Alien civilisations: how likely they really are

TL;DR — How likely are there alien civilisations 300,000 years more advanced than us? Not very. No realistic science exists to estimate alien life — the Drake formula extends a sample of one, which any statistics professor would fail. Plus there are solid cosmological, thermodynamic and energy reasons why we're probably alone. Here's why, without magic.

Despite what some podcasts tell you, no realistic science or formula exists to estimate alien life. The famous Drake equation means extending a sample of a single element (Earth) to the entire universe — an operation any university statistics professor would fail without appeal.

So imagine how sensible rational reasoning can be projecting 300,000 years. Nobody can answer with data — you can only answer with logic and the physical laws we know.

The simple truth is sad and plain.

Five reasons we're probably alone

1. We have no proof of other civilisations. After decades of SETI, radio astronomy, analysis of atmospheric biosignatures on exoplanets — nothing. A universe noisy with technological civilisations should at least whisper.

2. We may truly be among the first. The universe is 13.8 billion years old, but producing the elements useful for life (carbon, oxygen, iron) requires prior generations of stars that exploded in supernovae. On Earth, it took 5 billion years to go from stardust to us. It's not absurd that we're among the first forms of consciousness to appear in this universe. I'm not saying unicellular or similar forms don't exist — I'm saying technological civilisations like ours may still be rare.

3. The temporal problem is terrifying. Even if there were other technological civilisations, how many chances are there that they live in the same cosmic period as us? That they look at the same direction of the sky? That light/waves arrive at compatible timing? It's like launching a gnat from Portugal and one from the US at different times and hoping they meet in flight without tracking. Ridiculous.

Our civilisation depends on oil. It's not at all guaranteed that other civilisations have access to it, or to anything remotely similar. Without easily extractable energy density, technology stops at the level of shaped stone.

4. The energy problem. Every technological civilisation needs easily extractable energy density to make the leap from agriculture to the steam engine. On Earth this density existed, gifted by 300 million years of biological decomposition turned into hydrocarbons. It's plausible that on other planets this accumulation never happened — for various geological reasons. Without oil (or equivalent), no flight, no industry, no electronics.

5. The laws of thermodynamics. They apply everywhere. A civilisation growing in energy consumption quickly clashes with its planet's thermal limits: dissipating heat, managing entropy, sustaining the biosphere. Good luck to a society surviving hundreds of thousands of years if it doesn't invent fusion fairly quickly. And it's not certain that it will.

The Fermi Paradox, revisited

Enrico Fermi in 1950 famously asked: "if the universe is full of civilisations, where is everyone?". Cosmic silence has many possible explanations — the most elegant is not that they're hiding, but that probably they aren't there, or are so rare and far away they can never reach us.

It's not cynicism. It's arithmetic applied to a scale the human brain struggles to grasp.

A realist conclusion

I'd say we can focus on not going extinct and leave the aliens to Hollywood fantasies and motivational podcasts. The few cognitive resources we have are better spent solving the problems we have at home — climate, conflict, sustainability — than hoping someone from space comes to save us or give us answers.

If they're out there, they're very far. If they're near, they're in a time window that doesn't coincide with ours. Either way: focus on Earth.