What are the odds aliens exist?

By Brian Koberlein in SCIENCE WIRE | SPACE | February 3, 2016

The star KIC 8462852 continues to display strange behavior,
baffling astronomers and prompting speculation and these
musings about advanced aliens.

Our sun is located about two-thirds of the way out from the
center of the Milky Way galaxy. There are 100 billion suns in
our Milky Way. Illustration via Caltech.

Recently the star KIC 8462852 (aka Tabbys Star) has made
news again because of its strange behavior. Possible
explanations for its varying brightness (such as comets) dont
seem to fit the observational data, which has some
speculating that the stars behavior could be explained by the
presence of an alien civilization. While many astronomers
admit that is a possibility, they dont think aliens are the
likely cause. For one, mysterious behavior is not enough to
conclude the cause is aliens. For another, the likelihood that
an alien civilization actually exists is still a matter of some
debate.

The odds of an alien civilization coexisting with humans is

often calculated by the Drake equation. It was first proposed
by Frank Drake in 1961. Simply take the rate at which stars
form in our galaxy and multiply it by the fraction of stars with
planets, the average number of planets per star that could
support life, the fraction of those that actually develop life,
the fraction of life bearing planets that develop civilization,
the fraction of civilizations that have detectible signals, and
finally the length of time a civilization might last. Crunch the
numbers and you have the number of civilizations in our
galaxy capable of communicating with us.

When Drake first proposed the equation, the values for each
term were largely unknown, but we now have good estimates
for many of them. We know that most stars have planets, and
the odds of a potentially habitable planet is actually quite
high, possibly as high as 100 billion in our galaxy alone.

Unfortunately the really important factors of the Drake

equation are still completely unknown. On how many
potentially habitable planets does life actually arise? How
many of those give rise to civilizations? How long does a
typical civilization last? No idea. Depending on the answer to
those questions the number of civilizations in our galaxy
could range from hundreds of thousands to only one.

The equation was never intended to give an absolute

number, though it is often used that way. There are also
alternatives such as the Sara Seagers equation, which
focuses on our ability to detect civilizations indirectly rather
than requiring active communication. Just because an alien
civilization is quiet, that doesnt mean we cant see evidence
for them. Seagers approach is to focus on stable red dwarf
stars with known potentially habitable worlds. Since red dwarf
stars are by far the most common, the odds that wed find
alien life near such a star is higher. She then focuses on
planets that transit their home star from our vantage point
and are near enough that we have a chance of observing the
effects of the planets atmosphere on the stars light. She
estimates that there might be two inhabited worlds might be
detectable in the next ten years.
Of course this presumes that life forms readily on a habitable
planet and survives billions of years, which might not be the
case.

The famous Drake equation, formulated by Frank Drake in the

1960s. It brings together key factors to consider when
estimating the number of active, communicative
extraterrestrial civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy.

What makes Tabbys Star particularly interesting is that it

hints at being evidence of an artificial structure the size of a
solar system, such as a Dyson sphere, which is something
only highly advanced civilizations could create. Of course the
big underlying assumption here is that the more advanced a
civilization is, the more likely it will build such a structure. The
idea was first presented by Nikolai Kardashev in 1964, who
proposed a classification of civilizations based upon their
energy use. Type I civilizations harness the resources of their
home planet, such as humans today. Type II harness almost
the full energy of their home star, possibly through
technology such as Dyson spheres. Species within the Star
Trek universe would typically be Type II. Type III are
civilizations that can harness the energy of an entire galaxy,
such as the Asgard of the Stargate universe.

Carl Sagan later generalized the Kardashev scale to a

logarithmic function of energy use, and estimated that we
were at about 0.7.

The Kardashev scale presumes that more advanced

civilizations will necessarily demand more energy. Humans
have so far lent credence to this idea, since our modern
global civilization consumes much more energy than earlier
agrarian civilizations. If our human population and demands
for technological convenience grows, we will likely expand
out into the solar system with a continued rise in energy
consumption.

But such a future is not guaranteed. Its also possible that we

will instead reach a stable and sustainable population level,
and combined with increasing energy efficiency our energy
consumption may flatten. Technological civilizations may
stabilize at type I rather than continuing up the scale.

Thats the real challenge with calculating the odds.

Everything weve pinned down so far point to a good

chance that life forms on planets across the universe but
theres still too many unknowns.

Even NASA has toyed with the idea of large space habitats.
This is a painting of what one might look like on the inside, by
space artist Don Davis.

Bottom line: The star KIC 8462852 continues to display

strange behavior, baffling astronomers and causing
speculation about advanced aliens. However, now as in
1961, when Frank Drake formulated his famous Drake
equation the fact is that there are many unknowns, and we
dont know if our galaxy has numerous advanced civilizations
or one.