Humanity has not yet found intelligent extraterrestrial life for the reason that in the Universe around us there may be a kind of "clique" of aliens actively communicating with each other and hiding the fact of their existence from the Earth, according to an article posted in the electronic library Arxiv.org
More than half a century ago, American astronomer Frank Drake came up with a formula to calculate the number of civilizations in the galaxy with which contact is possible, trying to estimate our chances of detecting extraterrestrial intelligence and life.
Physicist Enrico Fermi, in response to the high assessment of the chances of interplanetary contact using this formula, formulated the thesis, which is now known as the Fermi paradox: if there are so many alien civilizations, then why do we not observe any traces of them?
Cosmic silence
Scottish astronomer Duncan Forgan of St Andrews University has tested the plausibility of a popular explanation for the Fermi paradox, which scientists call the "Galactic Club" or "Galactic Zoo." This idea was invented and popularized by the famous Australian astrophysicist Ronald Bracewell in the mid-70s.
Its essence is extremely simple - we have not yet contacted extraterrestrial civilizations for the reason that they actively hide their fact of existence from earthlings, communicating with each other within the framework of a kind of "galactic club of civilizations", where the Earth is not yet worthy to join.
This idea has both many supporters and opponents, claiming that aliens cannot organize such a club because of the difficulties in communication and the impossibility of keeping all extraterrestrial civilizations from accidental contact with the "barbarians" from Earth before they contact " management”of the club and will accept the rules of communication in it.
Promotional video:
Forgan became interested in this problem and tried to calculate whether such a "club of civilizations" could really maintain discipline in the "galactic arena" by calculating the number of civilizations in our Milky Way that have arisen since the emergence of the galaxy until today, and determining the number of possible cultural ties between them …
Universal conspiracy theory
As these calculations have shown, the existence of a single “club of aliens” will not be possible due to the gigantic distances between different corners of the Galaxy, but the presence of several local coalitions of aliens capable of effectively maintaining communication with each other can solve this problem of “galactic isolation” of the Earth.
Their existence will be possible if alien civilizations appear next to each other quite rarely and will exist for over 250 thousand years (humanity, if we take from the moment our species appeared, has been living on Earth for about 190 thousand years). The number of such "clicks" will depend on the duration of the interval between the births of new civilizations - the larger it is, the more groups of aliens will exist in the Milky Way.
Of course, all these calculations, as Forgan emphasizes, do not mean that such "camarilla" aliens really exist. They simply point out that the existence of a global "Galactic Club" is hardly possible. The "Galactic Empire" -hegemon, according to the astronomer, can exist only if alien civilizations live on average for millions of years, appear very quickly, every few million years, and their total number is several hundred.
All of this is much less likely than the emergence of local coalitions of aliens hiding from us independently of each other, Forgan concludes.
