 When I began writing Life-Line: Origins, I decided the novel would include no sentient beings visible to humanity. In the story, humanity focused solely on its own existence and expansion. As a result, they didn’t notice that human evolution had stopped. Over more than a million years, humanity expanded throughout the Milky Way, Andromeda, and Messier 100 galaxies - all while encountering no sentient life. I did this to echo the situation today in the 21st century, not to say we are expanding beyond our planet, but to ask what the results are in the search for extraterrestrial life.
To date, there has been no evidence of life beyond Earth’s biosphere. Yet this hasn’t prevented humans from exploring worlds in our solar system and beyond in hopes of finding life. The big question remains: where are all the aliens? Mathematical models predict that the universe should be teeming with life. Yet there is a theory known as the Fermi Paradox, proposed by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. The Paradox asks the simple question, "Where is everybody?" Since our galaxy contains billions of stars and habitable planets, an advanced civilization should have colonized or contacted us by now! Scientists don’t like paradoxes, however, and seek answers to this “problem.” So, there are a few theories that suggest why we haven’t been contacted by extraterrestrials. While researching my novels, I decided to do some digging…. The first theory is called the Great Filter, which suggests that intelligent life must pass an incredibly difficult evolutionary hurdle before achieving interstellar travel. So, the reason we haven’t met aliens could be explained by a filter created by our evolution from a single-cell organism to a complex lifeform. It seems we have passed this hurdle, which is good news for us. This hurdle means that developing sentient life is extremely difficult and maybe even random. There is also an extraneous filter, which could be our future, where civilizations always seem to destroy themselves with nuclear bombs, the destruction of their biosphere, or even rogue AI. Is this why we haven’t heard from them? They blew themselves up? Hmm, sounds like Skynet to me… The second theory is the Dark Forest Theory, which holds that aliens do exist but hide because they don’t know whether other aliens would be friendly. So the species in question would hide out of fear of destruction. As an aside, this seems to be a common trope in science fiction stories and movies. Are they friendly or not? Today’s science fiction often portrays contact as life-threatening to humanity. The third is known as the Zoo Hypothesis. This theory holds that advanced alien civilizations are deliberately avoiding contact with Earth. In other words, we are treated like a cosmic nursery or wildlife preserve. The reasoning is that aliens want Earth to develop at its own pace without interference. Remember the ending of the first Men in Black movie, with the aliens playing marbles with galaxies? Are we their plaything? The fourth theory is known as the Rare Earth Hypothesis. It suggests that the development of life is an extremely complex, almost impossible combination of cosmic events. These range from having a stable moon, a protective gas giant like Jupiter, the existence of plate tectonics, and being a planet that resides in the comfort zone that allows for life. This is known as the Habitatble zone or Goldilocks Zone. The plate tectonics one made me think, and I found out that it is like a thermostat or life-support system that maintains our climate, creates a protective magnetic field, and provides a nutrient supply for long-term biological evolution. All of this basically says that it might make Earth an anomaly rather than the norm for the universe. The fifth theory is the Transcension Hypothesis. This one is a rather interesting thought that civilizations don’t move outward, but rather inwards. They transcend to something smaller by living in virtual reality, compressing the technology down, along with themselves, so that they can eventually live on the event horizon of black holes. Wow! Honey, I shrunk the kids… The sixth theory is the Early Bird Hypothesis. Maybe we are just ahead of the game in the 13.8 billion years of the universe’s existence. So, we might be one of the first. Makes me wonder if we would make a good role model… There is the idea of the opposite of the Fermi paradox known as the Great Silence. It suggests that the universe is devoid of life, making humanity the biggest introvert known to the universe… A place where there are no radio transmissions, structures found on other planets, or evidence of tinkering by aliens in our own solar system. So, where is all of this taking me? Which theory best works with my storytelling? Why am I writing about this? It fuels the imagination! Now, I get to play with these theories and come up with a reason why there is (currently) no sentient life in the Life-Line universe. Which theory will I use? You’ll have to wait until a future novel in the series. In the meantime, watch for Life-Line: Diversions, coming soon! For more information, check out these references: The Fermi paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox The Great Filter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter The Dark Forest: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/dark-forest-theory-alien-life The Zoo Hypothesis: https://explainingscience.org/2017/05/27/the-zoo-hypothesis/ The Rare Earth Hypothesis: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/earth-and-atmospheric-sciences/rare-earth-hypothesis The Transcension Hypothesis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576511003304 The Early Bird Hypothesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firstborn_hypothesis The Great Silence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
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