New Model Calculates Chances of Intelligent Beings In Our Universe and Beyond

Chances of intelligent life emerging in our Universe "and in any hypothetical ones beyond it" can be estimated by a new theoretical model, reports the Royal Astronomical Society.

Since stars are a precondition for the emergence of life, the new research predicts that a typical observer [i.e., intelligent life] should experience a substantially larger density of dark energy than is seen in our own Universe... The approach presented in the paper involves calculating the fraction of ordinary matter converted into stars over the entire history of the Universe, for different dark energy densities. The model predicts this fraction would be approximately 27% in a universe that is most efficient at forming stars, compared to 23% in our own Universe. Dark energy makes the Universe expand faster, balancing gravity's pull and creating a universe where both expansion and structure formation are possible. However, for life to develop, there would need to be regions where matter can clump together to form stars and planets, and it would need to remain stable for billions of years to allow life to evolve.

Crucially, the research suggests that the astrophysics of star formation and the evolution of the large-scale structure of the Universe combine in a subtle way to determine the optimal value of the dark energy density needed for the generation of intelligent life. Professor Lucas Lombriser, Université de Genève and co-author of the study, added: "It will be exciting to employ the model to explore the emergence of life across different universes and see whether some fundamental questions we ask ourselves about our own Universe must be reinterpreted."
The study was funded by the EU's European Research Council, and published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

If we assume...

[Anonymous Coward]

If we assume that conditions on Earth are optimal for the evolution of intelligent life then very little chance because I've checked Earth extensively and couldn't find any.

The probability is high

[dbialac]

Given how vast the universe is, I think the better question to ask is, "What is the likelihood that there isn't intelligent life elsewhere?" I would assume very low. The problems that life has had to encounter here are not so different from the problems that life has had to encounter elsewhere.

Re:

[sinij]

Given how vast the universe is, I think the better question to ask is, "What is the likelihood that there isn't intelligent life elsewhere?"

Indeed, but yet there are no observable signs of intelligent life anywhere. Kardashev [wikipedia.org] Type 1 would be observable in nearby starts, Type 2 would be detectable to us anywhere in our galaxy and Type 3 would be detectable in a lot of visible galaxies.

Re:

[dbialac]

But even in our detection methods, we're not doing very well. SETI, at least the last time I looked (2 decades ago), was using Gaussian smoothing to filter out noise. Those same filters will flatten out an advanced civilization that has inhabited multiple stars in close proximity. We're also limited as to what we have the technology to detect. The ideas of radio transmission are quite young and there is likely far more that we don't know and can't leverage than the opposite. The one thing we do know for cer

Re:

[siege72]

There's a problem with your question: you don't define "intelligent".

There are a number of nonhuman species (elephants, octopi, etc) on Earth that display some degree of intelligence, but wouldn't meet the "conventional" definition (technologically advanced civilization-builders).

"The problems that life has had to encounter here are not so different from the problems that life has had to encounter elsewhere."

That's not necessarily true. Earth has a lot of things going for it. Our star has stable energy outp

Re:

[firecode]

Chance of emergence of live from random chemical interactions is EXTREMELY small.

I calculated some numbers and it showed it would take multiple universes until it is likely that life emergences (assuming each star has one Earth).

What in the world has happened to science?

[davide marney]

Good Lord, a "scientific" paper using a "modeled" distribution of "dark" energy to predict the "emergence" of intelligent life via natural selection of randomly mutated changes in genetic structures?

That's the plot of a Sci-Fi novel.

Re:

[quonset]

Good Lord, a "scientific" paper using a "modeled" distribution of "dark" energy to predict the "emergence" of intelligent life via natural selection of randomly mutated changes in genetic structures?

That's the plot of a Sci-Fi novel.

Already been done to some extent. Life on a neutron star [wikipedia.org].

Assumptions

[phantomfive]

Since stars are a precondition for the emergence of life,

That's a rather large assumption, I would say. Energy of some kind is surely a precondition for life, but does it have to come from stars?

and it would need to remain stable for billions of years to allow life to evolve.

Given that we have a sample size of 1, do you really feel confident assuming you know how long it takes for life to evolve?

Dark energy makes the Universe expand faster, balancing gravity's pull and creating a universe where both expansion and structure formation are possible.

These seem like inordinately confident assertions considering how little we actually know about dark energy.

Re:

[burtosis]

Given that we have a sample size of 1, do you really feel confident assuming you know how long it takes for life to evolve?

Billions of years is likely an overestimate of what’s possible, but any life as it’s remotely defined needs to store information and process it in a way to evolve. So long periods of stability are likely a minimum requirement. It could be deep within a planet around an unstable star, it could possibly evolve on a gas planet without a usable surface, but it does need stability or its self replicating pattern is simply wiped away.

Nonesense

[BloomFilter]

What a load of nonsense. You can't use probability to predict something happening that has only ever happened ONCE (abiogenesis) that we know of. That isn't how statistics work. And you can't just throw "universe is really big" at the problem either. There have been TRILLIONS of organic chemicals bouncing around Earth for 4 billion years and those never because alive before or after that one life-starting event, so sheer numbers obviously don't matter. It is just insanity to use probability, we don't have e

Re:

[null etc.]

TRILLIONS is a relatively small number, cosmologically speaking.

TL; DR

[PLAST]

So what's the result? Are there any?

Model makes many assumptions to come up +-100000%

[rahmrh]

Model makes many assumptions to come up an answer that is +-100000% .

I am not sure how a model that estimates various things that we actually have zero idea about (or even what is or if it actually exists--dark energy/matter), could come up with a useful answer.

Maybe as a though experiment.

But probably Garbage in/Garbage out.

Plenty of versions of the Drake Equation out there

[Eunomion]

Just tweak the assumptions here and there, throw in or take out terms here and there, you'll get any result you want. It's just conjecture. A fun little game for the sci-fi enthusiast. Calling it a model would be absurd at this point. We need a baseline of well-characterized exoplanets, and we're not even close to that.

Plate tectonics

[oumuamua]

Star formation? this is useless, we can more or less see how many stars are out there. Now there is a theory that plate tectonics is important in the evolution of life. If so how common is plate tectonics? it could be exceedingly rare and a key variable in the Drake equation. https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]

More evidence

[SuperDre]

Are we on the verge of publicly having contact with other civilizations? More and more articles and publication are coming out on life beyond earth, like getting people ready about the idea of us not being alone. I have no doubts about other life in the universe, we sure aren't alone. But I do have doubts about the misuse of alien technology, until we find our own way to travel faster in our own galaxy, hell even our own solar system.

Misleading headline

[LindleyF]

Based on the summary, the goal isn't to say whether there is life out there, but only to better understand how different levels of dark energy effect the environment.