Scientists have assumed that intelligent life on other planets similar to earth is formed, that is, it takes 4.5-5 billion years to achieve a sufficiently high degree of development. These figures have been called “astrobiology limit Copernicus”, based on the famous “Copernican principle”, that Earth is not unique, and in the Universe there should be some number of systems with similar conditions and, therefore, nothing should impede the emergence of life elsewhere.
the Second limit of Copernicus, according to scientists from Nottingham is the need of the presence of metals, as on Earth, whose star is the Sun is metal-rich.
“the Weak limit of Copernicus” means that the civilization appears five billion years after the emergence of a suitable planet. “Strong limit Copernicus” suggests the emergence of advanced forms of intelligent life in 4.5 billion years and more as on Earth.
Based on the “strong scenario” in our galaxy there must be at least 36 intelligent technical civilizations, say the researchers. According to them, the smallest number, figuring they came from the fact that an advanced civilization is using radio waves for at least the last hundred years, both on the Ground and catching the waves, it is possible to find habitable planets.
However, provided more or less uniform distribution of these 36 civilizations in our galaxy, the average distance between them is 17 thousand light years, so at this stage in human development we do not have the technical capabilities to detect them.
in addition to this, the lifetime of intelligent civilization can be quite short, and in this case, it is likely that at the moment we are alone in the galaxy – the rest have either died or have not yet reached a sufficient level of technological development.
the Brevity of the existence of intelligent civilization, researchers explain that the probability of occurrence of life in a relatively short-lived star-a yellow dwarf like our Sun, is very small. Much more likely the development of civilization in the area of long-lived red dwarfs in the Universe are immense. Exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars were discovered in 2005.
