Where are all the aliens?

The most common argument for the existence of alien civilizations is The Drake equation. The Drake equation crunches the numbers and concludes that there must be millions of not billions of advanced civilizations throughout the universe. If course the equation is based on a series of unverifiable assumptions. How many stars have planets, how many of those have life. How many with life will develop intelligence, how many of those will develop technology capable of exploring space etc.

We do not know how common planetary systems are. The only extra solar planets discovered so far are hot-Jupiters. Hot-Jupiters are colossal planets, several times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting insanely close to their parent star. They can complete an orbit in a manner of days. These planets are way to close to their parent stars to have formed there. If they didn't form there, what caused them to migrate inward? What happened to planets closer into the star when these planets began to move inward? Why didn't this occur in our solar system (or will it)? To be fair. Our ability to detect relativity small Earth-like planets is very limited. However the existence of hot-Jupiters seems to indicate that our basic assumptions about planetary formation may be seriously flawed.

We also don't know exactly how life initially started on Earth. The conditions that we believe life originated in can be recreated in the laboratory. We can zap it, irradiate it, shake it, heat it up, curse at it and a host of other things, but it doesn't become alive. The origins of life remain a mystery. It is therefore impossible to determine how common the conditions for life are.

Having stated that, just because life exists, doesn't mean it will develop intelligence. If an animal can run fast, have sharp teeth and a good sense of smell or hearing, what need would it have to develop intelligence to survive? In addition to that there have been periods of mass extinctions over the history of the Earth. The most recent was the one 64 millions years ago that killed the dinosaurs. If it weren't for that, and other mass extinction events we would not have the fossil fuels we need to power our civilization today. If it weren't for our large Moon, the Earth's poles would wobble over time resulting in limitless climate swings.

It's really through a series of fortunate events that we are even here at all. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Life on Earth is almost that old. In all that time only one species has developed the intelligence, self awareness and the ability to manipulate it's environment and had the tools and resources to explore the universe.

There are a number of other variables that must also be factored into this. The biggest problem with determining how likely alien civilizations arise in the universe is that we are starting with a data set of one. The Earth. Everyone knows you can't plot a chart with only one data point. Bottom line, the Drake Equation is a guess. What we do know is that if advanced civilizations do exist, they haven't gone out of the way to make their existence known to us.

Multi-cellular life did not develop on Earth until about a billion years ago. It's had a rough time since then. Given that. Any life we find in the solar system or elsewhere in space, it likely to be primitive bacteria rather that advance civilizations zipping between that stars. Blurry photos, atories of alien abduction and government conspiracies not with standing. There is no compelling evidence that the universe of teaming with intelligence. Given the shear enormity of the universe, if aliens exist, I doubt we will ever contact them or vise versa.