The Fermi Paradox and the Tape Recorder of Life

Exobiology
Written By First Admin

Introduction

Habitable planets are believed to be common throughout the universe, so where are all the aliens?
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Alone in a Crowd?

Common bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus, noticeably not assembling a smartphone or arguing about pineapple on pizza.
NASA (Public domain)

Here’s a no-brainer: intelligent life exists in the universe. Exhibit A? Us! Yep, you and I, sipping coffee and pondering the stars, are proof that brains capable of building smartphones and arguing over pizza toppings exist. But it does make you wonder: are there other intelligent beings out there, maybe debating their own version of pineapple-on-pizza somewhere in the vastness of space?

Sure, many animals on Earth get the whole “I think, therefore I am” thing1, and a few of them—like crafty crows or self-aware elephants—get the “I think, and also other people think“ as well2, but none of them are launching rockets or writing sci-fi novels. If we’re hunting for alien civilizations with tech as fancy as ours (or fancier!), we’ve got to look beyond our pale blue dot to the twinkling stars. Spoiler alert: so far, our search for cosmic kin has been a bit of a letdown. We used to dream of Martian metropolises or Venusian villages, but we haven’t found so much as an alien amoeba, let alone a little green philosopher.

Still, the question nags at us like a catchy song stuck in our heads: Are we alone? Even without definitive evidence, we can play detective, piecing together clues from life on Earth to sketch out what alien life might look like. Meanwhile, we keep scouring Mars’ dusty dunes and Enceladus’ icy oceans, hoping to stumble across a microbial “hello.”

Adventures in Astrobiological Spitballing

Running the Numbers

Innumerable stars and planets fill the universe. But how many are home to beings like us? Let’s do the numbers.
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Fermi & Drake: Not-So-Scary Numbers

Enter the Fermi Paradox, one of the universe’s most frustrating head-scratchers. It goes like this: the galaxy’s chock-full3 of potentially habitable planets, and it’s been around for billions of years. Even with slow, sub-lightspeed spaceships, a motivated alien civilization could’ve turned the Milky Way into their personal empire by now4. So, where’s the galactic welcome mat? Why isn’t our cosmic neighborhood buzzing with alien tourists? Something’s gotta be holding back the interstellar party planners, but what?

To crack this mystery, we turn to the Drake Equation5, a cosmic recipe for guessing how many alien civilizations might be out there waving “hi” (or at least broadcasting something we could detect). It looks like this:

N = R✴ • fp • ne • fl • fi • fc • L

Woah! Translation, please!

  • N: How many alien civilizations we might detect.
  • R✴: How many new stars pop up in the galaxy each year.
  • fp: The fraction of stars with planets.
  • ne: How many of those planets are Earth-like.
  • fl: The odds that an Earth-like planet grows life.
  • fi: The odds that life gets smart.
  • fc: The odds that smart life starts sending out cosmic postcards (like radio signals).
  • L: How long those civilizations stay “online” for us to notice.

The Inconvenient Truth

Here’s the catch: we only have solid numbers for R✴ (about one star forms per year6) and fp (surveys say nearly every star has planets7). The rest? Total guesswork. We don’t know how many planets are cozy for life, how often life pops up, or if it evolves into something that invents Wi-Fi. And how long do civilizations last before they, say, binge-watch themselves into extinction? No clue.

So, what did Frank Drake do back in 1961? He and his pals took a wild stab at it:

  • 1 star forms per year (nailed it).
  • 20–50% of stars have planets (modern data says closer to 100%—nice!).
  • Each star has 1–5 Earth-like planets.
  • All Earth-like planets sprout life (bold!).
  • All life gets intelligent (super bold!).
  • 10–20% of smart life sends detectable signals.
  • Civilizations stay detectable for 1,000 to 100 million years (that’s a big range!).

Plug in those numbers, and you get anywhere from 20 to 50 million alien civilizations in the Milky Way5. That’s like saying, “There could be 20 people at the party… or 50 million.” Not exactly helpful! The equation’s more of a cosmic thought experiment, pointing out three big question marks:

  • Does every star system have at least one life-friendly planet?
  • Does every life-friendly planet always cook up intelligent life?
  • Do advanced civilizations stick around for thousands or millions of years, beaming signals like cosmic DJs?

Are these guesses legit, or are we just shouting into the void? Let’s put on our detective hats and find out!

Habitable Worlds and Where to Find Them

Physical Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

Galaxy M61 contains hundreds of millions of stars. But which, if any, are circled by Earth’s distant cousins?
ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team (CC BY 4.0)

Let’s begin with the first question:

Does every star system have at least one life-friendly planet?

To figure this out, we need to talk about what makes a planet “life-friendly.” Here on Earth, every critter from tiny bacteria to massive whales needs liquid water to keep the party going, so it’s a safe bet alien life might need it too (though we’ll circle back to that idea later). For water to stay liquid—not frozen into cosmic ice cubes or boiled away into space steam—a planet needs to orbit in the circumstellar habitable zone, aka the “Goldilocks zone,” where it gets just the right amount of starlight. Too much (more than 110%8 of what Earth gets), and you’ve got a runaway greenhouse sauna that evaporates the oceans; too little (less than 35%9), and you’re stuck with a frozen snowball planet.

Out of the confirmed exoplanets we’ve spotted, about sit in this Goldilocks sweet spot, suggesting roughly 3% of planets might be habitable. But hold your space horses—that’s a super rough guess, and there’s plenty of debate about whether the real number’s way higher or depressingly lower.

The Pessimistic Case: The Universe Is a Tough Neighborhood

Imagining a cosmic barbecue gone wrong.
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Picture a planet where one side’s roasting under a never-setting sun while the other’s locked in eternal, teeth-chattering darkness. Could life even deal with that?

Some folks, waving the Rare Earth Hypothesis10 flag, argue that habitable planets are rarer than a polite internet comment section. They say a planet needs a ton of things to go just right to host life, even if it’s in the Goldilocks zone. Obvious stuff includes:

  • A chill star that doesn’t barbecue its planets.
  • A star not too beefy (under 1.5 times the Sun’s mass) so it sticks around long enough for life to evolve past the slime stage.
  • Enough heft to hold onto its oceans and atmosphere, unlike poor, nearly-airless Mars.
  • Not a gas giant—life needs a solid surface to hang out on.
  • No constant asteroid bombardment turning the planet into a cosmic pinata.

Then there’s the more unexpected stuff:

  • A star that avoids the galaxy’s spiral arms, where supernovae throw deadly radiation parties.
  • No , so the planet doesn’t have one side frozen solid while the other’s a lava lamp.
  • A nice, circular orbit for stable weather (unlike with orbits loopier than a rollercoaster).
  • A Jupiter-like bouncer to fend off rogue asteroids, but not so close it yeets the planet out of orbit.
  • A magnetic field to shield the atmosphere from solar zaps.
  • to keep the climate in check with a fancy carbon cycle.
  • A big moon to stabilize the planet’s wobble, avoiding climate chaos.
  • Just the right amount of water—not so much it’s a global swimming pool, but enough for life to splash around in.

Phew! That’s a checklist longer than my grocery list. If all these boxes need checking, the odds of finding a habitable planet might drop from “slim” to “are you kidding me?” Just ruling out (maybe-) gas giants shrinks our 176 candidates to a measly 8.

The Neutral Case: Maybe the Universe Isn’t That Picky

But hold up—don’t write off the cosmic party just yet. The Rare Earth crowd might be painting the universe as a barren wasteland, but new data and snazzy computer models are loosening up those strict rules:

  • Earth’s zipped through the Milky Way’s spiral arms plenty of times without getting zapped into extinction11, 12.
  • Tidally locked planets? They might still have cozy climates if their atmospheres shuffle heat to the dark side13, 14, 15.
  • Wacky, elliptical orbits? Some planets can still stay habitable16.
  • Jupiter as a cosmic bodyguard? Turns out, it might cause as many asteroid problems as it solves17.
  • No magnetic field? Venus is rocking a thick atmosphere without one, so maybe it’s not a dealbreaker18, 19.
  • Our big Moon stabilizing Earth’s tilt? Nice, but a faster-spinning planet could do without it20.
  • Gas giants in the Goldilocks zone might have Earth-like moons throwing their own life parties21.
  • Even planets drowning in water might still have some land thanks to some geochemical magic22.
  • Plate tectonics, like on Venus and Europa, might be more common than we thought23, 24.

Here’s the thing: Earth’s our only data point, like judging a whole restaurant based on one dish. Our planet’s quirks—like its oversized Moon, restless crust, or magnetic shield—might just be happy accidents, not must-haves for life. Maybe alien life’s out there thriving on planets we’d call “weird.” Who are we to say they can’t make it work without our exact setup?

So, how common are Earth-like planets? Are they one-in-a-billion unicorns or more like one-in-ten cosmic regulars? With these optimistic updates, I’m betting closer to the latter. But here’s a wild thought: do we even need Earth-like planets for life to throw a party? Let’s keep pondering that one!

Optimistic Case - Marginal Habitats

Icy moons, like Saturn’s Mimas, Enceladus, and Rhea here appear nothing like Earth. But might worlds as strange as these be suitable habitats for life?
(Image: NASA/Cassini)

The astrophysical community is generally a lot more optimistic about the prevalence of life-bearing planets than strict Rare Earth adherents, and indeed there are numerous reasons to believe that significantly more than 3% of all planets can support at least simple life.

On Earth we know of many extremophiles that can survive conditions wildly hostile to ourselves. They might find even freezing or boiling planets quite homely. In fact, there are many places in our own seemingly-barren Solar System that known extremophile lifeforms would find quite homely[40].

Let's meet a few critters who challenge our ideas of the limits of life.

Case 1. The Deserts of Mars

Mars, once the subject of so much exobiological speculation, is a pretty horrible place to live. It is dry, cold, toxic and its thin atmosphere does little to protect its surface from cosmic radiation. Were a human to step out unprotected onto the Red Planet's surface, they would quickly succumb to asphyxiation and hypothermia as their blood boiled in the low-pressure air.

Some relatively complex organisms, like this Rusavskia elegans lichen, do quite well under simulated Martian conditions. This one can even survive out in the hard vacuum of outer space for well over a year!

(Image: Jason Hollinger (original photograph), Papa Lima Whiskey (derivative edit) CC BY-SA 3.0)

But there are numerous creatures on Earth who would find our hypothetical Martian vacation trip tolerable, if not especially pleasant. Lifeforms trying to survive on exposed Martian surfaces will be most challenged by extreme dessication, radiation exposure and regular plunges to -100°C. As it turns out, the first two problems have basically the same solutions; DNA is damaged in similar ways by dryness and ionizing radiation so the various lifeforms that inhabit deep deserts also happen to tolerate radiation fairly well. Indeed, several species of desert lichens have been observed happily photosynthesizing under simulated Martian conditions.

As for the cold, there are solutions as well. Ever-resilient bacteria can remain active at temperatures as low as -40°C, while the hibernating tuns of water bears can plunge to near absolute zero (-272°C) and still revive upon the return of tolerable conditions. It is not hard to imagine colonies of lichens sheltering under rocks or in fissures in the Martian crust, getting by on meagre trickles of groundwater and sheltering entire ecosystems of microscopic fauna. Such a situation may be in our own future as we inadvertently contaminate Mars with extremophile life riding on the surfaces of our space probes.

Case 2. The Frozen Seas of Europa

Slightly further from home, we come upon the icy moon Europa. Though its surface is airless, freezing and radioactive, Europa is a frequent target of exobiological studies since its water-ice crust encases a subterranean liquid water ocean many times more voluminous than Earth's world ocean. Though we have yet to directly explore Europa's underground sea, orbital observations suggest a depth of 100-200 kilometres above a rocky bottom dotted with hydrothermal vents that spew organic materials into the water. The subsurface ocean is probably oxygenated, rich in CO2 and somewhat salty, much like Earth's.

The challenges to lifeforms trying to inhabit Europa's seeas are twofold. Firstly, the ice above the ocean is too thick to allow sunlight to pass through and so it is pitch dark. Secondly, the huge volume of water and ice generates pressures at the ocean floor of up to 2500 atmospheres, enough to instantly reduce a human to organic paste. Additionally, the ocean might be extremely salty, though our constraints on Europan salinity are poorly established.

In any case, there are plenty of organisms on Earth that can overcome all of these problems. While all the life we are personally familiar with is ultimately reliant on the Sun and photosynthesis for food, hydrothermal vents in Earth's seas are famously home to ecosystems entirely divorced from light, consuming toxic chemicals in volcanic fluids into usable energy. These vent ecosystems host numerous complex lifeforms from giant tubeworms to blind shrimp to ghostly octopuses. The animals in these ecosystems are still tied to the Sun for their oxygen, but on Europa where radiation-generated oxygen is delivered to the ocean by subduction even this tenuous link can be severed.

The pressure of Europa's seabeds is admittedly above the tolerance of any known animal, but this is likely because Earth's oceans are simply too shallow - even the deepest parts of the Mariana Trench which sit at pressures of 1,200 atmospheres are home to numerous animals like shrimp, sea cucumbers and scale worms. It is likely that they could evolve to withstand greater pressures were there any need to do so. Indeed some preliminary studies suggest bacteria can survive up to 10,000 atmospheres, rendering Europa a trivial challenge. As for the salt, there are ways around that as well. Numerous bacteria, archaea and even some more complex organisms like fungi can survive in waters up to 30% salt by weight(!), more than enough to deal with any plausible Europan ocean salinity.

And Europa is not alone. A similar (and less pressurised) ocean certainly exists on Saturn's moon Enceladus, while another is in the process of forming on Enceladus's neighbour Mimas. Additional subsurface water bodies may exist on the larger moons of Uranus and the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris; all of them may be habitable to at least simple life.

Case 3. The Flesh-Eating Lakes of Kepler-452b

Let's kick things up a notch with a world even further from home. Kepler-452b is a candidate planet some 1,800 light-years away, orbiting a star slightly brighter than the Sun. At five times Earth's mass and 1.5 times its width this is a massive world near the upper limit of terrestrial planet size. While we make few definitive statements about this planet's surface, it is not implausible that vigorous tectonics would result in an unbearably warm world heated by a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere with near-boiling seas stabilised by crushing atmospheric pressure and highly acidic contaminants.

Once again, life rises to the challenge. Numerous microbes can handle temperatures well past human sensibility provided a source of water - the archaeon Methanopyrus kandleri can survive and reproduce in volcanic fluids at 122°C(!!!), while the absolute limits of thermal tolerance may lie as high as 150°C. Neither does the acid pose an insurmountable challenge - other archaea, such as Picrophilus torridus, are unfazed even by highly concentrated sulphuric acid. While complex life is not known to withstand these conditions, archaea do occasionally display multicellular tendencies and globally harsh conditions might allow these tendencies to compound into high levels of complexity.

Case 4. The Eternal Dark of OGLE-2016-BLG-1928

Very Optimistic Case: Alternative Biochemistries

Though the range of extremes we have explored thus far may seem impressive, we have only used the limited biodiversity available to us on Earth to populate them. An intriguing proposal exists that may expand the habitable universe by orders of magnitude - that of alternate biochemistries. All known life on Earth constructs its genome from DNA, its enzymes from left-handed amino acids, and its food from right-handed sugars. On a deeper level, all Earth life is reliant on water as a solvent to facilitate its carbon-based chemistry. Some scientists have proposed that this is not the only way to construct a living organism, and that alternative chemicals could be substituted to create a plethora of bizarre forms.

At the most basic level, it is possible to construct one's genome out of an information-carrying molecule that is not DNA. On Earth, some viruses already do this, using RNA to carry their biological instructions instead. Though RNA and DNA behave very similarly, other nucleic acids have significantly different properties. Glycol nucleic acid (GNA) is exceptionally stable at high temperatures[50] and could allow for life on very hot worlds like Kepler-452b, while genomes made from peptide nucleic acids (PNA) resist acidic environments[51]. Though not as common in the cosmos as DNA and RNA, these genetic codes can form in nature[52] and could conceivably become the basis of life in environments[52] where their common counterparts fail.

At a higher level, the medium in which the reactions of life occur can be changed as well. Water is useful for life because it is a powerful solvent that can carry all sorts of biochemicals, but water-like chemicals such as ammonia[53] and sulfuric acid[53] might be able to do its job. These substances are liquid under vastly different temperature ranges than water is, so they could permit life on planets far too hot[54] or cold[55] for water oceans.

Even hydrophobic liquids like gasoline or liquid methane could conceivably support life of a very different variety. Though not as good at dissolving things, they are far less chemically harsh[56] than water is, allowing life to make use of a whole world of delicate molecules to cope with the unconventional environment. The plastic resin acrylonitrile is even known to form cell-like structures[57] in certain hydrophobic solvents. Life built from this exotic biochemistry would inhabit worlds devoid of liquid water, such as Saturn's frigid moon Titan, which is famous for its methane seas. It has been proposed that this type of exotic organism would convert acetylene and hydrogen gas into methane and indeed there is something[58] on the surface of Titan that does just that!

Finally, some particularly speculative hypotheses propose that life may not need to be based on the chemistry of carbon at all. While carbon is unique among the elements for its tendency to bind to itself in large, complex molecular structures, some authors have proposed that other elements may be able to mimic its behavior adequately enough to sustain living systems. Silicon, which is chemically similar to carbon, is a common contender[59]. Boron, carbon's neighbor on the periodic table, is even more versatile in certain ways[60]. In extremely high-temperature conditions, even normally inert metals will become chemically active and link up with silicon and oxygen in complex structures speculatively permissive to life[61]. Organisms based on boron or silicon might be exceptionally resistant to cold, inhabiting environments like Titan's freezing lakes, while metal-based lifeforms would be so heat-resistant as to be able to live in molten lava.

Unfortunately for our speculations, each of these exotic biochemical systems has its weaknesses - silicon forms only weak bonds with itself and instead prefers to form inert crystals[59] with oxygen, boron is rare in the universe[62] and its compounds are dangerously explosive in the presence of oxygen, while high-temperature metallic chemistry is so poorly known it is unclear whether life would be possible at all. If they truly exist, non-carbon based lifeforms would be universal rarities, relegated to the toughest and most hostile of environments.

Regardless, it is evident that life is a lot more adaptable than we give it credit for. In the end, Drake may have had the right idea - it will always find a way.

Convergence vs. Contingency

Evolutionary Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

How often do complex lifeforms actually develop on habitable worlds?
(Image: Me, via SpaceEngine)

Our examination suggests that Drake’s first assumption is correct. Life, at least in its simplest form, is an adaptable and resilient thing that quite possibly pervades the universe. From that, Drake concludes:

All life-supporting planets inevitably develop a transmitting civilization.

But there is a vast gulf between simple microbe and thinking man. Is this gap surmountable? Let’s look at the data.

The view of evolution as a sequence leading up to humans is common in popular culture. But is it accurate?
(Image: March 11, 1876 Scientific American, p. 167)

Drake assumed that intelligent beings would inevitably[63] emerge in any sufficiently advanced ecosystem. He, along with fellow astronomer Carl Sagan and paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, argued in the late 1990s to early 2000s that convergent evolution[64] would ensure that something would eventually fill the 'intelligence niche' that humans occupy on Earth. They cited[63] a trend of increasing complexity and intelligence among organisms from protozoa to invertebrates to reptiles to mammals to man, which they reasoned was a natural consequence of the complexficiation of ecosystems through Earth's history. Sagan in particular suggested[63] that high intelligence is advantageous for all animals, so natural selection would eventually push all life to sapience. They also argued[65] that statistically, Earth is probably a typical[66] member of the habitable planet population, so we should expect that other planets are populated by lifeforms similar to humans.

It might seem intuitive that human intelligence would be advantageous to evolve, given how completely we have dominated our planet's ecosystems. But as with everything, context is necessary. To get that context, let's go back to the beginnning.

The primitive vertebrate Haikouichthys ercaicunensis. Was its descendants' rise to dominance inevitable, or simply a stroke of fickle fortune?
(Image: Nix Illustration, Creative Commons 4.0)

It is 518 million years ago, in the shallow seas of southern China.

You are wading through the warm waters of a shallow reef in what is today the Maotianshan Shale of Yunnan. Though the sun-soaked beaches and azure waves would not be out of place in the Bahamas of today, looking closer reveals an almost alien world. There are no coconut trees lining the shoreline, nor hermit crabs scuttling through the spray, nor colorful corals towering beneath the surface. The air is devoid of the cries of seabirds, the buzzing of insects, or the smell of sun-dried kelp, for none of those things had yet evolved[67]. The sunshine is warm and mild, but you don a full-body wetsuit and air tank to keep out the unbreathable atmosphere[68]. It will be another 50 million years[69] before plants first crawl out of the ocean and pump the air full of life-giving oxygen. In the meantime, the Sun's rays bake the land into a lifeless Mars-scape.

But as you swim further from the lifeless beach, a whole world of strange life reveals itself. Forests of tubular Leptomitus sponges interweave with iridescent fireworks of proto-comb jellies Daihua and Stromatoveris and fields of tentacled Facivermis. Above and around them swarm the mobile inhabitants of the ancient reef - armored palaeoscolecid worms Maotianshania and Cricocosmia burrowing through the mud, multi-legged proto-arthropods Hallucigenia and Megadictyon clambering over the sponges, shrimp-like Synophalos and enigmatic Nectocaris leisurely drifting with the currents. Darting through the crashing waves are swarms of tadpole-tailed Beidazoon and proto-fish Haikouichthys, schooling tightly as fierce, predatory arthropods Lyrarapax and Amplectobelua use their powerful compound eyes to single out the weak and sick before ripping their targets to shreds in a flurry of powerful fins and lashing claws. Eoredlichia trilobites scuttle through the invertebrate forests secure in the knowledge that nothing has yet evolved which can crush their stalwart armor, while giant, filter-feeding Houcaris paddles unmolested through clouds of plankton, its two-meter body too large for even the most fearsome predator of this time to harm.

Plenty of alien-like organisms have inhabited Earth over life's 4 billion years of existence. We are all variations of a single template, warped on the surface but ultimately consistent throughout the ages. What would lifeforms truly different from us be like?
(Image: Creative Commons/Zhixin Sun, Fangchen Zhao, Han Zeng, Cui Luo, Heyo Van Iten, Maoyan Zhu)

Though these animals will never know, their fates will diverge soon. Five million years from now, an ice age[70] will come for Earth, chilling these tropical reefs to extinction. Agile Lyrarapax, ferocious Amplectobelua and titanic Houcaris will meet their ends[71], while strange Beidazoon will struggle through only to disappear some 5 million years later[72]. Others, like Hallucigenia and Maotianshania, will march on slow and steady[73] for another hundred million years. But for yet others, like the Eoredlichia and Haikouichthys, the ice age will be an opportunity. Freed from competition, their descendants will spread and diversify to dizzying heights[74], founding vast biological dynasties that will change the world forever.

But on this day 518 million years ago, you do not know any of that. If you tried to predict whose descendants would dominate the world half a billion years in the future, would you even consider soft, tiny Haikouichthys over Lyrarapax or Amplectobelua? Drake, Sagan, and Morris would suggest so[64]. According to them, Haikouichthys's vertebrate body plan had inherent advantages over its rivals which would ensure its future success. The oncoming ice ages would inevitably pare away the tyrannical arthropods, leaving the world for its silver-scaled descendants to inherit and conquer. Even if by chance its lineage did not survive, Drake, Sagan, and Morris would argue[64] that fish-like animals would still inevitably dominate the oceans, as restrictive selective pressures forced other groups into the same roles. Perhaps Beidazoon would sprout eyes and drop its armor or Nectocaris would lose its tentacles and grow some scales, but in the end it would be the same. Give it a half billion years and basically-humans with big heads and long arms and upright bodies on two legs would still show up.

Velociraptor was a small, nocturnal ambush predator functionally similar to medium-sized cats. Notably, it looks nothing like a cat.
(Image: Prehistoric Planet S1:4)

Unfortunately for Drake, Sagan, and Morris, both fossil and living organisms argue against the inevitability of intelligence. Morris in particular argued strongly that evolutionary pressures are predictable enough that organisms filling the same ecological functions should look and act roughly the same[64]. This is true to some extent. Eyes, Morris's favorite example of convergent evolution, have evolved in lineages as distant as vertebrates, mollusks, jellyfish, and dinoflagellates. However, most of the truly incredible examples of body-plan convergence Morris points to only occurred because the ancestors of the organisms involved were already physically similar. Of the "many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab", for instance, all save one occurred in a single group of crustaceans, the Reptantia, whose common ancestor was a lobster-like thing easy for selective pressures to reshape into a crab[75] The crab shape, along with numerous other claimed convergences, is therefore mostly a product of lineage and not environment. Though convergence is undoubtedly important, I personally think the evidence is insufficient to justify Morris's extensive application of the concept.

Evolution has no goal[76], so every adaptation a lineage goes through must provide some advantage[77] in the environment at the time it appears. As such, organisms adapting to a certain ecological role are only pressured to change the parts of their anatomy which are important for that role while ancestral traits that don't get in the way remain. For some animals, such as aquatic swimmers, there are legitimately few solutions for moving efficiently around the environment and so we get very similar fish-shapes across groups as distant as lizards and sea slugs. For others, the restrictions are much less severe; Dryosaurus, ostriches, kangaroos, and horses look basically nothing alike despite being functionally identical medium-sized, quick-footed herbivores. Morris argues that the niche of 'intelligent being' is relatively restrictive[64] such that its occupants should evolve to be human-like regardless of ancestry. However, dolphins, parrots, crows, octopuses and elephants don't resemble us much at all, suggesting that relatively high intelligence at least may be useful for a variety of ecological roles and not just the one that humans occupy.

Drake and Sagan's proposal that intelligence has steadily increased throughout evolutionary history doesn't really hold water either. While there are certainly some very intelligent animals today, people forget that animals are only a very small part of global biodiversity. There are somewhere on the order of 5-20 million animal species compared to upwards of 100 million protists and 1 trillion bacteria[78](!!!), none of whom are particularly intelligent. Sagan argued that since bacteria and protists are our ancestors, they did evolve intelligence[63], but this argument makes the mistake of assuming living protists and bacteria are primitive forms unchanged for billions of years and not cousin lineages who have been playing the game of life for just as long as we have. Considering that bacteria can evolve to overcome the numerous poisons[79] we throw at them in days while we vertebrates struggle to resist a few degrees of global warming despite all our smarts, perhaps being unintelligent is the better strategy!

Earth's history also argues against the common view of the evolutionary march of progress towards bigger, better, and smarter. Supposedly 'superior' lineages have consistently languished in the shadows while their 'inferior' counterparts ruled the world, while numerous powerful and sophisticated creatures have been extinguished by chance misfortune. Lyrarapax and Amplectobelua, rather than being primitive failed experiments that would inevitably be outcompeted by the fishes, were active, sophisticated animals who could hold their own against vertebrate rivals. Their swimming style was far more stable and efficient[80] than that of finless Haikouichthys, while the power of their eyes would be unrivaled[81] until dragonflies evolved 200 million years later. Dinosaurs, the grandest sovereigns of natural history, were held down[82] by bulky crocodile-relatives until the splitting of Pangaea climate-changed the crocs away, while modern mammals were overshadowed by those same dinosaurs[83] and their own sibling lineages[84] until a random space rock killed every warm-blooded animal bigger than a cat. Even today, mammals dominate the terrestrial megafauna even though birds are smarter on average[85].

Finally, Drake, Morris, and Sagan's claim that an 'intelligence niche' exists is not as rock-solid as it might seem. We share millions of years of shared history with even the most removed Earth bacterium, while we are related to alien life only by shared chemical overtures, if that. If convergence towards intelligence is powerful enough for it to arise independently in numerous completely unrelated lifeforms on different planets, as Drake and Sagan claim, would we not expect it to be even more common among Earth animals closely related to known intelligent lineages (us), who already possess anatomy we know can be modified into an intelligent form? Terrestrial ecosystems have been essentially modern[86] since the Carboniferous period, yet in the 300 million year-long period that gives us we find only a single example of civilization - ourselves. Corvids (crows, jays, etc.) and dolphins are of comparable intelligence to ourselves and have existed for over 10 million years[87][88], but neither of them have managed to construct a technological civilization.

If the evolutionary conditions that produce civilization-building species are rare enough that they only appeared once on Earth, what reason do we have to expect them to be common on alien planets? At least on the point of intelligence, I think it is safe to say that Drake was wrong.

The March of Progress

Our modern technological society is built on the fossilized remains of ancient rainforests and tropical reefs. On a world without them, could our equivalents achieve nearly as much as we?
(Image: Me, via SpaceEngine)

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that intelligent life manages to evolve. Once it does, will it follow our path and expand to the stars? Drake says:

All intelligent life becomes technologically advanced and is detectable for thousands or millions of years.

Is that true? Let’s consider some possibilities.

Are they advanced?

The controlled use of fire is typically regarded as the first of the great human inventions. While numerous animals and plants use natural fires to eliminate competition or flush out prey, only humans and some Australian raptors[89] intentionally spread them and only humans can start them. Beyond its role in cooking food and fending off predators, the mastery of fire allowed humans to construct complex tools from materials such as ceramic and metal[90]. Without fire, the great revolutions of agriculture, industry, and information could have not possibly occurred[91], and we would be stuck clubbing rabbits on the African savanna no matter how smart we became.

Now imagine intelligence emerged in the icy seas of Enceladus which we explored back in Section 1. Perhaps octopus- or dolphin-like beings call these lightless waters home, sandwiched between volcanic rock and kilometres of ice. Like their less-intelligent kin, they would huddle around the life-giving warmth of hydrothermal vents and the ecosystems they support. The vents are more than hot enough to cook food, but are much too cold to purify or forge most metals[92]. Our space octopuses or space dolphins would be restricted to stone, shells, and a few native metals such as gold or platinum. They would still be capable of constructing complex societies but without workable metals they would never develop the industrial base[93] needed to leave Enceladus or broadcast their existence to aliens (us). They might not even realize that there was a world outside of their sealed ocean!

Numerous planetary circumstances can make advanced civilization difficult or impossible. Fire is impossible in an atmosphere less than 16% oxygen[94], trapping even terrestrial sapients on planets with such atmospheres in a perpetual stone age. Intelligent species on ocean or desert worlds would be scattered across habitable oases or islands separated by long stretches of inhospitable terrain, which might discourage the long-distance commerce and information exchange critical to innovation on Earth[95]. Planets younger than Earth or those with unfavorable geologic histories might not have the fossil fuels that burgeoing industry relies on; Earth's vast coal and oil deposits were formed by fortuitous arrangements of Carboniferous swamp forests[96] and shallow seas[97], respectively, and did not begin forming until 'just' some 300 million years ago. Even if everything is fine with the planet, the anatomy of the planet's inhabitants may not be permissive; dinosaurs ruled the Earth for over 100 million years, but happened to have extremely inflexible hands[98] that would likely make fine toolmaking difficult[99]. Carnivorous sapients would also struggle, since preindustrial animal agriculture might not be enough[100] to support a sedentary population large enough to necessitate technological advancement.

Even on Earth, we find examples of civilizations trapped in pre-industrial states due to circumstances beyond their control. The megafauna of the Americas was devastated by the end-Pleistocene extinctions[101]. While Eurasians could yoke oxen as labor for high-intensity agriculture and ride horses to exchange goods and ideas, Americans were stuck with dogs and llamas. With no means to project power or trade across continents, there was never any incentive[102] to invent things like iron tools, natural science, or market capitalism that would promote the development of industries critical for spaceflight.

Considering the preponderance of factors that can slow or totally stop the technological advancement of an intelligent civilization, it seems rather absurd to assume that everyone must become advanced enough to build radio and communicate with us.

Can they survive?

Once a civilization collapses, its traces are rapidly removed from its former habitat by natural processes. Were we to disappear today, for example, all signs of our existence would be gone by ~5 million years with the exception of microplastics in Holocene sediments, radioactive isotope anomalies caused by 1950s atmospheric nuclear testing and the various defunct space probes floating around the Solar System. As a result of this, our ability to detect alien civilizations is strongly related to how long such civilizations last on average - if they are short-lived, then the likelihood of one nearby being around for us to detect is low and vice versa.

We know very little about how long advanced civilizations should last. Our species has been in existence for some 200,000 years while our current global industrial society has existed for some 200. Despite the efforts of internet doomsayers, we have discovered no sign of an impending human extinction, though there are many things that could conceivably wipe us out or at least terminate our global, industrial (hence detectable) civilization.

We could spitball about killer asteroids, nuclear wars and anthropogenic climate change all we want, but our responses to those things are determined by a lot of public policy decisions which I don't want to even attempt to predict with any sort of rigor. However, we may not need to mire ourselves in politics and economics in order to get an answer to this question.

I

…But can we find them?

Even on a planet with all the conditions necessary for industrial civilization to develop, it may remain elusive if the anatomy or society of the native intelligent species are not permissive. A species that sees the world through echolocation might develop an industrial society but never discover the wider cosmos, for they would see the sky as an empty void. A flying species might lack the concepts of tribe and nation, spared from the vast conflicts that drive the need for technological supremacy. A hive species like ants or bees might advance rapidly in the face of brutal inter-hive aggression, but wipe itself out with the irresponsible use of apocalyptic superweapons. A solitary species, conversely, would struggle to get much of anything done.

Sociological conditions might prevent an advanced society from leaving its homeworld. Many people and institutions believe that space travel is not worth our time when social issues remain unaddressed. Or perhaps in the future as virtual reality advances we will lose our motivation to physically leave the Earth. Or perhaps we will die, laid low by natural disaster, internal strife, or technological irresponsibility. Or perhaps interstellar travel is simply too hard and we will never invent spacecraft capable of weathering the vast gulfs of void between the stars. In any case, a civilization that stays on its home world is limited in life.

…Or can they find us?

If a motivated society manages to establish an offworld colony, its survival across the millenia becomes much more assured. But that does not necessarily ensure that such a society will be detectable! It makes sense from an economic perspective to minimize the leakage of power and communications from your networks; aliens light-years away will probably not be interested in buying the products whose advertisements fund your TV coverage. Our current instrumentation is very limited in capability and if alien civilizations are not doing things like converting an entire star cluster's light output into waste heat, we will probably not notice them. However, we would expect such a society to eventually colonize every star or advance to a level where whatever they do is noticeable, but if intelligent and space-faring life appear rarely enough, it may be too early for

Or perhaps the solution is more sinister. If we make the (speculative) assumption that it has been long enough for intelligent civilization to become technologically advanced and extensively established in our galaxy, we must then conclude that intelligent life conceals its existence for some reason. One of the more compelling explanations is the Dark Forest hypothesis, which proposes that communicative civilizations are destroyed by others. Warfare between interstellar civilizations is likely to be highly asymmetric, as near-lightspeed projectiles are used to utterly obliterate enemy systems with no chance for counterplay, so an antagonistic civilization can easily and definitively destroy its enemies as soon as it learns of their precise locations. Since an anatagonistic civilization is unlikely to be forthright about its intentions, even ostensibly friendly communications cannot be trusted - at interstellar distances, it is impossible to spy on your neighbor to ascertain their true intentions. A civilization wary of this risk will never respond to hails, lest it reveal its own location and invite destruction. One that is paranoid about it will go about decisively eliminating the risk by preemptively destroying anyone who reveals themselves. Unfortunately, this means that a paranoid civilization is entirely indistinguishable from a hostile one! The existence of even a single paranoid civilization will encourage others near them to become cautious or even paranoid themselves, becoming more extreme as the paranoid civilization(s) wipe out those who don't get the memo. Eventually, paranoid civilizations become widespread across the galaxy, and so everyone either shuts up or gets killed. As we have not learned to shut up and are in fact actively shouting into the void in search of others, we may be in quite a bit of trouble if the Dark Forest is correct!

Retrospective

In the end, we have no way of really knowing what strange creatures may or may not inhabit the worlds we glimpse in our telescopes, but even our own planet’s storied history paints a less than inevitable picture of our own existence. Through Gouldian contingency or sheer misfortune, an alien civilization might well be directed upon a path towards undetectability or simply fail to exist at all, and even if it survives and thrives we need not expect it to become obvious to our probings.

It is not inconceivable that the universe is full of life. That strange parodies of plants and animals might be scattered through the vast cosmos, an uncountable number of evolutionary stories playing out in parallel across the stars. There might even be beings like us, intelligences able to ask themselves, “Are we alone?“

But we cannot expect them to come to us. Fortunate as we are to be able to see the wider universe for what it is, we must seek our cosmic brothers and sisters ourselves. And if we do not find them, then it is all the more important that we cultivate the spark of sapience we carry into a blaze that rivals the stars themselves.

All we have to do is look.

Footnotes

[6] As of August 21, 2024. A dynamic list of confirmed and candidate exoplanets is kept at the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

[7] I searched the newest version of NASA's Habitable Worlds Catalog CSV for all planets satisfying the solar flux requirements. At the time of writing, it is accurate up to March 21, 2024.

[8] As per Hammer et al. (2007).

[9] As per Scharf (2012).

[10] Concept explored by Gowanlock et al. (2010).

[11] An overview of this concept is found in Sundin (2006).

[12] It's hard to find uncritical references to these ideas outside of Ward and Brownlee's original Rare Earth book, but a critical analysis of them (along with other Rare Earth hypothesis postulates) can be found in Kasting (2001).

[13] As per Vida et al. (2017).

[14] For a general discussion of the habitability of massive stars, see this article.

[15] As per Cohen (1981).

[16] Using Gladman et al. (1996)'s tidal locking formula, the habitable zone distance for stars of various masses, and Earth's historical tidal dissipation factor of ~100.

[17] As per Kane et al. (2012).

[18] For an overall analysis of this topic, see Horner and Jones (2010)

[19] This infographic provides an extensive overview of the various methods by which atmospheric gases may escape a planet.

[20] As per D'Angelo and Bodenheimer (2013).

[21] For an investigation into this topic, see Ramstad and Barabash (2021).

[22] As per Brownlee (2010).

[23] For an investigation into this topic, see Lissauer et al. (2012).

[24] As per modelling by Cowan and Abbot (2014).

[25] As per Donlon et al. (2024).

[26] As per Noffke et al. (2013).

[27] As per Lingam et al. (2019).

[28] As per Prantzos (2007).

[29] Exemplified by the 5-planet system of Kepler-444, which has less than a third of the Sun's metal content per Campante et al. (2015).

[30] As per Filipović et al. (2013).

[31] Koeberl et al. (2004) addresses the impact hypothesis for the Permian-Triassic extinction event, but similar impact hypotheses have been proposed for numerous major and minor extinctions. Few are as rigorously dated and confirmed as the Cretaceous-Paleogene.

[32] As per Barash (2014).

[33] Numerous planets in binary star systems have been discovered, the first of which was Kepler-16 b.

[34] As per Popp and Eggl (2017).

[35] Joshi et al. (1997) refutes the claim that atmospheric collapse is likely for tidally-locked Earth-like planets.

[36] As per Merlis and Schneider (2010).

[37] As per Hu and Yang (2013).

[38] As per Dressing et al. (2010).

[39] As per Sakai et al. (2018).

[40] For the survival of a complex terrestrial organism under simulated Martian conditions, refer to Lorenz et al. (2023).

[41] As per Ray et al. (2021).

[42] As per Postberg et al. (2018).

[43] As per Changeat et al. (2022).

[44] As per Madhusudhan et al. (2020).

[45] Described by Kusube et al. (2020).

[46] As per Ramirez (2020).

[47] According to the European Chemicals Agency report.

[48] As per Takai (2008).

[49] As per Schleper (1996).

[50] As per Egli et al. (2023).

[51] As per Zhao et al. (2015).

[52] As per Nelson et al. (2000).

[53] As per Bains et al. (2021).

[54] Investigated by Seager et al. (2023).

[55] Investigated by Martin et al. (2020).

[56] Consult the National Research Council's The Limits of Organic Life in Planetary Systems.

[57] As per Stevenson et al. (2015).

[58] As per McKay and Smith (2005).

[59] As per Petkowski et al. (2020).

[60] As per Scorei (2012).

[61] This was explored once in David W. Koerner and Simon LeVay's 2001 book Here Be Dragons: The Scientific Quest for Extraterrestrial Life, but the concept has received little attention since then. A class of metal compounds called heteropoly acids have been investigated as the basis of an alternative biochemistry, but they exist at moderate temperatures and are rare outside the lab.

[62] Since stellar nucleosynthesis goes straight from helium to carbon, boron is not produced by stars. It is instead generated by stray cosmic rays disintegrating heavier elements, so it is always a minority element wherever it is found.

[63] It's pretty hard to find Drake and Sagan's original arguments since the lecture documentation has long since dropped off the internet. However, this rebuttal does a decent job at repeating them (albeit in a critical manner).

[64] Morris makes his arguments in several books, none of which are available online. You can find a short review of one of them, Life's Solution, on JSTOR that I would say adequately summarizes Morris's views on the subject of convergence.

[65] As per Snyder-Beattie et al. (2021).

[66] This argument is known as the Copernician principle. Basically, if you pick a random data point from a large set, it will probably be close to the average of all the data. Since Earth is one data point picked from a (presumably) large set of life-bearing planets, we expect its properties to be reasonably typical of all life-bearing planets. Opposing the Copernician principle is the anthropic principle, which says that scientists who can do statistics will (obviously) inhabit planets where intelligent life can emerge. They cannot naively assume their planet is typical of all planets that have life because it must have conditions that allow intelligent life to exist no matter how rare those conditions are among the set of all planets that have any form of life.

[67] If you are curious, coconuts evolved ~66 million years ago, hermit crabs ~200 million years ago, modern corals ~240 million years ago, seabirds ~100 million years ago, flying insects ~326 million years ago, and kelp ~32 million years ago.

[68] As per Jiang et al. (2022).

[69] As per Rubinstein et al. (2010).

[70] As per Zhang et al. (2023).

[71] Amplectobelua and Lyrarapax are not known to have survived past 518 million years ago, but their lineage last appears in the fossil record with Guanshancaris at around the right time. The taxonomy of Houcaris is pretty messed up and we're not sure how long the genus itself survived for, but its family Tamisiocarididae last appears with Echidnacaris, also just before the ice age.

[72] As with Amplectobelua and Lyrarapax, Beidazoon itself isn't known past 518 million years ago. A relative, Banffia, is known from the 508 million year-old Burgess Shale, extending their range 5 million years post-ice age. A similar animal, Skeemella, is known from as late as 501 million years ago but it isn't clear whether it is actually related to Beidazoon and kin. All records are per McMenamin (2019).

[73] A close relative of Hallucigenia, Carbotubulus, is known from the 300 million year-old Mazon Creek, while Maotianshania's lineage, the palaeoscolecids, are found up to about 426 million years ago.

[74] Some 22,000 species of trilobite existed over some 270 million years. Vertebrates, as should be obvious, are alive and diverse today.

[75] Carcinisation is a parallelism, a phenomenon where similar environmental pressures force organisms with the same ancestral body plan to evolve a certain way. All 'crabs' evolved from squat lobster-like animals such as Eocarcinus, whose body plan doesn't take too many changes to turn into a crab. The one exception to this are the extinct Cyclida, whose closest living relatives are the entirely un-crab-like copepods.

[76] For a pretty good explanation of how evolution actually works moment-to-moment, see this article by Nature.

[77] Some neutral or harmful traits like sickle cell anemia in humans are linked to positive ones like malaria resistance and can be brought along for the ride, while neutral mutations can get 'fixed' by random drift in small populations. But the overall phenotype of those traits is still selected because of its immediate utility. For example, dinosaurs evolved feathers to keep warm - the fact that feathers can be used to fly didn't matter when the first fuzzy dinosaur was busy not freezing to death on a cold Triassic night. All 'intermediate' features like protofeathers and proto-eyes were very useful for their bearers at the time they evolved, even if their descendants use theirs for different purposes.

[78] As per Wiens (2023).

[79] As per Bonomo et al. (2024).

[80] As per Sheppard et al. (2018).

[81] As per Paterson et al. (2011).

[82] As per Brusatte et al. (2010).

[83] There no consensus on whether dinosaurs were in decline before the asteroid or not. There were some climate instabilities and sea level fluctuations during the latest Cretaceous that caused localized extinctions in North America, giant herbivores worldwide. However, dinosaurs overall had overcome similar crises in the past and we have very little fossil data on the latest Cretaceous outside North America, so it's probably wrong to say that all dinosaurs would have gone extinct even without the asteroid.

[84] As per Brocklehurst et al. (2021).

[85] As per Isler and Van Schaik (2009).

[86] As per Benton (2010).

[87] As per Mourer-Chauviré (2004).

[88] As per Murakami et al. (2014).

[89] As per Bonta et al. (2017).

[90] Some elements, such as copper, gold, silver and iron (as meteorites), occur in metallic form in nature, but fire is needed to shape them into usable forms. Furthermore, native metals are very rare so we couldn't use metal extensively until copper smelting was invented some 10,000 years ago (Murr 2015). We're not exactly sure how this happened, but no one can deny its utility to civilization.

[91] Numerous animals cultivate and harvest foodstuffs without the need for fire, so it is not strictly necessary. However, these animals are all small - for large animals like ourselves, fire is probably necessary to make the equipment etc. necessary to feed a decent-sized population.

[92] Hydrothermal vents are hot enough to melt tin and lead, but much higher temperatures are needed to extract them from their ores in the first place.

[93] Since the concept of a fully underwater advanced civilization is just really cool, there's quite a bit of discussion in various forums about how to make this work. Ideas like using the thermite reaction to make underwater fire or breeding electric animals to electroplate things get thrown around a lot, but most of them aren't particularly feasible. Thermite-type reactions can work underwater, but they need pure metals (e.g. aluminium) which wouldn't be found in a corrosive environment. Electric eels make enough energy to electroplate, but they can't sustain that output long enough to actually do it. Nor is it likely that space dolphins and co. could make solutions with the required chemical purity for electroplating to make anything useful.

[94] As per Belcher et al. (2010).

[95] Intuitively, an isolated community has less innovation power simply because it has fewer people to invent things in it. On Earth, the people of Easter Island developed a unique written script, but due to their isolation they did not spread it to any other Polynesian island (that we know of).

[96] Most (but not all) coal is from the Carboniferous and Early Permian periods some ~300 million years ago. It is often stated that those deposits formed because plants evolved wood that could not be broken down by decomposers and accumulated into coal, but newer studies find that this is not the case. Instead, coal production peaked during this time because forests were dominated by fast-growing, short-lived lycophyte trees that lived in a continuously wet environment on the east side of the Central Pangean Mountains.

[97] The famous giant petroleum deposits of the Middle East were formed at the bottom of the shallow Tethys Ocean, which occupied the area from 150 to about 14 million years ago, remaining as the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas. Were continental movements different, the Tethys likely would not exist.

[98] Dinosaur hands are permanently supinated, so they cannot face their palms downward with their arms at their sides. This is even true for quadrupedal dinosaurs, whose hands just extended to touch the ground (VanBuren and Bonnan 2013).

[99] Some birds do manage to produce surprisingly sophisticated tools despite having the same inflexibility as other dinosaurs, so clearly inflexibility is not a deal-breaker for tool use. However, they would have issues working with heavy objects, causing problems for industry.

[100] Since livestock expend energy while they are alive, they use more calories of feed than they produce in meat - it takes 6 kg of feed to make 1 kg of beef, for example. A carnivorous civilization can support far fewer individuals per unit of farmland than an omnivorous or herbivorous one, which could discourage the formation of cities and the specialization of labor that drove technological innovation on Earth.

[101] As per Barnosky et al. (2004).

[101] As per Barnosky et al. (2004).

[102] Per Eichler et al. (2017), extensive metalworking in South America started some 2700 years ago. Despite this, no New World civilization ever phased out stone tools for metal ones.

But there are numerous creatures on Earth who would find our hypothetical Martian vacation trip tolerable, if not especially pleasant. Lifeforms trying to survive on exposed Martian surfaces will be most challenged by extreme dessication, radiation exposure and regular plunges to -100°C. As it turns out, the first two problems have basically the same solutions; DNA is damaged in similar ways by dryness and ionizing radiation so the various lifeforms that inhabit deep deserts also happen to tolerate radiation fairly well. Indeed, several species of desert lichens have been observed happily photosynthesizing under simulated Martian conditions.

As for the cold, there are solutions as well. Ever-resilient bacteria can remain active at temperatures as low as -40°C, while the hibernating tuns of water bears can plunge to near absolute zero (-272°C) and still revive upon the return of tolerable conditions. It is not hard to imagine colonies of lichens sheltering under rocks or in fissures in the Martian crust, getting by on meagre trickles of groundwater and sheltering entire ecosystems of microscopic fauna. Such a situation may be in our own future as we inadvertently contaminate Mars with extremophile life riding on the surfaces of our space probes.

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🔒Not open access

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