Life is common but time and distance too great

Sunday 15 August 2010 - Filed under Astronomy

Cross-posted from Slacker Astronomy

As I awed over another unbelievable Hubble image I couldn’t help but think the Universe is teeming with life. With billions of galaxies with billions of stars over billions of years — the math is undeniable: even the most unlikely situations will occur a great number of times. This is articulated mathematically with the Drake equation.

The problem is not the formation of life, it’s the unfathomable distances and spans of time between these formations. Science fiction has given us dreams of communicating and traveling over galactic distances. In reality, that is completely impossible given what we know about physics today. Utterly inconceivable. It’s a sad thought for the imaginative. If other life does exist in the Universe, we’d surely like to meet it. Dangers be damned, the thrill of finding other life is an undeniable quest and communicating with citizens of another world would be an Earth- and life- changing event. But sadly, it will never happen. We are doomed to be alone.

While I’m not really that pessimistic it is a valid answer to the Fermi paradox. The reason we haven’t heard from any other of the vast numbers of alien civilizations out there is: it’s not possible. The laws of physics prevent it. Certainly some worlds are created within “view” of others and they enjoy (or suffer) the wonders of that interaction. But we were born alone and will die alone because we are too far away in space and/or time from our nearest galactic citizens. They’ll send messages and we’ll listen, and vice versa, but never at the same time or the same way.

I hope I’m wrong!

2010-08-15  »  lolife