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."

Comments

Re:More likely

[SatanicPuppy]

Well, it's a population pressure thing. If there is no limit to your expansion, you'll expand to your limit.

Not that I don't think Fermi is full of it. All the "There can be no intelligent life if they haven't already a) been found by us or b) taken over the galaxy, theories are pretty foolish. There could be intelligent life inside 10 light years from us, and we wouldn't know it now; hell, we could be living on a planet seeded with life by an advanced society and we wouldn't know it...Maybe the dinosaurs were killed off by an automated terraformer. =P

Basic probability also suggests that it is extremely unlikely that we are an isolated occurrence...You'd have to buy into Creationism to think that such as we could never have happened anywhere else.

Re:More likely

[Cerberus7]

Extremely unlikely also means it's possible. We might very well be the first intelligent life to emerge in this galaxy. We might be the first in the universe. Extremely unlikely doesn't mean impossible. If we are, God help the younger species; the humans are coming.

Re:More likely

[broller]

They've had 10 billion years to visit us.

Sure, if you are only looking for life. If you are looking for intelligent life, the chances are much smaller.

If they were here in the first 99% of those 10 billion years, they would have missed us. We may be marked as a "potential revisit" but the likelihood of any existing lifeforms knowing that we are here is very small. The likelihood of us knowing that THEY are around is even smaller.

If the number of potentially viable planets is of any meaningful size, we could be one of a billion planets out there that they plan to eventually come back to.

Re:More likely

[squiggleslash]

They've actually had about 50,000 years to visit us, less if you only want to count "recorded history". Indeed, any visits done 50,000 years ago would have been to a group of "intelligent" primates who, in all probability, would have had great difficulty in having the contextual skills needed to show intelligence to the visitors.

So, Fermi's paradox is that something impossible is expected of aliens civilizations, that we have no way to tell has happened. And this is taken seriously, why?

Re:More likely

[SatanicPuppy]

Sure, but they could also have colonized the whole galaxy, then devolved and died off in the same period. Or they could just have skipped us because they like metal-rich planets in the liquid water zone with an atmosphere that's primarily methane, or any number of possible scenarios.

The point is, unless they set up an "Alien Burger" on the moon with a sign forty miles on a side, we'd never know they were around. Omni-directional radio of terrestrial origin has very little chance of ever being received in another solar system.

There is also the whole "What are the odds of intelligent live evolving at all?" question. It may be that, despite the age of the universe, the conditions for intelligent life took a long time to come together. Or that the process of evolution tends to take a while to produce a space faring civilization.

There are way too many variables to just automatically say, "If it were going to happen, it would already have happened."

Re:The paradox with the paradox

[mcvos]

In other words, it has taken primates some-odd half a million years to evolve into humans capable of inventing devices that can decipher energy waves from space. It has taken the Earth some 200 million years (from early life to humans) to evolve life on this scale. Assuming other planets have roughly the same time scale, we can only assume those planets inside a 200 (give or take a 100) million lightyear radius contains no life.

You're forgetting the age of the earth and the age of the universe. The universe was already over 10 billion years old before earth came into existence. Even if every other earth-like planet really needs at least 4.5 billion years too evolve an advanced civilisation, I still don't see why such a planet couldn't have formed one or two billion years before earth has.

The odds are really simple: if the evolution of intelligent civilisations is likely, then some of those must have a multi-million year headstart on us. Why aren't they here? The possibilities are limited:

• Our evolution is sufficiently unlikely that we are one of the first (someone has to be, after all),
• It's completely impossible to colonise other solar systems,
• Advanced civilisations that are aggressive enough to colonise space are too aggressive to not wipe themselves out before they get there,
• Somebody is protecting us/has quarantined us/is keeping us isolated for whatever reason.

Could be there's a few other options, but basically they all boil down to: we're incredibly lucky, or we're doomed.

Re:More likely

[ArcherB]

Hit a nerve, I see.

Yes. I take it personally when my belief system is used as a synonym for stupid, ignorant or "intellectually backwards". Just as, say a Muslim would takes it personally when Islam is equated to terrorism, or sci-fi fan is equated with "Trekker" (or Trekki, if forget which). I can usually take someone hitting a nerve in stride, but that nerve has been rubbed raw.

The reason I say you'd have to buy into Creationism, is because in Creationism, God created man, and no other species. That would be the only explanation for how an intelligent species could exist without there being the possibility for other intelligent species.

Well, there is nothing that says we are not the first intelligent species in the universe. I agree that it is HIGHLY unlikely, but someone has to be the first. Also don't assume that everyone who believes that God created man believes that God stopped there.

It's not that Creationists lack common sense. It's that they are so rabid about anything that might possibly in some world conceivably be a challenge to their beliefs, that they refuse to accept anything outside their little book. If they were open-minded at all, they wouldn't be pure Creationists. Just that simple.

There are "jihadis" that are even more rabid in their beliefs, but to say that all Muslims are equally closed minded is just as offensive as your argument. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you mean any disrespect, but stereotyping religions is no different using stereotypes as a basis for racism.

Re:More likely

[SirWhoopass]

I don't know if government is anti-procreation as much as people expectations of what a minimum lifestyle is. I suppose that counts as society.

I have a two-bedroom, one-bathroom post-war rambler, about 900 square foot foundation. The family that built this house raised six children in it in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, I am constantly asked when I will buy a bigger house because I have one child.

Could a "typical" family have six to ten children today? Certainly. Would they all have DVD players, attend summer soccer camp, college funds, and the latest fashions? No.

Extension of Murfy's Law:

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is why we do not see alien colonizers: Any civilization sufficiently advanced to discover Space Travel evolves its own GW Bush.

Re:There is nothing as unusual...

[Fastolfe]

Unless it is their goal not to disturb? A civilization sufficiently advanced that they're going around inspecting and cataloging life around the universe is almost certainly sufficiently advanced to hide their presence from the subjects they're studying.

Re:More likely

[Dogtanian]

The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable.

There are at least two major issues with extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Let's assume that they evolved independently of us. It is often said that- by the sheer number of star systems- that there are likely to be a very large number of potentially life-supporting planets elsewhere in the universe. Let's assume that this is correct, and further that life may have evolved on a proportion of them.

Thus, the reasonable conclusion is that there is life "out there". Fair enough. Now; consider the timescale of the evolution of intelligent life on Earth. Very simple bacterial/single-cell type stuff for a large portion of that time. Moderately-intelligent creatures (dinosaurs, birds, etc...) evolving at slow speed for a very long time. Then- on the cliched "24-hour-evolutionary-scale"- mankind, the only organism likely to get anywhere near space-travel- appears at "five-to-midnight".

Furthermore, although Homo Sapiens in their modern form have been around for 200,000 years, most of the progress made towards space travel hasn't been even; it's been very skewed towards the present day. Technological sophistication has been growing ever-faster, on a pretty-much-exponential scale; how much modern technology has been developed in the past 100 years (a lot)- how fast has computer technology developed in the past *30* years (an incredible amount- by many orders of magnitude(*).

It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going. Around 10 years ago, I figured out by myself (**) that the next 1000 (if not closer to 100) years are likely to see more significant and fundamental changes in the nature of the human race than those since the dawn of human-like-intelligence.

My point being this:- Yes, there may be many planets/systems out there capable of evolving and supporting life, and possibly many with life as we speak. However, if we assume that the evolution of life (and technology) follows broadly the same pattern elsewhere as it does on Earth, (very slow for a very long time, then an incredibly sudden surge in intelligence/development), then...

Unless intelligent evolution (and its inevitable offshoot, technology) has independently reached the same "explosive" stage on one of those other worlds at *exactly* at the same time it has on earth (i.e. around the present day), they'll either be way behind us (at best.. primitive man? monkeys? horses?) or so far ahead of us that it's unlikely we can even speculate on where they'll have reached.

Remember; our recent technological evolution has been very sudden relative to the timescale of mankind's evolution. In turn, mankind's evolution has been a sudden event relative to the history of life on the planet.

So, the chances of independently-evolved life elsewhere having reached a comparable stage to us is similar to the chances of two independently-set 24-hour clocks purely coincidentally reading the same time to within a small fraction of a second. If they're more than a few seconds behind, they're nowhere near achieving space travel.... if they're more than a few seconds ahead, they're likely gods, as far as we're likely to be able to comprehend them.

That's assuming they haven't made a fatal mistake as they progress on their exponential evolutionary/technological curve. As with mankind, by the time they've developed space travel, it's likely that they'll be developing sciences and technologies that have the ability (if not used carefully and responsibly), to wipe them out completely. If they're anything like us, their technological evolution will not be matched by social evolution, and there will be great danger that around the time of (shortly before or after) developing space travel, that they'll put a foot wrong and wipe themselves out.

Back to the parent comment; if the alien intelligence has survived, and is more

Re:More likely

[fyngyrz]

The Fermi Paradox is that if they were here any time in the last 500 million years or so, thay would have colonised the place

Presumes:

• Earth is the right distance from the sun
• Earth has the right atmosphere
• Earth has the right gravity
• Earth doesn't have something common, which is toxic to them
• Earth is somewhere they want to be (a spiral arm in the boonies)
• Earth wasn't colonized, and we are it
• Earth wasn't colonized, and dolphins (or something else, maybe cats or fleas) are the remains of it
• Earth wasn't colonized, and they died out due to lack of vigor
• Earth wasn't colonized, and they died out as a result of an asteroid, etc
• Earth wasn't colonized, and someone else came along and took exception to it, and wiped them out
• Aliens are interested in colonization (because we are - but that may not follow)

...and those are just off the top of my head. Just because you're qualified to push formulas around, doesn't mean you're an authority on aliens, for crying out loud. Some people - and clearly, Fermi was one - can't think their way out of a paper bag when they step outside their speciality.