Israeli Physician Explains ‘Why We Have Never Met Aliens’

Jewish Press Staff

Israeli physician Dr. Yuval Rabinovich reviews possible reasons ‘why we have never met aliens.

Even in our local solar system there are numerous moons and planets for a celestial traveler to choose from. Photo Credit: Jcpag2012 / Wikimedia Creative Commons

In Israel, a family physician based in Arad ponders things much more profound than simple medical matters. Dr. Yuval Rabinovich, clinical director of one of the HMO clinics in the small northern Negev city is also a writer and inventor. Rabinovich recently contributed two articles to the HaYadan.org.il scientific forum on the issue of extra-terrestrial existence. Following is the first of the two articles, translated exclusively for JewishPress.com by Dr. Rabinovich himself.

* * * * *

When I was fourteen, I eagerly read Erich von Däniken’s “Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past” in which he describes encounters between humans and aliens as being influential over human history and culture. The author claims the establishment has conspired against him to hide the truth. The opening sentence is, “It took courage to write this book and it takes courage to read it”, a brilliant opening that places the reader on the author’s side.

In the book he refers to ‘Drake’s equation.’ Suppose a constant rate of new stars are in formation. Some of these stars have planets. On some of these planets there are life-enabling environments. On some of these, life indeed was formed. On some of these, intelligent life evolved. On a few of these, a technology that enables sending signals to outer space was developed. Multiply this number in the amount of time that has passed since this technology was developed and you have a large number of civilizations in space.

To this day, fans of UFO theories present Drake’s equation as a claim.
When Doctor Frank Drake postulated his equation in 1961, he merely tried to point out the factors one has to take into account. The biggest change that has taken place since Drake’s equation was published is that planets that surround stars have indeed been discovered. This does not change the fact that was undoubtedly clear to Drake himself — that we simply do not know the magnitude of any factor of the equation.

So what do we actually know?

First of all, that Earth is quite unique. It is the only planet in the solar system that has a large amount of liquid water throughout the year. Earth also has a huge moon; we know of no other planet with such a relatively big moon. We also know that our entire solar system is located at the edge of the galaxy, where density of space objects is low.

We also know according to fossil records that life on earth were extincted almost entirely at least five times. The last extinction was the one in which all dinosaurs perished. The special thing about this extinction is that we believe we know what happened; a large celestial body (meteorite) hit the earth causing a nuclear winter that darkened the earth 65 million years ago.

Big animals do not survive big extinctions. But if size is evidence of complexity and if complexity is required for an intelligent species to evolve, it is still not understandable why none has evolved until 5 million years ago, when our still-not-very-intelligent ancestors made their first steps.

And there was enough time for that. Multicellular vertebrates walked the earth at least 300 million years. The dinosaurs were by no means less complex than modern animals, and still, no species that was technological enough to change its environment has ever evolved. We know modern relatively clever animals: elephants, dogs, dolphins, chimpanzees. Not one of them has come close to developing a language that can describe abstract ideas.

It is reasonable to assume that simple life on our planet formed as soon that suitable conditions exist, although direct evidence is lacking, since organisms that do not have hard organs do not leave fossil records. Some success in creating self-replicating molecules was achieved, however, even in-vitro.

But intelligent life is an entirely different matter. We do not know the precisely required conditions, but during hundreds of millions years of terrestrial animal existence it happened only once, and quite recently.

Is there any connection between having a huge moon to evolution of intelligent life? Maybe, but in this I am purely speculating. The moon enables tide, potentially creating drying niches where animals may be trapped and forced to develop terrestrial enabling mechanisms. The moon is also a light origin at night, thus may provide some advantage to an intelligent creature. Again, this is mere speculation.

Is the a connection between evolution of intelligence and our peripheral location in the galaxy? If dinosaur extinction is typical to the danger that big animals face, probably yes. In the center of the galaxy, celestial bodies collide much more frequently, leaving less time to evolve. Eventually, any civilization has to acquire the means to eliminate the danger of falling meteorites. We have not acquired this technology yet, even though we evolve where such collisions are less frequent, a privilege that is specific to the edge of the galaxy.

Our hardships in conquering outer space are not over yet. What are the chances of inventing writing? I do not know. But 99.8% of the length of human existence it managed without writing, which first appeared about 5,500 years ago.

We also know that Man has produced artificial radio signals only for about 120 years, a tiny fraction of Earth’s history. The first signals were very weak. But even if we assume that the first signals traveled through space and somebody actually listens to them, there is still a huge distance to cross. The distance to the closest stars spans dozens of light years, a non-traversable limit, we know.

There are many reports of encounters with aliens, human abductions by aliens, high speed unidentified flying objects and so on, all nourishing theories of encounters with aliens allegedly covered by governments. Naturally, some science fictions stories also deal with it, without pretending to describe actual events. It is noticeable that no reports existed before such science-fiction stories were published.

Science fiction stories have been around for centuries at least, even more if one considers ancient texts like Epic of Gilgamesh and Ezekiel’s chariot vision. But apparently the first known story of a hostile encounter between humans and aliens was in 1898, Herbert George Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”. The story is told about aliens from Mars invading Earth to conquer the planet, and deploying terror and destruction along the way.

Other stories of the same genre have been published. The best (and most frightening) in my opinion is from 1951, Robert Heinlein’s “The Puppet Masters”. In this book aliens obtain mind control over the humans they contact.

The first reports of UFOs appear in 1947. The first abduction report is probably Antônio Vilas-Boas’, a Brazilian farmer, in 1957, who was not just abducted. Although the abductor was a male alien, on the spaceship there was a female alien that had sexual intercourse with the captive. From 1961 abduction reports multiplied. Usually the captives were from English speaking countries, mostly the USA.

In 1997, the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Science, the late Zvi Yanai, addressed the subject: “One of the characteristics of pseudo-science is that time does not increase understanding of the phenomenon. Indeed, after 50 years of alleged encounters with UFOs and aliens, we know no more about them today than we did fifty years ago. Such is the case with Loch-Ness dinosaur, astrology, parapsychology, chirology and other similar beliefs.”

Nowadays nearly everyone has a photo-capable smart-phone and still no reliable documentation of a human-alien encounter. It seems that we will have to keep solving our problems ourselves.