The Age Distribution of Potential Intelligent Life in the Milky Way

TL;DR

This study models the Milky Way's habitability to estimate the age distribution of potentially intelligent life, revealing most such systems are older and farther from the galactic center than the Sun, implying advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.

Contribution

It introduces a galactic chemical evolution model to estimate the age distribution of habitable star systems and their potential for hosting intelligent life.

Findings

Most habitable systems are older than the Sun by about 3.13 billion years.

Potentially habitable systems are located between 7 and 14 kiloparsecs from the galactic center.

77% of habitable systems are significantly older than the Sun.

Abstract

We investigated the habitability of the Milky Way, making use of recent observational analysis on the prevalence of Earth-sized planets, in order to estimate where and when potentially habitable star systems may have formed over the course of the Galaxy's history. We were then able to estimate the age distribution of potential intelligent life in our Galaxy using our own evolution and the age of the Sun as a proxy. To do this we created a galactic chemical evolution model and applied the following habitability constraints to the Sun-like (G-type) stars formed in our model: an environment free from life-extinguishing supernovae, a high enough metallicity for Earth-sized planet formation and sufficient time for the evolution of complex life. We determined a galactic habitable zone as the region containing all the potentially habitable star systems in our model. Our galactic habitable zone contains stars formed between 11 and 3.8 billion years ago at radial distances of between 7 and 14 kiloparsecs. We found that most potentially habitable star systems are much older than the Sun and located farther from the galactic centre. By comparing the ages of these systems we estimated that 77% of potentially habitable star systems are on average 3.13 billion years older than the Sun. This suggests that any intelligent life in the Galaxy is likely to be incredibly more advanced than we are assuming that they have evolved under similar timescales than we have. Implications and limitations of our study are discussed.