Life in the Universe |
| Posted by The Masked Crusader (cschalk) on Feb 16 2010 |
In continuing my discussion of intelligent life in the universe, I feel almost obligated to talk about evolution, and what I believe evolution is from creationist standpoint, but I won't. I don't want to go flouting my beliefs and how they both confirm and repute evolutionist views of the universe. Do I believe in Evolution, yes. Do I believe that Man came from something else, No. That's all I am going to say about that. If you want me to spew forth my beliefs on evolution, leave a comment and I'll consider it for a future installment in this series.
I do believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, not merely here on Earth. I'll even take it a step farther and suggest that there may be countless, numberless worlds with intelligent beings on them. Are they aliens with buggy eyes and green skin? No. I believe that they probably act and look like us. If the chemicals combine on this earth in a specific configuration to create an intelligent life form on this planet, speaking of the human form, then for an intelligent life form to exist on another world, the chemicals must also combine in similar configuration, creating a creature that looks human and so forth.
For our purposes in this discussion, I'll define Intelligent Life as a creature that is capable of storing information outside their own body. Later, we'll talk about Communicating Intelligent Life, or intelligent creatures that communicate extra-terrestrially.
Humans are the only creature on Earth that has successfully learned to store information outside of their bodies. We can see that there is a measure of intelligence in all life. Sunflowers know where the sun is and turn their "faces" towards it to get nutrients. Knowing where the sun is requires a certain level of intelligence. Cats know how to hunt. Hunting, especially the affective hunting that cats are capable of, requires a much larger measure of intelligence. They have learned how to share this information with their offspring and pass it on from generation to generation, but cats have yet to learn how to store this information outside of their own brains. Only humans have evolved enough to be able to write down their information in annals and store them for future generations. We collect these writings and store them in large buildings called Libraries. The library of congress contains volumes and volumes of information. Carl Sagan addresses this topic of intelligence in the following video.
I know I pretty much recapped what he said, but I think it's important to consider that out of all the life on this planet, only one species is advanced enough to store it's intelligence outside of it's own head. Right now, you are reading this document on your computer at a dumb little website called themaskedcrusader.com. I am communicating to you from the past, for I am writing this before you read it. I am projecting my thoughts through time to a generation of readers who might read this document the day after it was written or in several years. Whatever it is, you're reading this and I am communicating with you.
Humans have, for the last 80 years or so, have been broadcasting their communications through the air and, consequently, across space. Those radio waves have been moving through space at approximately the speed of light and have reached several star systems. Whether or not they contain life on them is unknown, or whether or not they contain life that is in a communicating stage in their development. Once again, Carl Sagan addresses this and the Drake equation in the following video.
You can experiment with the drake equation yourself on this website. If we use the calculations from the video, there could be as few as 10 other civilizations that are currently advanced enough to communicate. On the other hand, there could be millions. If we assume that they are evenly spaced throughout the galaxy, then the odds of us reaching one is extremely low.
How big is the galaxy? The group Monty Python sings a song called the Galaxy Song. In it, they describe how big the galaxy is. Here is that video for your entertainment (this video may not be suitable for minors as it contains tasteless English humor):
In this song, I'm going to assume that they did their research and use their calculations for the size of the galaxy. All calculations are in light years. By Monty Python's description, the galaxy can be through of as 2 very squat cones connected. The equation for the volume of a cone is:
For our calculation, the radius is 50,000 and the height is 8,000. If we plug these values in, we can estimate that the volume of the northern half of the galaxy to be approximately 21 trillion cubic light years. Multiply this by 2 to get the southern half and the volume of the galaxy is approximately 42 trillion cubic light years. Now, assuming that the number of communicating civilizations (10) are evenly distributed, it means the closest one to us is within the closest 4 trillion cubic light years from us or about 16000 light years away. If we take the upper limit of communicating civilizations, 1 million of them in our galaxy, and assume that they are, once again, evenly distributed, then the closest one is approximately 160 light years away. That's exciting, except for the fact that our earliest transmissions have only made it about half the way there. When they receive our transmissions in another 80 years and attempt to respond to the earliest transmissions, then it'll take another 160 years to get that response. A long time to wait.
So, I can confidently say that we are not alone. If there are a mere 10 communicating intelligent civilizations within our galaxy, and that all galaxies average 10 of their own, that means the known universe is teeming with life. There are approximately 125 billion galaxies in the universe, meaning that there is possibly 1.2 trillion communicating civilizations within the known universe. If there are millions of civilizations per galaxy, then there can be millions of billions of civilizations just like ours out in the expanse of space.
TL;DR: We are not alone!
Last changed: Aug 22 2011 at 10:30 AM
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