As far as we know, humans have never made contact with aliens from deep space. Still, statistically speaking, we shouldn’t be alone. Like a rejected lover, we desperately tried to figure out why no one was calling, finding one possible excuse after another. A researcher at the Statistical Biophysics Laboratory at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland has found another explanation for radio silence, inspired by the humble sponge.

“We’ve only been looking for 60 years,” says biophysicist Claudio Grimaldi. “Earth could be in a bubble devoid of radio waves emitted by extraterrestrial life.”

In short, there is too much space to scan and probably not enough alien transmissions blocking our way. This is based on a statistical model previously used to study porous materials such as sponges, but has been applied to predict the distribution of extraterrestrial signal emitters that may or may not be somewhere in space, rather than pores in the material.

Please be patient with the message. Scanning the universe for traces of communication takes time, effort, and money, and there is debate over whether the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is worth it.

The discovery model begins with the assumption that at any given time there is at least one electromagnetic signal of technological origin in the Milky Way, and that Earth has been in a silent bubble (or spongy pore) for at least sixty years. .

If so, then according to statistics, less than 1 to 5 electromagnetic radiation occurs in our galaxy every century. So they’re as common as supernovae in the Milky Way, so they’re not very common. Such probabilistic estimates often have scalable assumptions. You can adjust the factors to be a little more optimistic (or pessimistic) by adjusting the probability of catching a signal in the future.

Based on the most optimistic scenario with the conditions outlined above, Grimaldi says it may take at least 60 years before we find alien transmission. In the least optimistic scenario, we expect about 2000 years. Either way, we need a radio telescope looking in the right direction.

“Perhaps we were unlucky because we discovered how to use radio telescopes when we were traversing a part of space where electromagnetic signals from other civilizations were missing,” Grimaldi says.

“To me, this hypothesis seems less extreme than the assumption that we are constantly bombarded with signals from all sides, but for some reason we are unable to detect them.”

As the tools we use to probe space improve, we’re discovering more planets that may have the right conditions for life, which means more chances for alien life to try to get in. in contact

However, we still have a lot of room to look for, so modeling is crucial to determining where to look. For example, if an alien civilization did evolve, it may have been clustered around a group of planets rather than evenly distributed, as the analysis in this study suggests.

Grimaldi suggests the best way forward is to do collaborative research: looking for signals in data collected by telescopes focused on other missions, rather than using telescopes specifically to search for alien communication.

“The best strategy might be to take the SETI community’s past approach of using data from other astrophysical studies – detecting radio emissions from other stars or galaxies – to see if they contain any technosignals and take this standard practice,” says Grimaldi. Study published Astronomy Journal.