OWN CORRESPONDENT, Sydney | Friday
HUMANS are far too primitive for alien life forms to bother contacting, believes an Australian scientist.
University of New South Wales astronomer Charles Lineweaver has calculated that Earth-like planets orbiting other stars would be about 1,8 billion years older than Earth on average.
As a result, humans would rate little better than bacteria on the intergalactic evolutionary scale, Lineweaver says in a research paper submitted to the scientific journal Icarus.
Lineweaver placed the average age of earth-like planets at 6,4 billion years, compared with Earth’s 4,6 billion ears.
“The rare clue is most of the lifeforms in the Universe have had two billion years longer to evolve than we have,” he said.
“To put this time span in perspective, two billion years ago our ancestors were microscopic single-celled amoebas.”
The astronomer examined factors such as the formation and destruction of planets, including the presence of heavy atoms such as iron, which were not contained in the early universe, while developing his theory.
Lineweaver said advanced extraterrestrials may not be sufficiently concerned about humans to bother communicating.
“People aren’t interested in talking to bacteria, trees, dolphins in their own languages – and we have a big brain,” he said.
“We assume that any species worth its salt would adopt or evolve towards human-like intelligence.
“If we’re talking about aliens who have two billion years difference then I just don’t know what we’re talking about.”
Researchers looking for life in space were likely to discover “bacteria and lots of other weird things and they’re not going to find any English-speaking colonies or human-like intelligence,” Lineweaver said. – AFP