Are Earth Humans The 'Aliens' Early To The Universe's Life Party?

Photo: DC Comics

Curtis Silver ,

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A few months ago there was a theory proposed in the astronomy community that surmised that we humans might be too late for alien life. The theory pretty much stated that alien life is already extinct and we are all that was left of life in the universe. Just like every study about drinking a glass of wine before bed or snorting raw eggs; a new theory proposes that we’re not staggering into the party late with warm beer, but we’re super early, playing guitar in the stairwell to an audience of zero.
The theory, authored by Abraham Loeb of Harvard and Rafael Batista and David Sloan of the University of Oxford, states that the chance of life grows much higher in the distant future. Life first became possible 30 million years after the Big Bang when there was enough carbon and oxygen to make that sweet life juice. The theory considers the likelihood of life after the Big Bang, but before the end of the universe after all the stars have faded — in about 10 trillion years.

The main factor in determining our arrival to the cosmic party is how long stars are hanging around. Many stars sputter and die before life even has a chance to get started. In the wide view of the universe, we’re the guy watching the theater crew clean up popcorn off the floor while we munch our fresh bag. The smallest stars will burn for 10 trillion years, creating that Goldilocks Zone where life could thrive. There is some probability involved in this theory and based on your pile of losing lottery tickets, that doesn’t matter. Says the theory:

Currently, we only know of life on Earth. The Sun formed ∼4.6 Gyr ago and has a lifetime comparable to the current age of the Universe. But the lowest mass stars near the hydrogen burning threshold at 0.08M could live a thousand times longer, up to 10 trillion years. Given that habitable planets may have existed in the distant past and might exist in the distant future, it is natural to ask: what is the relative probability for the emergence of life as a function of cosmic time?

Then the theory gets into some pretty heavy math and probability equations that may have spilled my brains all over the desk. Gyr is a gigayear, which is how long it feels when you are in the queue at Starbucks SBUX +0.00% before breakfast on a weekday. So the universe is about 13.8 billion years old and that’s only 0.14% of the total estimated life of the universe. So perhaps we are in fact sitting around an empty Dentist’s office. The Earth is about five billion years old and we’re just starting to notice other possible life-bearing planets.
Star Trek: First Contact had it backwards — we’re the Vulcans. Or if Trump gets elected, we’re the Borg (or, as one commenter pointed out — if Clinton gets elected, we’re the Reavers. To round it all out, Stein is tribbles and Cylons for Johnson).
Somewhere out there in the universe, there are planets just getting started with life. While there might have been life on Mars or Venus, according to this new theory — our galaxy was first. Soon we’ll be heading out there expecting to find aliens looking for us, but instead we’ll be the ones enacting the prime directive. We have 10 trillion years to get over our center-of-the-universe egos and discover budding life that is no-where near our possibly justified level of galactic avarice.