What Will Happened If Civilizations Exist Around Other Stars
If civilizations exist around other stars, they are probably beginning to emerge right now
, according to Space Telescope Science Institute theorist Mario Livid. He will detail his theory in a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Livid emphasizes that his theoretical work doesnt' necessarily mean extraterrestrial civilizationsreally exist-but it shows that they cannot be dismissed.
Some theorists believe that intelligent life forms, if they exist at all, appear on planets at some random time in the parent star's life. If this is tine, our chances of discovering them - or of being discovered by them - would be slim, making earthlings a lonely, isolated quirk of cosmic evolution.
Instead, Livid makes the case for a possible causal link between the sun's lifetime and the appearance of intelligent life on earth. This link should hold true for sun-like stars elsewhere in the universe, he says, offering an equal opportunity for intelligent life to arise somewhere else in space.
The second part of Livys case is based on the possibility that carbon- the fundamental building block of life as we know it - may not have been widely available until the universe reached about half its present age.
Given the added billions of years required for biological evolution to take place, intelligent carbon-based life could not have made an appearance any earlier than roughly three billion years ago. Livid points out that before the universe could make life that is in any way like us, it had to make carbon atoms.
Carbon is created by nuclear fusion in the hearts of early stars, and then ejected when the stars lose their outer gas layers and leave their cores behind as white dwarfs.
Though life first emerged on earth a few hundred million years after earth's formation, it took a vastly longer time nearly three billion years - for the first multi-celled organisms to appear. And then it took almost another billion years before life emerged from the sea onto the land.
The earliest humans appeared less than four million years ago -at about the halfway point in our sons lifetime. If this were purely coincidental, as other theoreticians have argued, then it would take much longer than the life of a star for most civilizations to arise. This would make it unlikely that extraterrestrial civilization could come about at all: we would be alone in the universe, a mere novelty, a cosmic accident.
Because sunlight provides far more energy for life than other chemical processes, biological evolution is intimately linked to the sun's behavior, livid maintains. The complex evolution of our atmosphere is interrelated with the sun. For example, our planet's atmosphere had to develop ozone to block out destructive UV radiation from the sun before animals could emerge on the land. Livid says that other civilizations should also emerge not much sooner or later than about halfway through their parent star's life cycle.
If Livid is correct, and the Galaxy is blooming with new civilizations, then where are they and why haven't they visited us?
Livid cautions that his work does not prove the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, but only points out that earlier conclusions that they do not exist may be premature. He adds that it's risky to think such civilizations would colonize the Galaxy. "This assumes we have even the vaguest understanding of the psychology of extraterrestrial civilizations," he says.
Livid cautions: "It's impossible to imagine the thinking of a civilization which might have evolved a million of years ahead of humans. We could be about as uninteresting to them as an amoeba is to us. Actual proof will have to await advances in biology and astronomy."
Meanwhile, Livys theory tells us that if there are other civilizations out there, now is their time.
by: emaly
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