The Aliens have Moved on…

The timescales in this universe are immense. Our universe is an estimated 13.8 billion years old and stretches across an observable radius of 46 billion light years. With 10 billion observable galaxies, there is a minimum of one billion-trillion (1*10²¹) estimated stars in the observable universe, with countless more stars that have existed in our universe ever.

Based on these facts, it is downright selfish to conclude that just because we have looked up to the cosmos and found nothing that resembles ourselves, that extra terrestrial life does not exist. So, where is it?

The human race has been around for maybe a million years (depending on your definition of homo-sapien). For 975,000 years, humans were no more than slightly advanced, cave dwelling, rock throwing, hairless apes. Then, slowly at first, we began to develop technology. Stone tools, agriculture, and writing emerged from Egypt and Sumeria.

This technological revolution steadily transformed the planet for nearly 25,000 years as those same hairless apes grew into hairless apes that could write, cooperate, make decisions, and explore. And now, in the last hundred years or so, we have seen the information age instill itself into our lives in the form of handheld media devices which we have access to the world’s information at our fingertips.

This tech revolution isn’t slowing down either. The rate at which computing technology is increasing is exponential. We are advancing quickly. What will the human race look line in a hundred years? A thousand years? How will the ever growing and changing human race continue to thrive?

The answer is energy. The present human race produces about 5.6*10²⁰ Joules of energy each year. This is, on average, 1.75*10¹³ J/s, or watts. This is a lot of energy; 13,000 times more energy than the solar radiation that hits the Earth’s surface every square kilometer, and 37,000 times more than the average nuclear power plant produces.

But we are a demanding species. As our level of technology grows, so will our need for energy. The more energy our species can produce, the more we can advance and thrive into the cosmos. You could say that energy production and technological advancement are directly proportional. Nikolai Kardashev, a Soviet astronomer, realized this too.

Above is his Kardashev equation. It is an elegant formulation that relates total energy production (P) to the advancement of an intelligent species. Kardashev figured that a civilization reaches three key points during its development, separating them into types (K) where higher numbers correspond to a more advanced species. The types are as follows:

• Type 0: 10⁶ watts of energy production. This is minimal world energy production, enough to power 800 homes for a year.
• Type 1: 10¹⁶ watts of energy production. This is comparable to the energy of the solar flux on Earth.
• Type 2: 10²⁶ watts of energy production. Roughly the output energy of the sun itself.
• Type 3: 10³⁶ watts of energy production. This is the output energy of an entire galaxy.

*This scale is solely based upon energy production. There are other scales based on levels of manufacturing, galactic colonization, computing power, etc.

Current energy production levels put the current human race at about a Type 0.72 civilization. According to Michio Kaku, We are expected to reach a Type 1 civilization within the next century or two, with aspirations of attaining Type 2 status within a couple thousand years. From our feeble time perspectives, this may seem like forever. But in the timescales of the universe, 2000 years is a tick on the watch.

Let’s say that we’ve harassed the energy production comparable to solar output; a Type 2 civilization equivalent. We have one of two choices. We can either stay here, in our galaxy, which contains maybe 100 billion stars for energy output. Or we can choose to go somewhere better. Somewhere where our energy production potential for our species would be far higher than that of our average sized galaxy in this tiny local group. Alas, there are such places.

The alien’s aren’t extinct. They’ve moved on.

We have identified at least 300 BCG’s (brightest cluster galaxies) which contain 10 to 20 thousand more mass in stars than our galaxy, emitting a respectively higher total energy output. We also now theorize that the structure of our universe is divided into filaments with higher concentrations of galaxies being fixated at the joints. Surely there must be clusters of galaxies more fitting than our own to harness energy from.

The time span between when we began emitting radio signals to search for ET’s and the time we leave this galaxy could be a time span as short as 5 to 10 thousand years, a time which in cosmological terms is almost negligible. We have only been searching our galaxy for life for less than a century, and within a few thousand light-year radius. It is not inconceivable that every few thousand years or so, another alien species in our galaxy grows up and moves away.

Our window of opportunity to search for intelligent, space-faring life may be too small to find any before we, ourselves, become a space-faring species. The last intelligent species may have left the galaxy several thousand years ago and the next may not develop for another several thousand years.

The odds all point to the fact that life is abundant in our galaxy. Perhaps the reason no one is answering humanity’s calls isn’t because the aliens don’t exist, but because they have switched area codes. Our species may just be the next in an expansive string of species to grow up and move away from our home galaxy, The Milky Way. And if the aliens can do it, why can’t we?