This morning a white paper by NASA researcher Silvano Colombano, titled &#8220;<a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20180001925.pdf">New Assumptions to Guide SETI Research</a>,&#8221; bubbled up on Reddit.
It made some bold claims, and the media immediately jumped on them. Fox News ran with the headline &#8220;<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-scientist-says-earth-may-have-been-visited-by-aliens">NASA scientist says Earth may have been visited by aliens</a>.&#8221; Yahoo wrote that &#8220;<a href="https://in.news.yahoo.com/nasa-expert-says-tiny-aliens-may-already-visited-earth-didnt-notice-112843778.html">tiny aliens may have already visited Earth</a>.&#8221;
Yes, Colombano — who works for the space agency’s <a href="https://ti.arc.nasa.gov/">Intelligent Systems Division</a> — conceded that aliens might have already visited Earth. But in essence, the paper was a whip-smart new analysis of the Fermi Paradox. In other words, it confronted the question: <a href="https://futurism.com/theories-intelligent-life-fermi-paradox">Where are all the aliens</a>?
Speaking in terms of galactic real estate, there are many possible locations aliens could be hiding out – the universe is gargantuan. In total, the <a href="https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/counts_detail.html">Kepler Program</a> has discovered 3,848 planets – including some candidates that exist in systems around 11.2 billion years old. Our home solar system is only about 4.5 billion years old — which means it&#8217;s possible that, in one of these super-ancient systems, there&#8217;s an Earth-like planet 6 billion years older than our home planet.
Imagine what life on that planet might be like. The timing — those six billion years — are what&#8217;s important to Colombano. Basically, he reasons, technology on Earth is evolving at such an unprecedented rate that we can&#8217;t even begin to predict the sort of evolution we&#8217;ll see in the next thousand years – let alone 6 million.
Colombano&#8217;s conclusion: there are four main assumptions we should be challenging that help dictate the idea of where aliens could be, and how ever-advancing technology could play a part in their discovery. Here&#8217;s a rundown.
<h2>1. Interstellar travel is impossible or highly unlikely.</h2>
When it comes to how far we can travel in the universe, we&#8217;re currently limited by our technology and understanding of physics. The farthest a human has ever been from Earth is the far side of the Moon back in the 1970s. And we don&#8217;t have faster-than-light travel or a <a href="https://futurism.com/images/these-theoretical-propulsion-systems-might-make-interstellar-travel-a-reality">fusion drive</a>. Yet.
But aliens might. So we can look for evidence of somewhat obvious things, like a giant spaceship with ion thrusters passing by Earth.
Colombano argues though that we can&#8217;t let our current resources, or our imaginations, limit us — we have to fathom the possibilities of achieving a much greater understanding and control of matter-energy and space-time.
<h2>2. Radio waves continue to be the major form of communication for thousands or millions of years.</h2>
Until we can travel at light speeds, it&#8217;s good to have a way to communicate from a distance. That&#8217;s one of the reasonswhy SETI has been <a href="https://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/seti-observations">searching for radio waves</a>.
Colombano explains that, even if <a href="https://futurism.com/powerful-radio-signals-are-coming-from-a-galaxy-three-billion-light-years-away">radio waves</a> continue to pop up in the far future — and we assume that they&#8217;re being transmitted by aliens — they&#8217;d be able to carry loads more information than they can currently hold. Meaning they would be unrecognizable to us — we wouldn&#8217;t be able to distinguish a meaningful message from &#8220;noise.&#8221;  Even so this form of communication might become obsolete in the future. Civilizations might choose other beacons — ones that we can&#8217;t even comprehend yet.
<h2>3. Intelligent civilizations would be based on carbon life.</h2>
This is a big one. For so long, we&#8217;ve known that certain key building blocks allow for life as we know it — but it&#8217;s possible that the universe contains very different forms of life. Our carbon-based ecosystem, Colombano argues, might just be a tiny first step in a continuing evolution that could produce forms of intelligence far superior to ours which are no longer based on carbon.
It feels reasonable to assume that all life originated in situations similar to our own — but the likelihood that every organism follows these same rules is slim. In which case, our opportunities for finding life begin to expand beyond the Goldilock&#8217;s Zone. It&#8217;s hard to imagine what this type of life would look like, or act like, or how it would communicate. The petri dish of its home planet could have concocted something totally alien.
This could then impact all other assumptions on this list. Life that is not carbon based might have access to interstellar travel due to a lack of human limitations — such as a human lifespan or size.
<h2>4. We have not been, and are not being, visited.</h2>
The search for extraterrestrial life, Colombano argues, has largely ignored the potential relevance of UFO phenomena thanks to prevalent hoaxes and general disinterest due to skepticism. Instead of this stance, he believes the scientific community should seek to &#8220;find the signal in the noise.&#8221;
<blockquote>In the very large amount of &#8220;noise&#8221; in UFO reporting there may be &#8220;signals&#8221; however small, that indicate some phenomena that cannot be explained or denied. If we adopt a new set of assumptions about what forms of higher intelligence and technology we might find, some of those phenomena might fit specific hypotheses, and we could start some serious enquiry.</blockquote>
<h2>So what should we be doing differently?</h2>
For a more aggressive approach to future SETI explorations, Comombano proposes a few suggestions.
Physicists should engage in &#8220;speculative physics&#8221; — still grounded in evidence-based theories, but that stretch the limits of space-time and energy. At the same time, they should engage technologists in futuristic exploration of how technology might evolve — especially in relation to AI and ways that humans can combine with machines. They should further engage sociologists in speculation about what sorts of societies might come from these sorts of posited civilizations, and how they might communicate. They should also consider UFO phenomena worthy of study in the context of a system with very low signal to noise ratio, but nevertheless with the possibility of challenging some of our assumptions and pointing to new possibilities for communication and discovery.
And considering all that — that life in the cosmos might not take a familiar form — we&#8217;re faced with new questions. How might this change our assumptions and openness to communicate with other civilizations that aren&#8217;t the Earth-like ones we&#8217;ve been imagining for ages? That&#8217;s the next hurdle.
For now, we&#8217;re still a ways away from confirming that aliens have touched down on our pale blue dot.

Yes, a NASA scientist said aliens may have visited Earth. But there's some nuance

Hard Science

This morning a white paper by NASA researcher Silvano Colombano, titled "New Assumptions to Guide SETI Research," bubbled up on Reddit.

Yes, a NASA Scientist Said Aliens May Have Visited Earth. But There’s Some Nuance

We have to challenge all previous assumptions if we want to find aliens. 

From living in a simulation, to just being really far away, here are our favorite theories as to why we haven’t come in contact with aliens yet.

One tasty metaphor on why our search for aliens has yet to prove fruitful.

A fruity visual metaphor helps explain Fermi's paradox

Off World

A Fruity Visual Metaphor Helps Explain Fermi's Paradox

A Fruity Visual Metaphor Helps Explain Fermi’s Paradox

We have accomplished a lot in our (relatively) short time on Earth. We&#8217;ve sent humans to the Moon and to live in space, developed massive and sophisticated telescopes to see the farthest reaches of the cosmos, and even rocketed rovers to Mars and probes to the edge of our solar system. However, a number of organizations have taken humanity&#8217;s voyage into the final frontier a step farther. NASA, the European Space Agency, and the research collective behind the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have been working tirelessly to find out if we are alone, once and for all.
Already, a number of projects exist that scan the stars for signs of intelligent life. And despite the fact that many of them have been looking to the skies for decades, we have yet to make contact. And that&#8217;s a bit of a problem.
<h2>The Paradox That Started It All</h2>
To put it mildly, our solar system is very old. In fact, scientists are still figuring out just how old — clues gathered from meteorites suggest it is <a href="http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/ita/05_3.shtml">almost 5 billion years old</a>, and surrounding star systems are likely <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/452/2/2127/1064904?redirectedFrom=fulltext">billions of years older</a>. While interstellar travel still <a href="https://futurism.com/here-future-interstellar-spacecraft/">seems to be a distant dream</a>, <a href="http://bigthink.com/think-tank/big-idea-technology-grows-exponentially">new technology is born every year</a> that allows us to scan the skies for signals from civilizations in the most distant corners of the cosmos. The number of known alien worlds and star systems discovered through these technologies <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-reveals-observable-universe-contains-10-times-more-galaxies-than-previously-thought">continues to rise</a>, but our creative methods of listening to space have not yet revealed anything that resembles extraterrestrial communications or civilizations.
Given the size and age of our universe, it seems like we should have made contact. We, of course, have not.
In the early 20th century, physicist Enrico Fermi asked himself a now-famous question: Given the scope of our universe, why haven&#8217;t we found intelligent extraterrestrial life yet (or why haven&#8217;t they found us)? This is sometimes called the <a href="https://futurism.com/10-solutions-to-the-fermi-paradox/">Fermi Paradox</a> or the Great Silence. Scientists have floated many possible answers in the century since Fermi first asked this question. Here are some of the most plausible reasons why he haven&#8217;t made first contact.
<figure id="attachment_110830" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="size-large wp-image-110830" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/11/2898_Landscape_1600x750-1200x675.png" alt="" width="1200" height="675" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image Credit: <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/the-search-for-life/life-signs/">NASA</a></figcaption></figure>
<h2>#GreatFilter</h2>
Basic probability asserts that alien life must exist. Since we haven&#8217;t made contact yet, one theory goes, there must be something barring life from interstellar travel or, at least, barring it from communicating with other alien species. This barrier is known as the &#8220;Great Filter,&#8221; and it is a force or event that stops a civilization from getting to the aforementioned point of interstellar travel or communication.
If the theory holds true, there are two primary reasons that we haven&#8217;t made contact: Because societies kill themselves off before they reach a state advanced enough to explore the stars or interstellar travel is simply not possible on a technological scale. Neither option is particularly pleasing.
And according to the experts behind the work, the filter event is of equal or greater probability than the existence of alien life itself. This is the point argued by Robin Hanson, a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, <a href="http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html">in his discussion of the topic</a>.
<blockquote>No alien civilizations have substantially colonized our solar system or systems nearby. Thus among the billion trillion stars in our past universe, none has reached the level of technology and growth that we may soon reach. This one data point implies that a Great Filter stands between ordinary dead matter and advanced exploding lasting life.</blockquote>
Since we have not been able to detect alien life (or leave the solar system much, for that matter), how far are we from being caught up in some event that would bar us from ever finding aliens? &#8220;The easier it was for life to evolve to our stage, the bleaker our future chances probably are,&#8221; Hanson writes. In other words, the more life there is in the cosmos, the greater the likeliness that we are about to reach a cataclysmic, life-ending event or reach the cosmic limits of technological advancement.
<h2>Do Not Disturb the Aliens</h2>
Another hypothesis asserts that alien civilizations certainly exist, but they&#8217;re simply inactive. That&#8217;s the &#8220;aestivation hypothesis&#8221; (aestivation refers to an organism&#8217;s state of prolonged inactivity, similar to a bear hibernating or a frog that buries itself in sand during hot weather), which was put forth by researchers from Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade.
The theory, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.03394">published in a paper in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society</a> in 2017, states that aliens may be &#8220;hibernating&#8221; until the environmental conditions are just right to become active and build their super society. The researchers argue that the laws of thermodynamics directly limit computation, as computing technologies need to be cooled in order to function. This makes it exceedingly difficult to create advanced technologies, as keeping them cool at scale quickly becomes prohibitively difficult. So the aliens are falling into a dormant until, to be blunt, the universe cools.
But distilling the development of a civilization to the kinds of conditions that our current, and somewhat imperfect, models can predict could be reductive. What if intelligent extraterrestrial life has found a way around the thermodynamic conditions that limit its ability to compute? &#8220;What if there are other forms of value that can be generated?&#8221; the study authors write. If they&#8217;re wrong about the relationship between thermodynamics and technology, the aestivation hypothesis would be moot. In this case, perhaps one of the other ideas here holds true.
<h2>A &#8220;Gaian&#8221;-tic Bottleneck</h2>
<figure id="attachment_110829" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="size-large wp-image-110829" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/11/drought-1675729_1920-1200x801.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="801" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image Credit: <a href="https://pixabay.com/en/drought-dehydrated-clay-floor-earth-1675729/">Creative Commons</a></figcaption></figure>
According to the &#8220;Gaian Bottleneck&#8221; hypothesis, life needs particular environmental conditions to develop, and they&#8217;re not so common. Astrobiologists at the Australian National University <a href="http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~aditya/pubs/ChopraLineweaver2016.pdf">penned their explanation</a> to the Fermi Paradox in 2016.
Extinction is &#8220;the cosmic default for most life that has ever emerged on the surfaces of wet rocky planets in the Universe,&#8221; the researchers wrote. That&#8217;s because a planet has to be actually inhabited for it to be habitable, because organisms change the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A Catch-22 emerges: no life without habitability, no habitability without life.
For alien life to persist, the researchers write, it must hang on: &#8220;like trying to ride a wild bull. Most life falls off.&#8221; Life can only take place with the presence of an unlikely feedback loop. In this case, Earth is the exception to the rule.
<h2>Trapped in Deep Oceans</h2>
In 2015, after nearly a decade in transit, NASA&#8217;s New Horizons spacecraft became the first to do a close flyby of Pluto. It offered humanity its <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-top-10-pluto-pics">first look at its icy surface</a> and raised questions about the possibility of subsurface oceans of water, and lots of methane and nitrogen. These questions put Pluto on a short but growing list of worlds with buried oceans trapped under a thick crust of ice and rock (some of the other worlds are Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, as well as Jupiter’s moons Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede).
Those oceans figure prominently into another theory of where life might be lurking, one that Alan Stern, the principal investigator for New Horizons, touches on. Since buried oceans form a much more stable ecosystem than flowing surface streams, changes such as altering tides and dissipation take place over a longer time period. A hard outer shell protects hypothetical life in the oceans from a <a href="https://www.space.com/18563-pluto-temperature.html">harsh climate</a> and a lethal mix of gases on the surface. &#8220;Impacts and solar flares, and nearby supernovae, and what orbit you&#8217;re in, and whether you have a magnetosphere, and whether there&#8217;s a poisonous atmosphere — none of those things matter,&#8221; <a href="https://www.space.com/38577-fermi-paradox-alien-life-buried-oceans.html">Stern told Space.com</a>.
Any intelligent alien life that forms in these deep oceans would have to overcome a big hurdle to reach inhabitants of other worlds: drilling through that thick, protective crust. All that work would only get them to the surface — sending signals to other planets become even more unlikely.
<h2>Missed Signals</h2>
<figure id="attachment_110037" style="width: 1200px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="size-large wp-image-110037" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/11/allen-telescope-array-ata-seti-institute-1200x798.jpeg" alt="" width="1200" height="798" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The Allen Telescope Array, Image Credit: <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/mmg_disp.jsp?med_id=72307">National Science Foundation</a></figcaption></figure>
For the past eighty years or so, we&#8217;ve been listening for signs of extraterrestrial life with  radio technology. The <a href="https://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/ata-how-it-works">Allen Telescope Array</a>, situated 470 km (290 miles) northeast of San Francisco, is one of the biggest — since 2007, 42 dishes have stood at the ready to scan the skies regularly in the hope of receiving radio signals from extraterrestrial life.
But what if extraterrestrial life doesn&#8217;t operate on those frequencies? Attempts at contact could simply be passing us by simply because we don&#8217;t comprehend the right wavelengths.
Instead of using telescope arrays and scanning the skies for radio signals, Duncan Forgan at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland suggests creating a <a href="https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/on-the-feasibility-of-exomoon-detection-via-exoplanet-phase-curve-spectral-contrast(75b700c1-49c4-447a-84c4-361645d6908a).html">galactic communications network</a>. The same way we blink our high beams to send a signal to other drivers, we could use the shadow that Earth creates when it passes in front of the Sun to send a message to our fellow inhabitants of the universe. Forgan suggests that we build powerful lasers that contain those encoded messages, which are sent out as we pass in front of the Sun.
“If you want to communicate with someone on the other side of the galactic centre, there’s lots of stuff in the way – dust, stars, a big black hole – so you can take the long way around using the network,” <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2141255-we-could-build-a-galactic-internet-but-it-may-take-300000-years/">Forgan tells New Scientist</a>. Rather than letting intergalactic messages get lost in the vastness of space, civilizations in different galaxies could agree to use this &#8220;galactic communications network&#8221; to ensure their messages get to their intended recipients – a unified system to cut through the chatter.
<h2>We are Being Impatient</h2>
We&#8217;ve only been actively reaching out for alien life for about a century — a mere blip in the long history of the solar system and of the universe overall. Evan Solomonides, an astrophysics and mathematics undergrad and researcher at Cornell University, suggests that it could take a while — <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-figured-out-we-ll-need-to-wait-1-500-years-before-alien-contact-becomes-likely">about 1,500 years</a> from now, to be precise — before we hear from any extraterrestrials.
In a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07687">paper submitted to the American Astronomical Society</a>, Solomonides examines the probability of finding life. &#8220;We predict that under 1 percent of the galaxy has been reached at all thus far, and we do not anticipate to be reached until approximately half of the stars/planets have been reached.&#8221; Solomonides believes that we will have <a href="http://mediarelations.cornell.edu/2016/06/14/possibility-of-alien-contact-could-be-1500-years-away/">explore around half of the Milky Way</a> galaxy before we hear anything, which will take a while since we&#8217;ve barely explored our own galactic neighborhood.
Solomonides is careful to note that the 1,500 years is not a deadline. “This is not to say that we must be reached by then or else we are, in fact, alone. We simply claim that it is somewhat unlikely that we will not hear anything before that time.&#8221;
Editor&#8217;s Note: This article was updated to correct the names of Saturn and Jupiter&#8217;s moons.

There are lots of possible answers to Fermi's Paradox.

Where is alien life? Six of the top theories

Sci-Fi Visions

Discover Futurism's six alien theories on why researchers have not been able to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Six Theories About Alien Existence and Research | Futurism

Aliens might be out there. Or, perhaps, they might not.

Where Is Alien Life? Six Of The Top Theories

<h2>Alien Life Beneath the Surface</h2>
The search for intelligent life on planets aside from our own has been long. In the decades since the search began, several theories have been proposed to explain our lack of answers, with one of the most well-known being <a href="https://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/fermi-paradox" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Fermi Paradox</a>. Named after Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, it questions why humanity has yet to find or meet alien life when the odds suggest that our universe should contain other species capable of interstellar travel.
Many have come forward with answers to this question, with some suggesting <a href="https://futurism.com/may-looking-alien-megastructures-wrong-places/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">we&#8217;re looking in the wrong places</a>. Others believe <a href="https://futurism.com/oxford-scientists-suggest-that-aliens-arent-extinct-just-hibernating/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">aliens are simply hibernating</a>; the more existentially troubling idea is that <a href="https://futurism.com/a-new-theory-suggests-we-may-be-the-only-technologically-advanced-civilization-still-around/?src=featured" target="_blank" rel="noopener">we&#8217;re the only technologically advanced civilization left</a>.
Alan Stern, planetary scientist and principal investigator of <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/overview/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA&#8217;s New Horizons mission</a>, has another theory to add to all this, which he shared at the recent 49th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society&#8217;s Division for Planetary Sciences.
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/why-havent-we-found-aliens-an-analysis-of-the-problem-infographic/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/12/Why-Havent-We-Found-Aliens-_v1_home-900x600.jpg" alt="Why Haven&#8217;t We Found Aliens? An Analysis of the Problem [INFOGRAPHIC]" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/why-havent-we-found-aliens-an-analysis-of-the-problem-infographic/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
As <a href="https://www.space.com/38577-fermi-paradox-alien-life-buried-oceans.html?utm_content=buffer5ad95&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=facebook" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Space.com</a> reports, Stern floated the idea that perhaps intelligent life does exist in other parts of the galaxy, but they live in dark oceans found deep beneath the surfaces of whatever planet they live on. Such oceans should exist in our galaxy, as they do in our own solar system — look no further than oceans <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pluto-s-icy-heart-may-hide-an-ocean/">deep below the surface of Pluto</a>, on <a href="https://futurism.com/saturns-moon-enceladus-may-be-our-best-shot-at-finding-extraterrestrial-life/">Jupiter&#8217;s moons Enceladus</a> and <a href="https://futurism.com/nasa-is-sending-a-lander-to-discover-whether-life-exists-on-europa/">Europa</a>, or <a href="https://futurism.com/magic-islands-appear-on-saturns-moon-titan/">Saturn&#8217;s moon Titan</a> for evidence of that. Buried oceans would also give life more time to evolve, as it would protect them from things that typically only affect the surface.
&#8220;Impacts and solar flares, and nearby supernovae, and what orbit you&#8217;re in, and whether you have a magnetosphere, and whether there&#8217;s a poisonous atmosphere — none of those things matter,&#8221; Stern explained to Space.com.
<h2>Knowledge of the Outside World</h2>
Continuing to build on his theory, Stern proposed that alien life living in buried oceans may also be unaware of the existence of a surface world. If they knew nothing of that, then they&#8217;d certainly know much less about the larger galaxy. Unfortunately, even if they were trying to communicate, it&#8217;d be unlikely we&#8217;d be able to see it on any spectrum. Very-low-frequency radio may work, but even then chances would be incredibly slim.
There&#8217;s also the matter of living in an ocean environment. In order to travel across the stars, their life support systems would require a significant amount of water. Large amounts of water can become incredibly heavy; more fuel would be required to provide the thrust needed to make it out of their home&#8217;s orbit.
<iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sCv9sucsKkc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
That said, Stern&#8217;s theory is just that: a theory. He also never meant for it to be seen as a definitive answer. &#8220;There is probably no one answer,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What this does is, it adds another element to the conversation.&#8221;
Humanity will <a href="https://futurism.com/why-looking-for-aliens-is-good-for-society-even-if-there-arent-any/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">continue to search for intelligent alien life</a>, as it would easily become the biggest discovery in our history. We can&#8217;t predict <a href="https://futurism.com/expert-well-find-alien-life-in-the-next-10-15-years-but-it-wont-be-intelligent/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">when we&#8217;ll make contact</a>, but we <a href="https://futurism.com/are-we-ready-for-aliens/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">have plans in place</a> when the time comes.

They're too busy swimming to explore space.

Alien life could exist in buried oceans throughout the galaxy

converted PNM file

Many have come forward to provide potential answers to the Fermi Paradox. Alan Stern has one: what if alien life exists in oceans deep beneath the surface?

Alien Life Could Exist in Buried Oceans Throughout the Galaxy

Oceans provide a safe place for life to evolve.

<h2>The Sound of Silence</h2>
For retired astrophysicist Daniel Whitmire, currently a mathematics professor at the <a href="http://www.uark.edu/" target="_blank">University of Arkansas (UARK)</a>, humanity is typical. Not exactly in the sense that we&#8217;re ordinary; we&#8217;re typical in a statistical sense, following a concept in modern cosmology called the principle of mediocrity. This principle suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should consider humanity to be a typical member of a certain reference class.
This was Whitmire&#8217;s conclusion, in a study published in the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/implication-of-our-technological-species-being-first-and-early/EB38BDC09C0908578184835C8B072390" target="_blank">International Journal of Astrobiology</a>, when he revisited his thoughts on the <a href="https://futurism.com/videos/the-fermi-paradox-where-are-all-the-aliens/" target="_blank">Fermi Paradox </a>— that we haven&#8217;t encountered alien life, despite the high probability of it existing — and again asked if there&#8217;s alien life out there. With all the billions of stars in billions of galaxies, chances are there&#8217;s bound to be other intelligent life in the cosmos. So, where are they?
“I used to tell my students that by statistics, we have to be the dumbest guys in the galaxy,&#8221; Whitmire said in a UARK press release. &#8220;After all, we have only been technological for about 100 years, while other civilizations could be more technologically advanced than us by millions or billions of years.”
But Whitmire changed his mind on this concept based on two observations: Firstly, that humanity was the first technologically advanced civilization that evolved on Earth, and we&#8217;re currently in our early technological development. (&#8220;Technological,&#8221; here, is to be understood as biological species that developed electronic devices and are capable of significantly changing the planet.)
On the surface, this may seem like an obvious observation. However, based on the Earth&#8217;s habitable time span  — from around 5 billion years ago, and for an estimated billion years in the future  — it would have been possible for other technological civilizations to precede us on this planet. The thing is, there&#8217;s no geologic record that shows someone else came before us. “We’d leave a heck of a fingerprint if we disappeared overnight,” Whitmire said.
<h2>Anybody Out There?</h2>
But what about life outside of the Earth? Following the same principle of mediocrity, technological civilizations that lasts millions of years or longer are atypical, Whitmire says. If one considers a bell curve of all supposedly extant technological civilizations in the universe, humanity would fall in the middle 95 percent.
If that is the case, the lack of communication from similar civilizations around us does not bode well. Whitmire explains the silence of the cosmos as a product of how typical technological civilizations work: They usually go extinct after attaining technological knowledge. This is the same explanation <a href="https://futurism.com/new-research-suggests-aliens-have-not-communicated-with-us-because-theyre-dead-2/" target="_blank">held by other scientists</a>, and one even suggests that <a href="https://futurism.com/astronomer-instead-of-alien-life-should-we-be-searching-for-signs-of-alien-tech/" target="_blank">we should look for traces of alien technology</a> instead of alien life.
The &#8220;Great Filter&#8221; hypothesis is another possible explanation. It suggests that before any life in the universe becomes technological or before technological life goes beyond the bounds of its own planet, it had to overcome some extremely difficult evolutionary threshold. Some even think that <a href="https://futurism.com/the-reason-weve-never-found-intelligent-life-might-be-because-we-are-already-going-extinct/" target="_blank">climate change is humanity&#8217;s great filter</a>.
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<a href="https://futurism.com/videos/bill-nyes-answer-to-the-fermi-paradox/" target="_blank">For resident &#8220;Science Guy&#8221; Bill Nye</a>, the Fermi Paradox should push humanity to explore further. The reason why we haven&#8217;t found intelligent extraterrestrial life or even simple alien life is because we haven&#8217;t been looking hard enough. There&#8217;s still a big chance that they&#8217;re somewhere out there.
Yet these theories assume that we&#8217;re not a typical representative of life in the cosmos. “If we’re not typical then my initial observation would be correct,” Whitmire said. “We would be the dumbest guys in the galaxy by the numbers.”

What if we haven't found aliens yet because they're all just like us?

Within the swaddling dust of the Serpens Cloud Core, astronomers are studying one of the youngest collections of stars ever seen in our galaxy. This infrared image uses data from the “warm” phase of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, letting us peer in

Our civilization's relatively short technological lifespan may be shared throughout the universe — which doesn't bode well for finding advanced aliens.

A New Theory Suggests We May be the Only Technologically Advanced Civilization Still Around

Most civilizations may exist briefly, and end badly.

<h2>The Fermi Paradox</h2>
The universe is incomprehensibly vast, with billions of other planets circling billions of other stars. The potential for intelligent life to exist somewhere out there should be enormous.
<figure id="attachment_95776" style="width: 640px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-95776" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/08/34598250650_c9c9077bc6_z.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="460" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image Source: Merrillie Redden/ Flickr Commons</figcaption></figure>
So, where is everybody?
That&#8217;s the Fermi paradox in a nutshell. Daniel Whitmire, a retired astrophysicist who teaches mathematics at the University of Arkansas, once thought the cosmic silence indicated we as a <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/species/" rel="tag">species</a> lagged far behind.
&#8220;I taught astronomy for 37 years,&#8221; said Whitmire. &#8220;I used to tell my students that by statistics, we have to be the dumbest guys in the galaxy. After all we have only been technological for about 100 years while other civilizations could be more technologically advanced than us by millions or billions of years.&#8221;
<h2>Principle of Mediocrity</h2>
Recently, however, he&#8217;s changed his mind. By applying a statistical concept called the principle of mediocrity – the idea that in the absence of any evidence to the contrary we should consider ourselves typical, rather than atypical – Whitmire has concluded that instead of lagging behind, our species may be average. That&#8217;s not good news.
In a paper published Aug. 3 in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Whitmire argues that if we are typical, it follows that species such as ours go extinct soon after attaining technological knowledge. (The paper is also available on <a href="http://realdanielwhitmire.wixsite.com/home/copy-of-astrobiology-1">Whitmire&#8217;s website</a>.)
The argument is based on two observations: We are the first technological species to evolve on Earth, and we are early in our technological development. (He defines &#8220;technological&#8221; as a biological species that has developed electronic devices and can significantly alter the planet.)
The first observation seems obvious, but as Whitmire notes in his paper, researchers believe the Earth should be habitable for animal life at least a billion years into the future. Based on how long it took proto-primates to evolve into a technological species, that leaves enough time for it to happen again up to 23 times. On that time scale, there could have been others before us, but there&#8217;s nothing in the geologic record to indicate we weren&#8217;t the first. &#8220;We&#8217;d leave a heck of a fingerprint if we disappeared overnight,&#8221; Whitmire noted.
By Whitmire&#8217;s definition we became &#8220;technological&#8221; after the industrial revolution and the invention of radio, or roughly 100 years ago. According to the principle of mediocrity, a bell curve of the ages of all extant technological civilizations in the universe would put us in the middle 95 percent. In other words, technological civilizations that last millions of years, or longer, would be highly atypical. Since we are first, other typical technological civilizations should also be first. The principle of mediocrity allows no second acts. The implication is that once species become technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them.
Whitmire argues that the principle holds for two standard deviations, or in this case about 200 years. But because the distribution of ages on a bell curve skews older (there is no absolute upper limit, but the age can&#8217;t be less than zero), he doubles that figure and comes up with 500 years, give or take. The assumption of a bell-shaped curve is not absolutely necessary. Other assumptions give roughly similar results.
There&#8217;s always the possibility that we are atypical and our species&#8217; lifespan will fall somewhere in the outlying 5 percent of the bell curve. If that&#8217;s the case, we&#8217;re back to the nugget of wisdom Whitmire taught his astronomy students for more than three decades.
&#8220;If we&#8217;re not typical then my initial observation would be correct,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We would be the dumbest guys in the galaxy by the numbers.&#8221;
This article was provided by <a href="http://www.uark.edu/">University of Arkansas</a>. Materials may have been edited for clarity and brevity.

The potential for intelligent life to exist somewhere out there should be enormous.

Astrophysicist argues that if we are indeed typical, it follows that species such as ours could go extinct soon after attaining technological knowledge.

The Implications of Cosmic Silence

Could cosmic silence imply that we as a species lag way behind other potential life forms?

<h2>The Fermi Paradox</h2>
The Milky Way Galaxy alone is home to between 100 billion and 400 billion stars, and each is potentially orbited by planets. There are probably at least 2 trillion galaxies like ours in the observable universe, each one populated by trillions of planets orbiting hundreds of billions of stars. Even if planets capable of sustaining life are exceedingly rare, on the numbers alone there should be intelligent life somewhere in the universe. For example, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-great-filter-fermi-paradox-aliens-2017-7?utm_content=bufferf279c&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer-bi" target="_blank">according to </a><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-great-filter-fermi-paradox-aliens-2017-7?utm_content=bufferf279c&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer-bi" target="_blank">Business Insider</a>, if a mere 0.1 percent of planets in our galaxy that might be habitable harbored life, that would mean there were about a million planets with life on them.
These numbers prompted Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi to ask in regard to alien life forms: “Where are they?” This question has come to be known as the Fermi paradox, and most possible answers to it would be concerning for humans.
Of particular concern is the “Great Filter” hypothesis, which posits that before intelligent life has the opportunity to escape the bounds of its original planet, it hits some sort of wall — the Great Filter. There are certain transitional moments from an evolutionary perspective that any planet like ours would have to master before communicating with other worlds. Some happen in the <a href="https://futurism.com/new-research-suggests-aliens-have-not-communicated-with-us-because-theyre-dead-2/" target="_blank">early stages of life</a>, and in our case, we may be running up against that filter at this point in our evolution.
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/if-our-universe-is-so-old-and-vast-then-where-are-all-the-aliens/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/10/fermi_home.png" alt="If Our Universe Is So Old and Vast, Then Where Are All the Aliens?" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/if-our-universe-is-so-old-and-vast-then-where-are-all-the-aliens/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
<h2>Climate Change: Our Great Filter?</h2>
Climate change, if it is allowed to continue, will eventually devastate much of life on Earth as we know it. It was the <a href="https://futurism.com/past-climate-change-doesnt-make-todays-activity-any-less-troubling/" target="_blank">remarkably stable climate</a> of the past 12,000 years or so that has allowed human civilization to flourish, benefitting from agriculture and eventually industrialization (although ironically that may also be our undoing).
Recent <a href="http://www.cell.com/action/showImagesData?pii=S0169-5347%2815%2900326-2">research points to several characteristics </a>of species more likely to survive the rigors of a planet ravaged by climate change: two of the most vital being an indiscriminate palate and a rapid reproductive cycle. Therefore, humans are basically the opposite of the types of creatures considered to be prime survivors.
In other words, although things wouldn&#8217;t unfold in the same ways on different planets, it&#8217;s possible that there are so many hurdles for life to clear that other civilizations haven&#8217;t made it. David Wallace-Wells <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html" target="_blank">wrote in </a><a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html" target="_blank">New York Magazine</a>: “In a universe that is many billions of years old, with star systems separated as much by time as by space, civilizations might emerge and develop and burn themselves up simply too fast to ever find one another. . . . The mass extinction we are now living through has only just begun; so much more dying is coming.” 
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<h2>Other Possibilities</h2>
Other thinkers have different answers to the Fermi paradox, which are even more depressing (or less — depending on your perspective). Oxford neuroscientist Anders Sandberg, Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade member Milan Ćirković, and artificial intelligence (AI) expert Stuart Armstrong have suggested that aliens aren&#8217;t extinct, but <a href="https://futurism.com/oxford-scientists-suggest-that-aliens-arent-extinct-just-hibernating/" target="_blank">are in hibernation</a>, waiting for the universe to cool. Professor Zaza Osmanov of the Free University of Tbilisi believes that our search for signs of alien megastructures has yet to be rewarded because we are looking around stars when we should be<a href="https://futurism.com/may-looking-alien-megastructures-wrong-places/" target="_blank"> looking around pulsars</a>.
And <a href="https://futurism.com/we-wont-be-hearing-from-aliens-soon-physicist-brian-cox-claims/">physicist </a><a href="https://futurism.com/we-wont-be-hearing-from-aliens-soon-physicist-brian-cox-claims/">Brian Cox suggests</a> yet another possibility; a cautionary tale for our own civilization as well as any others: “It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster,” says Cox. If intelligent life unwittingly renders itself extinct as soon as it advances sufficiently, the physicist believes, “we could be approaching that position.”

Perhaps we haven't encountered aliens because climate change is our "Great Filter" — not to mention our extinction event.

The Reason We’ve Never Found Intelligent Life Might be Because We Are Already Going Extinct

Climate change might be humanity’s "Great Filter."

<h2>Missing, or Sleeping?</h2>
<a href="https://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/fermi-paradox">During a lunchtime conversation in 1950</a>, Enrico Fermi, the &#8220;architect of the nuclear age&#8221; who built the world&#8217;s first nuclear reactor, posed a question that has resulted in decades of research and hundreds of published papers: &#8220;Where is everybody?&#8221;
This is the crystallization of the paradox he perceived (now known as the Fermi Paradox) which questions, &#8220;If the universe is  large enough to have more than sufficient opportunity to create more life than what we see on earth, why haven&#8217;t we met that alien life yet?&#8221; Scientists, like <a href="http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/people/49">Anders Sandberg</a>, an Oxford neuroscientist, and <a href="https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/bio/cirkovic">Milan Ćirković</a>, part of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, have used this as a jumping-off point in their attempts to debunk — or defend — the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations.
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Sandberg and Ćirković teamed up with <a href="https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/team/stuart-armstrong/">Stuart Armstrong</a>, an AI expert at the Future of Humanity institute, to author <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.03394.pdf"> a new paper</a> arguing that alien life is hibernating. Their &#8220;aestivation hypothesis&#8221; rests on two premises: advanced societies <a href="//futurism.com/seti-scientist-aliens-are-likely-robotic-life-forms/)">have transitioned to machine-based life</a>, and machines compute faster in cooler conditions. Therefore, they argue, aliens are hibernating until the universe cools so they can develop at a faster rate.
Sandberg and Ćirković <a href="http://aleph.se/andart2/space/the-aestivation-hypothesis-popular-outline-and-faq/">explain on their blog that</a> &#8220;as the Universe expands, this background temperature will decline exponentially&#8221; and &#8220;in principle, running processing becomes 10 times more efficient if your computer is 10 times colder (measured in Kelvins).&#8221; Because of this aliens are hibernating and waiting for the universe to cool.
They came up with the possible solution while discussing how to maximize the lifespan of a civilization. The theory developed as part of &#8220;eschatology considerations of what the best possible outcome for a civilization would be, not directly an urge to solve the Fermi question. However, it does seem to provide one new possible answer to the question.&#8221;
<h2>Other Possible Solutions</h2>
Solutions to the Fermi Paradox fall into three categories:
<figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/if-our-universe-is-so-old-and-vast-then-where-are-all-the-aliens/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2015/10/fermi_home.png" alt="If Our Universe Is So Old and Vast, Then Where Are All the Aliens?" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/if-our-universe-is-so-old-and-vast-then-where-are-all-the-aliens/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
First, that we are alone and there is no alien life. This could either be because aliens never developed or because they have now died off.<a href="http://rses.anu.edu.au/people/aditya-chopra"> Aditya Chopra</a>, from the Australian National University, provided a causal explanation for extinction <a href="futurism.com/new-research-suggests-aliens-have-not-communicated-with-us-because-theyre-dead-2/“">called the &#8220;The Gaian Bottleneck.&#8221;</a> He believes that while other life has developed, it was too fragile, and humanity is the only species that has proven persistent enough to survive through The Great Filter (the challenges life faces as it develops, <a href="http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html">codified by Robin Hanson</a>).
Second, that aliens exist but not here, due to limitations in our methods of communication, our technology, or our comprehension. Michio Kaku details this answer in<a href="http://dailygrail.com/features/michio-kaku-impossible-science"> an interview with The Daily Grail </a>using the analogy of an ant and a highway:
<blockquote>Let’s say we have an anthill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the anthill, they’re building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is “Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is?</blockquote>
Third, that there are aliens here, but they are not interacting in an obvious manner. Rather than blaming us primitive humans, this solution suggests the extraterrestrials themselves are being ambiguous. This category holds the hibernation hypothesis and could also be the explanation behind the <a href="https://futurism.com/no-signs-of-aliens-yet-but-this-mysterious-star-continues-to-baffle-astronomers/">baffling light fluctuations</a> of the star KIC 8462852, which some have argued could be due to alien interference.
Whatever the explanation — if there even is one — it is a fascinating question to try to answer. But perhaps the next question, and one also worth thinking about, is <a href="https://futurism.com/are-we-ready-for-aliens/">&#8220;what happens when we do meet aliens?&#8221;</a>

Space station interior, illustration

The latest solution to Fermi's Paradox argues that aliens could be hibernating in order to maximize their computational capabilities.

Oxford Scientists Suggest That Aliens Aren’t Extinct, Just Hibernating

Extraterrestrials may be biding their time, waiting for a more ideal universe.

During the 1960s, Freeman Dyson and Nikolai Kardashev captured the imaginations of people everywhere by making some radical proposals. Whereas Dyson proposed that intelligent species could eventually create megastructures to harness the energy of their stars, Kardashev offered a three-tiered classification system for intelligent species based on their ability to harness the energy of their planet, solar system, and galaxy, respectively.
With missions that are now capable of locating extra-solar planets (i.e. the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html">Kepler Space Observatory</a>) scientists have been on the lookout for signs of possible <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/127130/what-are-alien-megastructures/">alien megastructures</a>. Unfortunately, aside from some very <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/122865/whats-orbiting-kic-8462852-shattered-comet-or-alien-megastructure/">arguable results</a>, no concrete evidence has yet come to light. Lucky for us, in a study from the Free University of Tbilisi, Professor Zaza Osmanov offers some new insight on why megastructures may have eluded us so far.
While fascinating, the idea of alien megastructures invariably suffers from the same problem as all other attempts to find signs of intelligent life in our Universe. Basically, if intelligent life exists, why have we consistently failed to find any evidence of it? This conundrum, which was summed up by Enrico Fermi in the 1950s (thereafter known as the <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/103061/where-are-all-the-aliens/">Fermi Paradox</a>), has hung like a shadow over all our efforts.
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/05/syn1-3-600x338.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="338" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Artist’s impression of an orbiting swarm of dusty comet fragments around Tabby’s Star. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech</figcaption></figure>
For example, in the summer of 2015, a team of astronomers announced that they found what might be an indication of an alien megastructure around <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/122865/whats-orbiting-kic-8462852-shattered-comet-or-alien-megastructure/">Tabby’s Star</a> (KIC 8462852). However, they were quick to point out that any number of possibilities could explain the strange dimming pattern coming from the star, and subsequent studies offered even more plausible explanations — such as the <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/132801/finally-explanation-alien-megastructure/">star having consumed a planet</a> at some point in its past.
To this, Osmanov has argued that the problem is that we are looking in the wrong places. Last year, he wrote a <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.05131.pdf">research paper</a> in which he ventured that an alien super civilization — i.e. one that was consistent with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale">Level II Kardashev civilization</a> — would likely use ring-like megastructures to harness the power of their stars. This is in contrast to the traditional concept of a “Dyson’s Sphere,” which would consist of a spherical shell.
Furthermore, he argued that these Dyson Rings would likely be built around pulsars rather than stars, and offered estimates on their dimensions which were dependent on the rotational speed of the pulsar. According to Osmanov’s latest study, titled “<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.04142.pdf">Are the Dyson rings around pulsars detectable?</a>&#8220;, Osmanov extends the problem of spotting alien megastructures to the observational realm.
Specifically, he addressed how alien megastructures could be spotted by identifying their infrared energy signatures, and at what kinds of distances. By examining how such structures would vary in terms of the amount of IR radiation they would emit, he believes that they could be spotted within our local Universe using existing instruments.
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/05/syn2-2-600x375.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="375" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Artist’s impression of the exotic double object that consists of a tiny neutron star orbited every two and a half hours by a white dwarf star. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada</figcaption></figure>
Once again, it comes down to the diameter of the structures, which would in turn depend on the type of pulsar they orbit. As he states in the paper:
<blockquote>
<div>A couple of years earlier before publishing the paper of Kardashev, the prominent physicist Freeman Dyson has suggested that if such superadvanced (in the terminology of Kardashev, Level-II) extraterrestrials exist, for increasing efficiency of energy consumption they can construct a thin spherical shell with radius ?1AU surrounding a host star (Dyson 1960). It has been argued that for such distances the sphere will be in the so-called habitable zone (HZ) and therefore the sphere will have the temperature of the order of (200 – 300 K), making this object visible in the infrared spectrum.</div>
</blockquote>
Extending this to pulsars, Osmanov estimates that the habitable zone around a relatively slowly-rotating pulsar (with a period of about half a second) would be on the order of 0.1 AU. According to his calculations, a ring-like megastructure that orbited a pulsar at this distance would emit temperatures on the order of 390 K (116.85 °C; 242.33 °F), which means that the megastructure would be visible in the IR band.
From this, Osmanov concludes that modern IR telescopes — such as the <a href="https://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/paranal/telescopes/vlti.html">Very Large Telescope Interferometer</a> (VLTI) and the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html">Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer</a> (WISE) — would have the necessary capacity to monitor nearby pulsars for signs of alien megastructures. He further concludes that for this purpose, these telescopes would have an effective range of up to 200 parsecs (~652 light years).
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/05/syn3-600x382.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="382" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Ever since it was first announced in 2015, there has been speculation as to what could account for the dimming of KIC 8462852. Image Credit: Eburacum45/SentientDevelopments.com</figcaption></figure>
In addition, he goes on to state that within this volume of space, multiple candidates could be found and examined using these same existing instruments:
<blockquote>We have considered the sensitivity of VLTI and by taking into account its higher possible angular resolution, 0.001 mas, it has been shown that the maximum distance ~0.2 kpc leads to the IR spectral density of the order of 7.4 mJy, which in turn, can be detected by the VLTI. We have argued that by monitoring the nearby zone of the Solar System approximately 64 pulsars are expected to be located inside it.</blockquote>
Beyond these distances, up to the kiloparsec range (about 3260 light years), the angular resolution of these telescopes would not be enough to detect the structure of any rings. As such, finding megastructures at this distance would require telescopes that can conduct surveys in the UV band — which corresponds to the surface temperatures of neutron stars (7000 K). However, this would have to wait upon the development of more sensitive instruments.
“As we see, the search of infrared rings is quite promising for distances up to -0.2 kpc, where one will be able to monitor potentially 64 ± 21 pulsars by using the IR instruments,” he concluded. “Observation of distant pulsars (up to -1kpc), although will significantly increase the total number of potential objects – to 1600 ± 530, but at this moment the UV instruments cannot provide such a level of sensitivity.”
<figure style="width: 445px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/05/syn4-600x586.png" alt="" width="445" height="435" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">There are Dyson rings and spheres and this, an illustration of a Dyson swarm. Could this or a variation of it be what we’re detecting around KIC? Not likely, but a fun thought experiment. Image Credit: Falcorian/Wikipedia Commons</figcaption></figure>
So while the range would be limited, the opportunities for testing this hypothesis would not. All told, between 43 and 85 candidates exist within the observable volume of space, according to Osmanov’s estimates. And with existing IR telescopes — and next-generation telescopes like the <a href="https://jwst.nasa.gov/">James Webb Space Telescopes</a> — up to the task, some surveys could be conducted that would yield valuable information either way.
The concept of alien megastructures remains a controversial one, and for good reason. For one, the potential evidence for such structures – i.e. the periodic dimming of a star – can easily be explained by other means. Second, there is an undeniable degree of wishful thinking when it comes to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, which means that any findings could be subject to bias.
Nevertheless, the search for intelligent life remains a very fascinating field of study, and a necessary one at that. Not only would finding other examples of life in our Universe put to rest one of the most burning existential questions of all time — are we alone? — it would also allow us to learn a great deal about what other forms life could take. Is all life carbon based, are there other possibilities, etc? We would like to know!
In the end, the Fermi Paradox will only be resolved when we find definitive evidence that there is intelligent life out there other than our own. In the meantime, we can expect that we will keep searching until we find something. And anything that make this easier by telling us where we should (and what specifically to look for) is sure to help.

Due to advances in technology, scientists have been keeping an eye out for signs of alien megastructures.

We May Be Looking for Alien Megastructures in the Wrong Places

Focusing on these 85 candidates could improve our chances of finding life beyond Earth.

<h2>Far too advanced</h2>
English physicist Brian Cox believes we won&#8217;t be contacting intelligent extraterrestrials — nor will we hear from them — anytime soon (or perhaps not ever). Cox, the popular presenter of several science programs, is an Advanced Fellow of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester.
“It may be that the growth of science and engineering inevitably outstrips the development of political expertise, leading to disaster,&#8221; says Cox. He believes that intelligent extraterrestrial life may have unwittingly rendered themselves extinct. Intelligent life destroys itself as soon as it becomes advanced, the physicist believes, &#8220;we could be approaching that position.”
<figure style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img style="width: 100%" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/10/brian-cox.png" alt="Credits: BBC" width="800" height="450" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Credits: BBC</figcaption></figure>
The comment comes as no surprise, especially since Cox believes that politicians should start thinking more like scientists, using evidence as much as ideology to shape their views.
<h2>The Fermi Paradox</h2>
The vastness of space and the possibilities it holds are the very heart of the <a href="https://futurism.com/new-research-suggests-aliens-have-not-communicated-with-us-because-theyre-dead-2/" target="_blank">Fermi paradox</a> — a 1950s theory named after physicist Enrico Fermi who famously pointed out how, despite the strong potential for extraterrestrial life, there is an equally strong lack of evidence showing that it exists. If alien life is out there, why haven&#8217;t they contacted us, yet?
&#8220;One solution to the Fermi paradox is that it is not possible to run a world that has the power to destroy itself and that needs global collaborative solutions to prevent that,&#8221; Cox explains. While this explanation makes a lot of sense, there&#8217;s still a chance we might encounter extraterrestrial life, albeit not in intelligent forms.
The best chances we have right now may be in bacterial or microbial life forms. With the rise of <a href="https://futurism.com/the-aquatic-worlds-of-our-solar-system/" target="_blank">ocean worlds</a> inside and beyond our solar system, we may soon discover single-celled organism hiding in these planets — such as <a href="https://futurism.com/ocean-world-hidden-body-of-water-uncovered-on-saturns-moon-dione/" target="_blank">Saturn&#8217;s moon Dione</a> and our next-galaxy neighbor <a href="https://futurism.com/one-of-earths-closest-alien-planets-appears-to-be-an-ocean-world/" target="_blank">Proxima b</a>.

Cox believes we won't be communicating with intelligent life outside our solar system anytime soon. In fact, we may never hear from aliens. 
The best chance of finding alien life would be in bacterial or microbial forms on one of the 3,532 exoplanets currently known to us.

/Fermi Paradox

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