Our cosmos is a vast and mostly empty landscape, interspersed from time to time with galaxies and black holes. Over 95% of Space is vacant, yet there is a tremendous possibility for life to thrive in this seemingly bleak conditions, and we ourselves are prime examples of this. This is because of the enormity of space, the few percentage of land masses accounting for billions upon billions of stars and their corresponding planets. It is not unreasonable to assume that life thrives abundantly in the cosmos. In fact, that would be the logical conclusion considering the fact that the elements to generate life are so abundantly available around the universe.
Organizations such as Seti have been examining the skies for decades now, hoping to find any traces of intelligent life in the universe using large telescopes and satellites. The search has not been fruitful so far, but it doesn’t mean that we need to give up just yet. There are many reasons why we may not have encountered Alien Life thus far, and some of the major factors are listed below.
Space-time is incredibly vast
It takes light 14 billion odd years to travel from one end of the universe to another, and that is light we are talking about – the fastest element in our cosmos. That is how enormous the universe is! The universe is also ancient, nearly three times older than our planet, and the scale of time and space just does not translate to successful results when we have just started looking for aliens.
It would be like hitting the cosmic lottery if we find proof of life within a century of looking.
Differences in technology
The technology we are using to detect alien life belongs to our time. It isn’t our most refined piece of technology, nor is it the best we will be able to achieve in the field. It is simply the technology at hand.
Considering these facts, it is not unreasonable to assume that alien beings are using different technologies in order to communicate with us, whether it means that they are more advanced than us or behind the times.
The signal is on its way
Even if we are technologically in sync with our closest alien neighbors, it doesn’t mean that the signal has to get here anytime soon.
Frequencies take a long time to travel through space, and the closest signal, despite being en route, may still be millions of light years away from us. We just have to be patient for now.
Intelligent life may be rare
Experiments conducted over the last five decades have shown us that it is easy to create organic molecules in a lab when simulating the conditions of early Earth. By using the right gases and elements (with just a hint of electricity in order to simulate lightening showers), scientists were able to grow organic life in their labs. The process of making that next big leap in terms of life forms is however extremely hard, and that suggests that despite life being abundant in the cosmos, intelligent life may be extremely rare to find.
This is probably why we aren’t encountering aliens willy-nilly.
Aliens don’t want to be detected
Since our planet is relatively new in the universe, it is safe to assume that certain life forms may be far more evolved than us by this point. These alien beings may be closely watching us at all times without being detected due to their superior tech. This means that our search will remain fruitless until the aliens want to be found, and that may never happen either considering our current political climate.
