For all those people out there who believe aliens exist, there is one big problem… we’ve never heard from them, so where’s the proof? Unless, of course, said people also believe in (or have even experienced) an alien abduction, in which case, there’s your proof. For the sake of this conversation, I’m going to assume those abductions don’t qualify as real proof. Anyway, this lack of evidence is usually referred to as the Fermi paradox, which basically says that if the conditions required to start life are so easy to come by, then life outside of Earth should be common enough that it would be unlikely to have gone undetected. So, that leads to the question, why haven’t we been contacted by aliens?
There are many theories I found floating around the internet to explain why we haven’t been contacted by aliens. Here are seven that I have collected:
- The universe is huge. It could take hundreds of thousands of years for a signal from one civilization to reach another, depending on where in the universe each is located. Maybe we just need to be patient.
- We aren’t looking or listening. If we aren’t on the lookout for contact, we might miss it.
- Communication is key. There are many ways that living things communicate. Maybe we don’t have the ability to detect or understand the messages that are being sent out.
- Timing is everything. Our civilization and an alien civilization need to exist at the same time. Alternatively, an alien civilization had to have existed at a time that, when a message was sent out, by the time it arrived at Earth, we were sufficiently advanced to receive and understand it.
- Aliens just don’t exist. It is possible that aliens don’t exist. Or they did, but some mass extinction event (like the ones documented on Earth) wiped them out.
- Aliens are making secret contact. It is possible aliens are visiting Earth in secret. Or maybe even not so secret (see “alien abductions” above), and we just don’t believe the ones who have been contacted.
- Aliens aren’t interested in us. We might be considered a young and underdeveloped civilization not worth contacting.
I don’t particularly like any of these theories. Or rather, I think the reason we haven’t been contacted is a combination of several of these theories, especially #1, #3, and #4, and one thing that most of what I found online didn’t really consider. Start by thinking about Earth and all the millions of species here. As far as we know, there is only one species of all those millions that has been able to even think about communicating with life on other planets. Many of the theories I found (including all seven above) just assume the existence of intelligent life that has evolved enough to send messages to space. That’s quite an assumption…
What I think is most likely, is that there is alien life, but it is more along the lines of single celled organisms that are incapable of sending out messages to the universe for us to find. And if there is intelligent life out there, the universe is huge, and it takes time for messages (that we hopefully know how to detect and interpret) to make it from whatever originating alien planet to Earth. So, for all we know, there is a message on its way right now. And if we assume that is the case, several important questions arise: Will humans still be around to receive it when it arrives? Will we be able to understand it? Will the alien civilization that sent it still be around when the message gets to Earth?
What do you think? Is there life outside of Earth? If you think there is, do you think it is intelligent life? If so, why haven’t we heard from them?