The question “are we alone” has been proposed since the creation of intelligent thought. According to Fermi’s Paradox, intelligent life must exist elsewhere, even though there is no evidence of it (Zacharias, 2018). The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has been the major focus of many scientist’s lives, and for a good reason: we are not alone. There is too much coincidence in our solar system for us to be ultimately alone. Mars was moist and fertile before Earth existed, and it has been theorized that human’s original ancestral bacteria came from Mars, during the period of great bombardment (4 billion years ago, when the earth was being terraformed and constantly hit with massive celestial objects). This theory was proposed in 1996 when microbes were found in a meteor that was tested and found to have originated from Mars, which proves that some form of life existed outside of our planet (Gonzalez, 2014) (Tyson & Dawkins, 2012). Unfortunately, “life” is not defined the same in studies, so in this essay, “alien life” (or other similar terms) is used to define life that is capable of communication outside of their planet.

            How did life originate on Earth? What we know is that life requires a specific ratio of specific chemicals: Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, all in a 1:1 ratio. Coincidentally, the most abundant elements in the entire universe happen to be just that, in the same ratio! This leads to the inevitable question of: If the building blocks exist everywhere in abundance, does ETI exist? The ‘Drake Equation’ attempts to answer that question. This equation factors in multiple variables to conclude the chance of intelligent life. With 4 to 5 stars being born each year, half of them have planets orbiting them, and 2 of those on average are in the habitable zone (Haynes, 2018). These are just a few factors that play into the Drake Equation, which has a pessimistic view on the existence of ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence). The equations takes into account the 100 billion stars in each one of the 10 trillion galaxies, which equals to 1 septillion stars, and 19 sextillion planets exist that are similar to earth (Frost, 2017).

With all the chances in the universe to harbor life, it is obvious that only time is needed to produce ETI. It only took approximately 400 million years for single cell organisms to form after earth went through its primary genesis, and then evolved for 3.5 billion years to where it is today (Tyson & Dawkins, 2012). Four billion years is all it took to create humanity, and other galaxies have systems of planets that have been around much longer than earth. Even mars has fossils of microbials, which means that if a second genesis of Mars occurred, then there has to be life on some of the other billions of exoplanets (planets orbiting a star) (Kaufman, n.d.). This conclusion is drawn by analyzing that there are 2 signs of life in just our system. How can we seriously think that we are alone in this universe?

            Extraterrestrial life (ET) exists outside of our solar system, and might exist inside. The Milky Way galaxy consists of 4 arms, in which we are located on a desolate end of the Orion Arm (Tipler, 1981). This is relevant because we are far away from anything of importance. Any alien life capable of traversing space efficiently, wouldn’t bother with us. We are essentially in the “BFE” of the Milky Way (NASA, n.d.). Why would aliens visit us when major cities are just a few steps away (NASA, n.d.)

This leads to another point; we are useless to them. Unless they need our bodies for batteries, anything we could give them would be useless to a civilization intelligent enough to master space travel (Tyson & Dawkins, 2012). In 1964 Nicolai Kardashev invented a scaling system for theoretical ETI civilizations. A type 0 civilization (sub-planetary) gets all their energy from raw materials like oil, wood, and coal. A type 1 civilization (planetary) receives all the resources from the planet like wind/solar. A type 2 civilization (stellar) harnesses all its energy from the planet’s star. A type 3 civilization (galactic) harnesses all the energy from the entire galaxy, from all the suns and maybe from the black hole as well. Earth is a type 0.72 civilization, which means we are like an isolated African tribe compared to ETs (Faletto, 2017).

This only means that we won’t be visited soon. Humans have been shown to advance very fast, and we might be able to find life very soon. Bill Nye claims that within the next 30 years, we will more than likely confirm the existence of life on other planets (The Boötes Void, 2016). Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is one of the most promising areas to find life. Europa has a thick crust of ice, in which the core is liquid water. The main ability for Europa to maintain fluid, is the extremely fast orbit period. The pull from Jupiter squeezes Europa, maintaining its temperature due to kinetic energy (Gonzalez, 2014). This isn’t ETI, but it is interesting if we could find alien bacteria. The discovery of life in this moon would prove many theories of ETI correct, making it the 3^rd presence of life discovered just in our solar system.

Let’s say that alien life does exist, what would their species look like? We know that evolution is more than likely constant in the universe, so evolution must take place elsewhere. Humans adapted to our mild atmosphere and tall flora by making us skinny and tall, and fish at the bottom the sea adapted to the immense pressure and darkness by becoming wide, flat, and blind. This is the same for all life, and theoretically ETI. They would have adapted to their planet’s environment. This means that aliens would change their look based off a multitude of environmental factors, and what dominating species wins out natural selection.

            The Kardashev scale is a great scale to use when talking about advanced alien life. A type 3.5 civilization (sub-universal) would be in the process of dominating the universe. When a kingdom of that size exists, it would need a lot of energy. The best source of energy that we know of is nuclear fission, which is what a star is doing to create energy. Solar panels work great and all, but a physicist named Freeman Dyson proposed a revolutionary contraption: a Dyson sphere. A Dyson Sphere is basically a massive solar panel that envelopes an entire star and takes all of its energy. This means that we are trapping all of the photons trying to escape the star, which then makes it invisible to anything with human eyes (The Boötes Void, 2016).

            A type 3.5 civilization would have entire clusters of stars in billions of galaxies slaving away for their energy, which should make massive “voids” in space. This leads to my personal favorite theory: the Boötes Void theory. The Boötes Void is an area of space that has 60 galaxies in it, where it should have 10,000 (The Boötes Void, 2016). This void is 330 million lightyears in diameter, and 236,000 Mcp³ (megaparsec cubed) in volume. This void is so massive it would be like finding a single 6-mile-long object in the entire United States (but in 3 dimensions) (Dvorsky, 2012). It is so hard to put an area this size into perspective, but if we were centered in the void, we wouldn’t even know other galaxies existed until 1960 (Skibba, 2017). This empty space, I propose, it a type 3.5 civilization. The vast empire is using most of the stars in the area as a means of energy and conquering neighboring galaxies.

This leaves a lot of people with two questions: if they were to come here, how long would it take, and could we defend ourselves? The void is about 700 million lightyears away, so we are far enough away to not have to worry about it for quite some time. And a civilization as advanced as this would be impossible to defend against. This doesn’t give people peace-of-mind, but no information could do that. The immense amount of information that is lacking on this subject is daunting, but there isn’t anything we can do about it. This means that we should not care if alien life exists, they won’t visit us or impact us in any way that we could control. If they do decide to make themselves known, we would be at their entire mercy, like leaves and the wind. Humans have pondered for eons on the concept life outside earth, and I don’t think it’ll be answered soon. Their existence hasn’t, and won’t, affect us at all. If there is a super-kingdom of ETI that is conquering the universe in the Boötes Void, there is nothing we can do at all. If they come, then we will be at their mercy. This is why we shouldn’t dwell on it, look for the answer because of a thirst for knowledge, not to prepare for a fight. ETI exists, we just won’t ever know where or who they are.

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