Did All Alien Life Forms Go Extinct? Astrobiologists Say We Haven’t Found Alien Life Because ET Is Already Dead
A group of astrobiologists claims that the reason that we have been unable to locate life beyond our planet is because alien life has already went extinct. The group says that the problem does not lie in the technology we have available or the fact that aliens live too far away from us, but rather the extraterrestrials died off before we had a chance to meet them.
The Daily Mail reports that some scientists believe we have not found life on other planets because it no longer exists. Instead, the astrobiologists say we may find remnants of past life, but that the life that was once housed outside of our planet is long extinct. Therefore, this group of scientists believes we are likely alone in this vast universe. According to their research, life on other planets would be brief and alien life would have died out quickly. Therefore, alien lovers may be saddened to learn that ET may have went extinct before life on Earth ever even got started.
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— HighTechPanda (@HighTechPanda) January 24, 2016
The group of astrobiologists from Australian National University point to a number of discovered “habitable” planets that could have potentially been teaming with microbial life. They note that this life could very well have existed outside of Earth; however, it would have been very short lived due to the inability of the planet to stabilize its climate. The erratic heating and cooling would have made it impossible for life to thrive and grow as it did here on Earth.
The scientists looked at Mars and Venus as prime examples, noting that each planet could have, for a brief period, been habitable enough for microbial life. However, with the inability to stabilize the climate, Venus turned into a boiling hotbed that is inhospitable to current life and Mars turned into a dry, frigid desert. Interestingly, the scientists note that for life to survive it would need to evolve rather rapidly in a bid to stabilize its own climate and greenhouse emissions. However, this is difficult as early microbial life is “fragile” and most planets would not offer the habitat to ensure the microbes thrive quickly enough.
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— Fusion (@ThisIsFusion) January 23, 2016
Earth, on the other hand, was prime for life as we know it because early life forms quickly adapted to regulating carbon emissions in the atmosphere. The life forms then went on to producing oxygen, which led to the ability for new life forms to begin. Without this exact series of events taking place, life as we know it would not exist on Earth. Instead, Earth could have ended up like Mars or Venus, unable to regulate its own atmosphere with a sustainable habitat.
New solution to Fermi Paradox suggests alien life goes extinct early https://t.co/Q70qS810fK pic.twitter.com/oxb2qpFtp2
— io9 (@io9) January 21, 2016
Dr. Aditya Chopra, the lead author of the paper and an astrobiologist at the Australian National University, notes that life was almost certainly on other planets at some point in the universe’s history. However, these forms of life would quickly go extinct. Therefore, we may never find alien life because it has already become extinct in our universe.
“Early life is fragile, so we believe it rarely evolves quickly enough to survive. Most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable.”
In other words, there is much more to life evolution than simply being on a planet within the habitable zone with some potentially habitable properties such as water. Therefore, Chopra isn’t holding out hope that we will find ET anytime soon. Instead, he believes ET is already extinct as the exact series of events needed to produce sustainable life is a rarity even in our vast universe.
“The mystery of why we haven’t yet found signs of aliens may have less to do with the likelihood of the origin of life or intelligence and have more to do with the rarity of the rapid emergence of biological regulation of feedback cycles on planetary surfaces.”
[Image via Shutterstock]
