The dominant theory about why aliens haven’t made contact with Earth yet… and scientists say it’s “sick.”

Speculation that some form of alien life exists beyond our planet dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, but humans have still not made contact.

There have been a wide range of theories, including the lone proposal that human-level intelligence is totally “unique” in the universe, but one scientist has revealed a more likely scenario: alien civilizations were destroyed by gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

GRBs are hugely energetic explosions observed in distant galaxies, which occur when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own weight, releasing a massive ‘supernova’ of radiation.

“It’s a tightly focused beam,” astronomy professor Dr. Frederick Walter to DailyMail.com. “And if it were passed through the plane of the Milky Way, it could in principle sterilize about 10 percent of the planets in the Milky Way.”

“It’s just one of many possible explanations,” he noted, “a bit morbid, I think.”

NASA calls gamma-ray bursts “the most powerful class of explosions in the universe.”

A typical eruption produces a bright beam of focused energy: a trillion (a 1 followed by 19 zeros) times the brightness of our own sun, in other words more than enough to burn an alien civilization from its place in the Milky Way.

Fortunately, based on decades of research by NASA’s orbital Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, gamma-ray bursts are relatively rare in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

When the Compton Observatory satellite was launched in 1991, NASA researchers expected more “GRBs” to emerge from our pancake-shaped galactic disk.

But the reality turned out that these explosive ‘supernova’ events were much more common in younger, distant galaxies, which are still hot in the process of forming new stars, or in the case of long-lived GRBs, which collapse stars into black holes transform. .

“It is estimated that a gamma-ray burst occurs in every galaxy approximately every 100 million years,” said Dr. Walter, who has taught a course on the search for extraterrestrial life at Stony Brook University in New York.

“On average, over a billion years, you could expect a significant number of civilizations to be wiped out,” he said, “if they existed.”

Other estimates have suggested that gamma-ray bursts could occur as often as once every 10 million years per galaxy – but either range would mean that many alien species could be wiped out before they get a chance to do much space exploration.

The Stony Brook astronomer pointed out that planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and it took almost that long to develop the only technologically advanced species that humanity currently has evidence of: humanity itself.

That would mean that, like a game of Russian roulette, the Milky Way is estimated to have experienced between 45 and 450 local GRB events in Earth’s history.

Some geophysicists and other researchers have even argued that Earth’s Ordovician and/or Devonian mass extinction, about 359 to 445 million years ago, may have been the result of a gamma-ray explosion from just such a collapsing star or black hole. formative event.

But Dr. Walter emphasized that this is just one hypothesis as to why humanity has not yet officially discovered signs of an alien civilization anywhere in the universe.

Although these supernova explosions can be apocalyptically deadly, Dr. Walter that any potential threat to humanity from a GRB is “not worth worrying about.”

“They are rare and focused,” making them much less likely to hit Earth, the astronomer said. “And it’s not something you can prepare for.”

Gamma-ray bursts were first recorded in 1967, via a pair of American Vela satellites that were in use to detect evidence of any Soviet nuclear tests that may have been carried out in defiance of the 1963 Test Ban Treaty.

Two years later, the strange outbursts came to the attention of a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who later pioneered the laboratory’s gamma-ray astronomy group.

While the supposed ancient GRB eruptions that hit Earth hundreds of millions of years ago would have destroyed and dissolved the DNA of every living thing on the planet, today the distant radiation from distant GRBs usually leaves behind telltale evidence in the form of bright stars. -like flashes or evidence of gamma ray particles in our ionosphere.

In the 74 years since nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi first wondered why humanity, in a universe theoretically teeming with life, has yet to discover any of it empirically, the possible solutions to his famous ‘Fermi paradox’ have multiplied. .

One book, by physicist Stephen Webb of the University of Portsmouth, examined 75 feasible explanations currently in play, from the terrifying (e.g. all aliens are hiding from a deadly predator civilization) to the mundane (e.g. space travel is too difficult).

“There are many ways around this,” said Dr. Walter.

One example, he noted, was that a highly advanced aquatic species on another world, such as whales or dolphins here on Earth, is unlikely to develop the technology needed for space travel, despite having large brains and powerful social skills.

“If you live underwater,” he told DailyMail.com, “you’re not going to play with electricity.”

Alternatively, a wise but risk-averse civilization could simply decide that “it might not be worth traveling among the stars and looking for other aliens,” said Dr. ‘little utopia’ on their homeworld.

But one of the most common theories among physicists and astronomers, according to Dr. Walter that technologically advanced civilizations might be universally inclined to kill themselves – whether through mismanagement, greed, war, or worse.

“Just look around, you know?” said the astronomer. ‘We are polluting the atmosphere. We are questioning whether we will have a viable civilization a century from now unless we do something drastic.”

“If civilizations tend to develop in the same way as on our planet, then it will affect everyone,” Dr. continued. Walter, and opined, “Our technology may surpass our wisdom.”

“I think that’s the leading theory,” he said. “But look, it’s all speculation.”

“We have one example: that’s us.”

If you consider the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century as humanity’s first leap into the ranks of technologically advanced species, Dr. Walter notes that we have only survived about 150 years so far.

‘There is always a risk that we won’t make it for another 150 years.’