Watching all the alien
and space movies, we have all wondered about this question at least once in
life: is there any other life present in the galaxy?

For several years,
scientists have worked on this question but we never received a clear answer or
any indication of aliens reaching out to us. However, scientists at the
University of Nottingham have come up with a new cosmic evolution-based
calculation that gives us some idea about aliens. According to them, at least
36 ongoing intelligent civilizations are present in our Milky Way Galaxy.

Source: Forbes

We all know that the Milky Way has around 100 billion to 400 billion stars and
we are just part of one solar system in such a massive galaxy.

So the appearance of
the scientists was published in The Astrophysical Journal today and it argues
that intelligent life is present on other planets.

However, if people
choose to argue against this assumption we would understand that because no
solid foundation is present that can back this claim. It is just a calculation
based on a lot of assumptions. The scientists say that it will take around 4.5
billion years to confirm this theory because it took us roughly the same amount
of time to enter a technological civilization on Earth. So maybe life on other
planets exists but they just do not know how to communicate.

This theory has been
called Astrobiological Copernican Limit by the team of scientists. It revolves
around:

1. Star formation
histories.

2. How common
metal-rich stars are (like the Sun).

3. The likelihood of
stars hosting Earth-like planets in their habitable zones.

Source: Eunis

“The classic method for
estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of
values relating to life, but opinions about such matters vary quite
substantially,” said Tom Westby, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Engineering at
the University of Nottingham, and lead author on the paper. “Our new study
simplifies these assumptions using new data, giving us a solid estimate of the
number of civilizations in our galaxy.”

If those 36
civilizations even exist, then we also need to raise the question of their
survival. How long can they live and what means do they have on other planets
for sustainability?

Source: UC Chicago Mag

“Searches for extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations not only reveals the
existence of how life itself forms, but also gives us clues about how long our
own civilization will last,” said Christopher Conselice, Professor of
Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, who led the research. “If we find
that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization
could exist for much longer than a few hundred years. Alternatively, if we find
that there are no active civilizations in our galaxy it is a bad sign for our
own long-term existence.”