A new scientific paper is casting doubt on claims there is intelligent life in the observable universe.
A trio of experts concluded there is a "substantial probability" humans are essentially alone in the universe.
The paper, published on a website affiliated with Cornell University, addressed the Fermi paradox, a term that represents the lack of evidence of existing extraterrestrial civilizations and the high probability estimates that say there is intelligent life beyond Earth.
"When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilizations, and thus no longer find our observations in conflict with our prior probabilities," the paper reads.
"We found qualitatively similar results through two different methods: using the authors' assessments of current scientific knowledge bearing on key parameters, and using the divergent estimates of these parameters in the astrobiology literature as a proxy for current scientific uncertainty.
"When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53 percent–99.6 percent and 39 percent–85 percent respectively)."
The scientific community has said it plans to discover alien life at some point in the current century, which would likely involve finding microbes or detecting radio signals from another civilization.
Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets that might be able to sustain some form of life. And the Kepler Space Telescope might be able to identify hundreds of billions of them in the Milky Way Galaxy alone.
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