Any aliens in our galaxy have already likely annihilated themselves — the victims of too much progress, a new scientific study says.
Researchers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology have surmised that since past studies show a civilization’s technological advances “will inevitably lead to complete destruction and biological degeneration,’’ any intelligent life previously in the Milky Way has already likely killed itself off.
“[I]f intelligent life is likely to destroy themselves, it is not surprising that there is little or no intelligent life elsewhere,” the researchers said in a paper posted online earlier this month.
The scientists also theorized that humans are late to the party because peak conditions for life to develop likely occurred about 8 billion years after the galaxy formed — and we emerged around 13.5 billion years after the Milky Way came about, according to the website Live Science.