In recent days the debate on extraterrestrial life has become popular, from the photos and videos that are already known to appearances in the U.S. and Mexican Congress with testimonies and “real” aliens, today we want to investigate the possibilities of finding extraterrestrial life.
Many claim that discovering intelligent life beyond Earth would be the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, the confirmation that we are not alone, that there are more beings like us out there in the vast universe.
The most impressive thing would be to find intelligent life, however, finding any form of life, even at the cellular level would be impressive, as it would give us clues to humanity’s biggest question, what was our origin and evolution on our planet, if it is taking place on another planet, and what places can harbor life like earth.
According to the knowledge we currently possess, it has been dated that life emerged 4.2 billion years ago, the gestation of this was more or less hundreds of thousands or 120 million years, which geologically speaking is a blink of an eye, and if you do the math, life has populated the planet earth the last 500 to 600 million years is about 14% of the total timeline of the Earth.
It may be that under certain conditions life develops rapidly and that organic life in its beginnings may be universal and frequent, and that according to chemistry life has certain recognizable characteristics.
Intelligent life is that capable of making systematic astronomical observations, now the time that this type of life has been on earth is very short, 0.00012% of the time that has existed on earth, if we take into account that humanity sends signals to space constantly, the probability that one of our transmissions is captured or that we capture an extraterrestrial one is very low.
It is quite possible that life as we know it exists in very high quantities, but intelligent life may be rare, in other words, plants, animals and unicellular beings exist, but according to mathematics there may be a 60% chance that intelligent life does not exist on planets with life.
To find life on other planets, scientists look for bio-signatures, i.e. signs of life or chemical evolution on exoplanets like the one just discovered by James Webb (K2-18b). Perhaps in the near future, we will not only be able to identify bio-signatures more effectively, but also maybe and only maybe we will be able to visit them and confirm the existence of life.
In the same way that we observe other planets, it is possible that some intelligent life observes us as well, just as we detect the existence of oxygen and methane in the atmosphere, they may have seen the same in ours. Perhaps they are observing us from a few light years away and are beginning to see signs of technology, such as chlorofluorocarbons, the carbon we emit into the atmosphere.
And while the possibility of finding intelligent life is there, for now we must accept that we may be the only intelligent species in the galaxy, but maybe someday, that will change.
