Why we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy

[KimB]

hey thanks Chalnoth

I'd say that the argument is about "if we are not alone why doesn't someone capable come and contact us" which seems the only plausible conclusion from our "human" POV.

Well, no, that's not quite it. It's more like, "If we are not alone, why hasn't our planet already been colonized by another species?" If it were merely a question of contact, then the species couldn't know about us if they were more than a hundred or so light years away, which doesn't come close to ruling out intelligent life in the galaxy.

While technically I agree with your reasoning, on speed of colonization I do not agree with the premise that colonization is necessary outcome of intelligence capable to execute it. Your conclusion does not take an important aspect into account - and that is social development of "us" the intelligent civilization of this planet. That aspect is clearly observable here on earth with us humans, and I think that you could agree with the proposition which would say that more we develop - more different are our goals from pure "natural selection" goals.

Oh, I'm not even talking about natural selection here. Once a society comes into being, it follows its own laws of evolution, which are similar but subtly different from the laws that govern the evolution of pre-intelligence organisms. It is impossible for one signle civilization to circle the globe until a relatively modern society is achieved. Thus any planet with an intelligent society will contain a huge number of diverse societies. Only those societies that are aggressive in some measure will be capable of controlling large areas. Even ideas (sometimes called memes) follow their own laws of evolution, and only those ideas that are naturally self-propagating will come to prominence.

Thus, any planet that has civilizations that reach the point of technology of space travel is very likely to also want to colonize other planets.

Further social development of a civilization should make it to become benevolnet and "seamlessly integrated*" in the environment as opposed to the "destroy and conquer" attitude.

Oh, absolutely. But it is highly doubtful that colonization would be seen by any significant number of people as conquering. After all, even if my arguments fall flat about the possibility of other intelligent life on our galaxy, the vast majority of planets capable of harboring life out there won't have yet reached the point of developing intelligent life. How can an intelligent species feel sympathy about colonizing a planet with no intelligent life, when throughout its existence it has displaced every other species on the globe from which it arose? It is not unreasonable for an advanced civilization to decide to leave planets alone which have evolved intelligent life, but those without would be fair game.

 

[KimB]

I do wonder, though, at what the far, far future will be like. If we do manage to get off this rock eventually, then we will become nearly immortal as a species. But imagine the distances involved. Any colony will be effectively cut-off from Earth and any other colony. Thus every human colony out there will become its own, separate civilization. Given long enough time spans, every colony may even end up consisting of a different species of human (though natural evolution has nearly ceased, we will at some point need to begin the evolutionary process up ourselves through genetic engineering or selective breeding, as otherwise our gene pool will just slowly degrade over time).

Now, consider that every colony, once it's done filling up its own planet, will likely want to send out colonies of its own. But it won't have any way of knowing which planets won't have already been colonized by the time its colony ships arrive. This may well produce an interesting conundrum, especially if the humans involved are separated by thousands or tens of thousands of years of selective breeding/genetic engineering! They might not be recognizable to one another as the same species any longer.

And then, at some point, it would be inevitable for humans to run into another intelligent species. I personally think it's most likely that this won't happen unless we get out of our own galaxy, or another species from outside our galaxy makes it here. And when it does happen, it will likely be a surprise (i.e. it won't be discovered until, at the very least, a colony ship is on its way to a new world).

God, I would love to be able to observe the history of humanity over millions, if not billions of years (assuming we get off this rock). Oh, well.

 

[Druga Runda]

nutball says: "I think that the probability of the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is very low, based on a total lack of information".

Look, if you want to postulate the existence of life elsewhere as the pre-cursor to some other thought experiement by all means go ahead. But it is a postulation, it's not a basis for an argument in fact.

of course it is not an argument that can scientifically be proven , it is more like a thought experiment, but if you think about it is a very safe proposition.

The thought experiment that contradicts it includes such propositions as "in x billion of years that the milky way with x numebr of stars, every single one of them was unable to support life" or "support creation of intelligent life", or "all intelligent life self destructed", or perhaps "we are the first" etc...

Combine that with the known age of the universe and known number of galaxies, and the numbers that there is life out there are very close to 100% certain, with the age of the universe,the time it took for our evolution, and universe size combined it becomes very unlikely we are the first ones. Even further if the time or space is infinite that someone else is there becomes certainty, just for the fact that "we exist". That last one is not a proposition anymore it is a fact.

Now your "there is noone out there" should involve the idea that it is physically impossible to spread/communicate over the huge space in between galaxies for example, but that is something that we cannot argue either based on the "lack of information".

The facts are that there is no "official contact" and that "we are". You are of course free to state ""I think that the probability of the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is very low, based on a total lack of information", but that statement is more like lets say 30 years ago "I think that probablity for existence of life independant of sunlight is very low, based on a total lack of information" which is a true statement based on the total lack of information, still no reason to think "it is really the only solution" about this intriguing idea.

To me after some thought the other proposal I outlined in the previous post seems like a much more likely solution, given the information that we >have<.

 

[Druga Runda]

Well, no, that's not quite it. It's more like, "If we are not alone, why hasn't our planet already been colonized by another species?" If it were merely a question of contact, then the species couldn't know about us if they were more than a hundred or so light years away, which doesn't come close to ruling out intelligent life in the galaxy.

fair point

Oh, I'm not even talking about natural selection here. Once a society comes into being, it follows its own laws of evolution, which are similar but subtly different from the laws that govern the evolution of pre-intelligence organisms. It is impossible for one signle civilization to circle the globe until a relatively modern society is achieved. Thus any planet with an intelligent society will contain a huge number of diverse societies. Only those societies that are aggressive in some measure will be capable of controlling large areas. Even ideas (sometimes called memes) follow their own laws of evolution, and only those ideas that are naturally self-propagating will come to prominence.

totally agree there

Thus, any planet that has civilizations that reach the point of technology of space travel is very likely to also want to colonize other planets.

OK I could make another proposition - if they have socially developed to "seamlessly integrate" would it be more appealing to them to let the planets which have potential to develop intelligence grow without their direct influence. There is plenty of uninhabitable planets that can be made habitable with the discuvery of cold fusion, or some more efficient method for energy generation for example. IMO a civilization that has a thousand, let alone a million or more years ahead of us will certainly come to the point where energy/ environment manipulation is not a problem anymore. Why colonize Mars (assuming it has potential for life) when you can colonize Jupiter (assuming it has none) when you need only a fraction of its mass to produce all other elements you need for your pleasant survival there. That sounds more like seamless integration to me.

Oh, absolutely. But it is highly doubtful that colonization would be seen by any significant number of people as conquering. After all, even if my arguments fall flat about the possibility of other intelligent life on our galaxy, the vast majority of planets capable of harboring life out there won't have yet reached the point of developing intelligent life. How can an intelligent species feel sympathy about colonizing a planet with no intelligent life, when throughout its existence it has displaced every other species on the globe from which it arose? It is not unreasonable for an advanced civilization to decide to leave planets alone which have evolved intelligent life, but those without would be fair game.

My previous reply answers this point partly. Those civilization capable of travesting the distances will be very well aware which planets have the potential to harbour life, and which have none. Why use those that can have life developing on it, instead of the "dead ones" making them alive? Plenty of "dead" space to spread I'd think.

 

[Druga Runda]

I do wonder, though, at what the far, far future will be like. If we do manage to get off this rock eventually, then we will become nearly immortal as a species. But imagine the distances involved. Any colony will be effectively cut-off from Earth and any other colony. Thus every human colony out there will become its own, separate civilization. Given long enough time spans, every colony may even end up consisting of a different species of human (though natural evolution has nearly ceased, we will at some point need to begin the evolutionary process up ourselves through genetic engineering or selective breeding, as otherwise our gene pool will just slowly degrade over time).

Now, consider that every colony, once it's done filling up its own planet, will likely want to send out colonies of its own. But it won't have any way of knowing which planets won't have already been colonized by the time its colony ships arrive. This may well produce an interesting conundrum, especially if the humans involved are separated by thousands or tens of thousands of years of selective breeding/genetic engineering! They might not be recognizable to one another as the same species any longer.

And then, at some point, it would be inevitable for humans to run into another intelligent species. I personally think it's most likely that this won't happen unless we get out of our own galaxy, or another species from outside our galaxy makes it here. And when it does happen, it will likely be a surprise (i.e. it won't be discovered until, at the very least, a colony ship is on its way to a new world).

God, I would love to be able to observe the history of humanity over millions, if not billions of years (assuming we get off this rock). Oh, well.

given my outlook above I am kind of in a different thought pattern to this one.

I would say that before the space travel near the speed of light becomes possible we will probably understand a lot more about the laws governing this universe and very likely discover much easier methods of travel/communication etc... to think we have discovered the universe limits is fair at our point of time and understanding we have about the universe, but there are many more possibilities that might be unlocked using different energies/methods etc... perhaps some other theories about fuller understanding of the universe are found to be true, and some things sci-fi at the moment become true as well, as others did in the past (think travel to the moon in 19th century) while this is a simple problems for us now, someting deemed near impossible now might become possible. Not saying that it will, but likewise why not, practically there is still a lot we don't know about the universe in both micro/macro scales.

This is just how I see it, but furthermore I think we are bound to make ourselves (or what we consider ourselves) immortal even prior to that. If the "brain" is all that is to be human than this is a certainty to me, it is just a physical constraint in order to develop a system that will be able to reproduce all the aspects of our brain, thus it is just a matter of time, and probably much shorter timeframe than making us capable of traveling at or very near lightspeed. That in itself is "unimaginable" by the people of today. Not to mention that we can expect cyborg style integration in the time while we are still alive, which is frankly scary thought to me. But who would have thought we will have cloning as a viable option by now. I have already watched one show where we can "drive" a rat from an implanted chip which controls the impulses in rat's brain!!!. In any case there will be lots of suprises that is a given.

 

[nutball]

The social development goals are markedly different from pure natural selection which was the driver of evolution until we developed.

Are they? Surely society is merely a mechanism which enhances the possibilities for each individual to propagate their genes and have their offspring survive to become in their turn viable breeding members of the species?

Further social development of a civilization should make it to become benevolnet and "seamlessly integrated*" in the environment as opposed to the "destroy and conquer" attitude.

Why?

Why would a society / civilization when presented with a semi-infinite, unclaimed natural resource that would, if exploited, allow for the massive expansion of the civilization and by extension an expansion of the population and therefore the spread of the genetic material of the members of that civilization ... why would that civilization choose not to exploit that resource? It wouldn't be in the interests of the civilization nor the individual members of it not to do so I would say.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm not sure I buy this concept that the development of civilization has somehow decoupled us from our animal instincts (or if we haven't reached that point yet, that some future development will decouple us). I don't buy the idea that the inevitable end-point of civilization is some sort of global 60's hippy commune, and that all civilizations which don't go this route will inevitably fail.

 

[KimB]

My previous reply answers this point partly. Those civilization capable of travesting the distances will be very well aware which planets have the potential to harbour life, and which have none. Why use those that can have life developing on it, instead of the "dead ones" making them alive? Plenty of "dead" space to spread I'd think.

I'd tend to think that any such civilization would spread itself where it is easiest to spread first. The immensity of the undertaking in terraforming a dead world is absolutely dwarfs the effort required to colonize one which already has life.

 

[Frank]

Chalnot, while I agree with your reasoning as it stands, I think you made a crucial error: while you stipulate that the time for the next evolution and advancement becomes shorter every time, you stop at humans. And we're not really fit to survive anywhere else than on Earth.

The whole galaxy might be teeming with life that has adapted to the environments they are suited for.

For example, if we were to colonize nearby planets, we wouldn't go there in person. We would build a spaceship with the means to produce other machines, all run by very clever computers that are nearly sentient. They would have to be, as they need to "prepare" that planet for us all by themselves.

And when they're done and succeeded in creating a thriving planet, who is to say it would be fit for human life? But they might build better ships and colonize some other planets that suit them.

For all we know, intelligent machines or other lifeforms unlike humans might be everywhere by now, just not interested in an Earth-like planet. They might be on Mercurius, or Jupiter, or even our Sun. And having us on record as "an interesting, but still very primitive development of events".

 

[NANOTEC]

My personal vision of the far future would consist of the following things:

1. We will have developed nano machines at the molecular level that is injected into the body to fight off any type of virus that may emerge effectively giving us infinitely adaptive immunity against disease.

2. Human cloning and genetic modifications will be the norm for adaptation in harsh environments.

3. We will have technology that allows very quick terraforming of "dead" planets.

4. We will have technology that allows sythesizing artificial chemical nutrients required to sustain cellular respiration in place of naturally grown foods. For example you wil only need to take a pill a day to survive.

5. We will have solved the mystery of suspended animation.

6. We will have solved the mystery of aging.

7. We will have solved the mystery of brain memory and have developed a way to store this memory.

8. We will have technology that allows growing of embryos fetuses without the need for natural pregnancy.

9. We will have highly intelligent robots doing all manual labor work.

10. We will have genetically engineered a group of super geniuses to develop most new scientific breaktrhoughs.

11. We will have developed spaceships that are made out of extremely advanced synthetic materials powered by high efficient alternative power sources. For example solar power.

12. We will have a machine that can recycle urine converting it back into water.

I know some of this stuff sounds really scary today, but I think it would be the norm in the far future.

 

[KimB]

I would say that before the space travel near the speed of light becomes possible we will probably understand a lot more about the laws governing this universe and very likely discover much easier methods of travel/communication etc...

You shouldn't be thinking about travel in terms of obtainable speed. To put it simply, with zero friction, any speed is obtainable given enough time and a sufficiently long-lasting power source.

The question, then, really is about how fast we can accelerate, and for how long.

As an example, consider an ion drive as a propulsion source. An ion drive is basically just a linear particle accelerator, similar to those used for science today. It wouldn't take more knowledge about basic physics than we now have to modify today's designs to one that would be capable of propulsion.

With an ion drive, you want to accelerate the nuclei of atoms to highly relativistic velocities, ejecting them from the back of the craft. At relativistic velocities, the change in energy is equal to the change in momentum (with a difference of a factor of c). If we want to accelerate our spacecraft of mass M at some given acceleration a, we can do so by pumping energy into these ions with some amount of power dE/dt. But since they are relativistic particles, dE/dt = dp/dt. But dp/dt is defined to be force, and we all know that F=ma, so:
Power = m*a*c (with the extra factor of c being put back in at the end to get the units right, m being the mass of the craft, and a the acceleration of the craft).

Thus, power required for a 100-ton craft (about the size of 1.5 loaded semi trucks) with an acceleration of 1g would be about 2*10^14 Watts. This is currently well beyond our capabilities, and would require 3grams/s of mass energy to be expended, or 94,000kg/year. And this doesn't even consider that much of the energy would be wasted in inefficiency in the engine. Even with antimatter as a fuel source (the most efficient fuel), you could obviously not maintain that acceleration for long.

So, the question is, how much constant acceleration is feasible? And for how long?

 

[KimB]

For all we know, intelligent machines or other lifeforms unlike humans might be everywhere by now, just not interested in an Earth-like planet. They might be on Mercurius, or Jupiter, or even our Sun. And having us on record as "an interesting, but still very primitive development of events".

Nothing can survive on Jupiter or in our Sun. Mercury is too near equilibrium to be useful for any sort of life (you wouldn't be able to extract any significant amount of solar energy except right at the unmoving horizon). Venus is far too hot. Mars or our own moon may be useful. The moons of the outer planets wouldn't be (too cold).

Earth would be very useful to any form of intelligence. There's a large wealth of natural resouces (due in part to the fact that the planet is still geologically active). There are a number of cycles that can be made excellent use of in generating power.

So the question remains: why aren't they here?

 

[Tahir2]

The ygot their own places that are much better than Earth.

Why would you want to move from your palace to a council estate?

 

[NANOTEC]

Nothing can survive on Jupiter or in our Sun. Mercury is too near equilibrium to be useful for any sort of life (you wouldn't be able to extract any significant amount of solar energy except right at the unmoving horizon). Venus is far too hot. Mars or our own moon may be useful. The moons of the outer planets wouldn't be (too cold).

Earth would be very useful to any form of intelligence. There's a large wealth of natural resouces (due in part to the fact that the planet is still geologically active). There are a number of cycles that can be made excellent use of in generating power.

So the question remains: why aren't they here?

I think the question why they aren't here is maybe they've already discovered more advanced materials either from other planets or have the technology to synthesize it themselves. Why look for a planet that has plenty of iron ore when you can sythesize carbon nanotubes by the truckload? Why would they need it if they've already developed a nuclear reactor the size of a car battery?

 

[Frank]

So, the question is, how much constant acceleration is feasible? And for how long?

If you don't send impatient humans aboard, any acceleration will get you there in the end.

 

[Mintmaster]

Chalnoth, some of your points are good, but you seem to be skirting the issues I'm bringing up.

That's fine. But if the time constraints are much shorter, then they'd be here. If the time constraints are much longer (by more than a factor of two), then they wouldn't be able to evolve very far before being reset by mass extinctions, and would eventually just be killed off by their own star.

Why would there have to be mass extinctions? There's no rule that environmental pressures will change as fast as they have on earth. Rapid adaption isn't a necessity for life. Furthermore, a slower rate could also be viable simply through chance early in the evolution chain. Maybe a billion planets have this slower system, but a few of them climb the first few steps of the evolutionary ladder quickly simply by chance.

Or, even if by chance they managed to survive long enough to produce intelligence, if their evolution is one order of magnitude slower than ours, they wouldn't have had time to develop yet.

Evolution rates don't have to stay constant throughout time. What if life started very quickly with high mutation rates, but then this precluded complex genes from being sustainable? This may be what happened with us, with more sophisticated error checking enzymes in more complex beings (AFAIK). The creation of such enzymes changes evolution rates. You could have different rate changes at different times compared to earth.

As one quick example, take ATP. ATP is used for basically all of cell metabolism in all life forms on Earth. But there are three other molecules that would do just as well as ATP for the job, and are also made use of: GTP, CTP, and UTP. Why aren't these used for energy? When you get the right conditions, you can create these molecules randomly, but ATP is produced in much larger quantities. So early life forms that relied upon the use of ATP survived. This isn't due to the environment of the Earth: it's due to basic chemistry.

First of all, just because those variants exist doesn't mean it's an exhaustive list of possibilities. Secondly, you just said "when you get the right conditions". How is that not an environmental factor? There are many other possibilities.

Life span appears to be directly tied to metabolism, and metabolism to body mass. Organisms which are smaller tend to have shorter lifespans, but if the organism was too small, it most likely could not develop intelligence.

More handwaving based on known life on earth. Metabolic pathways could be completely different. Nonetheless, you're ignoring the point. Different organisms have different ceilings for intelligence over their lifespan. Whether the organism is slightly dumber or whether it lives a shorter time, my point still stands.

Then they wouldn't be considered intelligent.

Okay, so any species incapable of eventually developing intragalactic space travel is by definition not intelligent? You should probably reframe your claim to one suggesting we are probably the most technologically advanced life in our galaxy. Even then, however, I think population could be orders of magnitude different, which affects technological advancement (see below). Also, it's possible a species has a much slower learning ability but is still capable of advanced thought. Then technology develops in super slow mo.

The chemical composition of the planet may indeed vary greatly. But to have a planet at all you essentially need to have the planet made largely out of metal

Interesting. I didn't know that.

But planet mass is directly tied to the atmosphere. Too little mass and the atmosphere evaporates before life can evolve (see Mars).

Not sure why you think the sustainable population must be directly related to planet size. What if there's less land mass? What if large parts of the planet are inhabitable? What if there wasn't much atmosphere, and life evolved mostly underwater? What if the intelligent species were enormous smart dinosaurs? What if it's not as fertile, and only a fraction of the food can be grown? Isolation could make a species dependant on a food source only growable in a particular ecosystem. There are just too many possibilities to say earth-like conditions will be the norm, life will be human-like, and thus population will be similar.

Humans are the only intelligent species on Earth precisely because we were able to produce a fully-functioning society that was able to spread across the globe and begin to dramatically alter the landscape. We are naturally supressing the development of a new intelligent species: if we were much less intelligent, we couldn't do that.

I disagree. If there were several competing species, all sorts of scenarios could be played out. A strong sense of empathy (more so than ours) could trigger teamwork to kill off the other species. Then it could dominate, form an empathic society that slows evolution, but not be as capable of technology advancement. On Earth, it could be the ice ages that selected for the human brain's adaptability and intelligence. You can't say the outcome would be the same throughout the galaxy.

Anyway, it seems from your statement about intelligence that you're talking humans being the most advanced species in the galaxy. Nobody's colonized Earth so far, so the odds overwhelmingly suggest that we'll colonize every other life-sustaining planet before anyone else evolves.

 

[NANOTEC]

If you don't send impatient humans aboard, any acceleration will get you there in the end.

I don't think it's a question of patience, it's a question of life. Humans can only llive so long at least for now. But yeah sending robots makes more sense at least foer the near future.

 

[Frank]

Nothing can survive on Jupiter or in our Sun. Mercury is too near equilibrium to be useful for any sort of life (you wouldn't be able to extract any significant amount of solar energy except right at the unmoving horizon). Venus is far too hot. Mars or our own moon may be useful. The moons of the outer planets wouldn't be (too cold).

Earth would be very useful to any form of intelligence. There's a large wealth of natural resouces (due in part to the fact that the planet is still geologically active). There are a number of cycles that can be made excellent use of in generating power.

So the question remains: why aren't they here?

You're still thinking in terms of: other life == human life. They're almost certainly not.

Why wouldn't a machine be able to keep on functioning in all those environments? On Mercury, at the day/night boundary? Or in the atmosphere of Jupiter? On one of the moons? Or on a huge mirror, "floating" above the Sun?

And there's plenty of metals on Mercury, and plenty of fusibles on Jupiter. No oxygen atmosphere or liquid water, no, but they might rather do without those.

 

[Frank]

Btw, if it's mostly a question about the largest amount of suitable habitats, a species that lives on gas giants (balloon like or such) would have an easy time. And if it's about tool use, a metal-heavy planet without atmosphere would be better, and in large supply as well.

 

[Squeak]

That's as stupid as Aristothel's delusions about all matter consisting of various proportions of earth, water, air and fire.

For someone who only did theoretical thinking that is not stupid at all. Earth, water, air and fire could be the four basic phases of matter; solid, liquid, gas and plasma.

I don't think it's a question of patience, it's a question of life. Humans can only llive so long at least for now. But yeah sending robots makes more sense at least for the near future.

And for the long term also I think.
Robots/AIs are the natural successors to humans in evolution. Every "now and then" there is a shift to a new abstraction layer in life. First from basic DNA/RNAless life, to life that could remember and improve. Then to life with a simple nervous system that can react instantly to changes and lastly a new abstraction layer on top of the nervous system a that tries to predict the future and act upon those predictions, the next step will be for that self-aware “future prediction/simulationâ€￾ to lift itself out of it's inhibiting "hardware".
There really is no point in sending humans out of the solar system, specially build robots would be much better suited for that always.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

It's quite a common theory that even when you take into account the huge numbers of stars, only a small percentage will be suitable for life, only a small percentage of those will have suitable planets, only a small percentage of those will have life starting on them, only a small percentage of those will become intelligent, spacefaring races, etc.

When you take into account how rare such an occurance is, and how spread out in time and space the lifespan of such a technologically advanced space-faring civilizations will be, it's not that surprising we haven't met any yet.

Of course the ultimate argument is if they are out there and practical travel is possible, why haven't we seen anything of them? The galaxy is a big place, so there isn't really any proof either way. Maybe it's just not possible to get around that fast. Maybe they are not interested in travelling. Maybe we missed them and they died out millions of years ago. Maybe we truly are the first, or the only ones around in our part of the galaxy right now.

I think you also have to note how rare intelligent, exploring life will be. Even if you look at earth, we had dinousaurs for tens of millions of years. They became accomplished, even clever animals, likely with levels of social dynamics, and spread out to fill almost every ecological niche, but they stagnated, never achieving any more intelligence than what they needed to exist in their environments.

It seems to be a biological maxim that specialisation is nearly always preferable to intelligence. Animals, or even insects that have been on earth for a lot, lot longer than us simply never needed to become intelligent, adaptable tool users to occupy an advantageous niche in the environment. So even in the few places in the galaxy that complex life happens to exist in the same timeframe that we do, it's quite possible that they have only the standard eating/breeding drives, and no ability/need to eventually spread to other planets or stars, or to continually advance their abilities through the use of tools far faster than biological evolution ever could.

Life does seem to be able to "find a way". Dark cave or lakes cut off from the rest of the planet for millions of years, microbes on comets or asteroids, fumeroles deep under the ocean have all been used to theorise (and in some cases show completely unique) forms of life. So while I believe the potential for intelligent life can exist out there in all kinds of environments, it could be very, very rare for it take the evolutionary steps to take it all the way to becoming a space faring race, and even rarer to be one that is in the galactic locale and available for landings on the White House lawn at the same time as we are.