For centuries, humans have wondered whether we’re alone in the universe. And the idea that there
could be nothing else out there is too much for many to bear. So, why is it that we still haven’t
found conclusive evidence that life exists on other planets? Scientists continually tell us
it more than likely does, so what gives? This is Unveiled, and today we’re exploring
four extraordinary reasons why we still haven’t found aliens.
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Let’s start with the most obvious (and most cynical) reason as to why we haven’t found
any aliens yet: Because they simply don’t exist. The Rare Earth Hypothesis is probably the leading
theory on this particular idea. It argues that the conditions for complex life to form are so
incredibly rare, the chances of it happening are so impracticably slim, that we can say that Earth
is unique in the universe. Importantly, the Rare Earth Hypothesis doesn’t go quite so far
as to flat out deny all possibilities of any alien species (conceding, for example,
that microbial life might be possible elsewhere) it just says that aliens are almost immeasurably
unlikely. As a result, Rare Earth today stands as one possible solution to the Fermi Paradox.
As for evidence? Advocates point to the data that we currently have. Thanks to the many wonders of
modern science, we know that there’s a high number of potentially habitable exoplanets out there.
Distant worlds that could host the building blocks for life. But that’s all we have. Potential for
life, but still no life. For some, the idea that intelligent aliens just don’t exist is the
simplest explanation for this. They’re not hiding, or biding their time, they’re simply not there.
For intelligent life, specifically, we’ve seen how seemingly difficult it is to establish on
Earth alone. According to most models of our planet’s history, homo sapiens are the
most intelligent creatures ever to have lived - in four-and-a-half billion years’ worth of evolution.
There have been other, earlier humans that were also relatively smart,
yes, and there are some notably clever creatures today (like most primates, some dogs,
and dolphins and whales) but no other species has developed on the same scale as us. When,
on a planet as ideal for life as ours is, we’re the only intelligent species out of billions,
a Rare Earth theorist might ask; what hope is there for intelligent life on other worlds? On
worlds that seemingly aren’t as well-positioned or chemically balanced as Earth is?
But, of course, the counterargument is: what about all the other planets that are potentially
better suited to life than Earth is? Aliens just not existing isn’t the only solution to the Fermi
paradox… and for all the dangers of the universe, it can easily be argued that the odds are really
stacked in favour of extraterrestrial life existing. There might be billions of habitable
planets in just the Milky Way galaxy, let alone in all of the billions of other galaxies there are in
the universe. And only one of those planets needs to have developed intelligent life for aliens to
exist alongside us. So, why haven’t we discovered any of them? Today’s second reason is distance.
From our point of view, all of those other planets are extremely far away, and that’s a big problem
when it comes to humankind understanding the universe. We can’t travel at the speed of light,
or even anywhere close to it… but, even if we could travel at 99.9% lightspeed,
a circuit of the Milky Way would still take hundreds of thousands of years to complete.
And that’s just one lap of just our own, home galaxy. Current models claim that there could be
trillions of galaxies in the universe as a whole, in the observable and unobservable parts. So, what
if alien life – while not unique – is still rare enough that only a small handful of intelligent
species exist in each galaxy? What if humans are the only lifeforms in the entire Milky Way,
and our closest neighbours are in Andromeda? If it averaged out like this, with just one intelligent
species per galaxy… then there are literally trillions of aliens out there, but they’re all
so far away. We have almost zero chance of ever communicating with them, let alone meeting them.
In fact, the journey between us and them would take so long that one (or both) of us could be
extinct by the time we finally cross paths. It’s one reason why it makes more sense for scientists
to look for extinct (rather than living) aliens in the first place. And it’s why humankind is
arguably more likely to be discovered by something else once it has gone extinct… perhaps via future
aliens intercepting a message that we beamed out thousands of years before our own downfall.
We needn’t crunch statistics to discover another reason why we still haven’t found aliens,
though. According to multiple theories, it could be that they’re ignoring us until we
become advanced enough to comprehend them. We may well consider ourselves to be reasonably clever,
but in cosmological terms we’ve yet to even send a human being to a different
planet - and only twelve examples of us have ever walked on our own planet’s Moon.
That’s twelve people out of the more than one hundred billion people that have ever lived!
There are various theories, then, that humans are actually simple. So simple, in fact,
that higher level aliens have easily kept us from discovering any alien life until this point.
Think about it… even if evidence of extraterrestrials was placed on a table before us,
would we necessarily recognise it for what it was? Perhaps not. From our perspective, it’s why
something like the “Wow!” signal still garners interest. It’s widely reported as a potential
alien communication but, if it actually is one, then we still have no idea what it means.
Our potential ignorance could be so great that we may even need to ditch our traditional vision
of what an alien is (if we ever hope to find one). Increasing numbers of scientists
now suggest that if advanced aliens are out there, then they’re probably not organic beings. Instead,
they’re mechanical. And they’re capable not only of far higher thought but are also better
suited for space travel and they enjoy a much longer lifespan. And why would machines such
as these be interested in a fleeting, perishable, biological race such as our own, especially when
we can’t even leave our home planet? Call it a space-level status thing, or some kind of natural,
cosmological order, but we may never get noticed until we get knowledgeable. And
that could require us to make a seismic shift in how we even approach the topic of aliens!
And today’s final possibility builds on this. Because, what if it isn’t that aliens aren’t only
not interested in us to begin with, but it’s that they’ve observed us
(and tried to make contact themselves, before now) only, they don’t like what they’ve seen.
The last century of human history is full of stories of alien abduction, close encounters,
and alleged government cover-ups. Whether it’s the rumoured alien corpses that were taken from
the Roswell crash site, or the modern-day releases of confirmed UFO footage by US intelligence… the
feeling that we are not alone has grown and grown. But say the alien experimentation angle (as per
Roswell) was true, then wouldn’t that be another reason why we still aren’t living peacefully in
the company of ETs? If, in another reality, it was humans with higher level capabilities,
cruising through space, and you had crash-landed on an alien world,
the inhabitants of which swiftly bundled you off to a secret lab for tests… wouldn’t you advise
the rest of your home planet to stay well away from Earth lest the same thing happens to them!
Failing that, if an alien species were to intercept our communications and discover even a
snippet of how we perceive and present non-Earth lifeforms through science-fiction broadcasts,
could you blame them if they were wary of us? But, let’s end on a positive note. Because, for
all our gun-toting, alien-abducting, apocalyptic preconceptions, perhaps the aliens are leaving us
be for our own good. Perhaps Earth, to them, is an environment that needs to be protected. Maybe
they just don’t want to interfere with the unique ecosystem we have here. In some ways, it brings us
back to the Rare Earth hypothesis. But, in other ways it once again challenges us to bridge the
gap. To gain the knowledge needed to be accepted and inducted into an imagined higher order of the
universe, where dealing with extraterrestrials is an everyday thing. We can dream, can’t we?
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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