Since ancient times, a person has been excited by the idea of the opportunity to meet with representatives of other civilizations. There is even an entire subculture concerned with finding evidence that aliens have already visited our planet.
However, both representatives of this subculture and people who simply like the idea of the existence of aliens have to think about the obvious question - if aliens really regularly visit our planet, then why have we not been able to communicate with them so far?
There are several answers to this question. We present five of the most popular and well-grounded in this article.
1. If they do exist, they are most likely too … different
Our perceptions of alien life, whether we like it or not, are related to our earthly experience. Almost every major alien race in the world of fantasy and science fiction is humanoid. The Klingons from Star Trek are essentially vicious cave savages, and the Vulcans are generally hard to distinguish from humans. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are aliens, but they look exactly like the Europeans-earthlings of the 70s.
Even the Aliens from the film of the same name, despite their frightening appearance, are close enough to us that these roles could be played by people in appropriate costumes.
All "witnesses" who talked about their contacts with aliens describe humanoids who always have heads, arms, legs and eyes. In short, the reference point of our concept of extraterrestrial intelligent life is its indispensable "humanoidness". But who said that there should be something in common between us?
Promotional video:
In fact, we do not have the slightest idea of what life could have developed on a distant planet heated by an unknown star. The dominant form of alien life can easily be clouds of neon gas or energy blobs that communicate through a series of atonal whistles, temperature changes, or the emission of certain odors.
If carbon is a basic element on Earth, then it is not at all a fact that it exists on another planet, and in general, many earthly laws may not apply to the Universe. It is possible that we have not yet met with aliens simply because we could recognize them, even if they landed a meter away from us.
But if the likelihood that outwardly they are very similar to us is small, then the probability that their way of thinking somehow coincides with ours is even less. We cannot always come to an agreement with each other, but here is an alien education. So to decipher a single phrase of the alien, most likely, we would need days, months, or even decades.
2. Don't want to interfere
Let's assume that aliens exist, that they are similar enough to us for our communication to be theoretically possible, and that they are not hatching insidious plans to take possession of our minerals and are not going to enter our bodies. Even in this case, representatives of extraterrestrial intelligence can find many reasons to refrain from communicating with us.
If you've watched Star Trek, then you probably remember one of the most important rules of the Enterprise, according to which each race is supposed to go through its own evolutionary path. No one has the right to climb into other people's worlds with their advanced technologies, medicine, culture and impose their moral principles. Regardless of the situation.
So: a similar hypothesis exists in all seriousness. It is called the Zoo Hypothesis and was proposed in 1973 by the American astronomer John Ball. According to this hypothesis, the alien mind has long known about us, but prefers not to interfere in the process of natural development, but simply watches us from the side, like animals in a zoo. But when we grow to their level, then they will appear and may even share with us the secret of time travel or some other stunning technology.
Good or bad is a big question. The best intentions sometimes lead to unexpected consequences. For example, once a large-scale project was carried out aimed at improving the living standards of poor families in Ethiopia. In the course of this project, water pipes were installed in the Ethiopian huts. A great project that really made the hard life of many people much easier. As a result, Ethiopia has reduced the number of babies who die immediately after birth. Therefore, families have grown. And since there was no more money or work, these surviving children were doomed to grow up in hunger. This, of course, does not mean that it was necessary to leave poor Ethiopians without running water and let their babies die. But the world is so arranged that the solution of one problem can quite unexpectedly lead to the emergence of another, no less acute.
Now imagine that aliens came to Earth, say, in the Middle Ages and decided to make humanity happy by giving it an inexhaustible source of energy and perfect irrigation technology. All! No struggle for resources - we are provided with them forever. And then what? The earth would quickly become overpopulated, and people would quickly adapt the energy bestowed upon them to incinerate each other in order to clear up living space for themselves. In a hundred years, only embers would remain from the Earth, and our "benefactors" would have to make excuses to the intergalactic community. Well, why should they?
3. They are not interested in us
According to the so-called "Law of Progressive Return", as soon as a civilization makes a technological breakthrough, the rate of its subsequent development begins to grow exponentially. To be convinced of this, it is enough to compare the successes that humanity has made in the last century (in medicine, computer technology, aviation, astronautics) and in all the preceding millennia. And each new stage of development requires less and less time. When we build a new, state-of-the-art house, we don't have to reinvent the hammer and nails - we use tools that have been invented and improved before us.
Now let's try to apply the same logic to a super-advanced alien civilization.
We believe that the civilization of "flying saucers" is much ahead of us in development, that is, they have this "Law of Progressive Return" acting much longer than ours.
Even according to the most modest estimates, we take the pace at which Earth technologies have developed over the past 50 years and multiply, say, by 300 or 400. Well, why should they talk to us?
It is possible that alien civilizations do not try to establish contact with us for the same reason that we do not try to establish contact with the fish in the aquarium - in fact, we simply have nothing to say to each other.
4. We missed in time
When we think about the likelihood of the existence of intelligent beings outside our planet, we imagine millions and billions of planets - well, it cannot be that at least one of them does not have some green men with whom we could talk. But here we usually forget about how limited not only in space but also in time.
Just think - before the first humans appeared on Earth, it had existed for at least four billion years. Maybe at that time, somewhere in the neighborhood, some alien civilization was flourishing. Maybe during this time, in search of brothers in mind, they have visited our planet more than once. And they may even have found prehistoric lizards on it. For contact to be possible, civilizations must coincide not only in the degree of "rationality", but also chronologically. And, apparently, the probability of this coincidence is extremely small.
Skeptics from science, who cannot be fed with bread - just let them defile their cherished dream, have come up with the so-called "End of the World Theorem." This probabilistic reasoning is an attempt to predict how long the human race can still hold out on this planet, based on the number of people who have been born here so far. We will not go into details, let's just say that, according to these calculations, humanity is likely to dry up long before it learns to fly to other stars. And before the aliens are ripe to visit us.
To be more precise, the supporters of the "End of the World Theorem" believe that humanity with a probability of 95 percent will manage to live on Earth for about 9 thousand more years, which on a cosmic scale is not so long.
Even if during this time we manage to invent intergalactic ships, we must bear in mind that the "End of the World Theorem" applies to those civilizations with which we intend to establish contact. Based on this, even if we assume that a planet with intelligent life really exists, most likely, having reached it, we will find only mountains of large skulls. Is it worth transferring valuable fuel for this?
5. They are not and cannot be
The so-called "Unique Earth Hypothesis" was formulated by two scientists - paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee. They wrote a book in which they argued that the Earth appeared due to a completely unique combination of such a huge number of details that the likelihood of their repetition anywhere in the universe is vanishingly small.
That is, it is possible that some bacteria, algae or space fungus may be found under a stone on one of the distant planets. But the chances that this life form will develop to such an extent that it will start building houses and launching spaceships is no more than winning the lottery every day for the rest of its life.
First, the location of the solar system is of great importance - if it is too close to the center of the galaxy, it will be exposed to severe radiation exposure, if it is too far away, it will not be able to support life. Now the star should not be too old, too bright or too big, otherwise life will not arise again. Further: the planet, in order to become habitable, must rotate in an ideal orbit for this. In the case of Earth, if the orbit in which we rotate were reduced by five percent or increased by fifteen, we would either immediately burn out or freeze to death, respectively. The size and location of our Moon also play an important role - they keep the planet in a stable position, protecting us from rapid climate change and any other terrible disasters. If the Earth did not have such a valuable satellite of exactly this size and shape, we most likely would not be here either.
The sequence of geological eras is also important - if, for example, the Mesozoic era followed the Cainozoic, then the conditions for human development would never have arisen, evolution would have gone the other way, as a result of which, perhaps, some intelligent dinosaurs would have appeared.
Even the location of the other planets in the solar system matters. For example, Jupiter helps us survive by protecting us from space debris and deadly asteroids.
In addition, there are countless other circumstances, the combination of which allowed intelligent life to appear on our planet - the only one in the entire Galaxy. The likelihood that this whole combination will be repeated elsewhere is practically zero.
Therefore, there is nothing to hope to establish contact with another intelligent civilization, since there is no other such and cannot be.