The Fermi Paradox ("Where are all the aliens?")

[Kyng]

Kyng well the closest I can think of is zeta reticuli B.

See the star has an anomalously low level of beryllium, a material that's possibly useful for building Dyson swarms, that combined with the unusual age difference between the binary pair, and the debris cloud and you could see how it might look like a late stage type 1 civilization.

That and the Betty and Barney hill case has it listed on the supposed map that they were shown during what was described as a peaceful first contact event.

Real or not it's intriguing.

Yeah, that's certainly another thing to look for: stars with weird chemical compositions. Godier brought up the case of Przybylski's Star (which contains unusually large amounts of uranium, thorium, caesium, and various other elements that we just wouldn't expect to find) - but, Zeta Reticuli B is another interesting case .

I'd be intrigued to know more about these stars - but, as the chemical composition of Przybylski's Star has been known about since 1961, I'm not holding my breath for more answers !

[Kyng]

Now another weird suggestion for a solution. What if they've shrunk themselves in order to save on resources ?



TBH, this probably isn't the most convincing solution, for a number of reasons. First of all, even if some alien civilizations have miniaturized themselves, it doesn't work as a Fermi Paradox solution unless you can argue that every civilization would do this. Secondly, there's probably a limit as to how far civilizations can shrink themselves - and once they hit that limit, they'll have to start expanding outwards, into the galaxy.

Still, it's quite an amusing solution, and it is food for thought!!!

[SpookyZalost]

So, food for thought.

Now that we know it's possible to create warp bubbles... Perhaps we should improve gravity wave detectors or look for Cherenkov radiation since both of those should indicate usage of warp drives.

Even a stealthy warp drive should at least cause faint gravity waves as it warps space/time by it's usage.

After all, if a type 0.8 civilization can stumble on it, it should be in common use by any interstellar civilization.  If there isn't any, we've either missed something or whoever is out there isn't using a method that messes with space/time or isn't leaving their star system for some reason.

[Zerg Rush]

In recent times, many sightings have accumulated, confirmed by military and governments, of UFOs or UAP, as they are called now.
That due to their maneuvers they cannot be of a technology that we have.
At first I was very skeptical about it, but it has given me some reflections.
Certainly, if there are civilizations on other planets, they are at distances that at first glance seem impossible to reach, not even at the speed of light, in a reasonable time.
But on the other hand the speed of light is a strange thing.
The following example will show it.
We suppose that we have a ship that manages to reach a considerable percentage of the speed of light and flies to a planet 10 light years away.
For an observer of the Earth, the ship would need many decades to reach this planet, but not for the crew of this ship, for them the trip will last perhaps only a few months or a few years, depending on whether the speed reaches a greater or lesser amount. percent of the speed of light.
Naturally there is not much sense to get into a trip that implies that, when they return home, a century could have passed, but the thing is very different, when the planet of origin is destroyed by some cataclysm, then if it is acceptable to get into a trip, which for the crew means a few years, since the centenary or millennia that it would mean for an observer of the planet of origin is irrelevant, because it no longer exists.
I mean, it is quite possible that they are here, although they do not have a WARP engine. In addition, they may have arrived a long time ago, as old paintings show that leave little doubt.



Capture by a photographer who is dedicated to making landscape filming using drones.

[Kyng]

So, food for thought.

Now that we know it's possible to create warp bubbles... Perhaps we should improve gravity wave detectors or look for Cherenkov radiation since both of those should indicate usage of warp drives.

Even a stealthy warp drive should at least cause faint gravity waves as it warps space/time by it's usage.

After all, if a type 0.8 civilization can stumble on it, it should be in common use by any interstellar civilization.  If there isn't any, we've either missed something or whoever is out there isn't using a method that messes with space/time or isn't leaving their star system for some reason.

Maybe . Although, if warp drives do indeed turn out to be a practical means of interstellar travel... then, that means conquering the galaxy is even easier than Fermi envisioned . So, his question of why this hasn't happened would still stand!

In recent times, many sightings have accumulated, confirmed by military and governments, of UFOs or UAP, as they are called now.
That due to their maneuvers they cannot be of a technology that we have.
At first I was very skeptical about it, but it has given me some reflections.
Certainly, if there are civilizations on other planets, they are at distances that at first glance seem impossible to reach, not even at the speed of light, in a reasonable time.
But on the other hand the speed of light is a strange thing.
The following example will show it.
We suppose that we have a ship that manages to reach a considerable percentage of the speed of light and flies to a planet 10 light years away.
For an observer of the Earth, the ship would need many decades to reach this planet, but not for the crew of this ship, for them the trip will last perhaps only a few months or a few years, depending on whether the speed reaches a greater or lesser amount. percent of the speed of light.
Naturally there is not much sense to get into a trip that implies that, when they return home, a century could have passed, but the thing is very different, when the planet of origin is destroyed by some cataclysm, then if it is acceptable to get into a trip, which for the crew means a few years, since the centenary or millennia that it would mean for an observer of the planet of origin is irrelevant, because it no longer exists.
I mean, it is quite possible that they are here, although they do not have a WARP engine. In addition, they may have arrived a long time ago, as old paintings show that leave little doubt.



Capture by a photographer who is dedicated to making landscape filming using drones.

Yeah, I'm still very skeptical about this myself .

• There's an alternative explanation for the object in the painting, as I read on here:
  
  

  Of course, there’s a simple enough explanation. In many other paintings of the Nativity or Adoration we find a shepherd holding his hand to his head in a similar way as he gazes in wonder at a luminous cloud (often with an angel emerging from it). The angel may not be included here, but with some of the original gilding intact, art historians believe that it’s almost certainly the same bright cloud. Nevertheless, it does add a fun bit of contemporary mystery to a tour of the gallery.

  
  
• The calculations in the video are flawed. They're measuring two points on the ground, and calculating the speed required to travel between those two points in two seconds. However, the object isn't travelling between those two points: it's travelling in front of those two points, but it's closer to the camera - so it's travelling a shorter distance. (If I swept my finger in front of the camera lens, and it took two seconds to get between those two points, than that wouldn't mean my finger was travelling at 3200kph . It's the same principle here: without knowing how far from the camera the object is, we can't perform a meaningful calculation)

(Although, if I am wrong about either of the above, and those really are aliens... then, I do hope they don't shoot me for this !!!!)

[Zerg Rush]

The calculation respects the paralax error becaus of the distance. Any way the speed is insane and significant higher than the velocity of sound and in silence. You hear only the motor of the dron.
In the channel of this guy (there you can see, that this isn't any conspiranoic channel) are olso a few other captures, where you can see that it fly most at low ground level.

Yes, there are many interpretations of the UFOs in old paintings, most religious paintings, but also in older images.

https://www.infobae.com/cultura/2020/05/...-historia/

In this theme it's better to be neutral, it can be as wrong to claim that they are aliens, as to claim that it is something else.

[Kyng]

I did just re-watch the video, and I didn't see any point where he took parallax into account: it just appeared to be measuring the distance on the ground, then calculating the speed based on that. But, even if the calculation was correct, and the object really was travelling at 3200kph, it doesn't change what I'm about to say below.

I will acknowledge that I don't know what that fast object was (and therefore, I can't rule out the possibility that it was alien technology). However, I believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - and I consider the claim that "aliens are visiting Earth" to be extraordinary. I'd need clear and unambiguous evidence before I could believe that (so, something stronger than just a small, blurry image of something moving through the air, where we can't tell what it is). My experience of small, blurry images is that they often have alternative explanations that are more mundane (as was the case with the paintings) - so I suspect that the blurry image in the video will also have a more mundane explanation (even though I don't currently know that that explanation is). Therefore, I'll simply reserve judgement on it until I know more .

In any case, we do have a thread that's specifically about UFO claims - so, if you'd like to discuss the subject further, then I'd recommend continuing in that thread .

[Zerg Rush]

I agree, while there is no real evidence, apart from videos, it is useless to state anything. The only thing that is proven is that there is a real phenomenon that deserves to be investigated seriously, if only for air safety, in case a passenger plane, for example, has an encounter with something like that.

[SpookyZalost]

Kurtzgesagt just released another video on a possible explanation to the fermi paradox, the Dark Forest Theory.

Effectively it comes down to the idea that the reason why nobody is out there is that they're all hiding due to factors that (at least on earth), seem to accompany species that advance into technology.

Video below


Honestly I agree that caution should be taken up when encountering foreign powers both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial since who knows what their societies and cultures might be like!

still given the region they're also likely to be decently far away, and with the recent warp bubble discovery well... caution never hurt anyone.

[Kyng]

Nice . And I do think there's something to that explanation: when two civilisations on Earth have made first contact, the results are often disastrous for whichever civilisation is less powerful - so, it stands to reason to think that the same would be true of extra-terrestrial civilisations.

With that said, in order to work as a Fermi Paradox solution, it would need to explain why every civilisation is staying quiet (not just all or most) - and, on its own, I don't think it's really strong enough to do this. So, it'd probably need to be combined with other solutions (for example, ones suggesting that these civilisations are rare in the first place).