{"id":46,"date":"2010-08-24T09:44:13","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T15:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=46"},"modified":"2010-08-24T09:44:35","modified_gmt":"2010-08-24T15:44:35","slug":"46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=46","title":{"rendered":"Mind-Bogglingly Big!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The universe is a fascinating place and, as the late Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy<\/em> series put it, it’s “vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big.” (Technically, he was speaking about outer space, but the description still holds.) And I firmly believe it’s too big to just have one planet with intelligent life on it.<\/p>\n

I once decided to figure out how many civilizations might be out there. Without being aware of the Drake Equation<\/a>, I estimated there should be at least six civilizations in our galaxy alone.\u00a0 (Amusingly, Carl Sagan came to the same conclusion using the numbers he came up with for the Drake Equation.)\u00a0 I came to this number using very conservative probabilities.\u00a0 That is, I took the estimated number of stars in our galaxy and thought if a certain percent of those stars have planets and if a percent of those with planets have planets suitable for life (of a good size, in the right place relative to their star and composed of the right materials) and if a percent of those develop life, etc., and then I stuck in some low percentages.\u00a0 (This really isn’t too different from the Drake Equation, but I came up with it on my own.\u00a0 That doesn’t mean much; it had no scientific basis and I was just doing a lot of guesswork.)<\/p>\n

Then I took this number and went in a different direction.\u00a0 I took my estimate and multiplied it by the estimated number of galaxies in the universe.\u00a0 This was one of the least scientific parts of what I did; I operated under the assumption that our humble world and galaxy were average.\u00a0 I have no idea if that’s true or not.\u00a0 The number of civilizations out there, based on this estimate, was huge.\u00a0 I compared it to Earth’s population and concluded that if every person on Earth was an intergalactic ambassador, we would each have to represent close to two-hundred civilizations.<\/p>\n

That’s a lot of extraterrestrials, but recently I got to thinking about this again and wondered if I didn’t have the whole thing backwards.\u00a0 Obviously, we are not<\/em> intergalactic ambassadors, but what if members of civilizations outside of Earth are?\u00a0 The one thing most who have studied the Drake Formula and its implications have concluded is that there has been plenty of time for other civilizations to develop and advance well beyond our own.\u00a0 There’s no reason to think we would be anywhere close to the first planet with intelligent life.\u00a0 With that thought in mind, and knowing that methods of faster-than-light travel have been theorized by our scientists, it’s possible other civilizations have already developed such travel and come here to Earth.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are plenty of UFO enthusiasts who will tell you we have been Visited over and over again.\u00a0 What I find interesting about such reports is those which have visual descriptions give our Visitors one of two appearances:\u00a0 Either human-like but acting strangely or the now-familiar thin figure with a triangular bald head with large, almond-shaped eyes and a small mouth.\u00a0 One would think there would be some variety, but I have not heard reports of a whole lot of deviation from it.<\/p>\n

Now, I already am among those who think extraterrestrials have visited and continue to visit planet Earth, but this anomaly makes me believe it even more.\u00a0 I turn my conclusion around and think that perhaps instead of Terrans (Earthlings, if you prefer) being ambassadors to the stars, the stars have designated an ambassador race for us.\u00a0 No other civilization is allowed to approach us until it is deemed permissible to make full contact with us.\u00a0 That moment, I believe, will come when we get past theory and build a craft capable of traveling to the stars.\u00a0 This would, after all, force the question.\u00a0 If we can<\/em> go to other star systems, it’s a safe bet we will, so avoiding contact with us becomes impossible.<\/p>\n

Some UFO conspiracy theorists think there will be an announcement shortly we have made Contact.\u00a0 A few have even stated President Obama will make the announcement.\u00a0 I think that would be the single most exciting moment in my lifetime if it happened.\u00a0 I don’t expect it will, at least not anytime soon; the conspiracy (assuming it exists) to keep the American public out of the loop on ET contact is thus far mostly intact.\u00a0 Government officials from countries outside the U.S. have made some interesting statements, but nothing conclusive or irrefutable.\u00a0 Still, I hope it will happen, and I further hope we, as a species, take the news well.<\/p>\n

Coming back to the equations for life outside Earth, I want to add that any estimates made so far are (1) pure guesswork and (b) based on very conservative estimates of the numbers we don’t have any information on.\u00a0 My own probabilities and the application of Drake’s Equation which Carl Sagan used were done before planets were confirmed to be orbiting other stars.\u00a0 At the time, it was believed planets were an exception, not the rule.\u00a0 Current estimates are that forty percent of all stars have some sort of planet in orbit.\u00a0 Six civilizations, as such, could be a huge underestimation.\u00a0 Fully turning my estimate around, then, we could have roughly two-hundred civilizations keeping an eye on us instead of the other way around.\u00a0 If there are twelve civilizations per galaxy, then that number would be around three-hundred-fifty to four hundred.\u00a0 If the underestimation is as big as I think it could be, and there are hundreds or even thousands<\/em> of civilizations, on average, in each galaxy, well, it doesn’t take a rocket (or hyperspace) scientist to see the “mind-bogglingly big” possibilities.<\/p>\n

I hope I live long enough to learn the real numbers and maybe even become an intergalactic ambassador.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The universe is a fascinating place and, as the late Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series put it, it’s “vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big.” (Technically, he was speaking about outer space, but the description still holds.) And I firmly believe it’s too big to just have one planet with intelligent life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}