Are we ALONE in the Universe?

By G. O. Okeng'o 

© Copyright by Okeng'o Geoffrey Onchong'a, All Rights Reserved August, 2012

The question of the origin and the existence of life in the universe is a very controversial one. On a very broad spectrum, the views on this subject, by different individuals, are bound differ according to whether one adopts a religious standpoint or the scientific paradigm. On a more general sense, however, the two pictures seem to complement each other with the former seeking answers to the questions “why” while the latter attempts to address the questions “how”. It is on this basis that it can be argued that science really does not necessarily anyway contradict religion but in actual sense the two co-exist to serve different purposes. However, this may not augur well with some schools of thought who may often want to initiate spirited debates on this subject (this is allowed!) but whose basis is likely to be due to a number of opposing views which I will discuss in a future edition in this series.

However, despite this quagmire enigma and the numerous efforts by scientists to discover other “earths” out there, one thing is as clear as snow; that we all know of only one place where life exists and we can see it today, and that is the planet Earth. But as discussed in my previous article titled “How Big is the Universe?” the Earth occupies only a very tiny portion of the whole universe and using the numbers I provided this ratio comes to about 1:3,000,000,000,000,000,000; that is one part in three billion billion kilometers, where one billion is the number one (1) followed by nine (9) 'zeros'. That's the region of space occupied by us in the universe!

While you digest these numbers, it is also important to further reinforce the fact that the Earth is just but only one planet in our solar system that consists of eight planets (following the demotion of Pluto- I will discuss this in a future edition!), located third from the Sun with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune being the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eight respectively, and this system, together with a number of minor objects including dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids and rock debris are what makes up our solar system.

A solar system by definition is an 'arrangement' of planets and other smaller bodies that orbit a central star under mutual gravitational attraction. But how many stars (like the Sun) do we have in the universe? How many of them have their own planetary systems? Is there a possibility that some of the planets going around those suns (stars) or some of them could be Earth-like? Could these planets be harboring intelligent life or any other form of life? Are we alone in the universe?

To answer this questions, it's important to draw your attention to the following known facts: scientists estimate that there are about 1 trillion stars in our galaxy and over 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Now, if we temporarily assume that each galaxy is a typical medium-sized galaxy, like our own Milky Way, (not a bad assumption since many of such galaxies are known e.g Andromeda), the total number of stars like the Sun in the universe comes to about 10,000 billion billion! Simple mathematical probability then undoubtedly leads to the (not) so surprising result that it will be very 'selfish' to argue that we are the only creatures existing out here... If true this is likely to violate the fundamental law of natural economics: “thou shalt not waste space”.

But why do scientists care about the existence of life outside the Earth? (extraterrestrial life) or other creatures to be precise? How do they find it? What do they look for? And what have they found so far?

The first question is tricky but easy to answer, the rest are a subject of ongoing research and can only be answered tentatively.

Well, scientists care about existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe because that is science; they are scientists, so they do science! On the other hand, the question of whether we are alone in the universe has vexed humans for a number of centuries and according to a recent television survey in UK published in the Mail Online (29^th June, 2012), this is the top-most question among the top mysteries that many people are most desperate to see solved. Second on this list is the cure for cancer, followed by a prove if God exists and as you might have guessed.... further down near the bottom of the list is the question of why the fridge lights do not go off when the fridge door is closed!

The following facts sum up answers to the questions above:

No contact yet with an “Extraterrestrial"

You might have heard, (or probably claimed yourself) that they (you) have been visited by aliens or sighted some Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's). But how true is this? And what does science say about this? To begin with, no ordinary mortal person can completely say that such creatures do not exist at all or that they haven't visited anybody. However, these claims remain untrue scientifically (unless one captures the alien for everybody to see or captures the UFO so that it can undergo lab verification tests to show that it's indeed an extraterrestrial!). Beyond that, such claims remains entirely unfounded and hence untrue (at least scientifically). To try and verify this idea, astronomers have for many years scanned the sky using powerful telescopes to detect weak signals from extraterrestrial beings but so far nothing has been detected. Relaxed now?

For Life to Exist conditions must be “Just Right”

For a planet to support life, very stringent conditions must be fulfilled. It must for instance among other things; contain sufficient liquid water, be at the “right” distance from it's sun (star) and must be neither too hot nor too cold otherwise all the liquid water would evaporate or freeze, hence support no life.

No spontaneous life

According to scientific findings, for life to develop, there must exist specific initial conditions. If such conditions are not met in a planet, no life would develop.

Vast distances makes finding extraterrestrial life (im)possible

If we could send humans onboard of the Apollo 11 mission that landed men on the moon, the journey to the nearest star Proxima Centauri would take about a million years. What if we can make it accelerate? You can quip! Well, if we send an unmanned mission cruising at the incredibly high one-tenth the speed of light (which is about 30,000 km a second!), the journey would still take over 40 years. However, the success of this will also depend on whether the spacecraft would survive tearing apart from violent collisions with the thousands of grains and loose particles present in space (which is most unlikely). But let us be optimistic enough and assume that the spacecraft survives and completes the journey. Fuel economics then dictates that an enormous amount of power (or fuel) would be needed to fuel this journey. Estimates (it is easy to perform a simple calculation to prove this) show that the amount of energy needed to fuel such a voyage would be equivalent to the total electric power consumption required to power the whole world for one month! Would it then be possible to send missions to other stars in the universe? Simple estimates tells us further (against the wishes of scientists) that not even a combination of all world economies would have the capacity to fuel such a project!

Now you know better; there is simply not enough technological manpower (at the moment) to enable us make contact with our 'friends' out there, so are we alone in the universe? Or what do you think?