Humanity in Our Own Galactic Neighborhood Appears to be solitary
In the vast expanse of the Milky Way, the search for extraterrestrial life continues, despite the challenges and uncertainties involved. Two Austrian researchers, Manuel Scherf and Helmut Lammer from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, have recently provided some intriguing insights that could potentially shape the future of this search.
Scherf and Lammer have considered a crucial factor in the development and sustainability of life: the presence of carbon dioxide (CO2) in a planet's atmosphere. They argue that the right amount of CO2 is essential for life as we know it, and a planet needs plate tectonics to regulate this amount.
The presence of plate tectonics ensures that carbon dioxide is locked into rock and removed from the atmosphere, preventing both a lack of CO2 that could lead to a cold, barren planet, and an excess that would result in a greenhouse effect, inhospitable to any biosphere.
The researchers also considered the number of rocky planets with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, similar to Earth's, as a potential indicator for the presence of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. They calculated that a technological civilization on a planet with 10% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would have to be at least 280,000 years old to exist simultaneously with another one in its galaxy.
This finding suggests that the search for extraterrestrial life may need to focus on older civilizations, at least 280,000 years old, to have a chance of finding one. For ten technological civilizations to exist simultaneously in a galaxy, they would have to be an average of ten million years old.
However, these calculations attribute only extremely low chances of success to the search for extraterrestrials. Scherf believes that the search should not be abandoned, despite the low chances of success. He emphasises the potential significance of the discovery of extraterrestrial civilizations, which would be the greatest scientific discovery of all time.
Scherf and Lammer's analysis also indicates that if there were an extraterrestrial civilization in the Milky Way now, it would most likely be on the other side of the galaxy. This geographical distribution could pose further challenges in the search for extraterrestrial life.
Despite these challenges, the search for extraterrestrial life continues, driven by the inherent human curiosity and the potential for groundbreaking scientific discoveries. As we continue to explore the cosmos, we may one day uncover the existence of life beyond our planet.
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