Alien Civilizations May Number In The Trillions, New Study Says

Here is an interesting article on the possibilities of other life in our universe. It looks more and more like the Drake formula will need a major update.
Alien Civilizations May Number In The Trillions, New Study Says

Frank says the potential number of planets orbiting their parent stars within a habitable distance is staggering.

“Even if you are pretty pessimistic and think that you’d have to search through 100 billion (habitable zone) planets before you found one where a civilization developed, then there have still been a trillion civilizations over cosmic history!” Frank wrote. “When I think about that, my mind reels — even if there is just a one in a 100 billion chance of evolution creating exo-civilizations, the universe still has made so many of them that we are swamped by histories other than our own.”

www.huffingtonpost.com...

“The existence of planets orbiting stars other than the sun is a 2,500-year-old question that has been entirely answered over the last 20 years,” said Frank. “We now know that every star in the night sky has at least one planet orbiting it, and many of those are in the right place for life to form.

This has been obvious to many lay people but without hard scientific proof people as little as 50 years ago were scoffed at for believing in extraterrestrial life unless they were writing a fictional novel, or were considered by some to be delusional. I personally have no doubt the universe is teaming with life...nope no proof so I guess you can call me delusional.

Awesome find! The numbers are just staggering. 1 in 100 billion.... And that is a conservative estimate. It really does seem to me that they are slowly introducing us to possible known truths, one drop at a time.

Well, they better get a move on and come pick me up!

a reply to: 727Sky

Assuming all life is the same as it is on Earth

Pretty big assumption considering how big the universe is

IF evolution is to be believed then it stands to reason that as life has evolved to adapt to the environment on our own planet, life on other planets will evolve to adapt to its own environments which means not all life is the same.

I mean you only have to look at the amount of different life on our own planet to see that life is so different

The whole goldilocks region for life is only for life as we know it, not as it may be

Hopefully though any intelligent life with FTL has put a huge "Danger Volatile Species" sign up for other space travellers to avoid us as we wouldn't make very good friends when we can't even be civil to ourselves

a reply to: 727Sky

Sure... pick a number, insert it into an equation, voilà a universe teeming with life.

Trillions....does that include the spirit beings that shun physical bodies like the plague?

Sure -- Trillions in the observable universe. There are even more if we count the universe that we cannot possibly observe. Then again, some people believe our universe is infinite (not me though, because I don't believe in an infinitely large space for our universe to exist -- but I digress); if the universe was infinite, then there are an infinite number of civilizations.

However, my take away from that article is something I have been saying for years now, and that is something Dr. Sullivan in the OP's article called:

"The cosmic frequency of technological species"

That is to say, given the age of the universe...AND given a finite amount of time that technological civilizations may exist, the question becomes "how many of those planets that could support a technological civilization actually have a technological civilization that exists 'right now'?"

Just because a technological civilization is able to arise on a given planet, that does not mean the technological civilization still exists on that planet at the same time we exist, or even has even yet to arise on that planet during the time frame that we humans will exist.

Someone wrote a paper to state the obvious opinion. Congrats.

Still no official contact so what do we conclude ?

originally posted by: frenchfries
Still no official contact so what do we conclude ?

1- Could be there are no short cuts for crossing vast expanses of the universe.

2- lies and damn lies

Well, Science used to say that life on a planet was rare, all conditions had to be perfect. I never believed that at all. Scientists fifty years ago were wrong. Even when I was young I knew that life on other planets might be different, their makeup may be matched to their environment just like ours is.

Over the years more and more scientists found evidence to show there was probably life out there, so they start saying what most people already said all along. The majority of people could just see, at least any with any real intelligence, that it would be extremely rare if life did not exist around the other little lights in the sky. Scientists say we cannot see a real lot of stars in the sky with the naked eye, I see way more than they say we can see, especially when looking at the milkyway. I think the beliefs of scientists are askew sometimes. They are being blinded by knowledge, they cannot see the whole picture. Discovering something new is much harder that way, they see what they know when they look at something. Not what is really there. I guess I got corrected a lot over the years by those who said I was not seeing things right, they supplied evidence that did not apply to the situation. Over the years most of what I had asked and shared with them has been proven to be real. I am surprised, not everyone was blinded by their knowledge I guess, but the people who did discover the truth were bashed or ridiculed initially for going against consensus of the time too.

originally posted by: frenchfries
Still no official contact so what do we conclude ?

Here are two possible conclusions:

1. They are not close enough for their EM signals (assuming they use EM to communicate) to be strong enough to be picked up by us.

2. Space travel is difficult, and they have not been able to visit us (or maybe are not currently visiting us).

Those are among several reasons why we have not yet had contact with an alien civilization.

a reply to: 727Sky

Aha! How time flies and math gets updated with little more than more universal thinking. Many of you remember how the original "Drake equation" bill of goods was sold to the public when it emerged from contrived computations. Sagan used it as a bulwark against ETs being common enough, close enough, and technologically savvy enough to visit us and give a sense of genuine presence to the UFO phenomena.

Then it was up-dated. Now, it should be scrapped as based on entirely false thinking. Oh, I know, the argument will be "BUT that is all we knew and supposed at the time!" Actually, that is all they wanted us to know at the time as the UFO had been well established as real ETIs here in our back yards.

Signs of life fossil life on Mars and intelligent manipulation of Phobos? Some things are still just too much to dump on the public at any one time. So they up their game a trifle by now suggest that we may not be alone and the galaxy crowded. --No proof yet of that they say, but they figure that you should be thinking of the possibilities.

It is all their game, folks, a long, decades long game played on us for reasons they feel justified.

If all these theorized citvilizations came into being in the same era, third generation star systems for example, and they are spread out equally in the universe, then none of them has sent signals far enough into space for detection by others.

Either that or we are alone.

Well, that just highlights the conundrum. The more civilizations you believe are out there, the harder it is to understand why we don't see any trace of them. Unless you're talking about hypothetical civilizations. Sure, there may be trillions of civilizations in some distant galaxy billions of light years away. But what's the difference between them and a completely fictional civilization? Essentially none.

Science is funny. On one hand, it will tell us that because of the basic laws of physics and chemistry the universe is likely filled with extraterrestrial life. On the other hand, it tells us that the universe is so incomprehensibly vast that the odds are very good that we'll never discover any of it.

originally posted by: TXRabbit
Well, they better get a move on and come pick me up!

you would think that they dont have their own problems?

to me i dont think that a i need a scientist to convince me that there are other civilizations out there, given the fact that this universe is more than 13 billion years old and with trillions of galaxies out there, as believer of a creator i dont believe that he created this universe just for us, that would make no sense at all

The cool part to me is the fact that for every planet that had a civilisation there must be millions upon millions more that just have all kinds of amazing plant like life growing on them.. Just quiet amazing sunsets by the ocean that nobody will ever see.

So, now the word study is synonymous with the word conjecture, eh?

This is all it is, conjecture. There's no "science" to back up someone's opinion. Not say there are not "trillions" out there, not saying they are. But it's not a "study." No evidence of anything found.

There is the argument that the parameters necessary for the existence of life are so narrow that the chance of it happening are incredibly small.

These kinds of claims of studies that are not really studies make "science" look stupid. Science falsely so called.

originally posted by: incoserv
So, now the word study is synonymous with the word conjecture, eh?

This is all it is, conjecture. There's no "science" to back up someone's opinion. Not say there are not "trillions" out there, not saying they are. But it's not a "study." No evidence of anything found.

Well, no -- they have not found (or otherwise have come on contact with) trillions of other civilizations out there, if that's what you're asking. I think this story would be a lot bigger if it was "we have proof of trillions of other civilizations".

All they have done was used the estimated number of stars in the entire known universe to interpolate an estimate of how many planets there might be in the known universe on which a civilization might develop.

This really isn't anything new. Science has been saying for years that there are millions of planets in our galaxy that might be able to support an ET civilization. If we assume we are an average galaxy (some are bigger; some are smaller), we could then multiply that number of habitable planets in our galaxy by the number of galaxies in the known/observable universe and get a number of potential locations for civilizations that numbers in the trillions.

There is science to back up this estimate -- i.e., the estimate is not just pulled out of their behinds. The science to back it up includes data showing the number of exoplanets found so far that may support life as we know it, along with the number of stars in the galaxy, and the number of galaxies in the known universe.

a reply to: roadgravel

1 ha , lightspeed 299792.458km/s and the endless space. Nothing can faster than light Einstain said. Lol and all the aliens obey. Somehow I believe that there are shortcuts... and the fundaments of nature aren't really that well understood. lol ask a scientists how much dimensions there are , can he answer that simple question ,i dont think so ? Even the why of that number (lightspeed) isn't known ... so much to learn as science advances.... So I think there are many many shortcuts and seas of time to visit us. They did in the past hence the megaliths but then a wonky show... And now people don't even consider the possibility... Back to square one.

2 LIES... well another word for lies is CNN and yet another word is MSM. So what do we expect from MSM ? The truth ? Well I don't think they are able to tell us the truth about anything. My point : I adhere to the Zoothesis and as time advances it comes clear to me that that is the only explanation for the lack of ET's. One Earth big zoo and everything is controlled , even science. and out there Triljons of civilizations... but not for us .. deplorable humans we are