The absence of signs of the existence of alien civilizations suggests either that humanity is the first intelligent race of the Universe, or that technologically advanced civilizations have an average of no more than 500 years, says the mathematician in an article published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
“I used to teach astronomy and told my students that humanity, according to statistics, must be the stupidest form of intelligent life in the Galaxy. We entered the current phase of technological development only a century ago, and other civilizations had to develop for millions, if not billions of years,”says Daniel Whitmire of the University of Arkansas (USA).
More than half a century ago, American astronomer Frank Drake developed a formula for calculating the number of civilizations in the Galaxy with which contact is possible, trying to estimate the chances of discovering extraterrestrial intelligence and life.
Physicist Enrico Fermi, in response to a fairly high estimate of the chances of interplanetary contact using Drake's formula, formulated the thesis, which is now known as the Fermi paradox: if there are so many alien civilizations, then why does humanity not observe any traces of them?
Scientists have tried to solve this paradox in many ways, the most popular of which is the "unique Earth" hypothesis. She says that for the emergence of intelligent beings, unique conditions are necessary, in fact, a complete copy of our planet. Other astronomers believe that we cannot contact aliens for the reason that galactic civilizations either disappear too quickly for us to notice them, or because they are actively hiding the fact of their existence from humanity.
Whitmir offered his explanation for the Fermi paradox, which he called the "principle of mediocrity", which postulates that all supposedly "unique" features of humanity are "mediocre" norms in the absence of other examples of the existence of intelligent life that arose in fundamentally different conditions.
According to the mathematician, within its framework, the absence of other intelligent beings in the Universe is explained by two different, but equal hypotheses - the fact that humanity is the first intelligent race of the universe, or the fact that technologically advanced civilizations live extremely shortly.
As Whitmere noted, humanity appeared on Earth quite early compared to the length of the period during which life could in theory exist on our planet. Accordingly, this suggests that intelligent races could appear in other worlds just as quickly, with a "head start" of several hundred million or even billions of years.
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Moreover, human ancestors acquired intelligence in a fairly short time, about seven million years, in other words, this means that mass extinctions and "self-destruction" of civilizations should not always lead to the fact that intelligent life will disappear forever from the surface of a planet outside the solar system.
Guided by these ideas, Whitmir tried to calculate how often extraterrestrial civilizations should appear and how long they can exist, while keeping within the "Fermi paradox".
The results of these calculations turned out to be disappointing for mankind - intelligent civilizations, not inferior in development to the inhabitants of the Earth, on average, exist no more than 500 years before they must either destroy themselves or die in the course of some natural disaster. Otherwise, traces of their existence should have been noticeable to us.
An alternative scenario is also possible - due to the early time of appearance, humanity may be the first intelligent civilization in the Universe. In this case, other civilizations can exist for a much longer time, but they, most likely, have not yet appeared, or signals about their existence have not reached the Earth.
