We Come in Peace

Not Geography Geography Lesson 23

Here Come The Men in Black *Clap Clap*

Hello friends! It's been quite a while (a whole year if we're honest) but I've decided that it's time to whip out the old blog again. In my defence, I've been fairly busy finishing my degree, getting a job, getting a car (and crashing it...), getting a house, moving to a new county, and most importantly making a lovely terrarium. But anyway, I'm back and I've made us all rather dashing tinfoil hats for the first blog of 2019(!), which is going explore the main potential reasons why we haven't yet made contact with aliens! Let's get into it...

Where is Everybody?

This is a question relevant for lots of situations - all-you-can-eat broccoli buffets; grizzly bear petting lessons; any event where clowns are present... but when a very clever physicist called Enrico Fermi was asking 'Where is everybody?', he was talking about aliens. Or rather the apparent lack of aliens on Earth. 

And what he meant by that question was - there could be an estimated 500 billion billion (not a typo) sun-like stars out there in the universe, with 100 billion Earth-like planets floating around them. What are the odds that not even a couple of those planets don't have any intelligent life on them?! Surely, they must be smaller than an ant's trainer sock. And yet still no aliens. 

Not All Civilisations are Equal

Before we get into the reasons why we might not have found aliens, or they haven't found us, we need to better understand what we might be looking for. As much as I love Men in Black (1 and 2 obviously, the third film is rubbish), the aliens in the films probably aren't much like what real aliens would be, if they're out there. 

The Kardashev Scale is a very clever and absolutely terrifying way of classifying civilisations depending on how much energy they can utilise. There are three tiers:

1. Type I Civilisation: these can harness all the energy on their planet.  Sad news though - we aren't quite there yet (we're about 0.7) so we need to plug some more things in or something...
2. Type II Civilisation: these can harness all the energy of the star at the center of their galaxy. We can't even imagine what this would be like, but maybe something like having the dishwasher, washing machine, toaster and microwave on at the same time?
3. Type III Civilisation: these can harness all the energy of the entire Milky Way (not the chocolate because that's only about 450 calories worth, which could probably only boil the kettle). This is even more energy than it takes to prise a piece of pizza out of a dog's mouth.

Basically, we could potentially be looking for civilisations a squillion times more advanced than we are.  

So Why Haven't They Found Us?

If these aliens are that advanced, why haven't they found us yet (on the off-chance that there are any aliens reading this - that's definitely not a challenge)? There are lots of possible explanations but I'm going to include the most popular (and unnerving).

Possibility 1: The Great Filter

We haven't found any aliens or vice versa, because they aren't actually out there, because they don't exist. There is some point between 0 and Type III, at which civilisations are wiped out - this point is 'the great filter'. We don't know how or why they die out (*nervous laughter*), but the great filter could mean three different things for us. 

• We could have miraculously passed the filter, and are super-duper-winning-the-Euromillions lucky. This also means that there aren't any other civilisations out there because they weren't so lucky.  
• We could be one of the first civilisation to have gotten to this stage and who knows what's next.
• The filter could be ahead of us, and we are going to cruise right into it.

Possibility 2: We were late to the party

Humans have only been knocking around on Earth for approximately 50,000 years, which isn't even a lunch break in the history of the universe. It's definitely possible that aliens could have rocked up to Earth before we were here, seen that there wasn't much going on and left again. And they didn't even leave a note, rude. 

Possibility 3: We're out in the sticks

The universe is so so so big, that it's possible that we just live in a really remote corner of it that aliens haven't explored yet. Having recently moved to an area where I can't even have a pizza delivered to my house, I can deeply relate to this level of isolation...

Possibility 4: We're idiots for even looking

The scariest possibility on this list - there are some aliens out there who routinely find and exterminate other civilisations, and the rest of the aliens are keeping their heads down and hiding. Hence they're not replying to our signals, or sending out their own. This makes us absolutely bonkers for broadcasting our location and inviting alien assassins to come fry us all. Both Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan (who know a fair bit about physics and whatnot) have warned that it might not be the wisest move to continue sending messages into space, just in case hostile aliens come looking for us.

Possibility 5: Our technology isn't advanced enough yet

There could be aliens out there hearing our signals and replying, but our technology is far too primitive to actually realise it - like they're sending Whatsapps from a brand new iPhone and we are trying to pick them up using a paper cup on a string. 

Possibility 6: They're already watching us

Also deeply unsettling - aliens have already found us, but because they're so much more advanced than us, they're just watching our silly and trivial little world because we are incapable of making meaningful contact. This is called the 'Zoo Hypothesis' and I imagine it's the cosmic equivalent of watching 'You've Been Framed'.

Possibility 7: We're being duped

Finally time to don those tinfoil hats friends, because this possibility is that aliens are already here, walking amongst us, but the government/illuminati/lizard overlords are keeping it hush-hush. This seems a tad far-fetched but it's not completely impossible - I'm looking at you people who keep pigeons as pets.... 

Well that's all folks, I hope you enjoyed the first of hopefully many blogs in 2019! You can tell it's been while - it took me so long to write this that Netflix asked if I was still alive twice!