5 Insane Theories About Why We Havent Discovered Alien Life By Fernando Ramirez February 21, 2013 1,150,068 views Add to Favorites 0 Email Human beings are obsessed with the possibility of life on other planets. Countless movies, books, and television shows are centered around alien civilizations, and there is an entire subculture of people devoted to the idea that aliens not only exist, but have already visited our planet for the inexplicable purpose of livestock mutilation and the molestation of the barely-literate. However, we can say with a candor close to absolute certainty that nobody on Earth will ever see warp drive starships or quad-breasted space women from the Crab Nebula, because for a number of reasons, the chances of us ever meeting any aliens are slim to none. Why? Well ... #5. If They Exist, Theyre Likely Too, Well, Alien Getty Our concept of alien life is firmly rooted in the idea that it would be comparable to life on Earth. Almost every major alien race in the realm of science fiction and fantasy has been humanoid -- the Klingons from Star Trek are essentially angry space-cavemen while the Vulcans are virtually identical to human beings. Both Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are technically aliens, despite the fact that they look exactly like two white Earth men from the 1970s, and the Asari from the Mass Effect series look like blue strippers with subdermal cornrows. Behold, inspiration for decades of uncomfortable Comic-Con costumes. Even the so-called eyewitness accounts of extraterrestrial landings we see on those History Channel UFO specials describe the aliens as being essentially human in appearance, with identifiable arms, legs, eyes, and heads. Hell, even the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise, which were supposed to be inhuman bug monsters, were so close to us they could be played by humans in costumes. The point is, that our idea of intelligent life is dependent upon the assumption that the human race is a common point of reference, despite the fact that in all likelihood this is crushingly incorrect. Getty But the greater question is, If aliens arent going to have boobs, do we even want to meet them? The truth is, we dont know the first goddamned thing about what the makeup of life is in the Quasar Nebula or whatever distant star cluster aliens might hail from. The dominant life form on their planet could be a fart cloud of neon gas and space lightning that communicates with a series of atonal whistles, by changing the temperature of the air around them, or even by emitting certain smells (though to be fair, some human beings communicate in this third fashion). In other words, even the basics of life as we know it on Earth (I.e., that carbon is the base element) is by no means the fundamental rule of the universe. Carbon may not even freaking exist on the aliens home world. The reason we have yet to make contact with alien civilizations may very well be because we wouldnt recognize them even if they sat down in the booth next to us at Applebees. Getty Sorry, we dont serve hyper-intelligent shades of blue. Store policy. But even if they were somehow amazingly close to humans in their psychology, their thought process could be significantly different to human in terms of speed and response (an idea postulated by Carl Sagan in the novel-turned-unfortunate-movie Contact). It could conceivably take an alien species several hours, days, months, or even decades to relate a single phrase translatable by human beings. For all we know, aliens have been paging us the same sentence for the past 70 years and weve just been dismissing it as bizarrely drawn-out radio static. #4. They Might Not Want to Screw Us Up Getty But lets say that there are aliens out there who, by some random chance, evolved to be close enough to us that we could converse with them. And lets further assume that they dont simply want to destroy the planet and take our gold. They may still have solid reasons for simply not wanting to talk to us. Getty You can only leave so many crop circles without a reply before you start looking desperate. If youve ever seen Star Trek (and lets not kid ourselves -- if you clicked on this article, you have seen Star Trek), you may know that the most important rule the crew of the Enterprise follows as theyre zipping around the galaxy is the Prime Directive, which they break about eight times an episode: As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely € This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations and carries with it the highest moral obligation. Getty And that means no banging! Kirk! Basically, the Enterprise cannot interfere with life on other planets in any way, regardless of the outcome. They cant pick one side of a warring alien race and arm them with laser cannons, obviously, but theyre also not allowed to bring a starving village a crate of space cupcakes (Starfleet considers these to be the same goddamned thing). They have literally let entire civilizations obliterate themselves for the sake of the Prime Directive. This is an actual theory about extraterrestrial life that scientists call the Zoo hypothesis, which suggests that super advanced aliens do exist, but they refrain from contacting Earth in order to keep from interrupting our natural evolution and development. Essentially, the aliens are content to sit back and watch until we reach their level, and only then will they share their time-traveling rocket boot technology with us. What a bunch of shitheads, right? Well, maybe not. Charity, no matter how well-intentioned, can backfire in unpredictable ways. For example, there have been a number of projects to increase the standard of living in Ethiopia, which is a country literally famous for being impoverished. One such project involved installing water taps in Ethiopian households. While this had several incredibly beneficial effects, most notably dropping the infant mortality rate, it ultimately contributed to household shortages. More children means more family members to support, and those water taps werent spitting out any extra money -- so essentially, the children were surviving infancy only to grow up starving. By solving one problem, another equally devastating problem was created. Getty Im finally over my intimacy issues, but now I have herpes. In the perspective of the Zoo hypothesis, imagine if aliens had touched down on Earth during the Dark Ages, and instead of face-raping everyone with space crabs, they decided to try and help. So they gave humanity self-perpetuating mooncube energy and advanced irrigation, thereby eliminating the need for any of us to ever compete for resources ever again. The aliens leave, patting themselves on the back for their good deed. However, with endlessly renewable resources, Earth quickly becomes overpopulated, and instead of fighting for oil or whatever, people are vaporizing each other with mooncube lasers just for living space. The aliens come back after a hundred years to check up on us only to find the Earth an ashen, blasted landscape of corpse fumes, and now they have to type up a substantial report explaining their actions to the intergalactic community. We wouldnt want to have to deal with that amount of paperwork, so its reasonable to assume that the aliens wouldnt, either. But even if they did, there might be another reason they avoid us ... #3. We Might Not Be Worth the Aliens Time Getty According to the Law of Accelerating Returns, once a civilization begins hitting a real technological stride, the level of advancement will begin to increase exponentially in a comparatively short period. For example, human beings have been trolling around the planet for thousands of years but have seen their greatest advancements (medicine, computers, flight, space travel, etc.) just within the past century. And each iteration of those advancements took less and less time to produce -- that is, the span between no computers and the first computers was much longer than the span between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5. Every time we build a house, we dont have to rediscover what a hammer and nails are -- we just take the tools weve already developed and continue to figure out better ways to use them. Getty But see, this time, you swing the hammer. Thats called innovation. Now, lets apply the same logic to a super-advanced civilization of star-hopping aliens. We can assume that flying saucers are at the far end of the technological timeline, meaning that by now the aliens have theoretically enjoyed centuries of Accelerating Returns. So, take the last 50 years or so of Earth science and multiply that by, say, 300 or 400. Thats the level of technology at which interstellar travelers would likely be operating, and it is far beyond anything our pizza-microwaving asses can even begin to comprehend. So, what would we have to offer them? Getty Come on, the first three seasons of The Wire for an interstellar warp drive is totally a fair trade. Alien civilizations may not be trying to talk to us for the same reason that we dont spend a whole lot of time trying to talk to goldfish -- we really dont have anything worthwhile to say to each other. Maybe some dimensional-shambling moon lizards noticed intelligent life on our planet and decided to take a break solving Rubiks cubes with their mind fingers to discuss the finer points of time travel with our greatest minds, only to discover that our defining technological achievement of the past three years was figuring out how to rent movies from a vending machine. They wouldve sighed heavily, climbed back into their star cruiser, and signed into the Galactic Network to remove Earth from the list of potential candidates for the United Federation of Planets. 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There might not be anyone in our neck of the woods. Maybe even to the point where it doesnt matter given you cant travel faster than the speed of light and inter galactic distances are so vast, because well never meet these aliens in our lifetime or in the span of our civilization. But, theyre definitely out there. BardoThompson +4 4 0 08-23-2013 | 5:54 pm loved this article, For #1 though, I think another argument to use would be Fermis Paradox. The whole thing was thought up by this astronomer named Enrico Fermi who was bullshitting with some friends. They figured ,if there were aliens out there, someone could have come up with a self-replicating satellite that when it found a planet or resources it would stop to build another and send that off. Like two seconds later, Fermi blurted out, Where are they? and left, cause he did the numbers in his head, and even if those probes moved at less than relativistic speeds and given millions of years, a galaxy would have been filled with them, or at least we would have readily noticed one by now. Reply ratgirl15 +6 7 1 08-19-2013 | 9:23 pm If humanity is the best and brightest the universe has to show for itself after 14 billion years, I have to say it aimed rather low. Reply Xenohaz 0 0 0 08-06-2013 | 11:08 am Its a good article, but other than the last theory, none of it really seems insane. Reply Oblivion14 +5 5 0 08-02-2013 | 6:29 am I talk to Goldfish all the time! Hes my only true friend! Reply homieSapien +1 1 0 07-25-2013 | 7:35 pm Great article. I like the goldfish analogy. I havent thought of it in that way. We could also be a research project that has to be observed for 1000s of years, but got canned. They had to cut the research budget due to the intergalactic economic collapse... (Sarcastic Trombone) Reply MulderCat +3 6 3 07-24-2013 | 10:54 am Ive never watched Star Trek. Reply Oftengoldfish 0 0 0 07-09-2013 | 1:41 pm While the first three seasons of The Wire may not be worth interstellar warp drive, its at least worth a blaster or two. Reply colon_three +4 5 0 07-08-2013 | 11:55 am So you cite the Law of Accelerating Returns as the reason aliens wouldnt be assed with contacting us, but cant apply that same logic to us cracking space travel within 9,000 years? Reply SocratesAgrees 0 2 1 07-18-2013 | 11:36 am Wouldnt we have to do s**t like defying the speed of light and find new ways to keep human beings alive and stable when in deep, totally unknowable space? There are certain things well probably never accomplish, especially while were all down here screaming and trying to kill each other. rivkahchaya +1 1 0 08-05-2013 | 5:02 pm You also have to have someone intelligent and personable enough to have risen through the ranks at NASA, probably been in the military at some point, shmuesed his (or her) way into the most important mission ever, and has lots of leadership skills, to be the flight commander, yet has no family or friends, or other impediments to making some kind of warp-flight that will take years, and return him to earth possibly centuries after everyone he ever knew is dead. Templarii +3 7 4 07-06-2013 | 9:58 am I once read a theory that aliens came to Earth around 13,000 years ago from the planet Mars having destroyed it through war. These supposed aliens were completely left-brained and attempted to take us over through force, which according to them, we were entirely right-brained at the time. Supposedly, we outnumbered them and won, let the remaining Martians live amongst us. The Martians gradually crawled to complete rule over us and soon they ruled over everything, their original intention. According to the theory, they now live as the thirteen richest families in the world, control 90% of the worlds currency and are driven entirely through power. It seems a bad theory, to be honest with little evidence to support it. If you subscribe to the theory, feel free to give evidence to back it up. Reply rivkahchaya 0 0 0 08-05-2013 | 5:03 pm Little evidence? Mars rover, anyone? JohnV +4 4 0 08-23-2013 | 12:09 am That sounds like less a theory and more like a science fiction plot. amandamarve +4 4 0 07-05-2013 | 8:32 pm 4 and 3 were good points, but 2 and 1 are just kind of, I dont want to say wrong but... Take 1, Alien life might not exist at all, in our solar system alone and with only our knowledge of life on Earth to use as a guideline, we think life could exist on Mars (something to account for unknown methane production, simple complex life like snottites, bacteria, etc. Certainly not little green men), on Jupiters moon Europa ( friction caused by orbit heats the moon, meaning potential oceans of liquid water beneath the Icy surface, protected from Jupiters radiation, life could develop. Likely extremely simple due to lack of energy sources.) and Titan (Liquid methane could be used as a catalyst for life to start in place of water, life using that would likely resist the moons intense cold. And there is potential for the world to warm with time, but we cant be certain of what geological process go on within it as it is covered by a thick atmosphere). Thats 3 potentially life sustaining worlds and 1 life sustaining world in our solar system. There are around 300,000,000 stars in our galaxy, each of which with the potential for worlds to form, with observations from Kepler, worlds with the potential for life are uncommon, not extremely rare as once predicted. Then there are untold numbers of galaxies. Then there is the general hardiness of life, there are lichens that survived for 2 days putting up with conditions that simulate the surface of Mars, thats a whole 2 days longer than we could. Then the God-like microbial water bear which can withstand the temperature, or lack thereof, and vacuum of space for approximately a week. Look at all the extremophiles detailed on cracked and you get the general idea. Then there is 2, which is pessimistic more than anything else. There is no way we could know that, by the end of my generation I expect the average age of death to have increased, to around a 100, so one could obviously surpass this. In that time, Anything could have happened, we could have reached medical or technological singularity, trans-humanism is already a thing, we could have been driven to extinction by hippos who grew weary of toying with us. And if you are referring to us as a species, then, we are slowly getting our s**t together. There could be a pretty bad conflict when resources run low, but humanity is unlikely to kill itself. Please do note the unlikely. There could be something natural, which we can do little to stop, but there are already ideas circulating on how to deal with things like a gamma ray burst. Basically, alien life almost certainly exists, perhaps little sentient life, but life itself could flourish, and there is quite a fair chance we, as a species will get to witness it, maybe even personally, with new technologies on the horizon. Reply amandamarve +7 7 0 07-05-2013 | 7:53 pm And because the Reapers killed them all isnt on this list, why? Reply anyname -11 0 11 06-30-2013 | 2:44 pm Since there is an infinite number of worlds, and so few of them contain life, that means the percent of planets with life is as close to zero as you can get. Therefore life does not exist. Reply colon_three +5 6 0 07-08-2013 | 11:46 am We have no idea what percentage of worlds contain life, so you cant reasonably make the statement you just made. SocratesAgrees +4 4 0 07-18-2013 | 11:38 am Man, try harder if youre going to attempt to sound intelligent to a bunch of strangers. That was just painful. ABipolarGuy +11 11 0 06-26-2013 | 5:34 pm Really scientists have no idea what conditions are essential for intelligent life or what the odds are. We have one example, and almost no data to compare it against. Its sheer guesswork to assume the conditions we live in are essential. Its sophistry, not science. Once upon a time we would never have believed life could live at all by the deep see volcanic vents. Many things scientists have argued by extension of limited information have proved false, and we had to change our theories and assumptions. Reply gemini1984 +2 2 0 06-26-2013 | 5:27 pm if the universe is infinite, though, there are infinite chances to get our life specific conditions exactly right. again and again. not to mention that our conditions may not be the only conditions that can support intelligent life. Reply Hide All See All 3 Replies KTope +1 3 2 07-05-2013 | 3:30 pm The universe is not infinite. Why do I keep hearing people say this? It doesnt make a shred of sense. SocratesAgrees +2 2 0 07-18-2013 | 11:42 am It might not make sense to us, but our scope of understanding isnt infinite, either. Most people try to define the entire universe by Earths standards, which makes even less sense. MaeveHightower +1 1 0 06-22-2013 | 10:07 pm Hooloovoo! Reply anyname +1 1 0 06-30-2013 | 2:37 pm I love the Hitch-hikers guide! :D Binga +7 8 1 06-17-2013 | 5:50 pm God real life sucks, im going back to playing mass effect... Reply jericoparazo +5 5 0 06-16-2013 | 10:29 pm There are probably a lot more planets in the universe than the number of winning combinations in a lottery. So there is a very good chance there are aliens. Reply Durins_Bane +3 4 1 06-09-2013 | 10:28 am To all saying that #1 cant happen because the Universe is too big for there to be life I would like to point out that that is an Appeal to Probability Logical Fallacy. Reply TheySaidRepent 0 1 1 06-25-2013 | 12:25 pm I dont think that applies here. Its only when evidence is presented, and then discounted because its conclusion seems too improbable, that comes into play. (I proved the twin primes conjecture! / You couldnt possibly have done that. / Heres the proof! / It looks right, and Im in a position to say so under normal circumstances, but its just so ridiculous that you might have done that I must be mistaken.) What it may be is the inverse gamblers fallacy - say you go to a table and see someone get a royal flush. How long has that person been playing? You have no information. Likewise, you sit down to a machine and hit the jackpot - does that make that machine loose? You have very little information. Its difficult for us to make a meaningful statement about the probability of Earth-like planets, little information as we have about extrasolar planets. AlienProjectMX5 +5 6 1 05-25-2013 | 6:59 pm Numbers 4 and 3 to me feels like they may seem to be the most likely, as for number 2, this is where I think this article started going into nonsensical pessimism territory. 9,000 years is still quite a bit of time, and our technology right now is continuing to increase, add that to the fact that theres still at least a small chance that we wont go extinct in the next 9,000 years. 5 Percent. But as time goes on there can be many many changes, more so than you think, for all we know it could be possible that in the future the chances of humans surviving could be increased, and the time span could be expanded even longer. There could be many awesome surprising new inventions coming up within the next one hundred years, and of course, something could be invented at some point capable of having humans live longer, heck maybe even cyborg technology giving us immortality. Some things in the past used to be Science Fiction, until they were invented. All it takes is an amazing break-through to invent something that was never thought possible, thus having it not be science fiction anymore. Time travel does actually exist, I saw this on another article, maybe not for us yet, but Box Jellyfish can go back in time, they just need to activate their stingers which are 700 Nanoseconds, while on board a rocket ship, right when its taking off. And do I even need to explain Number 1? Eh might as well. Yeah... Our universe is so vast, fact is, theres so much we dont know about it. And with trillions of galaxies and other solar systems all not being able to sustain life? No way Jose. Thats just not possible, especially considering our universe possibly is not the only one to exist, and that there could be other universes out there. Well, planets with super-intelligent lifeforms may be kinda hard, but still seems pretty unlikely that its absolutely impossible. Weve found other planets already that have life-friendly characteristics, such as Europa, one of the moons around Jupiter. Space travel can be hard, but I say the closer life-friendly planets are to us, the better. And the more possible it is to be able to house ourselves on them in the future. No other life just cannot be how it is, again arises no other life means just a massive waste of space. Honestly, I think people who think theres no other life and that life is pointless and theres nothing, absolutely nothing, to save it, and that theres no true cool out of this world stuff whatsoever, are extreme pessimists, only out to ruin everyones day. Dont listen to them, theyre the ones spewing the true bullshit here. Reply SkyLark-lol 0 0 0 09-15-2013 | 10:48 pm Please tell me where this box jellyfish time travel article is sounds awesome SkyLark-lol 0 0 0 09-15-2013 | 10:52 pm but more on the goldfish theorum, if humans could somehow incorporate there method to develop time travel, would we be responsible enough, what if the butterfly effect does exist More Comments Read more: cracked/article_20216_5-insane-theories-about-why-we-havent-discovered-alien-life.html#ixzz2kwkOWcnR
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 22:58:18 +0000