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Life goals: meet an alien or at least answer the question; are we alone in the universe?
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What I’m saying is WHERE ARE ALL THE ALIENS?
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Hey guys, Julia here for DNews
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Probability tells us that our galaxy should be teeming with life. Our universe is about
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14 billion years old. Our Solar System and our Earth are only 4.5 billion years old.
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But the universe is a big place, and there are plenty of other solar systems that are
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wayyy older even in our own galaxy. So intelligent life should have evolved millions of years
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sooner than we did and they should have taken over the galaxy by now. At that rate, we should
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have some evidence that the truth, or life, is out there. So what’s the deal with the
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radio silence? This is the very question physicist Enrico Fermi asked in the 1950s, specifically
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“Where is everybody?”. This idea that alien life should be out there, but we haven’t
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heard anything is called the Fermi Paradox.
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Most solutions to the paradox can be broken down into two broad categories, aliens don’t
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exist, or they do exist.
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If aliens don’t exist, it might be because a planet that can sustain life is rare, and
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that complex life-- such as plants and animals-- would evolve is even RARER. This is creatively
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called the Rare Earth Hypothesis, which suggests that we are actually alone. Another idea is
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that an intelligent, colonizing, intergalactic lifeform is incredibly rare. Robin Dale Hanson,
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an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, described this idea as ‘The
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Great Filter’.
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He suggests that each stage of evolution might just be really hard to reach. For aliens evolve
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and become visible to us, they would need the right star system, reproductive molecules
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like RNA, simple life, complex life, sexual reproduction, multicellular life, tool using
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life, where we are now, and last but not least, colonization explosion, or the ability to
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take over the galaxy. He suggests each of these steps is very improbable, let alone
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all of them. And one or more of these steps is “the Great Filter”, meaning that it’s
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so incredibly difficult to pass, that nothing in the universe has done it.
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Since we’ve already made it through most of these steps, it stands to reason that the
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biggest hurdle of “The Great Filter” might be where we are now or where we nearly are.
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If that’s the case, that means we are approaching the filter.. and odds are, we will destroy
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ourselves before we become interstellar, just like everyone else in the universe probably
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did.
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But okay what if aliens DO exist? Where are they? One hypothesis supported by Author Michael
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Michaud is that aliens are just shutting the hell up. And for good reason, self protection.
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The universe could be a giant hostile place filled with warfaring colonizing civilizations.
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So by staying at home and staying quiet, they aren’t drawing attention to themselves to
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keep themselves safe.
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But some people think extraterrestrial life is here. And that maybe they just don’t
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care. Maybe they don’t find us interesting enough. Or maybe they’re nice aliens, who
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care about us a whole lot. So much so that they won’t even touch us. One theory published
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in the journal Icarus in 1973 suggests that we are part of some sort of protected zone,
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almost like a preserve or a zoo! But maybe they ARE here and reaching out to
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us. But we just can’t communicate with them, maybe we’re just bad at reading the signs.
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Maybe they communicate with technologies that are different from radio waves, like lasers,
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or something we haven’t even conceived yet!
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There’s so many more solutions to the Fermi paradox, one physicist Stephen Webb lists
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at least 50 solutions in his book “If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE
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IS EVERYBODY?”. But he actually believes we are alone.
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No matter what, I want to believe we’re not alone. But perhaps the universe is too
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vast for us to ever know.
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While we haven’t heard anything from other civilizations that doesn’t mean we’ll
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stop scanning the skies anytime soon. In fact, NASA’s got a new telescope in the works
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that will see further than we’ve ever seen before.
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If you want an incredible behind-the-scenes look at the new James Webb Space Telescope,
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make sure to check out Discovery’s brand new documentary Telescope! The world premiere
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is this Saturday, February 20 at 9pm on the Discovery Channel. We’ll be watching too!
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So what do you think? Do you think life is out there? Or what’s your favorite solution
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to the paradox? Let us know down in the comments below