Scientists Suggest Our Perceived Loneliness in the Universe May Be Right Beneath Our Feet.
For many years, scientists have been puzzled by the reality that we have not found any civilizations beyond Earth. This is despite the fact that the Drake Equation suggests there should be many civilizations close enough and capable of contacting us. Originally proposed by Frank Drake, this equation attempts to estimate the chances of encountering intelligent life and implies that those chances should be quite high.
New research indicates that we may have been misled by overlooking a crucial aspect regarding the emergence of intelligent life. Our Earth could be relatively rare, with its oceans, continents, and long-lasting plate tectonics lying beneath us, which may be necessary for the development of “actively communicating civilizations” like ours.
For years, we have not found any civilizations beyond Earth. (Image credit: NASA).
The Drake Equation consists of several factors that can help determine the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the universe. Each factor is considered a prerequisite for life.
It begins by examining the number of stars formed each year, then how many of these have planetary systems, how many of those planets have environments suitable for life, how many might develop life, and how many worlds could produce technology that might alert other beings to their existence, as well as the timeline for all of this to occur.
In reality, we cannot assign an exact value to any of those variables. However, researchers have discovered that this suggests life should be widespread throughout the universe and ready for us to encounter.
Yet, we have not achieved this. This failure leads to discussions about the “Fermi Paradox“, named after Enrico Fermi, who questioned why we cannot find life anywhere else. In the new study, scientists argue that we may have overlooked an important part of one of those variables. This could explain why we feel so isolated in the universe.
For a long time, researchers believed that the probability of life on a planet evolving into intelligent life was nearly 100%. However, they suggest it may be much lower because it might depend on plate tectonics.
On Earth, plate tectonics indicates that the Earth’s crust and upper mantle have broken into many pieces, slowly moving around and leading to severe natural disasters on our planet. But this is quite rare: Earth is the only planet in the Solar System with plate tectonics, despite having three other rocky bodies: Venus, Mars, and Io, one of Jupiter’s moons.
Plate tectonics also means that mountains, volcanoes, and oceans are formed. They contribute to the weathering that releases nutrients into the oceans, and by forming and destroying habitats, all life on the planet must evolve and adapt. This process may be essential for leading to the intelligent life we have on Earth.
Therefore, scientists argue that the Drake Equation should be refined to account for how many planets have long-lasting continents, oceans, and plate tectonics. If this is the case, then the estimates would be much lower: the crucial variable would drop from nearly 100% to around 0.003% to 0.2%.
“This explains the rarity of planetary conditions conducive to the development of intelligent life in our galaxy and resolves the Fermi Paradox,” stated researcher Robert Stern from the University of Texas at Dallas.
