The Silent Sirens of the Cosmos

The Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2 telescope at the La Silla Observatory has imaged a region of star formation “NGC 3324.” The intense radiation from several of NGC 3324's massive, blue-white stars leads to the face-like appearance.

In most science fiction movies, space is loud. The sound amplifies the movie theater or your living room with thrusting engines, explosions, pulsars that vibrate with noise — but in the vacuum of space, there actually is no sound; you wouldn’t hear someone screaming at you standing right next to you.

There are, in the scale and scope of the universe, almost certainly “others,” standing right next to us. The odds of us being alone are astronomically (so to speak) low. How low? If you use an updated version of the most famous equation, the Drake equation (from two scientists in the fields of physics and astronomy in 2016):

Frank and Sullivan find that human civilization is likely to be unique in the cosmos only if the odds of a civilization developing on a habitable planet are less than about one in 10 billion trillion, or one part in 10 to the 22nd power.

“One in 10 billion trillion is incredibly small,” says Frank. “To me, this implies that other intelligent, technology producing species very likely have evolved before us.”

It should also be noted that life formed incredibly rapidly in the scale of earth’s history. Point being — there is even more reason to believe this isn’t some unique occurrence, but rather the inevitable outcome of what would happen on many similar planets.
So if the odds of advanced life and civilizations having existed in the universe is incredibly high, why in the cosmos have we not heard from them? We are transmitting in all directions — why aren’t they transmitting back? There are two obvious notions that come to mind, which I will mention, but I want to talk about a third, which I am going to guess you highly likely have not heard of. The most immediate reason that comes to mind would be how incomprehensibly vast the universe is. Since I used the word “incomprehensible,” I won’t even define it. I’ll just say go outside into the night sky one evening and look up. That is, for all human intents and purposes, infinite (also it’s a very healthy and soothing thing to do, at least for me).

The next possibility that comes to mind is that advanced civilizations don’t make it very long. Certainly humans seem to be trying to prove that point at a rapidly increasing rate. If technology advances exponentially, which we have every reason to believe is the only way it would with intelligent civilizations, then civilizations would soon have the ability to destroy themselves entirely. There is no reason to know if life outside earth is as defensive and hostile as life on earth, but if evolution holds true it would seem at least very possible. Benevolence would not seem to be a feature that would allow for early life to evolve.

Still, even given the above two, the numbers would lead us to believe that some advanced civilizations have made it, and some could very well have contacted us. So why have we not heard from them? I want to speak on a possibility that I assure you I could never have thought of on my own, but the more I think about it the more likely it would seem.

As we here on earth advance, there is a truism that seems irreversible. The more we use technology, the more energy we need. Right now we are classified by science as a “Type 0” civilization — we do not use all of our available planetary energy (we use about 1/4 of it) — but we will need not just all of our planetary energy but all of the sun’s energy as well if we continue at our current rate of energy needs. How would we capture all of the sun’s energy? Only a fraction is directed at us. To capture 100% of it, we would need to build some sort of barrier/wall (likely of incredibly small filaments) around the entire earth and sun, or around the sun that is funneled to the earth. If such a sphere existed (and again I didn’t originate this thought; it came from Dr. Freeman Dyson in 1960), then nothing would get out, and nothing would get in. By very definition, we, or some hypothetical other advanced civilization, need to capture everything. We would, in very real terms, be living in a hermetic bubble. And hence, other civilizations would not see or hear from us, nor us from them.

I write this not because I have a clue if this is the case. I have almost zero knowledge in this area. I suspect what I just wrote would make many astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists cringe. I wrote all of the above for one simple reason. The human mind itself amazes me. That Dr. Dyson could think of this idea — well that to me is something in itself. And if one human at one moment could think of something so creative, to me almost anything in the universe is indeed imaginable.