When we look out into the star-dotted void of deep space, we see no obvious evidence
of anyone else populating the galaxy along with us.
There are a huge number of proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox as a result, I know of
well over a hundred, all varying in likelihood.
But in the end, it may simply be that life in the universe is common, even intelligent
life, but for some reason we simply can’t see it.
We just assume that aliens might want to contact us, so we look for it.
But maybe they don’t wish to do that.
So here are ten reasons aliens might not ever contact earth.
10.
We’re too War Like
It’s no secret that we are a warlike species.
Countless wars have been fought across most of the planet’s continents, and warfare
ranks as one of the oldest things humans do.
It’s also something we may eventually outgrow and cease, but we’re a long way from that
right now.
We also tend to assume that at least some alien species somewhere out there will not
be warlike, or will have long ceased practicing it.
Warlike aliens take many forms in science fiction, from alien invasions of earth such
as in Independence day, to interstellar wars between species, often depicted in Star Trek.
But aliens may not practice warfare at all, and have nothing like it in their history.
It’s also possible that the circumstances of a species never promotes any kind of conflict,
especially if an alien species maintains a small population by its nature.
As a result, when they come across a warlike species in their exploration of the galaxy,
they may adopt a no contact protocol and do everything they can to hide their presence
from the warlike species.
This may even extend to artificially cloaking their planets biosignatures to render their
technosignatures undetectable, thereby creating a very unnatural situation where the great
silence is explained by the notion that all advanced alien civilizations have technology
so good that they can't be detected, even if they are present throughout the galaxy.
Perhaps a natural end to this however is that once a species stops warfare and outgrows
it, then contact may be established and that the declaration of world peace on a planet
is immediately followed by contact.
If a species never gives up warfare, so long as they stay confined to their world and threaten
no one else, then that species may spend its entire existence believing they are alone.
9.
We’re not advanced Enough
We are not the only tool using species on earth.
Tool use among primates, birds, mammals such as elephants and so on are well documented.
But it actually goes even further than that depending on how you define tool use, it’s
been noted in nature that even certain species of alligator and crocodile will recognize
that birds use sticks to build nests, and in response actually balance sticks on their
heads and trap the birds as they go for the sticks sitting on top of the alligator’s
head.
This is rather amazing because it means that the alligator understands the seasonal behavior
of the birds, but also understands the concept of a trap based on a lure.
This research has been called into question recently, in that studies showed that alligators
may not be intentionally doing this, but at the same time, they do seem to balance sticks
on their heads.
But what we don’t really do is try to communicate with these animals on an international diplomatic
basis as though they were a nation-state entity.
This may be how aliens see us.
We’re new to the high technology game, even just a century ago we were not a space-faring
species, rather merely fantazing about one day doing it.
A century is not a long time in the grand scheme of the universe.
It may simply be that aliens aren’t interested in us at this level of technological development,
we might be noteworthy in the same way as the aforementioned alligator, but the alligator
is going to need to do a lot more evolving before we let them open an embassy.
We may be in the same boat, in that aliens may be so far advanced that we’re just nothing
close to even being able to comprehend them.
In which case it may take us millions of more years to get to a point where aliens find
us interesting enough to contact.
Or they may become so advanced that they do things like create a new universe of their
own and leave this one, and we m ay never know they ever existed.
8.
The Prime Directive
Perhaps a well worn concept within science fiction is Star Trek’s prime directive,
where you do not interfere or intervene in a developing civilization for fear of influencing
them negatively, whether through the introduction of technology too early or the cultural impacts
that premature first contact could have.
And those concerns are valid, if a bit cliche these days.
If we’d have been given laser technology in the middle ages for example, we’d have
probably either never figured out how to use it, or the local ruler would have put it to
military use and built an empire.
At the same time however, the argument could be made that certain technologies, such as
medicine, if introduced into a primitive society could transform it in a positive way.
But that assumes that you care, and aliens may not.
They may see no value whatsoever in interfering, even positively, with a developing civilization.
We do not vaccinate ants, as an example.
They may rather simply just watch, or ignore, developing civilizations deeming it simply
too much trouble to involve themselves in the affairs of a primitive, though technological
civilization.
Or they may go the star trek route and very carefully conceal themselves to avoid any
kind of cultural or technological interference, preferring instead to allow civilizations
to develop on their own and take their course until they come into contact with the hidden
alien civilization.
But in this case, you’d need a very secure, very advanced alien civilization because to
allow that to happen the civilization must assume superiority.
When the lesser civilization comes into contact, you’d need to be absolutely certain you
could defeat them handily and not get conquered yourselves.
This is actually a rather scary scenario, where the galaxy is ruled by an invisible,
but absolutely all powerful force that lies in wait for you to find it.
Once you do, it then judges you, and you either survive or you do not.
7.
Aliens Never Contact Anyone
When thinking about alien first contact we tend to assume that the aliens would want
to do it.
Two groups of technological aliens meeting and giving each other the vulcan sign of peace
is a common theme.
But at the same time, it may be that first contact just isn’t important to anyone except
humans.
We’d love to see it, but that may just be because we haven’t yet met an alien species.
Would it be the same after 452 first contacts?
Meeting the first alien species would be amazing, but would number 600 evoke the same sense
of wonder?
Well, it’s likely that it’ll never get boring for specialists, let’s not mince
words, I’d make a video on every single first contact here on this channel, but there
are plenty of people on the planet that would yawn and move on without much thought about
yet another alien civilization saying hello.
So you have to wonder, are there indifferent alien civilizations that place no value on
someone contacting them?
And, in the same grain, never try to contact any other civilizations?
And, there’s always the question of inherent xenophobia, aliens may not want contact with
anyone that isn’t them.
It’s possible, but this type of civilization has the odd attachment that they may end up
being among the most easily detected civilizations as far as technosignatures go.
If they don’t care about first contact, and just ignore it when it’s attempted,
then they probably don’t care much about hiding their presence.
Indeed, for security reasons, ensuring that their presence is known in order to scare
away first contacters might be a priority.
If you want to keep others off of your lawn, you need to put up a sign, more on that in
a bit.
6.
They Don’t Know We’re Here
Earth presents a sort of dichotomy.
On the one hand, our biosphere’s strange disequilibrium of certain biology related
gasses has been visible for a very long time, enough for any astronomer in the galaxy studying
exoplanets to have picked up on and deduced that there was a biosphere here.
It’s the exact opposite in regards to our civilization, we have only just barely been
detectable for a century, and even then intermittently.
Certain radar over the years has been detectable at a distance, but that’s about it, to hear
our radio stations would require an improbably enormous radio telescope, and even then, it
would have to be within 100 or so light-years to catch the propagation of our radio waves.
That’s only a tiny fraction of the galaxy.
As a result, while aliens might know that there’s a biosphere here, they very likely
don’t know that we’re here and it may simply be that we’ll go a long time thinking
about the great silence, until it suddenly stops being silent as alien civilizations
find out about us and start trying to establish contact.
First contact may not happen soon, but in a few thousand years it may be routine.
5.
Contact is Futile
Or maybe it’ll never happen.
Our radio signals are weak, and on some fronts are getting weaker.
While we probably won’t ever go radio silent, radar is too useful, it may be that we just
don’t produce signals strong enough for anyone to detect.
Maybe aliens don’t build radio telescopes the size of Chicago and they forever simply
can’t hear us, or even know to contact us.
And then there comes the possibility of actual direct encounters, and the problem there is
worse.
To actually meet an alien face to face, if it has one, is a tall order.
We know of no way to do it without crossing vast amounts of space, and doing so over a
vast amount of time.
The universe seems to short circuit every way we think of to accomplish faster than
light travel, and the few ways that seem viable, or at least don’t violate any rules of nature
that we know of, such as the Alcubierre drive, require vast amounts of energy and present
problems that may never be surmountable, such as whether you can survive in a warp bubble
of this type.
As a result, it may simply be that aliens are too distant.
We can’t realistically interact with them or even know they’re out there, and it’s
the same for them.
Thus if we never make a detection of an alien civilization, we could never rule out that
they’re not out there because of the great distances and energy involved with finding
out.
And, it’s the same for the aliens.
4.
We’re Too Different
Communication is something dependent on the assumption that whatever you’re communicating
with will understand you.
One does not expect to meaningfully communicate a complex idea to a tree or a rock.
Another human, a pet, and even a computer however can understand or partially understand
your meaning, and thus we communicate with them.
But that may not necessarily be the case for an alien civilization.
It may be that for them communication is just that, raw information transfer, and the pleasantries
of human speech and interaction are simply not present.
They communicate only when they wish to transfer information, and thus may never contact us
if they see no reason to.
This could be for a variety of reasons, ranging from them simply not being interested in talking,
to an overall conclusion that communication with us won’t work, either because there’s
no way we have to know when a signal will come through, and energy constraints placed
on long term broadcasts of contact signals leads them to never try.
And even if communications could be established, the alien civilization may conclude that we
have no commonality with them, thus no conversation can be had because both sides are incomprehensible
to each other.
That would lead to one of the stranger solutions to the Fermi Paradox, that communication is
just too hard so no one does it over interstellar distances.
Or, it’s not worth it because no one in the galaxy is likely to ever understand one
another, even if they do attempt to communicate.
3.
We Are Alone in our Abilities To Communicate
There are many ways to hypothetically communicate.
We tend to use spoken or written language, and while we can watch animal communication
occurring around us, only in rare instances do we know what they’re communicating.
We know the whales and dolphins seem to be saying something to each other, but what it
is eludes us.
On the other hand, we have successfully communicated with gorillas and chimpanzees, but only because
we were able to teach them sign language.
And there are other ways to communicate, chemical communication is another option as is tactile
or touch communication.
The question is, what method would an alien make use of?
The answer is that verbal communications for it may not be the cards, especially if the
atmospheric makeup of their world differs significantly from our own.
But if you communicate using touch only, for example, your paradigm on what communications
are becomes completely different from a human, and that may alter how they view communications
via SETI.
Same with chemical communications, transmitting chemical information by radio may seem completely
alien, so to speak, and a fruitless thing to even attempt for an alien species of this
nature.
So in the end, the very idea of looking for radio signals from an alien civilization may
have too many human biases built into the notion, and as such it would be no wonder
if we never hear from aliens, even if they are attempting to say hello.
This idea alone, may well lead to no one ever trying to establish contact.
2.
Don’t Blow Your Planet’s Cover
While we have never made an unambiguous detection of an alien technosignature, we do have a
handful of candidates.
These include some well known examples, such as the Wow signal and Tabby’s star, but
there are more obscure ones such as the star HD 139139 where it sees repeated dimming events
that appear to be transiting earth like exoplanets.
The problem is that during the initial 87 day observation period, there were 28 of them,
and none of them appeared to be periodic.
The star is a double star system, so it’s unclear which member is producing the dips.
Potential explanations for that star have included a very chaotic situation where the
planets in the system are unstable and we caught them while they were being tossed around,
also on the table is a disintegrating planet, an extremely dusty asteroid belt, and sunspots
on one of the stars, and no explanation quite fits.
As a potential alien explanation, the interesting thing about this star is that we actually
transit the sun from their perspective, which only about half a percent of nearby stars
in the galaxy have that ability.
We only are barely visible, but visible we are and if aliens were studying exoplanets,
they could in principle know about earth.
That might lead them to construct a huge, unnatural visual display, such as an inexplicable
transit pattern, to say hello.
But there is another candidate, and it’s rather spooky.
I’ve made videos on this channel on this star, and indeed all the other candidates,
but this one deserves more attention because if it is alien, it wouldn’t be sending a
message to us, we’re not a threat, but to someone else that is.
It’s Przbylski’s star, which contains large quantities of transuranic elements,
and weird decay products like Techniceum and other elements that really shouldn’t be
in a star.
On the one hand, this star may be in some bizarre nuclear circumstance that’s very
rare causing it to produce elements not normally present in nature, or it’s the activities
of an alien civilization.
If it’s the latter, there are a number of things it could be, such as making a star
into a nuclear reactor that can produce transuranic elements, or it could be warning to someone
that that civilization in that system is so advanced and powerful it can alter a star
and show that they have very advanced nuclear physics capabilities.
In other words, they could be telling someone to stay away.
If that’s the case, and the civilization went to that length to post a warning sign,
then it would suggest that there’s something highly malevolent and powerful lurking out
there presenting a threat.
As a result, it may be that no civilizations broadcast messages out, because it simply
isn’t safe until you are extremely advanced, or you’re noticed and destroyed before you
get to that level.
1.
There’s something about the Universe We Don’t Know
When it comes to understanding the universe we have essentially two handicaps.
The first is that our understanding of physics is incomplete.
We know some, but not all, and no one yet knows what lies in the undiscovered areas
of physics.
Within that question lies another question, is there something there that prevents or
discourages alien communications?
Are such things rendered dangerous in a multidimensional universe such as that proposed by String Theory?
But the second is the most problematic preventer of communications.
It’s simulation theory, and its implications.
While the universe probably isn’t a simulation, the possibility does remain.
The question is, is it testable.
There have been some hypothetical ways to test whether it's indeed a simulation, but
no answer so far.
That said, if we imagine that it is, then the result of that is that the entire universe
is essentially not real.
It may easily be that when a civilization reaches the simulation conclusion, then there
really isn’t any point to contacting other civilizations because, well, none of it is
real, and communication ultimately serves no purpose because the question of other civilizations
simply stops mattering.
It’s a bleak and somewhat terrifying possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.
The question then becomes, can you communicate with whoever is running the simulation.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently worried if we’ve
got our cosmology wrong, and it really is turtles all the way down.
In such a scenario, no one communicates across interstellar distances because whenever they
try all the turtles whisper hush!
And the whole thing becomes awkward.
Very disconcerting and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book retailer
and subscribe to my channels for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting,
weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.