Understanding the universe has long been an important topic to research and whether or not life other than that on Earth exists elsewhere.
Scientists have tried calculating the possible chances of other extraterrestrial civilizations existing out in space by using the Drake equation that was created in 1961 by astronomer Frank Drake. A new paper published in the journal Astrobiology has determined that this original Drake equation can be simplified due to the advancement of observations of exoplanets since the 1990s according to Discovery News.
Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan, who work at the astronomy department and astrobiology program at the University of Washington, believe that humankind was most likely not the first advanced civilization in the universe.
They go on to explain that the questions posed using the Drake equation are usually centered around finding out how many civilzations exist now in our universe when we should be focusing on whether or not technological civilizations ever existed in the past.
What Frank and Sullivan are hoping to find out is whether these civilzations did exist before humankind and how long they lasted for. They used the new method and calculated that the likelihood of humankind existing before us somewhere in the universe and its twenty billion trillion stars, is less than one in ten trillion.
“To me, this implies that other intelligent, technology producing species very likely have evolved before us,” says Frank.
Despite the idea that there could be other advanced life out there, Frank and Sullivan believe that any other civilizations probably don’t exist anymore since the universe is 13 billion years old.
“That means that even if there have been a thousand civilizations in our own galaxy, if they live only as long as we have been around — roughly ten thousand years — then all of them are likely already extinct and others won’t evolve until we are long gone,” explains Sullivan.
This may be grim news, showing that humankind has most probably got a deadline with climate change posing a huge threat, but Frank and Sullivan hope that researching further will help us understand how other past civilizations have dealt with these changes.