Even if you are not a follower of astronomy or science, the past few
months has seen some very interesting developments in man’s exploration of
space and its ultimate goal of understanding "are we alone". More interestingly it has opened a whole new set of questions which will cause us to revise how we consider ourselves and where we might have come from. It also raises questions about what drives Humanities strong desire to find out if we are alone. Is this drive a result of our general dissatisfaction with the state of our world and our seeming impotence to correct that which plagues us. Is it rooted in our confusion between what place Science and Religion should occupy in our lives. Maybe it is the idea that perhaps someone or something else can help us find solutions to our challenges. No matter what truly drives this curiosity and desire for knowledge, the fact is; man is destined to eventually find out the truth about our Universe and our existence. We are inching closer and closer based on the below.
The Kepler space telescope which was launched by NASA in 2009
and was designed primarily to search the milkyway for Earthsized exoplanets
(planets particularly like Earth). It uses a principle of looking for the dimming of a star as a planet passes in front of it. Imagine tying a Ping-Pong ball to a string and passing it in front of a flashlight beaming against a wall. The light beam will dim as the ball passes in front but will never fully extinguish the glow you can see on the wall. Thereby indicating the presence of the planet whose size can be estimated based on the degree of dimming. Kepler though now partially disabled had been able to identify as of January
2015, 1000 confirmed exoplanets. In May of 2016 NASA announced it had spotted
1,284 planets and of these 550 are small possibly rocky ones of which 9 of them were
found to be in the habitable zone. Four of those new confirmed exoplanets were
found to orbit in the habitable zone of their related stars: three of the
four, Kepler-438b, 442b, and 452b are almost Earth-size and likely
rocky; the fourth, Kepler -440b is a "super earth". The Habitable zone is when
a planet is located close enough to its star to potential permit liquid water and temperatures that would not boil or freeze you to death;
also known as the goldilocks Zone).
In addition to the Kepler findings a paper released by Adam Frank and
Woodruff Sullivan in April of this year revised the findings of the "Drake
Equation" (Frank Drake). The "Drake Equation" was developed to measure
the potential existence of technologically advanced civilization in our universe.
Based on evolving information and new research they were able to address three
questions which were not complete or not known at the time of Drakes
calculations. They were:
1. How many stars actually might have planets?
2. How likely it was for life to evolve on those planets and more
importantly having ones which developed intelligent beings;
3. How long it might take for any civilization to become extinct.
The Frank/Sullivan equation used data and information which was not available
at the time (1961) that Drake developed his equation. Given the number of exoplanets
discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope. Through this analyses it was possible
for astronomers to estimate that at least 1/5th of stars have planets
in habitable zones. As to Drake's estimate as to the length of time over which
intelligent civilizations release detectable signals, Frank/Sullivan asked the
question, "Are we the only technological species that has ever
arisen?"
The duo's new equation says the probability there has never been any
extra-terrestrial life in space is an infinitesimal one in 10 billion trillion
or one part in 10 to the 22nd power. This is an incredibly
small number, said Frank.
They also conclude that over the 14 billion years the universe has been
in existence, it's very likely these civilizations have become extinct.
These findings obviously increase our understanding and point to the
fact that for planet earth and more importantly an Intelligent Civilization to
be a "one off" is extremely unlikely. If we use the Frank and
Sullivan adjusted Drake Equation we can calculate that even if the chances of
there having had a "high tech" species being 1 in a 1,000 trillion, it
would mean there is a possibility that there have been 1,000 occurrences of a
history like our own on planets across the local region of the cosmos. The result
of the revised Drake Equation however does something even more important. It
increases the value of the Fermi Paradox. This "paradox" written by
Enrico Fermi asked a very specific question. If we know the number of potential
planets in the visible universe and the potential for development of intelligent
civilizations. Where is everyone? Or more appropriately put; why have we yet to
encounter any other intelligent Civilization or found evidence of such. So
while the exploration and growth of our knowledge increases we are still left
with the question Fermi asked so many years ago. We are however beginning to
perhaps understand that maybe there were "others" but those others long ago disappeared. It is perhaps possible that given the age of our universe;
that a type of cycle exists between the evolution of a planet into a civilized
and technological society and its ultimate extinction. This therefore affecting
who is "out there" at any given time. In layman’s terms perhaps a
more fitting scene from Spielberg’s E.T would have had E.T phoning home only to
find the line was dead.
This new information has caused me to reflect on mankind’s ongoing
desire to answer the incredibly perplexing question, "Are we alone"?
Having grown up gazing at the stars and wondering, what is out there; I have
maintain this incredible curiosity throughout my adult life. My curiosity has
always been tapered with a sense that we might have all along been asking the wrong
questions. One need not be a person of faith or a person of Science to fully appreciate that one resounding question remains unanswered. Was the "Big Bang" the start or the end of something else? The fact that how everything
really began for our Universe some 14 billion years ago does remain a
scientific mystery. The simple fact is the "origin" had to come from
something. More simply put you cannot have "something" that came from
"nothing". That just does not pass the litmus test. If anything, one
must ponder the following. We have established that our ancestors date back
about six million years, the modern form of humans we know today only evolved
about 200,000 years ago. What we recognize today as "civilization"
has only been around for about 6,000 years, and the world most of us recognize
today (the industrialization period) started in the 1800s. While we’ve
accomplished a great deal from our birth to today, we are infants in the grandeur scheme
of the overall age of the universe. In essence we are not even an embryo in the
universes womb. If we take the age of our sun (approx. 4.5 billion years old
and we believe it will last another 5 to 5.5 billion year) it theoretically
means the earth will have benefited from its star for 9.5 to 10 billion years. If you
apply that the Univers is some 14 billion years old the math dictates that planets benefiting from a star with the same life span as ours would have long ago been obliterated by their (dying) expanding and exploding stars.
So now back to the real question. Is it possible that planetary
development into intelligent Civilizations could be cyclical? Is
it possible that all evidence of previous civilizations has been wiped out?
That all we can see are remnants of the past and potentially developing planets of the
future. That this particular moment is Earths "Time". Does this possibility resolve in finality the question about if we are alone? More strategically does it increase humanities desire and focus on
leaving this planet to colonize another. Would this guarantee
the continuity of mankind? A greater question if this is true is; why did no other civilizations
already do this? The answer may lay in the evidence we are currently
discovering. Could it be the Universe is telling us a story that we have yet to fully understand. The answer is, perhaps yes! Perhaps our theory of evolution holds as greater story. Maybe Earths evolution was enhanced by a civilization that could not leave its own planet on mass but
found a way to seed another evolving planet. Is it possible that a civilization
existing many millions of years ago helped the evolutionary process here on earth?
That they ultimately discovered through their own technology a planet circling
its star in the goldilocks zone and developed a way to send some sort of micro bacterial life to this planet to ensure the continuity of a species. Was it a desperate attempt to start over? An attempt to erase the errors of a previous Intelligent society doomed to extinction. A Hail Mary for a "new beginning". To start over from scratch.
These are interesting questions. What they still fail to resolve is how
did nothing become something? That is the quintessential question. A question which leaves the door open to "ancestors" or "gods" who perhaps helped to create life as we know it. Or "evolution" helped along by unknown forces. All of this will hopefully be answered as we forge our way further into space and discover more of the Universes history and our place in it. In the end however one thing remains and should remain. Mankind must pursue its quest to answer these questions. It must pursue it to better understand not if we are alone but more relevantly where we came from and far more importantly where we might be headed.
