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Fermi Paradox Predicting Humankind's Future?
An anonymous reader writes "The Fermi paradox says that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, at least one of them should have colonized the entire galaxy by now. But since there is no evidence of this, humankind must be the only intelligent life in the galaxy. The Space Review has an article on how the Fermi paradox can be applied to human civilization. It says that, like the extraterrestrials, humans have three choices: colonize the galaxy, remain on Earth, or become extinct."
If it does, I can't see how it'd ever be right, given the fact the universe is still expanding. No civilization can ever populate the entire universe with slower than light travel.
Could be that more than 4-5 light years makes travel a little... hairy. I mean, people start to ...wig-out at those kinds of distances. There's a lot of distance to cover, with a lot of dangerous particles flying in the same space, so it's safe to say the further you go the more... close shaves you'll have!
Har har har I kill myself.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
For some reason, they don't take orders from somebody on Slashdot with a 900k+ user ID.
Does that imply that there exists a person on Slashdot with a sufficiently low UID to give orders to NASA?
If you live in a typical suburban neighborhood, there are at least 200 houses within a 30-minute walk. How many have you visited? How many would you visit if it took the entire output of your civilization for 10 years in order to visit?
Anyway, amongst the nearest alien species this is called the "Brakloo'tj Paradox".
Clearly, then, humankind has the right, nay the obligation to expand throughout the universe.
We should terraform any planets that are not already Earthlike, use the energy of however many stars it takes to achieve our goals, and find some black hole into which to pitch any planets that become inconveniently polluted.
Any semi-intelligent life we encounter along the way will obviously be inferior, since it has not colonized the universe first. If it gets in our way (or even if it doesn't) we should trample it under our jackboots, but only if necessary. Whenever possible we should altruistically force them to accept the inestimable benefits of the English language, democracy, and McDonald's hamburgers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Oh he will. We'll make sure of it.
We may be marked as a "potential revisit"
I believe the correct term is "Mostly Harmless"
Slashdot Low User ID Operations Order 001
1. SITUATION: the Fermi Paradox compels us to populate the Galaxy or become extinct.
2. MISSION: NASA will design, test, build, staff, and deploy a fleet of interstellar colony ships for the purposes of populating the galaxy.
3. EXECUTION: This mission will take place in 6 phases:
a. Design a colony ship;
b. Test the colony ship;
c. Build a fleet of colony ships;
d. Staff and populate the colony ships with suitable colonists;
e. Deploy the fleet; and
f. Monitor the colonies and provide support as appropriate.
4. SERVICE SUPPORT
a. Funding: no change.
5. COMMAND AND SIGNALS: no change.
There! Let's see if that works.
DG
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