Alone in the Universe

Amidst this business of “social distancing” thanks to the COVID19 virus pandemic, a larger perspective occurred to me.  And no, it’s not induced by any mind-altering drugs, but merely my own overactive imagination.

Where Are The Aliens?   By now we know there is no one on the Moon, no Martians or Venusians, and no one on the remotely habitable moons of Jupiter or Saturn or those planets themselves, which are gas giants and not suitable to sustain life.  We haven’t received transmissions from Alpha Centauri or the Andromeda galaxy.   In fact, in all this time we’ve received no contact from any alien civilization, at any time in our history.   Of course, there are plenty of assertions to the contrary, but none of them stand up to any serious scientific scrutiny.

Look at how consistently cruel we are as humans.  We kill animals with no remorse.  We've had several waves of genocide - and the victims were fellow humans.  If there are aliens out there, chances are they would be hostile to us and wipe us out without a second thought.  Assuming they would be friendly and helpful is not a good idea - though I don't suppose we could rule that out absolutely.  But it's moot - again, we haven't found any evidence of aliens, friendly or hostile.

That being the case, the true horror is that we are ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE.  There is no other form of life anywhere, and there never was.   When the last human dies, the universe will be utterly devoid of intelligent life.

Life Here, a Timeline

13.8  billion years ago.   The Big Bang.  The Universe itself comes into existence – not sure how or why – and begins expanding.  What was there before that?  Absolutely no clue.

4.5 billion years ago.   Earth finally coalesces from the matter surrounding the Sun.

3.7 billion years ago.   Microbes, bacteria, and other single-celled organisms evolved into existence.

900 million years ago.  Multi-celled organisms came into existence.

540 million years ago.  The Cambrian Explosion, a large increase in life.

400 million years ago.  The first four-legged animals came into being.

250-65 million years ago.  The Dinosaurs.

100,000 years ago.  Humans are here. 

For 10 billion years, there was no life anywhere in the Universe – including Earth.  Until 100,000 years ago, there were no intelligent species.  That means 13,799,900,000 years with no intelligent life anywhere in the universe.       

Sun.  The Sun will not last forever.  It’s not big enough to go supernova on us, but it will exhaust its fuel and expand into a red giant in approximately 5 billion years (give or take a few days) and engulf Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth too.   Even if it doesn’t actually absorb Earth itself, it will be too hot to live here.  Any of us still around by then need to move somewhere else. 

Open or Closed Universe.  So far as we can tell, the universe is expanding, and has been since the Big Bang.  The question is, whether it will continue expanding indefinitely (open) or will eventually stop expanding, begin contracting, and then we’ll have a Big Crunch (closed).   We might imagine that the Big Bang itself was subsequent to a prior Big Crunch, and that the universe bangs and crunches indefinitely, over and over again.  If so, were there humans or other intelligent species in those prior universes, who simply perished when the universe crunched?  

More horror here concerns an open universe.   If the universe expands indefinitely, without a crunch, all the stars will eventually run out of fuel and go dark.  Eventually we’ll be left with a cold, dark universe forever.  That scenario actually makes a closed universe, with its cycle of bangs and crunches, somewhat more preferable. 

Parallel Universes.  If there are, in fact, parallel universes, there might be any number of them, or perhaps an infinite amount of them.  Some might be open, some might be closed.  How we might ascertain their existence is beyond my skill set as an attorney.  How we might travel from one universe to another is even further beyond that.  I dare say the top scientists, assisted by our array of helpful science fiction writers, are working on the problem now and will have an answer for us in our lifetimes.   Stay tuned.