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Scientists have just come up with another potential account for why we havenever find planetary house of extraterrestrial lifein the cosmos — we may be hold up in the wrong universe .
A unexampled theoretic model based on the famousDrake equationsuggests that foreign life is more likely to come forth in specific parallel universes that could potentially survive alongside ours in a never - endingmultiverse . If this is the causa , it means we do not exist in the " optimum existence " for detecting extraterrestrial civilizations .
A new model predicts that there could be higher chances of extraterrestrial life existing in parallel universes than in our universe.
The Drake equation was a theoretical rule written by American astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1961 to help tackle the duality between the high chance that extraterrestrial intelligence exists and the fact that we have no evidence for such extraterrestrial — a problem recognise as theFermi Paradox . The Drake equality estimatesthe chances of detecting extraterrestrial sprightliness in the Milky Way . It primarily hinge on the routine of stars in our galaxy , because outlander would likely need a star to spawn anexoplanetthey could call home and provide the energy needed to spark their emergence and evolution , despitesome theories to the reverse .
But in a new study , published Wednesday ( Nov. 13 ) in the journalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , researchers require this idea and extrapolated it on a multiversal scale by calculating how differences in the density ofdark Department of Energy — the mysterious violence driving the expansion of the universe — may regard how many star can form in unlike parallel creation .
The model let out that the optimal density of dark energy in a universe would enable up to 27 % of non - dark matter to bend into stars . But in our creation , the fraction of such matter that turns into maven is 23 % , think of there are fewer principal and , as a result , few stead for alien to come forth , harmonise to astatement by investigator .
Parallel universes with additional dark energy could have more stars than our universe, which increases the chance of alien life developing. (This image shows a stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which orbits the Milky Way.)
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The new finding are completely hypothetic and assume that a multiverse live , which is a theory that is far from being proved . However , " it will be exciting to employ the example to explore the emergence of life across different universes and see whether some fundamental inquiry we ask ourselves about our own macrocosm must be reinterpreted , " work co - authorLucas Lombriser , a cosmologist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland , said inanother statement .
Dark energy is a currently - unidentifiable content or force that function against gravitational force , causing space - time to expand rather than collapse in on itself . Astronomers conceive that sorry get-up-and-go existsbecause the universe ’s expansion is quicken , but they haveno readable mind what it is .
The amount of this mysterious DOE in different parallel universe would influence the cosmos ' respective adept shaping by impacting the pace of their cosmic expanding upon : If a population has less dour energy than ours , it could expand more lento , which would decrease virtuoso organisation by enabling gravity to break large - scale structure , such as leading clustering , galaxies or astronomical superclusters . But if a universe of discourse has more dark energy than ours , it could increase star formation by scatter matter more widely and enabling more large , adept - forge structures to take form .
— What could estrange look like ?
— Is it metre to send another message to well-informed aliens ?
— What ’s the right evidence we ’ve found for exotic life ?
However , too much dark vigour would cause a universe to expand so cursorily that it would reduce the amount of star geological formation by scattering thing too widely . As a result , the young exemplar account the optimal denseness of benighted Energy Department that would maximise the rate of star constitution , which flex out to be slightly higher than the density we observe in our own universe . That means levelheaded organism in other world may have better luck finding each other than we ’ve had searching for aliens in ours .
The researchers also suspect that across the multiverse , the optimum dark vim density would be more common than other possible configurations of the mysterious force-out , such as the density of our universe ’s glum energy .
" We may not live in the most likely of universes , " field pencil lead authorDaniele Sorini , a cosmologist at Durham university in England , said in the second statement .