 people in the international at the instant, however the bible states that Cain made like to his spouse and had a toddler meaning there became people in this earth while Adam and Eve got here here. So the reason civilization began 6,000 years in the past is brooding about is while the 1st sinners from heaven have been banished to the earth.

Answer 7

Valid points. The Drake equation did indicate that the likelihood of finding worlds capable of supporting life where actually more favourable that religious types would have you believe. But until we learn how to travel faster than light, we may never see if there is anyone else out there. Or like you said that they evovled and de-evolved before we were more than slugs.

Answer 8

I don't know. I think there's a fair chance we'll be extinct before we ever come in contact with other life. At the rate we're going, we might not be extinct, but our technological abilities will be hampered by environmental destruction within a century.

Answer 9

What would happen if the other side of this issue is true and our planet is only around 6000 - 20000 years old?

Edit:

Some scientists are trying to say that the chimp is more evolved than humans, I will never believe that a chimp can dream of and build anything; on the scale of human abilities.

Answer 10

I would say the odds are pretty poor of intelligent life evolving in two different places during the same time period.

Maybe intelligent life came by when the dinosaurs were running around and say "Screw this place" and never came back.