Why We’re Not Being Probed by Aliens

The famous Drake Equation suggests that our galaxy, and by extension most other galaxies in the observable universe, should be teeming with alien civilizations all eager to cross vast distances to probe our fundaments. But the fact is, despite decades of looking and despite all the conspiracy theory nonsense, we’ve zero real-world proof that anything is out there at all.

Hence the now-famous question: “where is everybody?”

What if the Drake Equation was as realistic as any solution to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Let’s take a look to see why this may well be so.

First of all the Drake Equation (which we’ll call DE henceforth) makes some astonishing assumptions. Given that we know absolutely nothing whatsoever about the probability of eukaryotic (multi-cellular) life emerging even on our own planet, it’s a bit of a stretch to make the blithe assumption (as the DE does) that eukaryotic life is more or less inevitable on any planet that can theoretically have liquid water sloshing around on it.

Secondly we know nothing about the emergence of technology-creating life. Our own species has arisen because of a huge number of largely stochastic events, a small change in any one of which would have precluded our emergence. For example, if grass hadn’t evolved there would have been no savannah encroaching on the jungles in which our primate ancestors lived. Without encroachment, our ancestors would have remained in the trees and it is impossible…