Ten Trillion Dikironium Galaxies
The current official estimate of the number of galaxies in existence is now TWO TRILLION, which is quite a big number which will almost certainly continue to increase (Refs. 1 & 2). This can be converted into an even bigger number using recent estimates of the average number of potentially habitable planets per galaxy. A Trillion is a million million, about 1,000,000,000,000, which is 10 raised to the power 12.
By simple reckoning, on the basis of these simple figures, if there is (say) a million to 1 chance of there being a habitable planet in any given galaxy, there would then be a million habitable planets likely in the universe, if a billion to one chance, then only 1,000 planets and so on. Just to provide orders-of-magnitude.
It seems the likelihood of there being other habitable planets out there must be reasonably high now (Refs. 3 & 4). David Kornreich (Refs. 5 & 6) used a very rough estimate by assuming 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. Multiplying that by our Milky Way’s estimated 100 billion stars results in an even rougher but extremely large number indeed: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, or a “1” with 24 zeros after it (This is a SEPTILLION in the American numbering system; 1 quadrillion in the European system). Kornreich emphasised that such numbers will be on the low side, as more detailed estimates of the size of the universe will suggest that there are even more galaxies than 10 trillion.
Recently, David Kipping of Columbia University’s Department of Astronomy concluded that if planets with similar conditions and evolutionary time lines to Earth are common, then life should have little problem spontaneously emerging on other planets, with the odds that these extraterrestrial lives could be complex, differentiated and intelligent 3:2 in favour of intelligent life. This result stems from humanity’s relatively late appearance in Earth’s habitable window, suggesting that development was neither an easy nor ensured process. “If we played Earth’s history again, the emergence of intelligence is actually somewhat unlikely,” Kipping said, pointing out that the findings should be treated as no more than a gentle nudge toward a hypothesis. (Refs 10 & 11).
Even if there were only 1 other habitable planet (it is interesting how “Habitable” is defined) in the Milky Way, how about Kepler 442-b which looks good (Ref. 7). It is only 1206 light years away and is classed as being more habitable than Earth, which is nice.
It is all down to fine tuning. Then it is worth considering why would any “craft” come here specifically, or are they simply doing a sort of “tour of inspection”?
What are the chances of the “aliens” looking like the ultra-intelligent highly mobile Dikironium Gas Cloud creature/entity from Star Trek (Ref. 8). An even money bet? An intelligent yet predatory non-corporeal lifeform that fed by forcibly extracting the corpuscles from minds and lived off Old Cheetos and fundamental human energy, absorbed using zero energy quantum mandibles. Well, let’s hope it would be the friendly version, a Universe wide intelligence that threads through the material reality of the 3-D Space Time Continuum, a hyper-gigantic quantum computer, similar to Fredkin and Zuse’s 1960s idea (Ref. 9) that the universe could be a type of computer called a cellular automaton. This perhaps existing outside our “Time” (“in Eternity”), always present and real, but a real phenomenon within a “Fifth Dimension” threaded through the three and the false practicality of necessary time.
Take your pick. Creatures doing their clean-up duties from Kepler 442b or Dikironium, the nice cloud creature, always there for us. How about both?
References
1. PhysOrg (2017), “A Universe of 2 Trillion Galaxies”, 16th January 2017.
phys.org/news/2017–01-universe-trillion-galaxies.html
2. Forbes (2018), “This Is How We Know There Are Two Trillion Galaxies In The Universe”, 18th October 2018.
3. Wikipedia List of Potentially Habitable Exoplanets: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_exoplanets
4. NBC News (2013), “8.8 Billion Habitable Earth-Size Planets Exist in Milky Way Alone”, 4th November 2013.
www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/8-8-billion-habitable-earth-size-planets-exist-milky-way-8C11529186
5. Space.com (2017), “How Many Stars Are In The Universe?”, 17th May 2017.
www.space.com/26078-how-many-stars-are-there.html
6. Physics Says What? (2019), “How Many Stars”, 18th May 2019.
www.physicssayswhat.com/2017/05/18/how-many-stars/
7. Wikipedia — Kepler 442b: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-442b
8. Memory Alpha: Dikironium Cloud Creature: memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Dikironium_cloud_creature
9. MIT Angles (2015), “Is the Universe Actually a Giant Quantum Computer?”.
cmsw.mit.edu/angles/2015/is-the-universe-actually-a-giant-quantum-computer/
10. Columbia University. “New Study Estimates the Odds of Life and Intelligence Emerging Beyond our Planet.” ScienceDaily, 18th May 2020.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200518162639.htm
11. David Kipping. “An Objective Bayesian Analysis of Life’s Early Start and our Late Arrival”. PNAS, 2020 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1921655117
