Intelligent Life in the Universe

Have you ever wondered if there is intelligent life other than humans out in the universe?  If you are a stoner, then the answer is probably "yeah, dude".  If you are everybody else, then the question might have crossed your mind at some point.  Since I brought it up, the actual answer is probably no, I doubt it.  The odds of alien life is pretty good, but the odds of intelligent life is very slim.  There are a quadrillion stars in our galaxy alone, meaning there are at least that many planets floating around space.  And there are millions and millions of galaxies with just as many stars in them.  So, the odds of a planet with just the right conditions for life to exist are very very high.  So, life most certainly exists out there, but the odds that that life evolved enough to be considered intelligent is not nearly as high.  I'll be writing a post very soon about what it took just for humans to evolve to the point where you are sitting there reading this and you will see why the odds are not in the favor of other intelligent life being out there.

But let's say there is intelligent life out there, who is to say humans will still be alive if they evolve enough to travel through space?  Humans are definitely a highly evolved species, but we are still a very short-sighted species.  Our brains don't really allow us to plan long-term and by long-term, I mean beyond a couple of generations.  Look at it this way, we know that pollution is killing our planet and yet we still haven't really done enough to make sure our grandchildren's grandchildren will inherit a planet that will be habitable.  So, if intelligent life has evolved enough to plan long-term and have invented interstellar travel, the odds that they show up here and humans still exist are very very slim.

And let's say that humans are the ones who invent interstellar travel, what are the odds that we find another habitable planet with an intelligent species far enough along in their evolution that we can communicate with them?  Humans have been around for 250,000 years which is about 0.00001% of the universe's 13.8 billion year existence.  That's an insanely small fraction of time.  What's to say that we show up to said habitable planet and discover that there was an intelligent species, but they had already gone extinct billions of years ago because they couldn't save their own planet from themselves (you know, like we currently are having problems with)?

So, there you go.  Even if intelligent life does exist (which is unlikely), the odds that we meet them at the same time of their own peak of intelligence is so slim that you are more likely to win the lottery every time you buy a ticket for the rest of your life.  What I'm trying to say is that buying lottery tickets is dumb and I really don't why anybody does it.  You are way more likely to die on your way to buy a lottery ticket than you will ever be likely to win it.

"No, not that kind of alien, silly pants."