Looking up at the night sky and its beauty can be baffling and intriguing experience for many. But aside from this beauty, there can be something scary out there? Or maybe not scary. As Arthur C. Clarke said, “We are either alone in this universe or we are not. And both these ideas are equally scary”. But today we are going to talk about the former one. Yes, we are talking about aliens, but in a totally different context. What if we are being watched by Aliens or infact, a God-like alien civilization? Are they just watching us like we watch animals in a zoo? We have seen and read a lot of sci-fi movies and novels which show that we live in a simulation or we are some kind of experiment not knowingly and there is someone watching and observing us. But the word ZOO has a certain significance which we can relate to. Today the animal zoos have to keep animals caged so that we can observe them and more importantly go on a summer evening and just watch them with some snacks. What if we are the same animals for a god-like alien civilization? The thought itself is terrifying for a lot of people. So, Today in this post we will talk about the possibility of what if we are being watched by aliens? Also, We have already made a post on the Fermi paradox and why we haven’t seen any aliens.Recently there has been a lot of Hype about UFOs and aliens. And on June 25, 2021, the Pentagon released its much awaited report on extraterrestrial life. The idea that we have a special place in the universe was first challenged by pernicious in the 16th century. Since then scientists have built upon that Idea and ripped apart every possibility of us having a special place in this universe. We now know that, we, along with seven other planets and other dwarf planets, asteroids and comets orbit a medium sized star, which is just a fairly ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy. The universe is very vast and has billions of galaxies. These billions of galaxies have trillions and trillions of planets and many among them are habitable too.

So where are they? Shouldn’t the universe be teeming with spaceships? Well that is the Fermi Paradox. Since the Copernican revolution two questions have eluded humanity for years: Is Life Typical or Is Intelligence Typical? Life on earth formed and evolved in the harshest of conditions. And since we don’t have a special place in this universe, Life might exist outside earth. Infact, Jupiter’s moon Europa is the greatest contender of microbial life in our solar system itself. But the question is can we find intelligent life? The Search for extraterrestrial life abbreviated as SETI is an organization that looks for life in Outer space. Of all the 4000 exoplanets observed the vast majority have been detected using just one technique: The Transit method. This is the most used method to detect extrasolar planets because it’s so damn simple. The simple idea behind the transit method is you keep taking photos of a star, and see if there is a dip in its brightness. So if an exoplanet around that star has a right orbital alignment it will sometimes pass in front of the star, thereby blocking out some of the star’s light. Based on the magnitude of dip in brightness we can then infer the size of the planet, its orbit, its moons and even its atmospheric chemistry.

So why is it important in this discussion? Where do the aliens come in? Well, if we are able to observe thousands of planets using this method, then an alien civilization could be watching us via a transit method. Any star which is lined up with our ecliptic will most certainly see earth transiting for about 13 hour since very 365 days. And this is just one particular part of the sky. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we can see them transit and they can see us transit. The transit probability of an earth-like planet in front of a sun-like star is one in 200.

Following the math after this we come to a conclusion that only one in 40,000 stars around us have just the right configuration for a reciprocal transit, which means we see them transit and they see us transit. It’s confusing right, but just hang on for a minute. But this observation begs a question, how many of these earth-like reciprocal transits might be out there? The answer comes out to be roughly 1000 stars that can directly observe us transiting and we too can see them transiting. There might obviously be other planets that might be able to see us transiting, but we cannot see them back. But in this video we will only talk about the ones we can see back. So let’s remember this number cause we will come back to it again later. Before we go to the concept of living in a zoo which we discussed briefly in the beginning. You guys might be wondering what a god-like alien civilization is? Based on the Kardashev scale, civilizations are of three types. We have specially dedicated a video to the kardashev scale and its significance, so we suggest you watch that video too to get a good insight on civilizations and their existence. But in simple words, A type one civilization is the one that has consumed all the natural resources and energy of its planet. Just so you know we are 0.75 at the scale. A type two civilization is the one that has used all the energy of its host star, like the concept of Dyson Sphere. A type three civilization is the one that has colonized and used all the natural resources of its galaxy and will be God like to us.

And if this God-like civilization is watching us what is their purpose? Are they responsible for life on earth? Why aren’t they making contact with us? it could be that they are observing us and once we reach a certain level of intelligence then they make contact with us. We might be in a tightly-regulated galaxy, and our Earth is treated like part of a vast and protected national park. This is known as the ‘Zoo Hypothesis’. As said earlier the zoo word has a certain significance because we can relate to the zoo animals that we see and enjoy with popcorn on a sunny evening. And if that’s the case then we are the zebras and gorillas that these aliens might be observing. This idea itself might not sit well with most people. The notion that we are just being observed by aliens as animals in the zoo are, goes way back in science fiction. Or it could be that we were put here by those aliens, like we put the animals in the zoo and observe them. And whether or not these aliens will reveal themselves to us. So if we were living in a galactic zoo it would be pretty much quiet. It would be something like going out and observing animals in a zoo. Just like in a zoo we observe zebras and then move on to the other animal. The animals talk or communicate among themselves and we just see and enjoy them doing their own animal stuff.

The aliens in the same way might be observing us doing our weird human things that we do. But what if we could tweak this scenario a little bit to actually establish interspecies communication. That’s the main purpose of SETI and a new project called METI (Messaging extraterrestrial intelligence), where they actively send messages of their brown trying to make contact. And if we are able to conclude or assume what if we live in a galactic zoo, the next obvious question would be Who are the Zoo Keepers? Our Milky Way is about 13 Billion years old. Initially it was not suitable for habitation but after 2-3 billion years conditions were hospitable for civilizations to exist. Our planet is about 4.54 Billion years old and many civilizations could have existed before us.

And if these civilisations that are way older than us, they will be god-like to us and can be our zookeepers. They might be observing us almost like we observe animals in a zoo? Now in order to make contact with them we need to be able to see them. That’s where the number of reciprocal transits that we discussed before come in. At first, making contact with a god-like alien civilization might seem a pessimistic scenario, if they are already watching and observing us and decided not to make contact when we are animals in a zoo. But then again let’s imagine we go to a zoo and we are the zoo keepers, but then all of a sudden, if a zebra instead of chumming around with others comes towards us and looks us straight in the eyes and starts counting out a series of numbers that are tough.

That would establish an entirely different kind of relationship between us and the zebra. Now we wouldn’t be interested in the giraffe or the lions, we would try to understand what in the world the zebra actually wants to say and is reaching out to me. This is the exact goal that we should have instead of just sitting and waiting for them to make first contact. In fact there may be some civilizations that are sending us messages and we haven’t received them yet but it may be for some civilizations we need to make the first contact. If we take the example of Trappist 1 which is just 40 light years away from us, it has potentially 3 planets at an habitable distance, which we call as the Goldilocks zone. This is why it’s a subject of research and curiosity for scientists. But if in case we don’t want to be seen by these reciprocal transiting planets we can sort of cloak our entire planetary signature or our bio-signatures using a laser cloaking system. It might be a possibility that the other civilizations might have cloaked themselves if they are paranoid.

But if they haven’t cloaked themselves then we can make first contact with them. It might be that the alien civilization is able to observe us and chosen to not make contact because they are hyper-intelligent and we might not be that interesting to them. We might just be like animals in a zoo that they don’t care about. So what’s going to prompt them to care and to reply? The thought of making contact with such advanced civilization might seem intimidating to some.

Because a hyper-intelligent civilization wouldn’t have anything to gain from us. Their scientific technologies and understanding of science might be a million times better than us. What will we have to teach them? Normally when we meet a stranger, we try to emphasize our intelligence and power. But as compared to a million years old civilization, we don’t have any of that. In fact we should try to do the opposite and learn as much as we can. We can learn how we as individuals and as a civilization survive problems like nuclear wars and climate change. For a civilization that has been for a million years that problem will have been solved. If they have lived for a million years they might live another million years. But for us that’s not the case, we still face the problems of extinction through man made or natural disasters. So with a lot of open questions we would like to conclude this post for you. Let us know what thoughts you have about being watched and making contact with a hyper-intelligent civilization, in the comment section below. Make sure to like the post and follow to our web so that we keep bringing some mind-boggling posts like this for you.