Everybody keeps talking about what aliens look like and that they must be somewhere out there, in the vastness of Cosmos, probably even in our own Solar System. It’s exciting and intriguing to believe that we’re not alone in the Universe, although highly intelligent alien species might not be friendly to us at all. Countless movies, books, and cartoons were made based on the idea that humanity could come in contact with weird beings from other planets. But what if aliens are nothing else but the outcome of human imagination?
It might be sad for some people to believe that we are all alone in a Universe that’s teeming with galaxies and stars. As much as astronomers were able to measure, the observable Universe has 96 billion light-years in diameter, which is truly mind-boggling. Therefore, could it be possible that we humans are the only intelligent beings in the Universe? Well, yes, even though it’s a relatively small chance.
Complex life develops extremely hard
When we say “aliens,” it’s important to realize that the term doesn’t necessarily have to refer to little green men with pointy years who fly in superfast spaceships. Alien life could also mean microbes, bacteria, or small creatures that know only to find food and run away from danger. If we speak about that kind of life, sure, it might appear in numerous places throughout the Universe!
If, instead, we refer to aliens as those frightening creatures that we’ve all seen in sci-fi movies such as “Independence Day” and “Star Wars,” we’re talking about complex life, which can develop in the Universe very hard. In fact, complex life is so incredibly complex that nobody has ever been able to create it in the lab.
To have complex life on another planet, there are many conditions that such a remote world needs to meet. A stable environment is needed, meaning the right temperatures, liquid water, as well as a suitable atmosphere. It’s also crucial for the chemical building blocks of life, such as oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus, to be present in the right amounts on that planet. Furthermore, complex life also needs a planet that’s positioned in the “goldilocks zone” of its solar system, where there’s also not too much radiation.
You got the idea: it’s very difficult to find another planet that is so friendly to life as ours is. Therefore, there might not be a suitable planet for aliens to exist.
Astronomers have discovered only 5,000 exoplanets so far
There are only about 5,000 exoplanets confirmed in the Universe so far, and none of those that have been analyzed have been found to possess the right conditions for life. Therefore, ET & Co. couldn’t live on such planets.
As for the planets in our Solar System, none of them have what it takes to sustain life as we know it. Mercury and Venus are way too hot, while Mars doesn’t have enough oxygen, not to mention that the radiation from the Sun would instantly kill everything in its path that doesn’t wear a spacesuit.
Surely, in the end, we can speculate that life on other planets doesn’t necessarily have to rely on the same conditions as it does on Earth. That’s correct, but at the same time, it means that we don’t have any reliable pattern to use. In other words, if we’re free to imagine life the way we want, we can say that aliens could exist completely independent from the environmental conditions. They could even defy the laws of physics.
Someone once said that whether aliens exist somewhere out there or not, the truth is that both scenarios can be equally frightening.
