Speculation that some form of extraterrestrial life exists beyond our planet dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, but humans have not yet made contact.
There have been a wide range of theories, including the solitary proposal that human-level intelligence is entirely “unique” in the universe, but one scientist has revealed a more likely scenario: extraterrestrial civilizations were destroyed by gamma ray bursts (GRB ).
GRBs are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies and occur when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own weight, unleashing a massive “supernova” of radiation.
“It’s a very focused beam,” astronomy professor Dr. Frederick Walter told DailyMail.com. “And if it’s directed across the plane of the galaxy, it could basically sterilize about 10 percent of the planets in the galaxy.”
“It’s just one of many possible explanations,” he noted, “somewhat morbid, I suppose.”
A variety of cosmic activity may be capable of generating gamma-ray bursts, as proposed by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab in Arizona in a case (illustrated above) that may have originated with the collision of stars or stellar debris near a black hole. supermassive.
NASA’s new $150 million COSI gamma-ray telescope will study the evolution of the Milky Way to map its unknown origins. This gamma-ray detecting telescope, called the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), is expected to launch in 2025.
POT calls gamma-ray bursts “the most powerful class of explosions in the universe.”
A typical explosion emits a bright beam of directed energy: a quintillion (a 1 followed by 19 zeros) times the brightness of our own sun, more than enough, in other words, to burn an extraterrestrial civilization that has cleared its position. in the galaxy.
Fortunately, according to decades of research by NASA’s Compton Orbital Gamma-ray Observatory, gamma-ray bursts are relatively rare in our Milky Way galaxy.
When the Compton Observatory satellite was launched in 1991, NASA researchers expected to see more ‘GRBs’ emanating from our pancake-shaped galactic disk.
But the reality turned out to be that these explosive ‘supernova’ events were much more common in younger, more distant galaxies, still hot in the process of forming new stars, or in the case of long-lived GRBs, transforming collapsing stars. in black holes. .
“It is estimated that there is a gamma ray burst approximately every 100 million years in any galaxy,” according to Dr. Walter, who has taught a course on the search for extraterrestrial life at Stony Brook University in New York.
“On average, over a billion years, a significant number of civilizations could be expected to be eradicated,” he said, “if they existed at all.”
This image provided by NASA on October 14, 2022 shows the Swift X-ray Telescope capturing the afterglow of GRB 221009A about an hour after it was first detected. Below, GRB 221009A, as seen by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in October 2022
Other estimates have suggested that gamma-ray bursts could occur as frequently as once every 10 million years per galaxy, but any range would mean that many alien species could be wiped out before they have a chance to do much space exploration.
The Stony Brook astronomer noted that planet Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, and it took almost that long for the only technologically advanced species for which humanity currently has evidence: humanity itself.
That would mean, like a game of Russian roulette, that the Milky Way is estimated to have experienced between 45 and 450 local GRB events in Earth’s history.
In fact, some geophysicists and other researchers have argued that Earth’s Ordovician and/or Devonian mass extinctions about 359 to 445 million years ago may have been the result of a gamma-ray burst from a star or black hole. in collapse. training event.
But Dr. Walter emphasized that this is just a hypothesis as to why humanity has not yet officially discovered signs of an extraterrestrial civilization somewhere in the universe.
“It is estimated that there is a gamma ray burst about every 100 million years, in any galaxy,” said Dr. Frederick Walter, who has taught a course on the search for extraterrestrial life at Stony Brook. ‘Over an average of one billion years, a significant number of civilizations could be expected to be eradicated’
Although these supernova explosions can be apocalyptically deadly, Dr. Walter warned that any potential threat to humanity from a GRB is “not worth worrying about.”
“They are rare and directed,” which makes them much less likely to collide with Earth, the astronomer said. “And it’s not something you can prepare for.”
Gamma-ray bursts were first recorded in 1967, via a pair of American Vela satellites operating to detect evidence of any Soviet nuclear tests that may have been conducted in defiance of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Two years later, the strange explosions caught the attention of a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which later pioneered the lab’s gamma-ray astronomy group.
While the supposed explosions of ancient GRBs that hit Earth hundreds of millions of years ago would have annihilated and dissolved the DNA of any living thing on the planet, today distant radiation from distant GRBs leaves telltale evidence in the form of a bright star. -like flashes or evidence of gamma ray particles in our ionosphere.
In the 74 years since nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi first asked why, in a universe theoretically teeming with life, humanity has yet to empirically detect any of it, possible solutions to his famous “Fermi paradox” have proliferated. “.
One book, by physicist Stephen Webb of the University of Portsmouth, explored 75 viable explanations currently in play, from the terrifying (e.g., all aliens are hiding from a deadly predatory civilization) to the mundane (e.g., space travel is too difficult).
“There are many ways to avoid this,” Dr. Walter said.
One example, he noted, was that a highly advanced aquatic species on another world, like whales or dolphins here on Earth, would probably not develop the technology needed for space travel, despite having large brains and powerful social skills.
“If you live underwater,” as he told DailyMail.com, “you’re not going to play with electricity.”
Alternatively, a wise but risk-averse civilization might simply decide that “it may not be worth traveling among the stars and looking for other aliens,” Dr. Walter said, choosing instead to “focus inward” and form their own civilization. “little utopia” on his home world.
But one of the most common theories among physicists and astronomers, according to Dr. Walter, is that technologically advanced civilizations might be universally prone to suicide, whether through mismanagement, greed, war, or worse.
‘Just look around, you know?’ said the astronomer. ‘We are polluting the atmosphere. “We are questioning whether we are going to have a viable civilization within a century unless we do something drastic.”
“If civilizations tend to evolve the same way they have on our planet, that will affect everyone,” Dr. Walter continued, opining, “our technology surpasses our wisdom, perhaps.”
“I guess that’s the main theory,” he said. “But look, it’s all speculation.”
“We have an example: it is us.”
If we take the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century as humanity’s first leap into the ranks of technologically advanced species, Dr. Walter noted that we have only “survived about 150 years” so far.
“There is always the risk that we will not survive another year or 150.”