Do aliens exist? Yes. All life on planet earth IS alien life, just not alien to us.
Borrowing some logic from my religion writings, the universe is indeed ~14.7 billion years old. Our sun is a third generation star, importantly. When the universe first began it was made of primarily hydrogen and helium, almost exclusively. The first generation of stars were born and dead over the first billion years, and during their conception and death, heavier and more complex elements were born. The third generation provides most of the full range of possible elements and in enough quantity to provide the needed building blocks for life, which include atmospheres, carbon, helium, oxygen, silicon, iron, etc.
This is to say, first generation stars (and their planets, if any) would have been barren rocks of mostly 1 to several elements. Our solar system contains most if not all of the steady state elements currently.
Some stars have been through upwards of 6 generations but do not produce more elements, so the universe is generally in its main sequence right now of being nearly as complex as it ever will be. From here on out, as our current large stars die, they will continue to fuse into new stars at slower rates due to expansion and the general decay of the universe. Currently a vast number of stars are brown dwarfs which may stay in their main sequence for trillions of years, which is amazing since our star will die within mere billions of years from now.
Why is this all important? Well, life in its simplest stages did begin a mere billion years after our (currently 4.5 billion year old earth) began. However around space, this generally may be approximately the case wherever life could begin. We know that there are many important factors to harbor life anywhere, not just as we know it, but as we can ascertain via deductive reasoning as well:
Proximity to its star (not too hot, not too cold)
Size of star, which dictates things like radiation, consistency of heat provided, and the elements fused
Planets having moons appears vital. And the earth is a special case (in the solar system) for having a mood that is so large in respect to the size of the planet. Moons help immensely with providing weather patterns and tides
Being in proximity to a much larger planet also helps – i.e., in our case, Jupiter shields us from many asteroid impacts now due to being so large
There are obviously dozens if not hundreds of other factors. If we took all possible things that make earth, still the only directly observed location to harbor life, as our only knowable path to life possible, we would have to look far and wide for an exact match. There are approximately 1 SEPTILLION stars estimated to currently exist in the universe. Possibly, around 7% of all stars may be yellow dwarf stars like our own, of course somewhere along their own (short) lifespans. Lets say, up to 90 SEXTILLION stars are existing like our own, across the entire universe.
Still, around 10 planets, on average, do seem to orbit their stars. This produces, again a staggering ~1 SEPTILLION PLANETS, orbiting YELLOW DWARF STARS, in the universe. If, say, 2 of 10 are in the goldilocks zone (as one baseline factor), then 200 SEXTILLION planets are already ‘earthlike candidates’ – from there, it’s a simple survey of seeing if they are rocky planets or gas planets – lets say half? f*ck if I know at this point. 100 SEXTILLION PLANETS! However from there, identifying how many have a similar composition/atmosphere/magnetic shielding/age/large moon/aren’t in some other severe danger may well decrease the odds by 10 fold each time. Real quickly, just those ~6 factors may bring us down to 1,000,000,000,000,000 planets. That is 1 Quadrillion planets, out of the original 100 sextillion. Huge numbers either way but 1 quadrillion is vastly, VASTLY less than 100 sextillion.
Even if there is anywhere near that number (there aren’t) of planets like ours (just in principle) out there, then the big question does indeed come down to, well, have they actually had life begin in any form at all?
Keeping our baseline in mind if of utmost importance as well. It took damn near all 4.5 billion years on earth to create us humans. We’ve been inventing stuff, in general, for ~6000 years, dating back to primitive tools that led to the development of the pyramids. But also, we really only discovered the possibility of burning fossil fuels ~200 years ago. In that short 200 years, we went from dying regularly of starvation, freezing, basic disease, lack of shelters, etc, to solving for X in nearly every conceivable category of how we could make our lives safer, easier, longer, and vaster. We went to space for the first time – in earths history - ~60 years ago.
However, we aren’t on the same trajectory we have been on for the last 200 years. In fact we are aiming directly at the opposite trajectory but much worse in almost every single aspect possible. Consider the following existential risks:
- We went from 1 billion people at the dawn of fossil fuels to 8 billion people in 200 years.
- Human and livestock biomass now amounts to 95% of all living biomass on the earth
- We are past ‘peak’ nitrates. Our heavily tilled soil will be increasingly unable to support our population.
- All things we make require MORE resources, not less.
- We have used more energy every single year since we began using energy
- We are at or around peak oil. Oil is the singular thing that if it went away, became more expensive, or even more rare, will indeed cause cascading failures across our world economy and society
- We have mined and tapped all of the easiest resources during our 200 year boom or bust cycle and now we are onto the harder reserves. This makes everything much more complex and hard and expensive to do.
- Nuclear war is always at an all time high
- We have use antibiotics in our livestock and ourselves to the point of making them not as effective as they should be, and while we continue to factory farm thousands of chickens in tiny warehouses the odds of encountering an extremely real and horrible virus is imminent
- The complexity of all manufacturing processes means a cell phone takes 8 countries to make and creates endless opportunities for cascading failures across the systems
This list also goes on forever, and is likely all true. It is a complete windfall of luck we didn’t kill ourselves already. So, just as we figured out how to even get into space, the very window of going further, let alone continuing to exist in a meaningful sense on our own planet is coming to a close. And this has been the case as well for all species to exist on earth so far; some 95% of all species to have ever existed on earth are extinct, with around 70% of the current batch to species gone or going extinct over the last 70 years.
Even if we hadn’t set so many of our own beartraps, our true window of opportunity to thrive on earth is quite narrow, indeed. Most of us probably know the sun will eventually pretty much swallow the earth hole as it expands and dies, but also between then there will be giant changes to the climate, planet composition, atmosphere, availability of certain plant and other animal life, etc. We are always still subject to other meteor impacts, volcano eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados and the like.
No matter what, human life, the only life capable in all of earths 8.7 Million different species to have ever existed, will be not only a rounding error to that number, but the duration of human life will also be a rounding error on the life of the actual planet.
Insofar, though our minds (mine alike) have always been fascinated by the idea of existing outside of our own planet, this has been proven to be absolutely not possible at the scales we wish it to be. Yes, we do have space crews existing at this very moment, orbiting the earth. They require vast amounts of our resources, currently ONLY provided from the earth itself, in order to stay in orbit ONLY. Not only can the crew members only last so long in space at a time before ill effects to their health begin to take shape, but they require constant supplies sent from earth on rockets to sustain every minute of it.
One way trips are possible; our furthest rockets ever have not yet left the OORT cloud, which is the limit of matter which is bound to our own solar system. And the probes themselves are long dead; we just have good ideas of where they are now. Of course, these are un-manned.
To get into the meat and potatoes of this matter – ALL other obvious factors aside (fuel, people not dying, becoming self sustaining (somehow) on a rocket), how soon could we reach the next nearest star? The fastest known rate of possible travel, for matter, is, in fact, light speed. Concepts of wormholes do exist. The rate of expansion of the universe exceeds the speed of light. Gravitational lensing could potentially increase the rate of speed as well. But for all intents and purposes, light speed is the realistic limit of matter going around space. The main injector at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory accelerates protons to 99.997 percent of the speed of light. That is, indeed, amazing. But can we get a rocket – of any sort, let alone with humans on it – going through space at 99.997 % the speed of light? No, of course not. 364,660 mph is the speed of the fastest rocket we have made to date. That is 671 MILLION miles an hour short of the speed of light. Sooo close.
So we need to approach this from a few angles – the question of, how long could it take us to get to the next nearest STAR? Proxima Centauri is about 4.3 light-years or about 25,300,000,000,000 miles away. That means, if we could go, say, 500,000 MPH, it would take 5776 YEARS to get to that star. And that is only the very closest star to our own. As far as we know, there is one somewhat ‘earthlike’ planet around this star, but the chances of life are at best, unknown. Really, provided we had the means (we don’t yet) of confirming life exists somewhere, we can then set off to go visit that planet.
Back to the numbers – there are 100 billion(ish) stars in the milky way, therefore maybe 750 million yellow dwarf stars. And, again, dividing that by 10 just 5 times brings us to around 7,500 options for stars that actually have very close to earth-like planets, which still may or may not contain life – either currently, in the past, or in the future. 7,500 still sounds like a lot but when you spread that across the our milky way galaxy that distances between possible planets, if roughly evenly scattered, becomes immense. The milky way galaxy is 120,000 light years across. That’s a lot more than the 4 light years that would take us 5776 years to get to just the next nearest star. In laymans terms, if we COULD travel at light speed somehow, it would take 120,000 YEARS to get across the entire milky way. In one human lifetime, we could go, say, 80 light years away. There are 166 stars within this radius of the sun. Really, the odds of finding one other planet with life – let alone intelligent life, is exceedingly slim.
Mind you, this is only working within our own galaxy. The next closest galaxy – the Andromeda galaxy – is 2.5 million light years away. That is ¼ the time that humans have been biologically human as a species.
The tantalizing thing here is, there are chances of life in many places – up to 3 of the moons in our own solar system are ice moons, with salty water underneath their ice crust. I hope with all my might that one day we send a probe to melt its way through the ice of Jupiter and saturn’s moons to see if we can find something – anything! Simply observing bacteria life elsewhere would be a major milestone for humanity.
So, all in mind, are we being visited by aliens?
It is quite hard to say. Why would they visit us? Many would think that aliens could have detected our technological advances and figured it must be time to visit us. If that’s the case, and if they were following for things like electricity, radio waves, or the burning of fossil fuels, our signature may have been detectable for around 200 light years away – which includes 1500 other stars (and, again maybe 200 of those being yellow dwarfs with the 1-2 ‘close possibilities’ of a life harboring planet like earths).
Why else would aliens have decided to visit us? Our biological signature has been permeating the universe for billions of years – oxygen, water, atmosphere, one could imagine another space bearing civilization detecting this many, many millions of years ago and deciding, against all other odds, to come visit earth – just for the hell of it, apparently. This would have to be a civilization that did some or many of the following, which humanity is so far failing to do completely:
- Discovered the ability to detect life on other planets from vast distances away – we so far haven’t been able to detect it on our own moons, but we are proving mars. James Webb has been hard at work for the last year and still we do not have any more conclusive data of life out there beyond our solar system.
- Developed space craft that can sustain life within them regenerately, possibly/probably generationally, that are apparently not of a very large size, that do not use forms of energy like we have discovered. Bear in mind, our fastest going space rocket used a one-time propulsion system of many thousands of gallons of rocket fuel and has no control of where it is going now and is long dead. And, it is only going ~350,000 miles per hour. Humans have been hard at work trying to discover alternative energy types for the last 100 years. We have so far discovered oil, solar, wind, hydrogen, hydro, lithium (and other batteries) and nuclear. In space we also have a form of ion propulsion systems at work that do very little in terms of speed or sustainability. The window of available energy sources is likely closed or closing on us, and nobody has found an infinitely usable energy source that has no waste whatsoever. Even our best ‘renewables’ are extremely energy and resource intensive to create. Solar panes cannot create other solar panes, and certainly not out of thin air.
- Those space craft can go at LEAST light speed, on some unknown propulsion and energy system.
- The being/s within can withstand the extreme g-forces
- The being/s within apparently have no interest in remaining on their own planet/s where life is presumably much easier and less desolate
- They don’t kill themselves off in the process of all of this technological advancement
- They decide, of all places, to come visit earth
- All they do is visit, as far as we can tell. Nothing else is done. They don’t take anything, give anything, or effect us in any meaningful way. I am speaking to the UAP/UFO sightings, now in the focus of the pentagon. Maybe they are simply surveying for now and plan to come back in large numbers later? Who knows. Maybe there is nothing there. Maybe it is our own technology / drones / etc that the vast majority of humans cannot confirm.
My conclusion is, there is certainly going to be life outside of the earth. Life may exist in many forms, whether carbon or silica based. It may have existed many times before us across the universe, and may exist long after us. It may vary greatly in terms of how complex the life is. The earth, which again is our only baseline, unfortunately, has had life for some 3 billion years, but 2.7 billion years of that was non-complex life. It wasn’t until the dinosaurs, essentially, where large complex life roamed the earth. And It wasn’t until the last few million, and really the last few thousand years, where complex, SENTIENT life roamed the earth. And in our one case, once we reached this point we kicked off the 6th mass extinction event across the earth which will mark our own reduction in population and general ability to extract resources and create. Think of it. All that time, if measuring sentience across a timeline.
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That little bump is humanity at our very best and only chance to escape our own planet.
Maybe some life bearing planets are like this
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Or like this
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Or like this
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The possibilities are endless, sure, but in principle quite limited. Life needs a ferocious will to continue and ample opportunity as well. It needs time to grow into its environment, and small changes can make big differences in its trajectories. In terms of earth-like planets out there, yes, there is certainly other life, but will it have had to have the same or better chances than we had, which were really quite good, to make it here.
I don’t believe we have been visited by aliens at this point in time. I remain open to the possibility, but as of now, with the data we have, knowing the vastness of space, the slim possibilities of life within that space, and the even slimmer possibilities of complex, space bearing, non terminating life, life that can manipulate the laws of physics as we know it (and we DO know a lot), it just doesn’t quite seem possible to me.
One more thought for interesting context. If all of human existence was crammed into a thousand page book, here is basically how the book would read:
Pages 1-950: People hunting and foraging, dying of plagues, starving, being eaten by other animals, freezing to death, being struck by lightning, but somehow managing to survive overall. Not much else going on. Populations teetering in the low millions for the most part.
Page 951: Jesus born and died, went to heaven, forever ensuring everyone has a ‘fair shot’ of making it to heaven themselves, so long as they believe.
Pages 952-999: More of what happened in pages 1-950 except some discoveries here and there, maybe the bronze age or something like that.
1000: Humans learn how to foster steam for energy, then coal, then other fossil fuels to radically accelerate their development, so much so, in fact, that right when gasoline was discovered, the slaves were freed from America, not because of our moral high-ground but because we no longer needed them, since we had machines. Great, unprecedented wars were fought. The population raises from about 1 billion to 8 billion. Nuclear bomb technology discovered. Automobiles, flying sardine cans discovered and implemented across the world. Humans go to space and learn 1,000,000 times more than they ever knew about space and our origins. Electricity put into motion. Biology honed in and chemistry used to cure many ailments in the means of medicine and vaccines. Many new drugs discovered which help some and hurt others. Television watched by billions, and then the internet becomes a thing, which rapidly turns toward artificial intelligence. All the while, humans are solving one problem after another, but generating new unsolvable problems all the while not realizing it, such as Overpopulation issues, Underpopulation issues, Nuclear war, other warfare for that matter, Manufactured pandemics, Starting the sixth planetary mass extinction while half of the people argue about climate change, Accidental pandemics due to factory farming issues, Supply chain collapses, Energy remoteness as oil and other resources decline but blaming it on politians, Weather pattern disruptions, Bank collapse, recession/Depressions, and others, extreme wealth disparity, etc.
What will page 1001 be? Jesus coming back to take all the good Christians away and leaving everyone else to die? Will we make it through our massive problems? Will the trillionth child be born, or only the ~110 billionth?
