The Milky Way could have dozens of alien civilizations capable of contacting us
We’ve been sending out radio signals for about into the galaxy for a century. Have other civilizations been doing the same? (Pixabay/)With astronomers constantly discovering new exoplanets orbiting distant stars and planetary scientists better understanding the warm, wet corners of our own solar system, the universe is looking more and more hospitable to life. Until someone spots far-off extraterrestrial technology or uncovers a more local microbe, the existence of extraterrestrial life will remain an open question. But that doesn’t stop some from trying to narrow it down. In the absence of hard proof, two researchers have made a new soft estimate of how alone humanity might be based on the (limited) information at hand. Their calculation, which appeared Monday in the Astrophysical Journal, blends current astronomical observations with one big assumption—that life on Earth is in no way special—to conclude that dozens of radio-capable civilizations may currently exist in the...