Professor Brian Cox explains what he finds so terrifying about the prospect of being alone in the universe
Professor Brian Cox has said that if intelligent life is as rare as he suspects, humanity could extinguish meaning across a galaxy of 400 billion suns, and that he finds the prospect terrifying.
Brian Cox sat down with LADbible for it's Explainer with a Stranger series.
"I'd prefer it if there was someone else out there," he said. "So even if some idiot presses the wrong button, there's meaning somewhere else close by."
"If it is true that intelligence is extremely rare, then it seems to be that there's a responsibility that falls on us to ensure that meaning exists in our little corner of space," he added.
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What is the Great Filter?
His own guess on wether intelligent life exists outside of our planet is nuanced. He said that microbes are common, even in our solar system, but that intelligence is another matter.
"My guess is that the length of time it takes to go from single cells to intelligence is enormous, and that's why civilizations are rare," he said.
The great filter is the idea that civilizations hit an almost inevitable barrier before reaching the stars. Cox said that if it lies in our future, every civilization would discover the atomic nucleus, invent atomic weapons and AI, and challenge the climate of its planet.
"Once you've got the power to destroy yourselves, at some point somebody just does it and prevents civilization becoming spacefaring civilizations,"
The great filter is the idea that civilizations hit an almost inevitable barrier before reaching the stars. Cox said that if it lies in our future, every civilization would discover the atomic nucleus, invent atomic weapons and AI, and challenge the climate of its planet.
"Once you've got the power to destroy yourselves, at some point somebody just does it and prevents civilizations becoming spacefaring civilizations," he said.
Cox said his version is more optimistic: that the filter is in our past, meaning intelligence is unusual but nothing is stopping us reaching the stars.
He pointed to the two Voyager spacecraft already in interstellar space, which reach 50 years in space next year.
Cox noted that Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, famously said there are only two answers to whether aliens exist, and that ‘both are terrifying’.
Has SETI found any evidence of alien life?
Cox said the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, known as SETI, has been running for at least 50 years, and that he met one of its founders, Frank Drake, whose Drake Equation attempts to estimate how many intelligent civilizations might exist in the Milky Way. He said the project has detected nothing at all to date, a lack of signals astronomers call the great silence, or the Fermi paradox.
The astrophysicist pointed out that the Milky Way has 400 billion suns, and that more than 6,000 planets have been directly detected around stars beyond our solar system, which he said means there are trillions of planets in the galaxy.
He called it a tremendous mystery, saying it seems inconceivable that there would not be other civilizations far ahead of us.
Cox also said he does not think there is anything at Area 51.
"I would find it astonishing, given my experience of governments and the competence of them, that they're managing to keep these very big things secret," he said.
Thomas Bamford