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Extraterrestrial

Is intelligent life doomed to self-destruct ?

By T.K. Randall
July 7, 2020 · Comment icon 17 comments

Will intelligent life inevitably self-destruct ? Image Credit: Henrique Alvim Correa
Scientists argue that if a civilization is advanced enough to communicate with us, it can also destroy itself.
The question of whether we are alone in the universe remains one of the biggest philosophical conundrums of our time. While it seems almost inconceivable that our civilization is alone in the cosmos, the fact still remains that we have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

One recent study calculated that there could be as few as 30 intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy, which might seem like a lot until you realize that in our galaxy alone there are hundreds of billions of stars and potentially many more planets than that in orbit around them.

Finding aliens, therefore, is like finding a needle in a haystack the size of the Sun.

But there is another problem that could confound such efforts even further - there is no guarantee that an alien civilization will actually persist for any great length of time.

The Roman Empire, for instance, lasted only 1,000 years - a relatively minor blip of time in the grand scheme of things. The window of opportunity during which an advanced civilization has the potential to communicate with us could be equally small.
It could certainly be assumed that any civilization with sophisticated space-faring technology would also be capable of annihilating itself - just as we could with nuclear weapons, for instance.

"Perhaps the key aspect of intelligent life, at least as we know it, is the ability to self-destroy," astrophysicists Tom Westby and Christopher Conselice recently wrote in Astrophysical Journal.

"As far as we can tell, when a civilization develops the technology to communicate over large distances it also has the technology to destroy itself and this is unfortunately likely universal."

Finding an advanced alien civilization that has either endured long-term or that still exists within that small window of opportunity, therefore, is likely to be very challenging indeed.

Source: Science News | Comments (17)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #8 Posted by Myles 5 years ago
Ethics also play a factor in this.    Perhaps the "intelligent thing for humans to do is to kill off 99% of the human population to allow the Earth health itself a bit.     
Comment icon #9 Posted by woopypooky 5 years ago
Advanced beings might not be using radio signal,..telepath maybe.
Comment icon #10 Posted by Trelane 5 years ago
Doomed? I don't thinks so. I don't think it's an inescapable future or just our fate as a species. Yes, the human species has a lot of things it needs to fix in order to survive.  
Comment icon #11 Posted by Hazzard 5 years ago
Even smoke signals are more likely than telepathy!
Comment icon #12 Posted by Sir Wearer of Hats 5 years ago
Humanity will be fine then!
Comment icon #13 Posted by third_eye 5 years ago
You sir, is too intelligent for our own good...  ~
Comment icon #14 Posted by Desertrat56 5 years ago
And they could have a different way of sending signals than radio waves.
Comment icon #15 Posted by XenoFish 5 years ago
Even if they did send it through radio waves or whatever type of communication they have. How are to even understand what they say, if they say anything?
Comment icon #16 Posted by XenoFish 5 years ago
Let's say that humans within 3000 years have colonized our entire solar system. Now let's just add an additional 3000 years and we as a species have branched further. By then our language will have changed, even communication between the inner and outer colonies might be confusing if for some reason we lost communication for some extended time. So even talking to our own kind would become a challenge. I can't imagine a species unlike our own trying to say "Hey wassup."
Comment icon #17 Posted by TripGun 5 years ago
If they have democrat ran cities I could see it.


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