Homo Techno #5
Will we meet aliens? Where are we? How will this all end?
[TL;DR How did life appear? Are evolutionary pressures ubiquitous? Is the universe deterministic? Does it matter?]
Anthropic Principle
Habitable Solar Systems
Most experts agree that main sequence stars like our Sun and red dwarfs could facilitate habitable planets.
Habitable Planets
Earth’s Seasons
Abiogenesis
Evolution & Competition
Grabby Aliens Model
Hard Steps Model + Human Earliness
Automated Expansion
Dark Forest Theory
Maybe aliens are inherently hostile due to evolutionary pressures.
SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
Superclusters
This is what our universe looks like.
We can only see above and below because the light from the sides of our galaxy blinds the rest.
We can also only see out to a certain distance because light/radiation must travel at 299 792 458 m/s, and the size of the universe is spanless as far as we know.
The James Webb telescope, launched in 2022, will enable us to look further than ever before, in time.
Local Group
Heat Death
There’s no need to worry about this in your lifetime. However, in all likelihood it appears there is an end to the universe. Our current understanding of the universe shows it is accelerating outwards. Some postulate that this is due to dark energy, but we do not know the exact mechanisms. Nevertheless, due to entropy all sources of energy like our sun, other stars, and black holes will evaporate; according to Hawking radiation theory even supermassive black holes will evaporate in the timescale of a Googol (10^100) years.
