The sheer scale of the universe strongly suggests Earth isn’t its only life-hosting planet. But do distant worlds harbor the types of advanced spacefaring civilizations depicted in science fiction, or just far simpler microbes?
Astrobiologists consider a planet’s age when searching for extraterrestrials. The standard logic implies that older planets had a longer time to develop advanced lifeforms. But while Earth is billions of years younger than many nearby exoplanets, one research team isn’t particularly worried about any impending visits from hyperadvanced aliens. As they recently explained in the International Journal of Astrobiology, their reasoning is more about plants than the planets themselves.
“Physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked, given the high likelihood of intelligent life in the galaxy, ‘Where are they?’” said study co-author and Northern Arizona University ecoinformaticist Chris Doughty. “This paper suggests that our exoplanet stellar neighborhood may be quiet because most Earth-like planets near us are likely to be evolutionarily behind us and still at the microbial stage.”
Nonsense.
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