Nine strange scientific excuses that people have not yet found aliens

Where are all the aliens? One night, 60 years ago, physicist Enrico Fermi looked into the sky and asked myself: "Where is everybody?", referring to extraterrestrial life. In his opinion the galaxy was literally filled with all sorts of life resembling earthly and not. Today, scientists only know that in the Universe there are millions and even billions of planets capable of supporting life. Why in the long history of just this life and held out his hand (or tentacle) people?

Maybe the universe is too big to be easily overcome. Maybe the aliens are deliberately ignoring us. Maybe any blooming civilization is doomed to self-destruct (as we, for example, if you don't stop screwing around).

It May be something else, something much more strange. Before you nine of the strange answers that scientists have tried to justify the Fermi paradox.

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Aliens are hiding in underground oceans

If people want to communicate with extraterrestrial life, we may need a few icebreakers. Some believe that alien life imprisoned in a secret oceans, buried deep within the frozen planets.

Subsurface oceans of liquid water have several satellites in our Solar system and can be quite common in the milky Way. NASA physicist Alan stern believes that underwater worlds like these can be ideal for the development of life, even if inhospitable conditions on the surface could harm any life. "The fall of meteorites and solar flares, nearby supernovae, orbiting neighbor, a poisonous atmosphere — none of that would prevent life underground," says stern.

For the aliens that's fine, but it also suggests that we will never be able to find them using a telescope. Should we expect that they will contact us? According to stern, these creatures live so deep that it is unknown if they know about the existence of the sky above.

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Aliens imprisoned on the "supersense"

No, the earths is not the birthplace of superheroes. In astronomy, this term refers to the type of planets with a mass 10 times larger than the earth. The study of the stars has resulted in piles of such worlds, which could have suitable conditions for the existence of water in liquid form. So, alien life might evolve on the supersense throughout the Universe.

Unfortunately, we are unlikely to meet with these aliens. According to a study published in April, a planet with a mass of 10 earth will have the escape velocity is 2.4 times more than Earth; to overcome this attraction can make the rocket launch and space travel almost impossible.

"On more massive planets space travel will be much more expensive," says study author Michael Hippke, a researcher from Sonneberg Observatory in Germany. "Aliens are under arrest on his own planet."

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We are not looking for it (because all aliens, robots)

The Humans have invented radio in 1900-ies, but the first computer appeared in 1945, and today the device mass production capable of producing billions of calculations per second. Full artificial intelligence could be just around the corner, and futurist Seth Shostak believes that this is enough to reconsider our approach to the search for intelligent aliens. Simply put, we need to look for machines, not little green men.

"Any alien society that invents a radio that we can hear, after a few centuries will invent new method of communication, and then successor," says Shostak in 2016. "I think it's important, because successor is the car."

Really well-developed alien society can be entirely populated by Superintelligent robots, says Shostak, and it should affect our search for aliens. Instead focus on finding other habitable planets, we should be looking for places that would be more attractive for cars — for example, places with a large amount of energy, for example, the centers of galaxies. "We're looking for analogues of ourselves, says Shostak, but I don't know what is a big part of intelligence in the Universe."

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We have already found aliens (but not understand)

Thanks to popular culture, the word "alien" probably makes you the image of a creepy humanoid with a large shiny skull. That's fine for Hollywood, but sabotages our search for alien life, wrote a group of psychologists from Spain at the beginning of this year.

During a small study, the researchers asked 137 people to look at images of other planets and search for signs of alien buildings. Among all those images were hiding a small man in a gorilla suit. Since the experiment participants were directly looking for alien life, only 30% of them noticed a "gorilla."

In reality, the aliens are unlikely to be anything like the monkeys. Maybe even with the help of light and sound waves is not possible to see. What conclusion can we draw from this research? Our own imagination and the ratio imposes restrictions on the search for extraterrestrial life. If we don't learn to broaden our scope manageable, we did not even see the gorilla under his nose.

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People will kill all the aliens (or already killed)

The closer we get to the aliens, the closer we are to their destruction. So says physicist Alexander Berezin.

Here is his logic: any civilization is able to explore their ownthe solar system must be on the path of unlimited growth and expansion. As we know on the Ground, this extension is often costly for small organisms that stand in his way. Berezin said that the principle of "divide and rule" is unlikely to disappear, when we find the aliens — if we even notice them.

"What if the first life, which will have the ability of interstellar travel will destroy all of the competitors to nurture their own distribution?", wrote Berezin in March. "I don't think a highly advanced civilization would deliberately destroy other forms of life. It just won't pay attention to them, like a construction crew, which destroys the anthill to build a skyscraper — she just didn't want to keep".

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Aliens launched a climate change (and died)

When the world's population burns resources faster than the planet supplies them, not far off a disaster. We know from our relationship with Earth's climate. Why alien, energy-greedy community can't get into the same situation?

According to astrophysicist Adam Frank, it's not only possible, but extremely likely. At the beginning of this year, Frank launched a series of mathematical models to test how a hypothetical alien civilization could survive the rise and fall, if it sucked all the resources of the planet. The bad news is that in three of the four scenarios, their society destroyed, and a large part of the population dies. And only if the company notices a problem early and immediately switches to clean energy, civilization survives. This means that, if aliens exist, chances are that they will destroy themselves before we go and meet them.

"In all space and time are the winners — who were able to see the future and prevent it and the losers who are unable to cope with the situation and lost civilization," says Frank. "The question is, in which category we want to be?".

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Aliens are unable to evolve fast enough (and died)

Another excuse from the category of "aliens already dead." The universe may be teeming with hospitable planets, but there is no guarantee that they will exist long enough for life could develop. According to the research the Australian national University from 2016, wet, rocky planets like Earth is very unstable for life to develop; if alien life and want to live in such a world, it will have a very small window for development (only a few million years).

"Between the first heat shock, freezing, change the atmosphere and increasing greenhouse effect support life on wet, rocky planet in the habitable zone can be like trying to ride a wild bull — a large part of life will fall," the authors write. "Life in the Universe may be rare not because it is difficult to start, but because it is difficult to hold the first billion years."

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Dark energy is tearing us apart

The universe is expanding. Slowly but surely, galaxy fly, distant stars are becoming dimmer for us, all thanks to a mysterious, invisible substance that scientists call dark energy. They believe that in a few trillion years dark energy stretches the Universe that even the earthlings can't see the light of galaxies beyond our nearest neighbors in space. It's creepy if we don't explore the Universe before we can explore her more than ever.

"the Stars will be not only unobservable, but also unattainable," says astrophysicist Dan Hooper. This means that we should hurry if we want to find some aliens and be a step ahead of the dark energy, expanding the limits of the possessions of our civilization.

Of Course, it won't be easy. We may have to move the stars.

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plot Twist: we are the aliens

You went outside and saw the alien. Your mailman from another planet. Your neighbor, too. Your parents and siblings are aliens, aliens and aliens.

At least, such conclusions can be drawn, if you follow the theory of panspermia. In brief, this hypothesis argues that a large part of life that we see on Earth today was not here, and were planted here millions of years ago, a meteor carrying bacteria from other worlds.

The Proponents of this theory assumed that octopus, tardigrades and humans were seeded from different parts of the galaxy, but, unfortunately, there is no real evidence to support this theory. Only one big counter-argument: if bacteria carrying human DNA evolved on another planet nearby, why do we not see traces of humanity anywhere else besides Earth? Even if this hypothesis would be plausible, it still does not give answer to the question of Fermi: "Where is everybody?".

Where is everyone? Tell us in our