I rarely read the news and I haven’t checked social media in 2023. My preferred source of news, Reddit, falls into that social media bucket so I’ve been living in a blissful lil bubble world through the beginning of this Millenia’s Jordan year.
I only hear about the exciting stuff when other people are excited enough about it that they bring it up. This week I found out about our military shooting down a UFO over Lake Huron because the woman I work with whose profile pic is Jim Harbaugh on Mount Rushmore told me about it.
Aliens, huh?.. Whelp! See ya later.
Anyway, this coincided with my decision to take this here newsletter in a different direction for a few weeks. Rather than providing you with first-person essays espousing my super special thoughts about a topic I am going to spend a few weeks sharing my favorite theories, concepts, and interesting ideas without including any of the heart-warming personal anecdotes I know you all love. And I’m going to do so in a newsletter you can digest in around five minutes. Not because I value you your time, but because the longer I write about this the more you’ll realize I only partially know what I’m talking about. Here we goooo!
The Fermi Paradox
When you gaze up at the night sky on a clear night its impossible not to feel a sense of awe at the sheer vastness of the universe above you. We all live on one single rock, that rotates around one single star, in a universe that has more stars than grains of sand on the surface of our planet. In fact, it is estimated that there are about about 10,000 stars for every single grain of sand on Earth. If you’ve ever been to a beach and find yourself still picking sand out from between your toes a week later you know how insane that number is.
Of those stars, an estimated 5% of them are similar in size and shape to our Sun. Assuming other lifeforms would require the same energy source as us that would leave us with 500 Quintillion (aka 500 billion billion) stars. The current NASA estimate for how many of these stars have earth-like planets, again assuming that our type of planet (ie; water, atmosphere, etc, etc) is the only type that supports life, is around 22%.
Okay, so 110 Quintillion. Still a lot of stars.
Even if we assume that the conditions for a planet to actually host life are extraordinarily rare - a percent of a percent of a percent - that’s still a lot of stars.
Which brings us to The Fermi Paradox.
Given how expansive our Universe is, it seems mathematically impossible that we are the only planet in all of existence to host life.
So where the hell is everyone?
Organized human civilization as we currently know it has been around for only about 12,000 years and in that time - in the last 70 years in fact - we have already escaped the surface of our planet and sent people and machines into space. Based on the rate of technological change and growth it seems certain that within a million years we’ll have the means to traverse our galaxy and beyond.
But a million years - although a very long time - is nothing in comparison to the estimated seven billion years the Universe has existed.
If, in fact, it only takes a million years for a society to cultivate Space Travel, it seems likely that a organism that germinated even a few million years before us would have already reached that point. So where are they?
We have satellites that can monitor radio waves from unfathomable distances. If we’re right that there should be thousands of other civilizations - even if only a small portion of them can transmit signals - why haven’t we heard anything?
We haven’t heard a single peep. Ever. Nothing.
Why?
Theory #1 - Aliens think we suck.
This highly scientific theory proposes that we have already been discovered by aliens . Perhaps they’ve been monitoring us since before we organized ourselves into a true civilization. Maybe they watched the dinosaurs get smoked by a big space rock. Whatever it is, IF they are already here and watching us then they likely have their own reasons for not making contact.
Maybe the scores of UFO sightings and reports that get written off as hoaxes have been real contact with an extraterrestrial.
Maybe their attempts to make contact with us have been met with violence like us shooting down the UFO over Lake Huron last week.
Maybe they don’t currently perceive our species to be a threat but are blocking external communications from reaching our planet to keep us in the dark and prevent us from discovering their existence.
Maybe there is a whole alien confederacy just outside our galactic doorstep and the aliens have decided we suck and they don’t want us to join their club.
Whatever it is, if they do exist - they clearly don’t want us to know.
Theory # 2 - The Unique Earth Theory
This has been the predominant world theory for most of the 12,000 years of our civilization.
We haven’t met any aliens because there are no aliens. There is nothing like us in the Universe. Perhaps what we perceive to be an expansive Universe is simply a mirage designed by a higher power.
This the God theory.
This Universe was created for us by God as a worldly plane of existence and after we move on from this life we move to one of the other two planes of existence (I’ll give you three guesses on what those are).
This theory is a boring one in my opinion, but technically speaking its just as likely as any of the others. None of us really know.
Theory #3 - The Great Filter
What if the reason we’ve never met a civilization technologically capable of making contact with us isn’t because other life doesn’t exist, but because life never makes it to that point.
Introducing The Great Filter - at some point during any civilization there is an evolutionary extinction level event that wipes the civilization away before it can grow any further.
If we assume that there is a Great Filter it begs the question: Is that moment behind us or ahead of us?
Behind Us (aka Rarity Theory)
The most optimistic take on The Great Filter theory is that this filter is behind us. There are countless planets in our Galaxy that spur life to form but perhaps the evolutionary leap that turns an organism from a simple lifeform into something that may one day explore the Universe is incredibly rare. Perhaps we are either the first civilization to ever make it past that point, or we’re so unique that even though other civilizations have gotten to that point we simply haven’t found each other yet.
This is kind of sweet. Us lifeforms just doing our thing in a lonely universe waiting to someday find someone else who understands us.
Ahead of Us (We’re Effed Theory)
If we assume that there are plenty of other planets in the Universe that could evolve into complex cellular organisms and also that its unlikely that we were the first to do so then, again, where is everyone?
What if the reason we haven’t found any other life in the Universe is because any civilization that nears the ability to traverse through space destroys itself before it gets there?
What if the path of technological advancement required to leave this gravity-bound rock is so treacherous that it completely destroys any being that walks it?
My first introduction to this theory was through the intro to an episode of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History titled Blueprint to Armageddon. The episode explored the cold war and the current existence of nuclear weapons.
Currently, as you sit here reading this, there are a handful of people on this earth that possess the ability to completely destroy the planet and every organism that lives on it within the span of a business day. We’ve built our own Great Filter in the form of nuclear weapons and rely on the things as fragile as diplomatic relations to prevent them from being used.
Further, even without the use of nuclear weapons our planet edges closer to destruction by climate change every single year.
What if the reason we haven’t met any aliens is that aliens are fallible like us and things like nuclear weapons and pollution always come first in the natural cycle of technological change.
What if they just couldn’t resist destroying themselves?
What if we can’t either?