Speculation that extraterrestrial life exists beyond our planet dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, but humans have still not made contact.
There are various theories, including the sole proposition that human intelligence is completely “unique” in the universe, but one scientist has revealed a more likely scenario: alien civilizations were destroyed by gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).
GRBs are extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies, occurring when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own weight, releasing a huge “super nova” of radiation.
“It’s a tightly focused beam,” astronomy professor Dr Frederick Walter told DailyMail.com. “And if aimed across the plane of the galaxy, it could sterilize about 10 percent of the planets in the galaxy.”
“It’s just one of many possible explanations,” he noted, “a bit morbid, I suppose.”
A variety of cosmic activities may be capable of generating gamma-ray bursts, as the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab in Arizona has proposed a case (shown above) that could originate in the collision of stars or stellar remnants at proximity to a supermassive black hole.
NASA’s new $150 million gamma-ray telescope, COSI, will study the evolution of the Milky Way to map its unknown origins. This gamma-ray detection telescope, called Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), is expected to be launched in 2025.
NASA considers gamma-ray bursts “the most powerful class of explosions in the universe.”
A typical explosion delivers a bright beam of directed energy: a quintillion (a 1 followed by 19 zeros) times the luminosity of our own sun, more than enough, in other words, to burn an alien civilization clean of its perch in the galaxy.
Fortunately, based on decades of research by NASA’s Compton Gamma-Ray Orbiting Observatory, gamma-ray bursts are relatively rare in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
When the Compton observation satellite was launched in 1991, NASA researchers expected to see more “GRBs” emanating from our pancake-shaped galactic disk.
But the reality turned out that these explosive “super nova” events were much more common in younger, distant galaxies, still hot in the process of forming new stars, or in the case of long-lived GRBs, transforming the stars collapsing into black holes. .
“It is estimated that there is a gamma-ray burst approximately every 100 million years, in any galaxy,” according to Dr. Walter, who taught a course on the search for extraterrestrial life at Stony University. Brook from New York.
“On average, over a billion years, one would expect a significant number of civilizations to be eradicated,” he said, “if they exist.”
This image provided by NASA on October 14, 2022 shows the Swift X-ray telescope capturing the afterglow of GRB 221009A about an hour after it was first detected. Next, below, GRB 221009A, as seen by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in October 2022
Other estimates suggest that gamma-ray bursts could occur as frequently as once every 10 million years per galaxy – but either range would mean that many alien species could be wiped out before They don’t have the chance to do much space exploration.
The Stony Brook astronomer pointed out that planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and it took almost that long to develop the only technologically advanced species that humanity currently has evidence of: humanity herself.
This would mean that, like a game of Russian roulette, the Milky Way is estimated to have experienced between 45 and 450 local GRB events during Earth’s history.
Some geophysicists and other researchers have actually argued that the Ordovician and/or Devonian mass extinctions on Earth, approximately 359 to 445 million years ago, may have been the result of a burst of gamma rays from of such a star or such a black hole. forming event.
But Dr Walter stressed that this is just one hypothesis as to why humanity has yet to officially discover signs of an extraterrestrial civilization somewhere in the universe.
“It’s estimated that there is a gamma-ray burst about every 100 million years, in any galaxy,” said Dr. Frederick Walter, who taught a course on the search for extraterrestrial life at Stony Brook. “Over a billion years, on average, we would expect a significant number of civilizations to be eradicated”
Although these super nova explosions can be deadly from an apocalyptic perspective, Dr. Walter indicated that any potential threat to humanity from a GRB is “not worth worrying about.”
“They are rare and directed,” making them much less likely to hit Earth, the astronomer said. “And that’s not something you can prepare for.”
Gamma-ray bursts were first recorded in 1967, via two US Vela satellites operating to detect evidence of Soviet nuclear tests that may have been carried out in defiance of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Two years later, strange bursts were noticed by a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which later pioneered the lab’s gamma-ray astronomy group.
While ancient hypothetical bursts of GRBs that struck Earth hundreds of millions of years ago would have annihilated and dissolved the DNA of every living thing on the planet, today the distant radiation from distant GRBs leaves for most of the telltale evidence in the form of bright stars. -like lightning strikes or evidence of gamma ray particles in our ionosphere.
In the 74 years since nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi first wondered why, in a universe theoretically teeming with life, humanity has yet to detect any empirically, the solutions possibilities for his famous “Fermi paradox” have proliferated.
A book, by Stephen Webb, a physicist at the University of Portsmouth, explored 75 viable explanations currently in play, from the most terrifying (for example, all aliens are hiding from a deadly predatory civilization) to the most mundane (e.g. space travel is too difficult).
“There are many ways around this,” Dr. Walter said.
One example, he noted, is that it is unlikely that a highly advanced aquatic species on another world, like whales or dolphins on Earth, would develop the technology necessary for space travel, despite a large brain and powerful social skills.
“If you live underwater,” as he told DailyMail.com, “you’re not going to mess with electricity.”
Alternatively, a wise but risk-averse civilization might simply decide that “maybe it’s not worth traveling between the stars and looking for other aliens,” Dr. Walter said, choosing instead to “look for other aliens.” focus inward” and form their own civilization. a “little utopia” on their native world.
But one of the most common theories among physicists and astronomers, according to Dr Walter, is that technologically advanced civilizations might be universally prone to committing suicide – whether through mismanagement, greed , war or worse.
“Look around you, you know?” said the astronomer. “We are polluting the atmosphere. We question whether we will have a viable civilization a century from now unless we do something radical.
“If civilizations tend to evolve in the same way as on our planet, then it will affect everyone,” continued Dr Walter, believing that “our technology may exceed our wisdom”.
“I guess that’s the leading theory,” he said. “But look, this is just speculation.”
“We have an example: it’s us.”
Considering the industrial revolution of the 19th century as humanity’s first leap into the ranks of technologically advanced species, Dr. Walter noted that we have only “gone through about 150 years” so far.
“There’s always a risk that we won’t make it through another 150 years or 150 years.”
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