For many years, I had to wonder why there had not been any proven alien visitations. After all, for well over half a century there have been claims of alien sightings, abductions etc. I had long assumed aliens probably existed and also figured they might be too far away, or not in an advanced state of development. In the year 2000, a book was written called "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon In The Universe". The book was written by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. It became the basis for what has since come to be known as the rare Earth hypothesis.
I wasn't aware of this book till probably 2010 and never read it. However, when I saw the title, I knew what it would be about. I had already written and illustrated a Graphic Novel (GN) which I'd completed in 2006. That GN touched upon my take of the rare Earth hypothesis. The first assumption I made about Earthlike worlds is that they orbit Sunlike stars. This because at this point, it's all we know. We cannot begin investigations into worlds orbiting other star types that are not yet known to have Earth analogues.
This illustration shows how an Earthlike planet could orbit either star of the Alpha Centauri system. It's orbit would probably be more elliptical, but not so much as to have the planet be attracted by one or the other parent star.
This image was intended to illustrate what an actual exo-planet might look like as photographed through an enormously powerful telescope. The above image came from my GN, "Human Space Flight and Beyond". I did HSFB from 2000-2003.
For the purpose of this blog, an Earthlike world can be a rocky planet with an atmosphere. By that definition, Venus and Mars are Earthlike. But we know those worlds do not support Human Level Intelligent (HLI) beings. An Earth analog would be a planet very much like Earth but not necessarily populated with HLI beings. This type of world may be fairly common and could be found orbiting other types of stars such as red dwarf stars.
However, one should start investigations of Earth analogs first because as previously mentioned, they are all we know as far as life giving planets. It would appear that all Earth analogues should have HLI beings. But the reality may well be that many don't. Some may orbit young stars and may still be in their early developmental stages for example. Life may be in the microbial or dinosaur stage assuming it even develops in the same glacial and sequential manner that it did on Earth. A sun like star like Tau Ceti could have advanced HLI beings due to the age of the star. Tau Ceti being older than the sun by over a billion years. Or maybe HLI beings on an Earthlike world orbiting Tau Ceti, has long since vanished for a variety of reasons.
What I imagined an image of an Earthlike exo-planet might appear like in a telescope like Hubble or the ESO complex at the Paranal observatory. This was the first image of Destin as shown in my GN, "Human Space Flight and Beyond".
My version of the rare earth hypothesis works like this. There could be hundreds of thousands of pre HLI being populated worlds out there meaning dinosaurs, animals, human like predecessors etc. Then out of that there could be a thousand or so planets populated by Pre Radio Capable HLI beings. Pre radio capable beings ranging from stone age to radio capability. Then a hundred or so early space exploration capable HLI beings followed by fifty or so stellar system exploration capable HLI beings and finally, one to five Interstellar exploration capable HLI beings. The least advanced interstellar travel capable beings can only explore a few local stars while the most advanced can explore virtually the entire galaxy. The latter could be present in only one of every ten or even hundred galaxies.
To further break down the number of potential HLI beings, I use this example. An example consisting of 3 possibilities:
1.....Earth is the only life bearing world in the entire known Universe perhaps because it is the very first.
2.....HLI beings are rare in the extreme.
3.....There are Spocks, Yoda's and neelixe's running around out there just in our galaxy alone, that is HLI life is as common as sci fi media and UFO proponents suggest. To answer each of the 3 possibilities, I do so in this way:
1.....This is highly unlikely given there are much older galaxies with earth analogs long since gone. It is also highly unlikely Earth is the only life bearing world. But it is possible and if life should be discovered outside Earth, number 1 will become a moot point.
2.....This is my personal pick due to the fact we have yet to detect HLI presence in nearby star systems via the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program. In addition, no credible evidence of HLI alien beings has been presented thus far. This does not mean HLI beings have not visited, they could have visited when dinosaurs existed. We would never know they were ever here if that were the case.
3.....A galaxy teeming with HLI beings. Each stellar system having at least one Earth analog with HLI beings. If what the UFO community presents as evidence is to be accepted, this would be the correct scenario. However, the evidence presented thus far by UFO proponents is far from irrefutable.
So assuming my hypothesis (Example 2) is correct, that there are one interstellar exploration capable beings in each galaxy on average. With billions of galaxies known to exist at various times within the known Universe, the irony is...HLI beings would be quite common anyway!
A sampling from my graphic novel Destin. This shows what I called the pyramid of life. A pyramid that has the simplest organisms at the bottom.
Another pyramid illustrates common to rare types of HLI civilizations.
If optical astronomy can evolve to see planets as spheres with some detail, we would probably see a multitude of Earth like worlds. Ranging from Venus to Mars and everything in between. Planets almost identical to Earth being at the mid range. Astronomers should also be able to detect spectral signatures that could be life indicators. In my GN entitled "Destin", the planet Destin (Short for Destiny) is detected and spectral analysis indicates a cyclic variation in CO2 output over each orbit of this world. A variation indicative of flora (Plants) undergoing seasonal variation.
One indicator of possible life on an exo-planet is a spectral analysis of the basic elements present in the light reaching Earth bound spectrographs.
A sampling or Earthlike worlds and Earth analogs from my graphic novel Destin.
It is much later determined this world is tilted on it's axis in much the way Uranus is. The tilt causing wild swings in the cycle of flora over the orbital period of Destin. A period similar to one Earth year. This fictional planet orbits around the star Alpha Centauri "A". It was further determined Destin had been struck by a smaller planet early in it's formation. It was knocked on it's side leaving it with a hemispherical ice cap on the side facing away from Alpha Centauri "A", and a giant lake on the perpetually lit north polar side. Life flourishing on the tilted equatorial band of Destin.
How did I arrive at the tentative conclusion of a rare Earth where HLI beings are concerned?
I began by looking at life right here on Earth. Out of millions of species, only one arose to technological development. And out of the planets of the solar system, only Earth is known to have life beyond simple microorganisms. We don't yet know of life outside Earth but Mars, Europa, Enceladus, Titan and perhaps Triton are good candidates for microorganisms such as extremophiles. It is often said Earth had to have just the right conditions for life to develop, especially complex flora, fauna (Animal) and HLI life.
In my Destin GN, the planet Destin itself, was thought to be teeming with advanced life forms. As it turns out in the story, it has some highly unusual life forms including one species determined to have HLI at the level humans were in the stone age. These were classified as "Planimals" as they had both plant and animal features. Destin demonstrates how unusual an Earthlike world or even Earth analog can turn out. Destin is just one of several Earth analogs I featured in my fictional story of Destin.
In my GN, planimal's grow under the canopies of trees in most cases.
This story followed "Human Space Flight and Beyond" and was itself named simply "Destin". I had plans for a sequel entitled "Beyond Centauri" which was to look at humanities expansion beyond the Alpha Centauri system. What I finished of that story showed a catalog of known Earthlike worlds as of the 30th century. A relatively small handful which illustrates the difficulty of optical telescope physics and interstellar travel. That difficulty lying in the example of the fact the speed of light had yet to be broken as of the 30th century.
One of the Earthlike worlds I featured, is populated by bird like HLI beings that never developed aviation. This was due to the fact they already had wings. I featured a chart showing various levels of Earth like worlds. The bird like HLI beings was yet another demonstration of the variety of HLI beings that may exist out there. There have been so many portrayals and types of Above Human Level Intelligent (AHLI) in popular culture that I had an extremely difficult time coming up with original AHLI beings for my GNs. I stopped doing novel length GNs due to inability to gain exposure for them. I may yet revisit my post Destin future scenario via short GNs but only time will tell if that happens. Even now, the media sometimes claim they think we will make contact in a decade or two. The point of my GNs were that we are not going to find aliens in a few years or decades, unless they contact us. It could take centuries and in Destin, it does. In a universe as vast as ours, finding and proving aliens beyond a shadow of a doubt is not easy to say the very least.
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