Aliens Moved My Cheese

Life is stupid. Not yours in particular, rather all life. Insects outnumber humans 100,000,000 to 1. A single human stomach contains trillions of bacteria. Basically, “dumb” life is far more common than sentient life on our insignificant little planet. Apart from our fluke evolutionary ability to pretty much devastate any ecological system we encounter using our opposable thumbs and keen fashion sense, the odds are that even if we manage to go extinct as a species, cockroaches and microbial creatures will happily go on existing without us. Except for some unfortunate mass extinctions due to comets or climactic catastrophes, dinosaurs would likely be wandering about, merrily and stupidly munching on leaves, oblivious to the intellectual value of reality TV, and inadvertently crushing furry mammals beneath their monstrous feet, when they weren’t dining on them as appetizers. Now that we’ve established how awesomely dominant we are as a species, it begs the question of why we have yet to encounter any other intelligent species out there in the universe. The now famous Drake Equation is a mathematical calculation of the probability that other intelligent life exists in the universe.

N = R* · fp · ne · fl · fi · fc · L

The Drake Equation Says (N = number of galactic civilizations we might be able to communicate with):

R* = 1/year (1 stars formed per year, on the average over the life of the galaxy; this was regarded as conservative)

fp = 0.2-0.5 (one fifth to one half of all stars formed will have planets)

ne = 1-5 (stars with planets will have between 1 and 5 planets capable of developing life)

fl = 1 (100% of these planets will develop life)

fi = 1 (100% of which will develop intelligent life)

fc = 0.1-0.2 (10-20% of which will be able to communicate)

L = 1000-100,000,000 years (which will last somewhere between 1000 and 100,000,000 years)

There are some fairly big guesses involved in this equation, but it suggests, according to those strange mutants who can do math, that even given our uncertainty regarding some of the variables, there should be somewhere between 1000 (on the low end) and 100,000,000 civilizations in our galaxy that might have the ability to either contact us, or hear our messages. And we have heard from exactly zero (unless we consider anal probing and cattle mutilation forms of communication). What, do we smell or something? This has led to a few additional suggestions: (1) The Fermi Paradox: Because we would have expected to see at least some sign of intelligent life out there, given our calculation of probability, the fact that we haven’t suggests that technological societies disappear quickly (the implication being they annihilate themselves), (2) The Zoo Hypothesis: There are many super-intelligent extraterrestrials that regard us the same way we look at penguins, and (3) The Great Filter: That life may be abundant in the universe, but intelligent life rarely appears. Stephen Hawkings, our current version of Einstein, has suggested that this is because there is not necessarily a long term evolutionary value to intelligence. Let’s face it, the ability to destroy your entire species all by yourself is not particularly adaptive. All of which suggest that either intelligent life doesn’t exist out there (but non-intelligent life dominates the universe) or when it does, is behaves too ignorantly to live very long. Take a look at the people around. I don’t know about you, but I could go either way. My favorite alternative is that intelligent life is abundant in the universe, just really, really scared of something. Maybe we should be a little quieter.