There are countless aliens in this universe …
There are at least 10 billion intelligent civilizations scattered throughout the universe
In 1960, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Frank Donald Drake, derived a formula that, in his opinion, could determine the number of extraterrestrial civilizations. In the formula named after the scientist, there are seven members: the number of stars formed per year, the proportion of stars that have planets, the number of planets or their satellites with suitable conditions for life, the probability of the emergence of any life, the likelihood of its transformation into a reasonable one, the proportion of planets with highly developed creatures among the inhabited, the lifetime of a civilization that lives on the planet.
Calculations, carried out many times according to Drake's formula, gave a different number of brothers in mind: from their complete absence - to 5 thousand. The spread arose from the fact that scientists differently estimated the values of the parameters included in the equation. They were based, naturally, on the ideas of their time.
Drake Equation Plot
Much has now become clearer - especially thanks to the observations that were carried out using the Kepler space telescope. It turned out that there are more stars in the Universe than previously imagined, as well as planets suitable for life.
The latest data on the universe are armed with Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, and Woodruff Sullivan of the Department of Astronomy and Astrobiology at the University of Washington. But using Drake's formula, they - for starters - calculated not the number of likely intelligent civilizations, but the probability that we are alone in the universe. And it turned out that such a probability is vanishingly small - less than one divided by 10 to the 22nd power.
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And since the likelihood that we are alone is so small, then most likely we are not alone. Further calculations have shown that there are about 10 billion intelligent civilizations in the Universe. Nothing less. Only in our galaxy - the Milky Way, there are several thousand.
Frank and Sullivan believe that most civilizations have existed long before ours. And have already disappeared. So archaeologists - astroarchaeologists will have to look for them. But at the same time, it is possible that several hundred high-level civilizations in our galaxy are still preserved.
Scientists are upset: if the speed of movement in space is really limited by the speed of light and there are no "holes" connecting the distant regions of the galaxy by a short path, then it is unlikely that we will ever come into contact with brothers in mind. It is very far from them - at least 20 thousand light years. But the fact that some of their worlds could appear before us, and somewhere after, is now undoubted.
AT THIS TIME
There are really many brothers in mind
Duncan Forgan of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has his own way of counting the number of habitable worlds in our Milky Way. The scientist believes that there are no less than 361 of them. Of course, he is not 100 percent sure of this. But his calculations give such a result.
Duncan created a model of the Milky Way - a galaxy in which intelligent life is known to have appeared. We are evidence of this. He set up a program, the parameters of which he correlated with the current knowledge of the ability of stars to acquire planets - of a suitable size and located in a zone favorable for the emergence of life. And launched into work in three scenarios.
The first scenario assumed that living organisms appear with difficulty, but then develop well. In the second, they experience difficulties in transforming into intelligent beings. According to the third scenario, life could be transferred from one planet to another, as follows from the very popular hypothesis of its origin on Earth.
As a result, despite all the difficulties, the scientist received three positive results. Namely 361 intelligent civilizations for the first case, 31,513 for the second. And as much as 37,964 for the third.
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Vladimir LAGOVSKY