Lockwood is a junior math and
biology major from Indianapolis.
CHRISTA SCHRODEL / THE DEPAUW
Currently, the search for intelligent alien life is underway and NASA predicts to find indications of intelligent life by the year 2025. Humanity will make giant step forward the moment scientists discover signs of another intelligent life form. The concrete knowledge that mankind is not alone could change humans’ perspective on their place in the universe; perhaps odd extraterrestrial-worshiping cults would spring up or political leaders would begin to promote the global unification of mankind. However, even when humans discover signs of intelligent, alien life, there is no way to tell how far along that species is in the evolutionary journey. That being said, where exactly do humans fit on the evolutionary spectrum?
In 1964, Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed the Kardashev scale, a method of measuring a civilizations level of technological advancement. While the scale is completely theoretical, it provides scope to a civilization’s energy usage from the cosmic vantage point. The scale has three main categories: Type I, Type II, and Type III. Type I civilizations have mastery of their home planet, able to use all available energy. Type II are able to utilize all of their host star’s energy, and Type III can completely harness the energy of the entire galaxy. Mankind is far from taking advantage of the Sun or Milky Way’s energy, as human's place at an estimated 0.72.
In the large scheme of the universe, human civilization still has a ways to go before competing with any other potential intelligent species. Certainly if they are a Type I or above, they would have at least 200 years of technology on mankind. But in a galaxy so insanely vast, where are those other civilizations?
Physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael Hart answer with Fermi’s paradox, an argued contradiction between the high estimated probabilities that intelligent alien life exists and mankind’s lack of contact or evidence with such a civilization. Fermi and Hart argue that because the Sun is a typical star, fairly young in age, in the billions of stars that make up the galaxy there will be other Sun-like stars. And there is high probability that some of these stars will have Earth-like planets capable of supporting possible intelligent life. Some of those civilizations may advance to the point of developing interstellar travel, and even at the predicted slow pace of interstellar travel, the galaxy can be colonized in a few ten million years.
Following this line of thinking, the Earth should have already been colonized, visited, or at least found by some advanced, intelligent civilization. An explanation to this phenomenon is the concept of the Great Filter. In the context of an evolutionary timeline, the Great Filter would be an event that is incredibly improbable, barring most species’ advancement to a higher civilization. Humanity’s relative position to the Great Filter has three options. We could have already passed the Great Filter, perhaps it was achieving eukaryotic cells from prokaryotes, or the construction of a multicellular organism. The second option is that mankind is one of the first intelligent species, meaning humans are on their way to becoming a super-intelligent civilizations. Last option is that the Great Filter is still ahead of human evolution. Humanity has yet to hit the barrier and will most likely fail like many others.
Personally, I believe we are in the third option and the Great Filter is becoming a Type I civilization. Even though mankind is on its way, there is much work to be done to create a planet-sustaining infrastructure to last millions of years. But humanity has the resilience to create a stable Earth and perpetuate onward in time.
Even if life exists elsewhere in the universe, there’s no way that it resembles anything on Earth. Humans and all life we share this planet with is unique on the cosmic scale which makes us, as the only humans in the galaxy, special.