More than 30 intelligent civilizations throughout our Galaxy

nivek

As Above So Below
Aliens-are-out-there-New-Research-shows-36-active-intelligent-civilizations-in-our-own-galaxy.png


Research sheds new light on intelligent life existing across the Galaxy

Is there anyone out there? This is an age-old question that researchers have now shed new light on with a study that calculates there could be more than 30 intelligent civilizations throughout our Galaxy. This is an enormous advance over previous estimates which spanned from zero to billions.

One of the biggest and longest-standing questions in the history of human thought is whether there are other intelligent lifeforms within our Universe. Obtaining good estimates of the number of possible extraterrestrial civilizations has however been very challenging.

A new study led by the University of Nottingham and published today in The Astrophysical Journal has taken a new approach to this problem. Using the assumption that intelligent life forms on other planets in a similar way as it does on Earth, researchers have obtained an estimate for the number of intelligent communicating civilizations within our own galaxy -the Milky Way. They calculate that there could be over 30 active communicating intelligent civilizations in our home Galaxy.

Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, Christopher Conselice who led the research, explains: “There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth.” Conselice also explains that, “The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.”

First author Tom Westby explains: “The classic method for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of values relating to life, whereby opinions about such matters vary quite substantially. Our new study simplifies these assumptions using new data, giving us a solid estimate of the number of civilizations in our Galaxy.

The two Astrobiological Copernican limits are that intelligent life forms in less than 5 billion years, or after about 5 billion years – similar to on Earth where a communicating civilization formed after 4.5 billion years. In the strong criteria, whereby a metal content equal to that of the Sun is needed (the Sun is relatively speaking quite metal rich), we calculate that there should be around 36 active civilizations in our Galaxy.”

The research shows that the number of civilizations depends strongly on how long they are actively sending out signals of their existence into space, such as radio transmissions from satellites, television, etc. If other technological civilizations last as long as ours which is currently 100 years old, then there will be about 36 ongoing intelligent technical civilizations throughout our Galaxy.

However, the average distance to these civilizations would be 17,000 light-years away, making detection and communication very difficult with our present technology. It is also possible that we are the only civilization within our Galaxy unless the survival times of civilizations like our own are long.

Our new research suggests that searches for extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations not only reveals the existence of how life forms, but also gives us clues for how long our own civilization will last. If we find that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization could exist for much longer than a few hundred years, alternatively if we find that there are no active civilizations in our Galaxy it is a bad sign for our own long-term existence. By searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life -- even if we find nothing -- we are discovering our own future and fate.
Professor Christopher Conselice

.
 

Standingstones

Celestial
I checked to see how big the Milky Way galaxy is. The numbers I found were 100,000 light years across. The Solar System is located on one of the outer spiral arms. Thirty six possible civilizations in a galaxy this size would seem infinitesimal. Yet by all accounts we see space vehicles constantly in the sky. What are we suppose to believe?
 

waitedavid137

Honorable
...Realistically, there is nothing special about the chemistry of our solar system and as such it is likely that virtually all stars in our galaxy either have planets or are young enough that they have dust around them that will eventually form into planets. ...

There is NOTHING about a star's "goldy locks zone" where a planet can sustain liquid water, that could keep planets out of it. Water is likely the most abundant compound in the universe, so it is also likely that most of those 10s of billions of planet bearing stars will have either a planet or a gass giant's moons that will form oceans. Most people don't want to believe it, for ridiculous religious reasons, but abiogenisis is well enough understood at this point that the simplest form of transitional chemical to life form, proteinoid microspheres, can actually be made in a lab recreating conditions of an ocean newly cooled into liquid. I can explain more if you want, but anyway, proteinoids, are identical to the earliest cell microfossils under electron microscopy. Such formed as expected right as soon as the earth cooled enough for the oceans to condense into liquid. As such one can reasonably expect essentially all ocean bearing worlds to have at least simple life. So our galaxy likely has at least tens of billions of stars which have water that either are oceans or will cool into ocean bearing worlds, essentially all of which will have at least single cell life when the ocean forms.
Now here's the catch. Of our planet's 4.5 billion year history, it took the first 1 billion to get to prokaryotes, which are the first step up in evolution from the proteinoids. In other words it took almost a billion for it to cool enough to have oceans. So estimates you hear about the earth's oceans being younger are wrong. Anyway, that means that the time that the simplest form of life has been around here is still on the same order of magnitude as the time that the earth itself has existed. So the order of magnitude of the reasonable estimate, 10's of billions of stars, that will or have formed oceans is the same order of magnitude as what we should estimate for current at least simple life bearing planets in our galaxy. Now of the last 3.5 billion years since the earliest proteinoids, it took maybe up to the last 1.6 billion years ago to get to eukaryotes, and then only until the last 600 million years until we got to interesting complex critters for life forms. As such it may be an order of magnitude less than 10s of billions that have interesting life bearing worlds. So I would say interesting life bearing worlds in our galaxy are probably in the billions.
Now here's another catch. Of that time it took until the last 100 thousand years to get to a species that could develop technology. As such of those billions of interesting life bearing worlds maybe only millions have tech capable life and of that, maybe only 10s of thousands currently have technology.
However all this leaves out something big, colonization. What if millions or more years ago the first tech capable civilizations started interstellar colonization. In that case they could now be actually at essentially every solar system.
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow

Hey, @waitedavid137 welcome back.

What these most recent scientific studies are ignoring is the history of the Milky Way galaxy. Although Milky Way's history is quite vague, we have a good general idea. Basically, galactic nuclei is the most violent and virulent, Chernobyl like zone, and pastures get greener only from 1/3 to 2/3 of the galactic radius. Further out, from 1/3 to 3/3, matter is too sparse for planets to form. That inner sterilization zone takes about 1/3 of galactic diameter, and guess what, Earth is located just on the border between the Milky Way's Chernobyl and the galactic green zone. What that means is that the most other Sun-like stars probably having intelligent life formed over 2.0 Billion years before us. Check this graph bellow:

index.php


That pale yellow dot is our Sun. Everybody else, with technological civilization, is under that huge bulge. So we are not just isolated in space, we are isolated in time. Damn! According to that study and average Milky Way technologically developed civilization is 2.0 billion years ahead of us!!! No wonder, we are sucking our toes, when it comes to Faster than Light travel.

That might explain why aliens are not keen to meet with us on equal terms and prefer to hold a surgical knife at hand when socializing with us. In other words, we are worst than lumberjacks of this universe. Something like Africa during the slavery age.

Here is that paper which goes into all the deeper detais:

The Age Distribution of Potential Intelligent Life in the Milky Way
by Daniel Legassick, University of Exeter
We investigated the habitability of the Milky Way, making use of recent observational analysis on the prevalence of Earth - sized planets, in order to estimate where and when potentially habitable star systems may have formed over the course of the Galaxy’s history. We were then able to estimate the age distribution of potential intelligent life in our Galaxy using our own evolution and the age of the Sun as a proxy. To do this we created a galactic chemical evolution model and applied the following habitability constraints to the Sun - like (G - type) stars formed in our model: an environment free from life - extinguishing supernovae, a high enough metallicity for Earth - sized planet formation and sufficient time for the evolution of complex life. We determined a galactic habitable zone as the region containing all the potentially habitable star systems in our model. Our galactic habitable zone contains stars formed between 11 and 3.8 billion years ago at radial distances of between 7 and 14 kiloparsecs. We found that most potentially habitable star systems are much older than the Sun and located farther from the galactic centre. By comparing the ages of these systems we estimated that ~77% of potentially habitable star systems are on
average ~3.13 billion years older than the Sun . This suggests that any intelligent life in the Galaxy is likely to be incredibly more advanced th
an we are assuming that they have evolved under similar timescales than we have. Implications and limitations of our study are discussed.
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1509/1509.02832.pdf
 

nivek

As Above So Below
However all this leaves out something big, colonization. What if millions or more years ago the first tech capable civilizations started interstellar colonization. In that case they could now be actually at essentially every solar system.

Good point, colonization could perpetuate a species across the galaxy as well as it could also change the evolutionary path of a planet stymying a native species from developing if there were a full colonization of a non-native alien species on such a planet...

...
 
36 is a rather conservative estimate. Id say its probably in the hundreds, if not thousands. Depends how many are born naturally and how many are "assisted" or "uplifted". If even one makes it into godhood range by themselves, they could begin spawning others.

And when were meeting aliens, its more likely going to either be with cavemen or gods. There might be a few civilizations roughly at our age of technological development, or none. If its the latter case, that would make us very intresting to any other onlookers.

While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old, and industrialization started in the earnest only in the 1800s. This tells me that intelligent life has chance to appear in a relatively short periods of time and perhaps make big technological leaps in even shorter periods.

Maybe theres cycles where intelligence rises, like waves, sometimes just a couple of species rise during hundreds of thousands of years in various parts of our galaxy, sometimes more than dozens. Maybe only half of them make it, maybe just few make it, through all the natural catastrophies, wars and plagues. And perhaps when a treshold is reached, they have a chance of becoming spacefaring and nomadic, which would also up their chances of survival. Spacefaring civilizations still face threats, but they can avoid going extinct from things like asteroid strikes, supernovas etc.

Would a galactic society of somekind level the playing field tough for multiple potential species existing in it?
 
Last edited:

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
Good point, colonization could perpetuate a species across the galaxy as well as it could also change the evolutionary path of a planet stymying a native species from developing if there were a full colonization of a non-native alien species on such a planet...

...

Unless you have two habitable planets in your solar system, it's much more meaningful to start living on giant spaceships than on planets. With a command of the whole Solar system, one can manufacture spaceships the size of big cities. In our own asteroid belt, there is a giant core of a failed planet that completely consists of iron. All you need is some hydrogen/oxygen or solar power or dig Helium-3 on the Moon, to start furnace in orbit and start turning all that iron into I-beams. I bet one can hover in spacecrafts above the clouds of Venus and extract all the hydrogen/oxygen he wants, plus he'll have 5 times more solar energy than on the Earth itself.

Just look at people living in Philippines, it's just tornado > earthquake > volcanic eruption >> tornado > earthquake > volcano etc. Poor guys can't get back on their feet without being knocked out by the next tsunami or tornado.
 
Last edited:

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
I checked to see how big the Milky Way galaxy is. The numbers I found were 100,000 light years across. The Solar System is located on one of the outer spiral arms. Thirty six possible civilizations in a galaxy this size would seem infinitesimal. Yet by all accounts we see space vehicles constantly in the sky. What are we suppose to believe?
The number is vastly larger than that.
They also are considering life as we know it...only.
Also, most visitors do not come from our universe.
In the multiverse, how many alternate or parallel Earths are there?...it is a very large number....
And travel to and from them is a lot easier than FTL travel.
 

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
Aliens-are-out-there-New-Research-shows-36-active-intelligent-civilizations-in-our-own-galaxy.png


Research sheds new light on intelligent life existing across the Galaxy

Is there anyone out there? This is an age-old question that researchers have now shed new light on with a study that calculates there could be more than 30 intelligent civilizations throughout our Galaxy. This is an enormous advance over previous estimates which spanned from zero to billions.

One of the biggest and longest-standing questions in the history of human thought is whether there are other intelligent lifeforms within our Universe. Obtaining good estimates of the number of possible extraterrestrial civilizations has however been very challenging.

A new study led by the University of Nottingham and published today in The Astrophysical Journal has taken a new approach to this problem. Using the assumption that intelligent life forms on other planets in a similar way as it does on Earth, researchers have obtained an estimate for the number of intelligent communicating civilizations within our own galaxy -the Milky Way. They calculate that there could be over 30 active communicating intelligent civilizations in our home Galaxy.

Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, Christopher Conselice who led the research, explains: “There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth.” Conselice also explains that, “The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit.”

First author Tom Westby explains: “The classic method for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of values relating to life, whereby opinions about such matters vary quite substantially. Our new study simplifies these assumptions using new data, giving us a solid estimate of the number of civilizations in our Galaxy.

The two Astrobiological Copernican limits are that intelligent life forms in less than 5 billion years, or after about 5 billion years – similar to on Earth where a communicating civilization formed after 4.5 billion years. In the strong criteria, whereby a metal content equal to that of the Sun is needed (the Sun is relatively speaking quite metal rich), we calculate that there should be around 36 active civilizations in our Galaxy.”

The research shows that the number of civilizations depends strongly on how long they are actively sending out signals of their existence into space, such as radio transmissions from satellites, television, etc. If other technological civilizations last as long as ours which is currently 100 years old, then there will be about 36 ongoing intelligent technical civilizations throughout our Galaxy.

However, the average distance to these civilizations would be 17,000 light-years away, making detection and communication very difficult with our present technology. It is also possible that we are the only civilization within our Galaxy unless the survival times of civilizations like our own are long.
Professor Christopher Conselice


.
I say they should go back to their drawing board.
 
The number is vastly larger than that.
They also are considering life as we know it...only.
Also, most visitors do not come from our universe.
In the multiverse, how many alternate or parallel Earths are there?...it is a very large number....
And travel to and from them is a lot easier than FTL travel.
Threads like this satisfy my interests in the Paranormal but I wonder in my life time if I ever get the truth about the whole Alien, Ghost, Time Slip, Multi Verse and Life after Death ?
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Interesting estimate, a conversation piece. We do seem to have any number of theories of exactly what's out there.

Think of it this way: suppose you lived somewhere in Europe say, a thousand years ago. Based on your culture, experiences and the amount of information available to you at that time how accurate would your 'estimate of the situation' be regarding the rest of the planet and the civilizations we now know existed at the time ? Probably not so much except maybe in some broad general sense.

I've wondered if one of the prerequisites for advanced intelligent life developing is being left the hell alone.
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
Think of it this way: suppose you lived somewhere in Europe say, a thousand years ago. Based on your culture, experiences and the amount of information available to you at that time how accurate would your 'estimate of the situation' be regarding the rest of the planet and the civilizations we now know existed at the time ? Probably not so much except maybe in some broad general sense.

That's a good illustration of what "common sense" is. Practically common sense is the same as ignorance. One is as informed as to the quality of information he has and his method of thinking.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
The number is vastly larger than that.
They also are considering life as we know it...only.
Also, most visitors do not come from our universe.
In the multiverse, how many alternate or parallel Earths are there?...it is a very large number....
And travel to and from them is a lot easier than FTL travel.

I don't see how it could be easier to travel outside one's universe than traveling within that same universe, if multiverses actually exist...Of course our understanding of our own universe is severely limited, but for a species that's been around for millions or billions of years I'm sure they have turned over almost every stone in our universe...Perhaps they have discovered other universes like our own, perhaps they are traveling between them, but it seems logical to me that older intelligent species in our universe would have been traveling around our stars before they began traveling across universes...

...
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
I don't see how it could be easier to travel outside one's universe than traveling within that same universe, if multiverses actually exist...Of course our understanding of our own universe is severely limited, but for a species that's been around for millions or billions of years I'm sure they have turned over almost every stone in our universe...Perhaps they have discovered other universes like our own, perhaps they are traveling between them, but it seems logical to me that older intelligent species in our universe would have been traveling around our stars before they began traveling across universes...

...

My guess is that, as far as thory goes, we are 99% of what aliens know. It's just that 1% that makes UFO craft so outstanding.
 

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
I don't see how it could be easier to travel outside one's universe than traveling within that same universe, if multiverses actually exist...Of course our understanding of our own universe is severely limited, but for a species that's been around for millions or billions of years I'm sure they have turned over almost every stone in our universe...Perhaps they have discovered other universes like our own, perhaps they are traveling between them, but it seems logical to me that older intelligent species in our universe would have been traveling around our stars before they began traveling across universes...

...
Changing one's phase to the next takes less energy in my opinion based on what I have gathered in information from UFO, humanoid and paranormal reports.
I also have reason to believe that our government/military have a device(s) that can alert them to any disturbance in the normal phase of matter which would normally occur when phasing in or out of our universe.
 

Sheltie

Fratty and out of touch.
Conservative estimates say there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Even if we eliminate two thirds of these due to their close proximity to the center of the galaxy and the resulting excessive radiation they might receive, there is still an unimaginable number of possible planets that could be inhabited.

Many scientists now believe there may be more rogue planets (planets that do not orbit a star) than stellar planets. We're learning more and more about how robust and adaptable life may be. Perhaps there are as of yet unknown ways they survive without suns.

We always think of things in terms of our known technology. Maybe such things as worm holes and interdimensional portals are everywhere and all we need to do is locate them and learn how to use them.
 
Top