Some thoughts on the issue of intelligent life. If we have counterparts out there, where are they? Do they not like us? Are they preparing an invasion to destroy us? Is their technology at our equivalent level? Do they visit us in secret until we “grow up” a little, or are we their laboratory experiments? Are they in some form we don’t recognize and can’t imagine communicating with (like, say, dolphins?) Or is space just so hostile that crossing it is almost impossible?
Alien (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Forbes has an article up noting that many scientists, including Seth Shostak, are now saying that we could find intelligent extraterrestrial life in the next twenty years. I definitely think we might find extraterrestrial life in that time frame, but I’m pretty skeptical that it will be intelligent.
I’ve written about this before, but the summary is that the universe is far older than our planet. There has been plenty of time for intelligent aliens to have evolved. But if they had evolved, they should have been here long ago. Indeed, we should have been colonized many times over. But there’s no evidence of that having happened. This is known as the Fermi Paradox. If all the statistics point to pervasive intelligent life, then where are they?
There have been lots of proposed answers to the Fermi Parafox, such as the rare earth…
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