By Khushi Mehra
Humans have always suspected that they are not the only one in this universe, and lately scientists have calculated that, there could be more than 30 active intelligent civilizations within the galaxy. Some of them maybe advance enough to communicate with us.
This new study got published on Monday in The Astrophysical Journal. This work is led by the researchers at the University of Nottingham, concluding that the intelligent life not only exists off-Earth, but thrive on other planets same as how it does on Earth.
“There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as it did on earth,” Christopher Conselice, an astrophysicist at the University of Nottingham who led this research, said in a statement. “The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale.”
To guess the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, the team took into account two major “Astrobiological Copernican limits”, or condition such an “Intelligent” civilization would depend on.
The Astrobiological Copernican Strong limit is that life must form between 4.5 to 5.5 billion years, as on Earth, while the weak limit is that a planet takes at least 4 billion years to form life, but it can form anytime after that, the researchers said. “It is called Astrobiological Copernican Principle because it makes the assumption that our existence is not special,” Conselice said. “That is, if the conditions in which intelligent life on the Earth also developed somewhere else in the Galaxy then intelligent life would develop there in a similar way.”
If we find that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization could exist for much longer than a few hundred years, alternatively if we find that there are no active civilizations in our galaxy it is a bad sign for our own long-term existence. By searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life, even if we find nothing, we are discovering our own future and fate.
Image Credits: CNN
