What If Aliens Are Avoiding Us?
A few months ago, scientists made a startling discovery about the size of our universe. Previously we had thought that there were hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe.
The new discovery however, pointed towards a mind blowing 2 Trillion possible galaxies, suddenly making the observable universe a lot more crowded than we ever imagined.
Just imagine the amount of stars in all those galaxies and the number of planets around those stars. It’s a number that we cannot even comprehend. And yet, humanity finds itself all alone, in the sheer vastness that the universe is.
This has haunted scientists and non-scientists alike for ages and nobody knows how long it will continue to do that. Judging by the size of the universe, it is statistically impossible that we are alone. So, where is everybody? Let me talk about what I feel, assuming for the purposes of this post that they do exist.
They Are Far Too Advanced To Care
Just take a look at the amount of progress that we have made ourselves in just the last 100 years. Technology is always progressing at increasing speeds and it is changing the world faster than we can adjust.
Now consider a race of alien civilisation that is anywhere from thousands of years to hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us. Their technology would literally be like magic for us, or maybe even beyond that.
Such a highly advanced race would not even spare a single thought about us, if they knew about us. Assuming that they do, they would most probably think that we are mere animals.
I mean would you care for contacting a pack of elephants in the wild for the sake of sharing of knowledge and what not? No, right? Similarly we might just be nothing more than dumb animals for these kind of aliens.
They Are In Observation Mode
The second scenario is a little less depressing. Maybe the advanced race does indeed know of our presence but are only observing us at this stage in our evolution.
They can have any number of reasons for observing us, be it studying how our particular type of species developed and progressed our intelligence and what we do with it, or it might be to understand how intelligent life in general develops.
It might be also that we belong to one of their territories without us even realising it. That is totally plausible isn’t it? It would be like owning an aquarium without the fish realising that they are in somebody else’s home!
There have been innumerable sightings of UFOs over the years. I know most of these are fake. But somewhere, I can’t help but feel, what if some of these were indeed true and they were just on their routine observations?
What If They Are Not There?
There is one more idea that is quite popular and something that has a huge chance of happening and one that might explain why we haven’t encountered any alien species yet.
See, we have begun developing AI and it has been really helpful and experts believe that one day it might even become more intelligent than us and that one day it might go one step further and gain consciousness.
What if the aliens went through the same thing? So, they develop this cutting edge AI and then it becomes conscious. Then one of two things might have happened. Either the aliens delegated all this space faring work to the AI equipped robot army.
Or, they wiped the aliens and started to explore the different worlds for themselves. Or maybe they didn’t want to become a space faring robot species and still exist on the home planet of the aliens! This is completely plausible in my opinion and something that any intelligent civilisation would come across one day in their advancement as an intelligent species.
I feel like they most likely have seen our television programs and listened to our "awards" shows and have decided "meh, not worth the trouble"
hahahahahhah True dat!! Absolutely LOL
Exciting post on a really cool topic!
My take is that aliens capable of traveling to the Earth will not care to significantly intervene in our lives. It's not like we, when coming across an anthill in the woods, step up and say "Hello little ones, I have come on behalf of humankind, now take me to your queen!"
Even if they wanted to study us they would probably make sure to not disrupt too much, just like if human scientists want to study an animal, they don't go ahead and disrupt the whole flock but instead take a lone animal. I can imagine us in a few thousand years when we can do interstellar travel. If we were to come across an intelligent life form, what questions would we ask ourselves? First we would obviously try to see to what degree they had come to master the universe through science and technology. If they were much less mature I would guess that we would relfect back on our own past and think that it would be better to leave them alone untill they were mature enough to handle our technologies.
Anyways a fascinating topic. Thanks for writing and sharing it!
I completely agree with you.
Also, looking at the same thing from our own perspective really is something I didn't even think of. It's so true that we would take the same steps of observation rather than intervention if we ever became advanced enough to find other intelligent life form that was still developing. Really cool point.
Thanks for reading :)
Thx for sharing
Thanks for reading :)
What if they live among us
That would be next level creepy!! :D
Thank you horsey!! :)
I take it for granted that Aliens would obviously avoid us.
Now on the other hand, if you consider the billions of years old the earth is, and the human population is still relatively new in comparison... we could be seen as aliens to the earth itself.
The fact that we're still discovering things on our own planet is obvious as to why we haven't discovered much in the galaxy either yet.
I don't think in my lifetime we'll discover intelligent "alien" life, not because it doesn't exist... it's just multiple centuries away before it happens.
If humans are still alive and well in 500 years from now, I think our chances of discovering alien life will increase.
Until then... I doubt we'll discover them (or them show themselves to us) (...and that includes Moore's Law still taking place.)
Now, I'm open minded about UFO sightings, etc, and the possibilities exist that they are interacting already...
..but I think those are specific rare anomalies that are short lived and will continue to be rare.
Yes, I too think that we are still a ways off from making contact even though many "experts" say that it might happen within the century. Who knows, right?
Interplanetary space travel is extremely difficult, the leap to interstellar space is nearing impossible. The vehicles required for such travel would need to be so highly advanced. One thing is certain, the human race will never be able to travel between solar systems in a time period shorter than several human lifespans.
There probably will be future colony missions but these will be long term one way trips. I see two valid methods: Putting humans into some form of cryostasis/induced hibernation state or a spaceship that is a literal city itself with people living and dying on that ship while it travels thousands of years to it's destination.
The prospects are grim and depressing. THe relevance to this post is that Alien civilisations will have the same dilemma. However I'm staying hyped for an ESA or NASA mission to Europa and it's subterranean oceans. Even finding some microbial life would make me cream my pants. As a budding physicist, maybe one day I'll be working on that mission Stares off into the sky longingly
Thank you sauravrungta, a great post about the first ever phenomenon that made me the aspiring scientist I am today ;)
There is one other way long distances may be travelled in a very, very short time frame. The concept is theoretical and we are still to observe one in real life but many things that were once theoretical have been observed. I am talking of course, about the wormholes. If they are discovered one day and we learn how to manipulate them, we could travel inter-stellar distances in a very short duration without breaking the laws of physics like the speed of life barrier.
As Neil deGrasse Tyson once said about aliens:
"It’s like taking a scoop out of the ocean with a cup and saying there are no such things as whales because there are none in my cup."
haha exactly!!
if we're being observed by an extraterrestrial intelligent species, they may view us as you'd view a virus or disease. any civilization that's capable enough to travel from their own home planet is sufficiently organized, homogeneous in purpose and united to look at our current state of affairs - environmentally, politically, economically - with disbelief and possible horror. if i were an outside observer, i'd doubt the continued existence of those i was watching.
and given intergalactic distances, i'm not sure the travel would be worth the trouble unless you were an anthropologist seeking dysfunctional cultures.
and if their technology is advanced enough to travel between planetary systems, we may not be sophisticated enough to detect their presence with our technology.
i'd take a look but don't touch policy if i were them ;)
nonetheless, an interesting topic and a thoughtful presentation as always! upvoted and resteemed! keep 'em coming. i especially like the illustrations you found. thanx for sharing!
Yeah, my thoughts are along the lines of what you say. We as humans need to unite and work as one species for us to be properly called a space faring civilisation. Any such large scale efforts would demand that. That's why if there are any aliens out there, they might just consider us barbaric and not worthy of contact.
This is fun to think about :) They have to be out there, it's too massive to discredit their existence. As to the size of the universe, it's so massive, the human mind cannot comprehend the complexity, and although our intellectualism likes to try, it's best to just sit back and become one with the now, because then at that point you are the universe :)
Yeah, I think nobody is denying the possibility of their existence.
There's pretty strong evidence that they have already been here. Ancient astronaut theorists have some interesting cases.
yes, I have seen some of those. Not sure what to think. So many wild theories out there.