Chance of alien life is very low

A balanced evnironment is crucial to sustaining life, which leads researchers to believe we’re alone in our galaxy.

We could well be alone in our galaxy. New research has suggested that the emergence of alien life produces dangerous and rapid environmental change, and that this eventually makes the planetary climate unstable, causing alien life to become extinct.

The research, published in the journal of Astrobiology by Aditya Chopra and Charles Lineweaver from Australian National University, claimed that most alien life would fail to balance its planetary environments fast enough for any kind of survival.

The lack of consistent signals from space led the scientists to find a possible explanation.

“Life may be rare in the universe, not because it is difficult to get started, but because habitable environments are difficult to maintain during the first billion years,” said the article.

“A billion years may seem long, but for evolution it’s fast – possibly too fast for life to diversify itself enough to balance the environment.

“The emergence of new life on a planet would disrupt the climate, making it completely unsuitable again for life, said the researchers.

“Most early planetary environments are unstable. To produce a habitable planet, life forms need to regulate greenhouse gases such as water and carbon dioxide to keep surface temperatures stable,” said Chopra to phys.org.

Just imagine what life would have been like on Earth without the intricate balance between carbon dioxide-dependent plants and oxygen-dependent animals.

“If life emerges on a planet, it only rarely evolves quickly enough to regulate greenhouse gases and albedo (a star’s radiation), thereby maintaining surface temperatures compatible with liquid water and habitability,” the article said.

This evolutionary crossroads or Gaian bottleneck suggested extinction was the norm for most life on the surfaces of wet, rocky planets.

“If one assumes that once life emerges it evolves towards intelligence and technological civilisations, we are faced with Fermi’s paradox: Where is everybody?” the article said.

Earth was incredibly lucky when early life started to evolve. The ability to quickly regulate the environment to maintain enough balance for evolution was critical, according to the research. – ANA