There could be a very good reason why humanity has yet to detect alien life in our stellar neighborhood and within our very own galaxy, according to a new study, and it could very well have everything to do with the shape of things. And by "things," it should be noted that that particular noun represents "galaxies." To be succinct: scientists developed a model using statistical data gathered from the local group of galaxies and discovered that those with the greater probability of housing habitable planets weren't spiral-shaped like the Milky Way. No, they were elliptical.
Phys.org posted September 1 a synopsis of the work led by Dr. Pratika Dayal of Durham University in England, wherein her team composed a model to aid in the search for alien life by determining where might be the most optimal places for extraterrestrial life, so as to help in targeting searches. Using data taken from Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a gathering of data from 150,000 of the nearest galaxies, it was established that the first metric in a targeted search should be the overall habitability of galaxies.
Dayal's team referred to their model as the first-ever "cosmobiological" model, a construct that could map the nearby universe in terms of habitability and illuminate which galaxies would be most amenable to living organisms. Unfortunately for astronomers and extraterrestrial hunters on Earth, the Milky Way and its type of galaxy wasn't among those that showed the best chances of greater habitability.
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