Forget close encounters of a third kind. Imagine galactic encounters with millions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy, each of them overflowing with complex life forms. A new study says it’s a possibility.
Although researchers are nearly unanimous in the belief that some other life forms exist in the great expanse of outer space, the worlds that any intelligent life forms inhabit are probably too distant for any human-alien meetings in the near future.
“On the one hand, it seems highly unlikely that we are alone,” said Louis Irwin, professor emeritus at the University of Texas at El Paso and lead author of the study published in Challenges journal. “On the other hand, we are likely so far away from life at our level of complexity, that a meeting with such alien forms is extremely improbable for the foreseeable future.”