2023-05-14 13:59:32
Professor David Garofalo claims that the peak of life in the universe was billions of years ago. He came to this conclusion by identifying links between black holes, the formation of stars and the planets that arose around them, writes Universe Today. It all started with the merger of a binary black hole, which most likely led to the formation of an active galactic nucleus, that is, a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, which attracted enough material to give off a bright glow.
An important place in the work of the scientist is the response of black holes. Different black holes elicit different types of responses, some are more conducive to star formation. The main way a black hole interacts with its environment is through relativistic jets, thanks to which the matter attracted by the accretion disk scatters far across the Universe.
Sometimes the backlash is too strong, and the relativistic jets release too much energy, which suppresses the formation of stars. These and other conditions can affect the probability of star formation. The lower it is, the less new stars and planets appear around them, that is, the chances for the birth of life fall. There is another factor, in addition to purely quantitative – because the galactic gas is heated, it emits in the X-ray range. These beams pierce the galaxy and affect the chemistry of the planets, inhibiting the ability to create life.
By incorporating these and other factors influencing the response of black holes into the Drake equation, Garofalo determined that the best conditions for the emergence of habitable star systems arose in isolated regions of the universe 11 billion years ago, 2.8 billion years following the Big Bang. During this period, the largest number of isolated galaxies experienced mergers, which led to the influx of cold gas and, eventually, to the formation of planets with the likely appearance of life on some of them.
The Earth, on the other hand, was formed only 4.5 billion years ago, and life capable of interstellar communication appeared on it only now. Suppose the average time for the development of intelligent life is 5 billion years. It turns out that the peak of extraterrestrial civilizations occurred 7.8 billion years following the Big Bang, or 6 billion years ago.
Mankind, thus, did not find the flowering of alien civilizations, but this does not mean that we are alone in the Universe. Perhaps there are other latecomers living somewhere. However, finding them without knowing where to look will not be easy.
The absence of signals from aliens in the colossal size of the universe was once expressed by Enrico Fermi. Scientists gave many explanations for this Fermi paradox: our signals might not yet reach the habitats of extraterrestrial civilizations, or they are hiding from us, or have fallen into hibernation. Swiss biophysicists came up with another explanationinspired by an ordinary sponge.
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