Space Aliens Are Likely Very Few And Far Between, Says New Paper

The greatest conundrum of our time —- the question of whether there’s extraterrestrial intelligent life in the cosmos —- may turn out to be an “either/or” proposition. Or so says a new paper, just submitted to the International Journal of Astrobiology.

In their paper, the authors simply argue that on planets like our own, life should either arise most of the time or none of the time. In the case of astrobiology, we would conclude that the cosmos is either very lonely or very crowded, whereas intermediate values appear contrived, the authors note.

That’s likely to be news to proponents of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).