Fermi Paradox

[camberiu]

Sci-Fi Author David Brin (Uplift Wars) asked readers to provide hypothesis to answer the the Fermi Paradox. Bellow is what I came up with. what do you guys think? (For those who do not know what the Fermi Paradox is, see link bellow).
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I have no issue with the idea of life being abundant across the universe. But civilizations and technology (as we know it), I am a bit more skeptic about. Why, you ask? Well, using our good old Earth as reference, intelligent life capable of producing technology and civilizations seems to be an extremely rare phenomenon. Life started on Earth what, 3.8 billion years ago? Since then, it went through several life cycles that ended with massive extinction events of unknown/uncertain origin. During this time, we have evidence of only one species capable of producing technology/civilization: ours. And human civilization has been around for what, 10 thousands years? So, of 3.8 billion years of life on Earth, several mass extinctions that have reset the most of the evolutionary lines, civilization has existed only for a tiny bitty fraction of the total time. It is not even a blip or a rounding error. It is statistically insignificant. If we project this across the universe, we end with a model of a universe that is teeming with life, but in which civilizations are rare and far between.

Fermi Paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

 

[ElQueso]

I think you're spot on. It's also the most common answer I've seen and one I agree with.

I recently saw a show that used the Drake Equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation) to show that there may only be 20 intelligent species alive in the entire Milky Way Galaxy at this point in time. Of course, the problem with the Drake equation is that almost all of the variables involved at reaching an answer are suppositions that can be raised or lowered depending on the level of optimism or pessimism the operator is using to make such a determination.

The only other explanations of the Fermi Paradox that I've seen have been along the lines of 1) there are no other intelligent races out there and we are the ultimate in evolution - i.e., we are completely alone and always will be or 2) there is a galactic society that is hiding from populations who have not yet achieved interplanetary colonies (or interstellar travel, etc) in order to not destroy them with contact from a higher civilization until they have had a chance to develop themselves (wishful fantasizing in my opinion) or 3) they are out there, not hiding, but communicate using gravity waves or some other communication medium of instantaneous or near-instantaneous communication that we simply have not yet developed (possible certainly - but what about other signatures we have searched for, such as fusion drive flame signatures) or 4) there is a horrible race out there that destroyed all life, at least in our galaxy, and goes hunting technical civilizations to destroy them.

I figure there's no real way to know the truth right now. I hesitate to say "obviously" one way or the other. Look at the fallacies that have been believed (and are still believed) without proof to back them up, throughout the entire existence of the human race.

However, the probable rarity of intelligent life existing at any one point in time in the galaxy, and being close enough for us to make contact (via communications at this point), during the time that that civilization arose here as well, and taking into account the vast distances that preclude easy communication and therefore discovery, feels about right to me.

Even if there were 20 technological civilizations in the galaxy, the galaxy is HUGE. And the civilizations would most likely need to be in the same galactic region in which we find ourselves in order to hear them. Too close to the center of the galaxy and radiation makes life as we know it impossible, too close the edges and maybe not enough of the type of matter needed to provide a stellar system with the appropriate richness of elements needed, plus a farther scarcity of stellar systems themselves in which to nurture a civilization.

Because the distributions of those 20 civilizations would likely be across a disk something like 2/3 of the radius of the galaxy from the center, it makes the distance farther than if we could include straight shots to the center of the galaxy or to the edges.

Yeah, life is certainly out there, but I doubt there are very many intelligent civilizations that are as advanced or more advanced than ours, and even if there were, they are constrained by the same laws of physics that we are. It's all well and good to think that civilizations can listen to our radio emissions and vice versa, but I've always wondered how strong and easy to pick up those really are across such huge distances, mixed in with all the other natural radio transmissions.

You also have to account for the certain psychological differences that a race which evolved on another world may have - for all we know, one of the Centauri suns have planets with a civilized race, but they don't use radio for whatever reason, or they're not looking for us because they don't either care about or think there could be other species out there, or they may have advanced to the point where all their communications are shielded - we put off much less undirected radio transmissions than we used to with satellites and cable systems.

One thing I'm pretty sure of - given the difficulty of interstellar travel (not impossible, but certainly for us prohibitively expensive at this point in our species' life) I doubt very much we have been visited by an intelligent species...

I always find this an interesting topic.

BTW - I like David Brin too...

 

[Amargo]

intelligent life capable of producing technology and civilizations seems to be an extremely rare phenomenon

Indeed. My theory is that the limited amount of resources a planet has is not enough for interestellar travel. We see it with our species, we are destroying the planet at a higher pace we are deloping our 'intelligence'.

Intelligent life is, indeed, a paradox.

 

[Iznogud]

 

[ElQueso]

Indeed. My theory is that the limited amount of resources a planet has is not enough for interestellar travel. We see it with our species, we are destroying the planet at a higher pace we are deloping our 'intelligence'.

Intelligent life is, indeed, a paradox.

I completely agree with you that an intelligent civilization cannot use just its planetary resources.

I also agree with you to the point that we are somewhat damaging our planet - but it's not permanent and it's not as bad as most doomsayers would have one believe. Particularly with anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (but that's another discussion ).

The biggest problem with developing interstellar travel is the huge resources needed to travel to another star. At our current level of spaceflight technology it would take us 50,000 years to reach the nearest start system, only a little over 4 light years distance. But that's because we don't have a way to accelerate constantly - we can only reach fairly low speeds and then coast. In order to accelerate all the way to the Centauri stars, we would have to have the mass of something like a small planet or moon to burn to accelerate constantly.

If we could accelerate continuously (accelerate halfway there and then decelerate the other half), we could conceivably reach another star system - Centauri in a decade or two real time, a little bit less in shipboard time, depending on fast we go (time dialtes for the observer as velocity approaches that of light). Decades is still a bit long, but with suspended animation capability, it could really happen.

In 1960 Robert Bussard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Bussard) proposed a possibility to reach another star system using hydrogen found between the stars as fuel. We are not quite there technologically, but we can see pretty much how it would have to be done.

But even then, to develop interstellar flight we would have to have advanced far enough to be able to create the machines we need.

Amargo is right when he says we don't have the resources on planet to advance to this point.

However, the resources of the solar system are vastly superior, and once you are in space, vastly easier to extract minerals, metals and energy than here on Earth.

I think it's possible that other species could have traveled to other stars and could have stellar colonies right now. Without some sort of faster than light drive, though, it's nearly impossible that they would visit us - the odds that they are nearby to begin with are extremely, extremely, extremely small. That's why I say nearly impossible, but not completely.

Some people don't realize this, but calculating odds doesn't yield certainty. As an example, flip a coin 100 times and the statistical distribution says that the number of times the coin lands on heads versus tails should be close to even. The fact that it is not even should say something.

Every time that coin is flipped, there is a 50-50 chance of which side it's going to land on. The next time it's flipped, just because it landed on heads more time than tails doesn't mean it's more likely to land on tails the next time - the odds stay the same. You could have a coin land on heads 100 times and it wouldn't be a statistical fluke.

So according to Drake's equation, which is all percentages and guess-work statistics, there could be no other civilizations (space faring or not) or there could be thousands.

But like a coin, the probability overall stays about the same, we just don't really know what that probability is because we have no meaningful measurements to make a statistical guess that really means anything.

And if a civilization has interstellar travel, the most likely means of detecting them (given what we know of the possibilities of traveling between the stars) is probably even less likely than a civilization of our own level of technology.

For example, communicating in a meaningful way between two star system would require a huge amount of energy. You would want a low-spread laser beam that was strong enough to be understood on arrival, which requires huge amount of energy. And the laser beam itself can only be intercepted if you are in its path. We would have no idea that these beams even exist, most likely.

I couldn't find any comments on searching for interstellar drive signs after a quick Google search, but I've heard that someone had once tried it, to find signs of an advanced civilization. But that would be one of the only ways I see to even find an advanced civilization that wasn't advertising its presence.

 

[ElQueso]

I knew the answer was here somewhere! Don't forget your towel

 

[scotttswan]

maybe they already have tried to contact us but we missed the message....

 

[PhilinBSAS]

Post Rio2 the probability of finding another planet with intelligent life is greatly higher than the probability of finding intelligent life on this one.

Hope Dilma is happy

http://www.monbiot.com/2012/06/25/end-of-an-era/

Just pause to think what would happen if another planet's inhabitants went out and made contact? What with us putting one national flag on the Moon and another national flag dropped on the seabed under the North Pole.

Don't tell Cristina or she'll claim Peron were there first only to be kicked off by unscrupulous English space pirates when we all know that there was a plaque left behind years before declaring inalienable rights.

N.B Any Aliens reading this would know about humour?

So be assured any other planet, from this or any other universe, that is stupid enough to reciprocate signals with this one, would be by definition supremely unintelligent

 

[PhilinBSAS]

maybe they already have tried to contact us but we missed the message....

how many more clues do you need?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFbU8M-r6Ww