08-27-2019, 04:45 PM
Here's a thread I've been meaning to cross-post for a while . The original is here:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/the_coff...=57&t=3695
Some of you might have heard of the Fermi paradox. If you haven't, then Enrico Fermi's argument was as follows: the Sun is a relatively young star (many stars in the galaxy are billions of years older), and we'd expect some of these older stars to have planets, some of which have intelligent life that's billions of years ahead of us in technological development. In those billions of years, they would easily have been able to spread their influence across the entire galaxy - including the Earth. However, we see no convincing evidence of such advanced civilizations even existing, let alone controlling us. Why is this?
There are a lot of possible answers to this question, most of which can be grouped into the following basic categories:
Of course, within each of these broad categories, there's a wide range of specific possibilities (and there are some that straddle multiple categories without clearly fitting into any of them ). In the following video, YouTube user John Michael Godier lists some of the more unusual and obscure ones:
If you don't have time to watch the video, here's a summary of the list:
So, what do you think is the most likely explanation?
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/the_coff...=57&t=3695
Some of you might have heard of the Fermi paradox. If you haven't, then Enrico Fermi's argument was as follows: the Sun is a relatively young star (many stars in the galaxy are billions of years older), and we'd expect some of these older stars to have planets, some of which have intelligent life that's billions of years ahead of us in technological development. In those billions of years, they would easily have been able to spread their influence across the entire galaxy - including the Earth. However, we see no convincing evidence of such advanced civilizations even existing, let alone controlling us. Why is this?
There are a lot of possible answers to this question, most of which can be grouped into the following basic categories:
- They never existed in the first place. Either we truly are alone, or any other life that did develop hasn't become intelligent. (Perhaps there's some kind of "Great Filter" that stops almost all life from becoming intelligent)
- They did exist at one time, but don't now. Maybe they have a strong tendency to destroy themselves once they become technologically capable of doing so. (Maybe this "Great Filter" is not behind us, but ahead of us - which is a pretty unsettling thought ...)
- They do exist, but they can't/won't colonize the galaxy. Perhaps it's technologically impossible, or they consider it too unsafe or too expensive.
- They have colonized the galaxy, but we can't see them. Maybe we're not looking/listening hard enough, or they're purposely keeping out of our way.
Of course, within each of these broad categories, there's a wide range of specific possibilities (and there are some that straddle multiple categories without clearly fitting into any of them ). In the following video, YouTube user John Michael Godier lists some of the more unusual and obscure ones:
If you don't have time to watch the video, here's a summary of the list:
10 obscure solutions to the Fermi Paradox
10. Aliens don't like planets. We've never seen a civilisation that's conquered a galaxy (we're not there yet ourselves), so we don't know what such a civilisation would look like. We look for them on other planets (because we live on one ourselves); however, aliens may choose not to do this, for any number of reasons.
9. Surface oceans might be rare. We still don't know how the Earth acquired its water. One possibility is that it came from comets - but, what caused the disturbance that set the comets on a collision course with the young Earth in the first place? We don't know - but it could have been a rare event, like a passing star. (Sub-surface oceans, on the other hand, are likely to be relatively common)
8. Aliens have different mathematics (or none at all). Some animals on Earth do have an ability to comprehend numbers (i.e. being able to compare 'smaller' and 'larger' quantities), but it's not what we humans would think of as 'counting'. So, perhaps the conditions which predisposed us to mathematics are rare (and, without mathematics, an otherwise-intelligent alien civilisation won't be able to get very far: space travel would certainly be out of the question).
7. The chemistry of life is too hard to happen often. We still don't know how life first originated on the Earth: we know that the basic building blocks could have been formed quite easily, but we don't know how we got from "the building blocks of life" to "actual life". We're working towards a solution to this - and, if it turns out that the chemistry is very complex, then it's not something that'll happen spontaneously on very many planets.
6a. Aliens become "scientifically frustrated". For example, we could discover the technology to upload ourselves into a computer, or heavily augment ourselves, to the point where we'd no longer be 'human'. Would we want that - and would alien civilisations facing the same question want that for themselves? Perhaps there's a future scientific discovery which is considered so toxic that it causes virtually all alien species to abandon any further scientific development.
6b. We might run out of science. We might find that some scientific questions are simply unanswerable - and, these eternal mysteries prevent any civilisation from developing to a point where it can colonise a galaxy.
5. You need more than one inhabitable planet. Perhaps life originated on Mars, at a time when it was more hospitable to life than it is now, and then spread to Earth before the Martian surface became uninhabitable. In other systems, it could be rare for there to be more than one inhabitable planet - so, perhaps life simply dies out when the planet on which it originated can no longer support it?
4. Intelligence is a fluke. Right now, there are several million species living on Earth (and there have been countless others in the past that have gone extinct) - and yet, we're the only one that can launch rockets. Since species on Earth have such a low 'success rate' at developing intelligence, perhaps it's just a fluke that we did?
3. Aliens become "scientifically happy". This is closely related to point #6 - but, instead of finding something that actively puts them off from making further scientific discoveries, perhaps they just lose the motivation to do so. For example, maybe they discover an alternate universe, which is far more interesting to study than our current one. Or, maybe they discover that our universe is a simulation, and lose all interest in studying it further.
2. Most worlds don't experience enough mass extinctions. While mass extinctions are terrible from the point of view of someone interested in biology, they do clear the way for new species to rise up. For example, without the extinction of the dinosaurs, it's very unlikely that we'd be here today. What if these events were rarer on most other planets - so, intelligent life has fewer opportunities to arise?
1. It's very slow out there. Aliens might operate on a much slower timescale than us humans do (for example, the process of saying "Hello, how are you?" could take years for them, as opposed to a couple of seconds for us). This means that, even if they are sending out signals, they might only repeat every 100 years or so - and, since we haven't even been picking up signals for 100 years, it's no wonder we haven't found any repeating signals!
9. Surface oceans might be rare. We still don't know how the Earth acquired its water. One possibility is that it came from comets - but, what caused the disturbance that set the comets on a collision course with the young Earth in the first place? We don't know - but it could have been a rare event, like a passing star. (Sub-surface oceans, on the other hand, are likely to be relatively common)
8. Aliens have different mathematics (or none at all). Some animals on Earth do have an ability to comprehend numbers (i.e. being able to compare 'smaller' and 'larger' quantities), but it's not what we humans would think of as 'counting'. So, perhaps the conditions which predisposed us to mathematics are rare (and, without mathematics, an otherwise-intelligent alien civilisation won't be able to get very far: space travel would certainly be out of the question).
7. The chemistry of life is too hard to happen often. We still don't know how life first originated on the Earth: we know that the basic building blocks could have been formed quite easily, but we don't know how we got from "the building blocks of life" to "actual life". We're working towards a solution to this - and, if it turns out that the chemistry is very complex, then it's not something that'll happen spontaneously on very many planets.
6a. Aliens become "scientifically frustrated". For example, we could discover the technology to upload ourselves into a computer, or heavily augment ourselves, to the point where we'd no longer be 'human'. Would we want that - and would alien civilisations facing the same question want that for themselves? Perhaps there's a future scientific discovery which is considered so toxic that it causes virtually all alien species to abandon any further scientific development.
6b. We might run out of science. We might find that some scientific questions are simply unanswerable - and, these eternal mysteries prevent any civilisation from developing to a point where it can colonise a galaxy.
5. You need more than one inhabitable planet. Perhaps life originated on Mars, at a time when it was more hospitable to life than it is now, and then spread to Earth before the Martian surface became uninhabitable. In other systems, it could be rare for there to be more than one inhabitable planet - so, perhaps life simply dies out when the planet on which it originated can no longer support it?
4. Intelligence is a fluke. Right now, there are several million species living on Earth (and there have been countless others in the past that have gone extinct) - and yet, we're the only one that can launch rockets. Since species on Earth have such a low 'success rate' at developing intelligence, perhaps it's just a fluke that we did?
3. Aliens become "scientifically happy". This is closely related to point #6 - but, instead of finding something that actively puts them off from making further scientific discoveries, perhaps they just lose the motivation to do so. For example, maybe they discover an alternate universe, which is far more interesting to study than our current one. Or, maybe they discover that our universe is a simulation, and lose all interest in studying it further.
2. Most worlds don't experience enough mass extinctions. While mass extinctions are terrible from the point of view of someone interested in biology, they do clear the way for new species to rise up. For example, without the extinction of the dinosaurs, it's very unlikely that we'd be here today. What if these events were rarer on most other planets - so, intelligent life has fewer opportunities to arise?
1. It's very slow out there. Aliens might operate on a much slower timescale than us humans do (for example, the process of saying "Hello, how are you?" could take years for them, as opposed to a couple of seconds for us). This means that, even if they are sending out signals, they might only repeat every 100 years or so - and, since we haven't even been picking up signals for 100 years, it's no wonder we haven't found any repeating signals!
So, what do you think is the most likely explanation?