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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."
For what I consider a much better treatment of this topic, see: The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?
This stuff is a big deal, and the Great Filter paper actually manages to draw some useful concrete conclusions from the question, or at least useful concrete questions.
Also related, albeit a little more tangentially, is "Are You Living In A Computer Simulation?". "We're in a simulation and there are no extraterrestrials in the simulation" must be considered one of the leading possible answers. (I'm not advocating it either way, I don't have an answer. Nor do I consider this post anywhere near a complete list, just some relevant pointers.)
"The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable."
An insertion here about relativity: if the ship were traveling fast enough, you mightn't need several generations just for 4-5 years. Because of relativistic time dilation, the astronauts in the spaceship would feel considerably less time elapse, while the journey would seem to take decades to everyone on earth. The question then becomes whether people would be willing to spend trillions of dollars on something only their children and grandchildren would see.
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?
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.
You are correct... some interesting comments here http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S R/rocket.html
From the article, for 1g acceleration:
Distance Location On Ship Time.
4.3 ly nearest star 3.6 years
27 ly Vega 6.6 years
30,000 ly Center of our galaxy 20 years
2,000,000 ly Andromeda galaxy 28 years
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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".
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:
Could be there's a few other options, but basically they all boil down to: we're incredibly lucky, or we're doomed.
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"
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
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My name is Blorgflog Fleeberblox from the Indurian colony of Aran. After current civil war between Xzixi faction and Xlfrixi government, my father, General Zobb escaped with a 10,000 trillion credit box...
See? This is the kind of craziness I'm talking about. You have entered into an infinite regress. Where does this thing outside space and time come from? Either it arises from something else, or it is eternally present, or it is self created. If it arises from something else, nothing is answered, we just have added another layer to the question. If it is eternal or self created, why could the universe itself, which must be less complicated than any proposed creator, not also be eternal or self creating?
This is so ridiculous and illogical: you posit that something as complex as the universe needs a creator, you posit a creator that must be more complex than its creation, and then you say that creator itself is not created by somethign else. Please try to see how insane this sounds to those of us who have not been infected by your mental virus.
There is no responsibility that comes from being in a created universe. Just because somethin gcreated you does not put that thing in a superior position over you. It is in no position to dictate responsibility to you, to say that it is is another of those completely illogical things religion would have you believe.
There is no lack of responsibility that comes from being without a creator. All real responsibility is a form of enlightened self interest. I don't need a creator to tell me to be responsible. If being responsible makes sense, I am perfectly capable of figuring that out on my own. Turns out it does make sense, creator or no.
Whether or not there is a creator is a question that is completely seperate from the question of whether religion is a form of insanity. If there is a creator, it sure has done a piss-poor job of communicating its intentions in unambiguous ways to it's creations. Until said creator makes itself and its intentions known to me in a way that can't be faked by mentally damaged humans, the question of whether or not there is a creator is utterly meaningless.
The question of the impact of religious insanity on human well being, however, is an important one that can be answered.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton