Scan of 100,000 galaxies finds no evidence of advanced alien life

[Reefa]

In 1950, famed astronomer Enrico Fermi made a passing remark that has stuck with astronomers and SETI researchers ever since. It boils down to this: if there’s alien life out there, why haven’t we found it yet? Researchers from Penn State recently tried to put Fermi’s Paradox, as it has come to be known, to the test by scanning 100,000 galaxies for signs of highly advanced civilizations. The result? Zilch.

Fermi’s Paradox is more complex than, “where the hell are they?” It basically postulates that any sufficiently advanced spacefaring civilization could expand their reach across an entire galaxy in a few million years. Since the universe is billions of years old, there should be huge galactic empires by now. We don’t see evidence of that around here, so it could be that we’re alone in our corner of the galaxy, or maybe there’s no one else out there at all.

The Penn State team used another famous scientist’s predictions as a way to test Fermi. In the 1960s, Freeman Dyson asserted that any advanced society would have to produce mid-infrared radiation through their use of energy for space travel, communication, or anything else. This is a near certainty based on our current understanding of thermodynamics, and a galactic civilization should produce enough of it for us to detect. Using data from NASA’s orbiting Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) observatory, the team checked 100,000 galaxies for mid-infrared emissions consistent with a highly advanced civilization, eventually coming up empty handed.

Many of the galaxies observed are billions of years old, so there should have been time for a galactic civilization to arise in one of them, if such a thing is possible. The negative results could mean a number of things, though. First, there are no hyper-advanced civilizations out there. Alternatively, there could be a lot of life, but space travel could be much harder than we imagine, preventing the formation of galaxy-wide empires. One other possibility is particularly interesting — there could be a thriving galactic civilization right on our cosmic doorstep, but we’re not smart enough to notice.

http://www.geek.com/science/scan-of-100000-galaxies-finds-no-evidence-of-advanced-alien-life-1620511/

[Ballistic Gelatin]

No surprise to me.

All of the aliens are here lurking among us, investing in the Etsy IPO and upgrading their subscriptions to Netflix. ;)

[lurch234]

Heh! This reminds me of an old joke. Here goes:

The best proof that there is advanced extraterrestrial life in the Universe is that they never came to see us on Earth!

[CODYQX4]

Heh! This reminds me of an old joke. Here goes:

The best proof that there is advanced extraterrestrial life in the Universe is that they never came to see us on Earth!

You never know, for all you know Earth is some planet's Hell.