I have a boring solution to the Fermi paradox. It is old, but really, really boring.
Start looking at things that are weird about our Solar System and the Earth. Figure out which ones are probably necessary for intelligence. Add those into the Fermi calculation. And see that it is likely that we're the first intelligent life in this galaxy.
What are some of those special things? It is not enough to have a planet that has the right ingredients to start life. It is necessary that it's progress not be constantly wiped out by major disasters over a very long time scale. What kinds of disasters?
You don't want a supernova going off too close. We have been lucky to avoid that. Our odds were greatly improved by the fact that we spend most of our time out of the galactic plane, away from other stars that could be about to go boom. This is an unusual orbit.
You don't want to be hit by too many comets. We've been hit by some, but far, far less than we would have without Jupiter acting like a sweeper to clean up dangerous stuff in our neighborhood. How rare is that? We have cataloged planets in hundreds of other solar systems. We see ones with only rocky planets. Ones with only gas giants. But we're the only one we know of with both gas giants and rocky planets. The only one where the rocky planets wind up protected from most of dinosaur killer kinds of impacts.
Oh, and get this one. Without the Moon, the tilt of the Earth's spin is unstable. Without it, in simulations we would wind up with one pole aimed at the Sun and the other not once every few tens of millions of years. Probably not good for the development of intelligent life. Again we don't know how rare this is, but we suspect that it is rather uncommon.
Suppose that each of these only happens to one star out of a thousand. Suppose further that there is one more, as yet unidentified, special factor about us that is also required. Again make that a 1/1000 coincidence. That would make the odds good that of the ~250 billion stars in our galaxy, we're the only ones with intelligent life.
Or if you do the back of the envelope just with the three that I named, and made them 1/10,000 coincidences, you get the same result.
As a sanity check, the fact that no other intelligent life has been observed is evidence that it is unlikely. And given Fermi's argument, it is probably unlikely at least on the scale of 100 billion to one against.
My favorite solution: The galaxy is teeming with life, but in the form of quasi-immortal software that lives at such vast timescales, they're as uninterested in talking to us as we would be in talking to a fruit fly. (Imagine Space Ents that say hello, and are perfectly content to wait 10,000 years for a reply.) It may well be that becoming such a life form is the only practical way to deal with the speed-of-light constraint, either in travel or communication.
If you wanted to build a Dyson sphere you would capture all the light from your star and might not exhibit ANY radiation.
We wouldn't see such a species and if there's such a small blink of time between the industrial age to the singularity the probability that there is an overlapping species is very very low.
We would only have about 20-40 years to actually have the technology to find them before we hit the singularity.
We have NO idea what happens after that point but my plan is to just chill with my wife in a virtual Yosemite park once we hit the singularity.
To continue the speculation, such "life" may be what can travel between stars but life such as our may still be common. Indeed, life such as our may be common enough that interstellar life merely takes note of it and moves on since novelty wears off quickly.
> The transcension hypothesis proposes that a universal process of evolutionary development guides all sufficiently advanced civilizations into what may be called "inner space," a computationally optimal domain of increasingly dense, productive, miniaturized, and efficient scales of space, time, energy, and matter, and eventually, to a black-hole-like destination.
One thing to keep in mind is that ~80% of the universe is 'dark energy' and ~20% is 'dark matter'. The stuff we're made of is ~5% of the mass-density of the universe.
For the stuff you and I are made of, we have a pretty good clue as to what is going on, how it works, what the 'bottlenecks' are in terms of talking with other stuff that is like us.
For dark matter, well... it falls down. That's about all we got. How it interacts, if at all, is a total mystery at this point. And there's about 4x more of it than of the stuff you and I are made up of (which is mostly in stars and black holes, at that!). Does it have phases? Can it have a temperature? If it can sustain something like life, what would that even be like?
For dark energy... um... it falls up? Honestly, we got nothing at this point. We've not really even got an idea if it's a particle or a field or what. Most 'serious' physicists just ignore it as it's embarrassingly mysterious. If life could exist in something like dark energy, we'd be totally left out of any avenue to talk to it. At least with dark matter aliens you can send gravity waves at them. With dark energy ones, we have no idea at all. And dark energy has 16x the mass-density that we do.
My point is that the majority of the universe that we know about today is just a total mystery. And we've only discovered this issue in the last 50 years or so. Meaning that in another 10,000 years, we're likely to have a completely different understanding of the universe than we have today. Like, so radically different that it's akin to the flat-earth model vs. general relativity.
When it comes to alien communication, be patient. It's likely to be so outside our current understanding that it would baffle anyone currently alive; it will be literally unbelievable to you and I.
Hart's paper attempts to cover the idea of "sociological" phenomena like this.
I think from an evolutionary biology standpoint, it seems dubious that such a thing could evolve -- even considering a software solution, software that more rapidly propagates will be more common then software that does not.
They might not want to talk to us, but members of that species that actively convert planets into computational substrates would be the more common variants just because on these kinds of timescales they would not have competition.
My favorite solution: consciousness is not that important of a criteria when determining the success of an organism- there are plenty populated planets all over the universe, but none of them care about learning, or exploring the unknown. Our giant brains are just one very specific solution to one very specific problem, and in some environments, there are advantages to not having such a brain.
I think that thinking around the Fermi Paradox has the fatal flaw that we think our current technological boom can be extrapolated. We have the feeling that the Kardashev scale, even type 1, is attainable. I'm more technological pessimistic and think it is not attainable. I think the technological boom will peter off, because of hard insolvable questions limited by nature and energy and money. We are enthusiastic now because of past progress and progress we see we can still make. But we will get in diminishing return time and slow stabilization before too long. And progress will become hard until impossible.
Humans will never colonize this galaxy. It's too hard, too expensive, and too pointless. And neither will other intelligent civilizations, of which I guess a small handful at most will exist in the lifetime of our galaxy. Maybe some galaxies do exist where a civilization lives that put everything of their energy on spreading within their galaxies. But even they will not be able to spread to other galaxies. The acceleration of the universe and the extreme distances and nothingness forbids that.
>Humans will never colonize this galaxy. It's too hard, too expensive, and too pointless.
If we stick around long enough, it will eventually, over a long enough scale, become none of those things. We're 95% of the way, as a species, toward the point of spreading out to such a diaspora that no natural force can eradicate us.
Even if we don't end up doing it because of nuclear weapons or mass suicide or some other reason, we would expect at least some other civilizations that reach our level of advancement to reach that last 5% beyond -- unless no other comparable civilizations have ever arisen in the first place.
Why do you think we are in danger of a dramatic slow down in new tech? The tech challenges today are certainly more difficult but our gains compound on themselves. Faster computers allow for previously computationally infeasible techniques, better tech allows for better understanding of biology from which we draw better, biologically inspired techniques, better cultural improvements/ greater access to information allows more people to work on a given problem. I definitely see certain roadblocks like the end of moore's law but there are other ways forward too.
It has seemed to me that we _have_ to colonize the galaxy, if we aren't - as a species - going to be forced to resort to periodic mass genocide of exactly the type discussed in the Marvel Studios Infinity War movie.
The notion we'd settle on planetary surfaces makes assumptions on the anthropology of our offspring.
Moving between stars requires us to master living in enclosed habitats for generations. If we do that, why would we bother with planets? We could arrive at the periphery of a system or an accretion disk of a young star, get all the materials to build a couple hundred new habitats and launch them towards the next system.
Would we still want to settle on planetary surfaces?
This is a huge aspect. We've already got lots of precedent of splits between nomadic vs. agricultural societies. I think we would naturally group ourselves into 'travelers' and 'settlers', with a small amount of migration between the two-- and eventually in the long run, species differentiation.
My “boring” “explanation”: the number of alien intelligences is unknowable and irrelevant because interstellar travel and communication are both near as damnit impossible.
Yeah I wonder if this isn't the simple (and sad) truth. Maybe every intelligent species discovers that the laws of physics are unavoidable hard limits and eventually decide it's a pointless waste of energy to endlessly broadcast signals to other stars and galaxies that are moving, ever faster, further and further away.
> Our steady-state model can constrain the probabilities for an Earth visit by a settling civilization before a given time horizon. These results break the link between Hart's famous "Fact A" (no interstellar visitors on Earth now) and the conclusion that humans must, therefore, be the only technological civilization in the galaxy.
FTA: "Faster-growing, rapacious societies might peter out before they could touch all the stars."
I don't get this reasoning. The way I see it: every solar system that gets settled is a fresh roll of the dice. Every newly colonized system increases the odds that at least one of these settlements will not self-destruct.
Polynesia is a great analogy. While Easter Island is suffering, Hawaiʻi, Tahiti and hundreds of other islands might still be going strong.
That is if it is somehow economically feasibly for those societies to develop interstellar travel in the first place. When a civilization is occupied with its own struggles and conflicts (the fast-living rapacious ones), they might be incentivized to first exploit local resources before interstellar travel is considered seriously.
It may be an extinction event for humans. Personally I think this is unlikely, but so what if it is? There have been extinction events before, and in fact that is why we are dominating the planet instead of the dinosaurs.
I propose the Morris equation for the odds of alien life finding us:
N = ( R * fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L ) / ( AI * VR * D * S * M )
Where the Drake equation:
N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy who detect our electromagnetic emmissions
R = Average rate of formation of suitable stars (stars/year) in the Milky Way galaxy
fp = Fraction of stars that form planets
ne = Average number of habitable planets per star
fl = Fraction of habitable planets (ne) where life emerges
fi = Fraction of habitable planets with life where intelligent evolves
fc = Fraction of planets with intelligent life capable of interstellar communication
L = Years a civilization remains detectable
Is divided by the karma equation:
AI = Whether or not aliens have merged with artificial intelligence, become their own God and are no longer interested in us (tends towards 1)
VR = Whether or not aliens have virtual reality akin to the movie The Matrix and live in a hedonistic paradise indefinitely (tends towards 1)
D = Number of psychedelic drugs available to aliens that are at least as compelling as actual reality (tends towards infinity)
S = Percentage of aliens that reproduce sexually or are able to spend a lifetime living in their parents' basement pondering aliens (let's just say 50%)
M = Whether or not aliens use money so contact with extraterrestrials is considered too great a risk (somewhere between 0 and 1)
So as with all things, first contact by extraterrestrials is likely dominated by the need to procreate and money.
Every single slightly habitable planet in the galaxy could harbor a species that has gone to it's nearest moons and planets, and we wouldn't be able to tell. Every transmission our species has made is indistinguishable from quantum noise at the distance of Alpha Centauri.
In the sense of the Fermi Paradox, zero species on this star have "made it to space".
"According to the inevitable life theory, biological systems spontaneously emerge because they more efficiently disperse, or “dissipate” energy, thereby increasing the entropy of the surroundings. In other words, life is thermodynamically favorable."
Isaac Arthur has a whole series of podcasts that cover all the current ideas around the Fermi paradox, which ones are more or less likely and why. Really interesting stuff. Here's a link to his Fermi Paradox playlist on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIIOUpOge0LulClL2dHXh...
He's also got a Soundcloud for audio-only format and a Facebook group.
The problem with the Fermi paradox is that it requires you to assume the existence of spacefaring civilizations, with all the expected technology. The possibilities are just to many, and we only know relatively well our own solar system, we don't know how normal it is (recent observations suggests it could be at least kind of odd) or how normal Earth is. As it is quoted, Earth for us is all there is and it would seem completely normal to us even if for any well educated alien it could look obviously artificial.
The Black planet hypothesis: There are planets intentionally cut off the bigger society. Spacefaring civilizations are largely immortal, and would be kept in an evolutionary stasis, so there are planets that are intentionally kept isolated and prisoners are kept on them in a pre galactic stage as a way to keep evolving.
Impending doom hypothesis: An immense catastrophe is expected to happen in the general area, and all the surrounding space has been evacuated.
Presumed recluse hypothesis: Our solar system is recognized as obviously artificial, yet attempts to communicate are met with no response. We are perceived as unwilling to communicate and intentionally left alone.
Planets are primitive hypothesis: More advanced civilizations have no interest in settling planets, planets are seen as primitive as living in a rainforest is to us, while advanced civilizations normally live in artificial habitats.
Unpleasant star hypothesis: The solar wind, neutrino flow or other forms of radiation may be disruptive to highly advanced technology, so the sources are avoided unless necessary.
tl;dr it shouldn't take as long as previously thought to colonize the galaxy based on a simulation.
That's largely an irrelevant finding that adds nothing to the Fermi Paradox because the time it would take to colonize the galaxy is so small in cosmological terms that shortening it is irrelevant.
What's more the authors decided to modeled the suitability of star systems impeding colonization when this seems like it would be largely irrelevant because starfaring civilizations seem highly unlikely to be planet-bound as this is a pretty inefficient use of mass. The Dyson Sphere (Swarm) seems much more likely at which point the only thing of value is the star. The planets are just piles of raw materials ultimately.
Obligatory plug for Isaac Arthur who has a series of videos on the Fermi Paradox. Here's an early one [1]. There are 10-20 others that go into particular aspects.
i dont know why people think there is a paradox. the way that life springs from barren rock is not known. if we dont know how that works, then we cant assign a probability to it happening on a given planet. people just assume that the probability is very high. it could be next to nothing for all we know, small enough so that even the entire universe only produces one. the paradox is all based on huge assumptions. there is no paradox until we prove that the probability is high.
well thats not true, because you need life but you also need intelligence. and again, everyone assumes that if you have life it will eventually become intelligent. and people assume that if life is intelligent it will eventually build space shuttles. its all a huge, huge assumption. look at all the animals that qualify as intelligent. some birds and monkeys are hugely intelligent, but they dont build space shuttles. this shows that intelligence doesnt equal space shuttles and that even when life springs up, and even when it becomes intelligent, it still could be super unlikely that it will build space shuttles.
hell, there are even humans that might have never built space shuttles. there are indigenous communities all over the planet that never developed technology and probably never would have. when you live in a warm climate and food is abundant, there may never be a reason to.
it is unproven that it is likely at all for space-shuttle level intelligence to spring up from bare earth. there is no paradox. its probably just really unlikely.
If we assume that most stars are in a sort of orbit around the core, wouldn't the stars stay in relatively the same place? And regardless, wouldn't they still require the ability and timing to take advantage of those moments the solar system's get close to each-other? That still requires a monstrous amount of technology and energy, doesn't it?
Do we have an estimate for likelihood of noticing earth as a life containing planet as a function of how far away we might imagine ourselves in the galaxy given current methods?
I remember reading than from a radio emissions standpoint, we wouldn't detect our activity if it was happening on a planet in the closest star system. I don't know about other methods but very interested too.
> It’s possible that the Milky Way is partially settled, or intermittently so; maybe explorers visited us in the past, but we don’t remember, and they died out. The solar system may well be amid other settled systems; it’s just been unvisited for millions of years.
This, however, does not explain the complete lack of artifacts or observable technological signatures.
Oh, but don't forget that one congregation of dust particles that flew by us really fast, which _might_ (who am I kidding - we all know it's 100%!) have been an alien probe.
[+] [-] btilly|7 years ago|reply
Start looking at things that are weird about our Solar System and the Earth. Figure out which ones are probably necessary for intelligence. Add those into the Fermi calculation. And see that it is likely that we're the first intelligent life in this galaxy.
What are some of those special things? It is not enough to have a planet that has the right ingredients to start life. It is necessary that it's progress not be constantly wiped out by major disasters over a very long time scale. What kinds of disasters?
You don't want a supernova going off too close. We have been lucky to avoid that. Our odds were greatly improved by the fact that we spend most of our time out of the galactic plane, away from other stars that could be about to go boom. This is an unusual orbit.
You don't want to be hit by too many comets. We've been hit by some, but far, far less than we would have without Jupiter acting like a sweeper to clean up dangerous stuff in our neighborhood. How rare is that? We have cataloged planets in hundreds of other solar systems. We see ones with only rocky planets. Ones with only gas giants. But we're the only one we know of with both gas giants and rocky planets. The only one where the rocky planets wind up protected from most of dinosaur killer kinds of impacts.
Oh, and get this one. Without the Moon, the tilt of the Earth's spin is unstable. Without it, in simulations we would wind up with one pole aimed at the Sun and the other not once every few tens of millions of years. Probably not good for the development of intelligent life. Again we don't know how rare this is, but we suspect that it is rather uncommon.
Suppose that each of these only happens to one star out of a thousand. Suppose further that there is one more, as yet unidentified, special factor about us that is also required. Again make that a 1/1000 coincidence. That would make the odds good that of the ~250 billion stars in our galaxy, we're the only ones with intelligent life.
Or if you do the back of the envelope just with the three that I named, and made them 1/10,000 coincidences, you get the same result.
As a sanity check, the fact that no other intelligent life has been observed is evidence that it is unlikely. And given Fermi's argument, it is probably unlikely at least on the scale of 100 billion to one against.
[+] [-] lukifer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burtonator|7 years ago|reply
If you wanted to build a Dyson sphere you would capture all the light from your star and might not exhibit ANY radiation.
We wouldn't see such a species and if there's such a small blink of time between the industrial age to the singularity the probability that there is an overlapping species is very very low.
We would only have about 20-40 years to actually have the technology to find them before we hit the singularity.
We have NO idea what happens after that point but my plan is to just chill with my wife in a virtual Yosemite park once we hit the singularity.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] svachalek|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gloriousduke|7 years ago|reply
> The transcension hypothesis proposes that a universal process of evolutionary development guides all sufficiently advanced civilizations into what may be called "inner space," a computationally optimal domain of increasingly dense, productive, miniaturized, and efficient scales of space, time, energy, and matter, and eventually, to a black-hole-like destination.
https://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.htm...
[+] [-] Balgair|7 years ago|reply
For the stuff you and I are made of, we have a pretty good clue as to what is going on, how it works, what the 'bottlenecks' are in terms of talking with other stuff that is like us.
For dark matter, well... it falls down. That's about all we got. How it interacts, if at all, is a total mystery at this point. And there's about 4x more of it than of the stuff you and I are made up of (which is mostly in stars and black holes, at that!). Does it have phases? Can it have a temperature? If it can sustain something like life, what would that even be like?
For dark energy... um... it falls up? Honestly, we got nothing at this point. We've not really even got an idea if it's a particle or a field or what. Most 'serious' physicists just ignore it as it's embarrassingly mysterious. If life could exist in something like dark energy, we'd be totally left out of any avenue to talk to it. At least with dark matter aliens you can send gravity waves at them. With dark energy ones, we have no idea at all. And dark energy has 16x the mass-density that we do.
My point is that the majority of the universe that we know about today is just a total mystery. And we've only discovered this issue in the last 50 years or so. Meaning that in another 10,000 years, we're likely to have a completely different understanding of the universe than we have today. Like, so radically different that it's akin to the flat-earth model vs. general relativity.
When it comes to alien communication, be patient. It's likely to be so outside our current understanding that it would baffle anyone currently alive; it will be literally unbelievable to you and I.
[+] [-] Koshkin|7 years ago|reply
I believe it would be very interesting, scientifically, to be able to 'talk' to a fruit fly.
[+] [-] andrewla|7 years ago|reply
I think from an evolutionary biology standpoint, it seems dubious that such a thing could evolve -- even considering a software solution, software that more rapidly propagates will be more common then software that does not.
They might not want to talk to us, but members of that species that actively convert planets into computational substrates would be the more common variants just because on these kinds of timescales they would not have competition.
[+] [-] knodi123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sporkland|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcoffland|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] planck01|7 years ago|reply
Humans will never colonize this galaxy. It's too hard, too expensive, and too pointless. And neither will other intelligent civilizations, of which I guess a small handful at most will exist in the lifetime of our galaxy. Maybe some galaxies do exist where a civilization lives that put everything of their energy on spreading within their galaxies. But even they will not be able to spread to other galaxies. The acceleration of the universe and the extreme distances and nothingness forbids that.
[+] [-] koboll|7 years ago|reply
If we stick around long enough, it will eventually, over a long enough scale, become none of those things. We're 95% of the way, as a species, toward the point of spreading out to such a diaspora that no natural force can eradicate us.
Even if we don't end up doing it because of nuclear weapons or mass suicide or some other reason, we would expect at least some other civilizations that reach our level of advancement to reach that last 5% beyond -- unless no other comparable civilizations have ever arisen in the first place.
[+] [-] pretendscholar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColanR|7 years ago|reply
It has seemed to me that we _have_ to colonize the galaxy, if we aren't - as a species - going to be forced to resort to periodic mass genocide of exactly the type discussed in the Marvel Studios Infinity War movie.
[+] [-] thangalin|7 years ago|reply
* [1998] http://www.geoffreylandis.com/percolation.htp
* [2014] https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.0204
[+] [-] CodeMage|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1001101|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eerie_Silence [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percolation_theory
[+] [-] rbanffy|7 years ago|reply
Moving between stars requires us to master living in enclosed habitats for generations. If we do that, why would we bother with planets? We could arrive at the periphery of a system or an accretion disk of a young star, get all the materials to build a couple hundred new habitats and launch them towards the next system.
Would we still want to settle on planetary surfaces?
[+] [-] slfnflctd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl6|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicnubs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naasking|7 years ago|reply
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.04450
Snippet from abstract:
> Our steady-state model can constrain the probabilities for an Earth visit by a settling civilization before a given time horizon. These results break the link between Hart's famous "Fact A" (no interstellar visitors on Earth now) and the conclusion that humans must, therefore, be the only technological civilization in the galaxy.
[+] [-] agreeer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eyeundersand|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bergoid|7 years ago|reply
I don't get this reasoning. The way I see it: every solar system that gets settled is a fresh roll of the dice. Every newly colonized system increases the odds that at least one of these settlements will not self-destruct.
Polynesia is a great analogy. While Easter Island is suffering, Hawaiʻi, Tahiti and hundreds of other islands might still be going strong.
[+] [-] maze-le|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fernly|7 years ago|reply
It seems quite a likely hypothesis that any upcoming intelligent species would, like us, ride the horse of fossil fuels right into disaster.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
[2] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...
[+] [-] ams6110|7 years ago|reply
It may be an extinction event for humans. Personally I think this is unlikely, but so what if it is? There have been extinction events before, and in fact that is why we are dominating the planet instead of the dinosaurs.
[+] [-] zackmorris|7 years ago|reply
N = ( R * fp * ne * fl * fi * fc * L ) / ( AI * VR * D * S * M )
Where the Drake equation:
N = The number of civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy who detect our electromagnetic emmissions
R = Average rate of formation of suitable stars (stars/year) in the Milky Way galaxy
fp = Fraction of stars that form planets
ne = Average number of habitable planets per star
fl = Fraction of habitable planets (ne) where life emerges
fi = Fraction of habitable planets with life where intelligent evolves
fc = Fraction of planets with intelligent life capable of interstellar communication
L = Years a civilization remains detectable
Is divided by the karma equation:
AI = Whether or not aliens have merged with artificial intelligence, become their own God and are no longer interested in us (tends towards 1)
VR = Whether or not aliens have virtual reality akin to the movie The Matrix and live in a hedonistic paradise indefinitely (tends towards 1)
D = Number of psychedelic drugs available to aliens that are at least as compelling as actual reality (tends towards infinity)
S = Percentage of aliens that reproduce sexually or are able to spend a lifetime living in their parents' basement pondering aliens (let's just say 50%)
M = Whether or not aliens use money so contact with extraterrestrials is considered too great a risk (somewhere between 0 and 1)
So as with all things, first contact by extraterrestrials is likely dominated by the need to procreate and money.
[+] [-] coldcode|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|7 years ago|reply
In the sense of the Fermi Paradox, zero species on this star have "made it to space".
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|7 years ago|reply
https://qz.com/1539551/is-the-universe-pro-life-the-fermi-pa...
"According to the inevitable life theory, biological systems spontaneously emerge because they more efficiently disperse, or “dissipate” energy, thereby increasing the entropy of the surroundings. In other words, life is thermodynamically favorable."
[+] [-] scotty79|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowdest|7 years ago|reply
He's also got a Soundcloud for audio-only format and a Facebook group.
[+] [-] PavlikPaja|7 years ago|reply
The Black planet hypothesis: There are planets intentionally cut off the bigger society. Spacefaring civilizations are largely immortal, and would be kept in an evolutionary stasis, so there are planets that are intentionally kept isolated and prisoners are kept on them in a pre galactic stage as a way to keep evolving.
Impending doom hypothesis: An immense catastrophe is expected to happen in the general area, and all the surrounding space has been evacuated.
Presumed recluse hypothesis: Our solar system is recognized as obviously artificial, yet attempts to communicate are met with no response. We are perceived as unwilling to communicate and intentionally left alone.
Planets are primitive hypothesis: More advanced civilizations have no interest in settling planets, planets are seen as primitive as living in a rainforest is to us, while advanced civilizations normally live in artificial habitats.
Unpleasant star hypothesis: The solar wind, neutrino flow or other forms of radiation may be disruptive to highly advanced technology, so the sources are avoided unless necessary.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|7 years ago|reply
That's one of the variables in the Fermi equation. Set it to zero, and the paradox vanishes.
[+] [-] cletus|7 years ago|reply
That's largely an irrelevant finding that adds nothing to the Fermi Paradox because the time it would take to colonize the galaxy is so small in cosmological terms that shortening it is irrelevant.
What's more the authors decided to modeled the suitability of star systems impeding colonization when this seems like it would be largely irrelevant because starfaring civilizations seem highly unlikely to be planet-bound as this is a pretty inefficient use of mass. The Dyson Sphere (Swarm) seems much more likely at which point the only thing of value is the star. The planets are just piles of raw materials ultimately.
Obligatory plug for Isaac Arthur who has a series of videos on the Fermi Paradox. Here's an early one [1]. There are 10-20 others that go into particular aspects.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDPj5zI66LA
[+] [-] bronz|7 years ago|reply
well thats not true, because you need life but you also need intelligence. and again, everyone assumes that if you have life it will eventually become intelligent. and people assume that if life is intelligent it will eventually build space shuttles. its all a huge, huge assumption. look at all the animals that qualify as intelligent. some birds and monkeys are hugely intelligent, but they dont build space shuttles. this shows that intelligence doesnt equal space shuttles and that even when life springs up, and even when it becomes intelligent, it still could be super unlikely that it will build space shuttles.
hell, there are even humans that might have never built space shuttles. there are indigenous communities all over the planet that never developed technology and probably never would have. when you live in a warm climate and food is abundant, there may never be a reason to.
it is unproven that it is likely at all for space-shuttle level intelligence to spring up from bare earth. there is no paradox. its probably just really unlikely.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SketchySeaBeast|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b_tterc_p|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Guillaume86|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hliyan|7 years ago|reply
This, however, does not explain the complete lack of artifacts or observable technological signatures.
[+] [-] Izkata|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joe-Z|7 years ago|reply
Oumuamua is what it's been called.