New Paper Offers Additional Reasoning for Fermi's Paradox

KentuckyFC writes "If the universe is teeming with advanced civilizations capable of communicating over interstellar distances, then surely we ought to have seen them by now. That's the gist of a paradoxical line of reasoning put forward by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. The so-called Fermi Paradox has haunted SETI researchers ever since. Not least because if the number of intelligent civilizations capable of communication in our galaxy is greater than 1, then we should eventually hear from them. Now one astrophysicist says this thinking fails to take into account the limit to how far a signal from ET can travel before it becomes too faint to hear. Factor that in and everything changes. Assuming the average communicating civilization has a lifetime of 1,000 years, ten times longer than Earth has been broadcasting, and has a signal horizon of 1,000 light-years, you need a minimum of over 300 communicating civilizations in the Milky Way to ensure that you'll see one of them. Any less than that and the chances are that they'll live out their days entirely ignorant of each other's existence. Paradox solved, right?"

Comments

And I thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was because as they reach our level of civilisation, they built giant particle accelerators for research and turned their planets into black holes.

Re:The First Ones

[sakdoctor]

FIRST POST!

only humans think in this way

[gzipped_tar]

We humans are still a bunch of young, angsty teenagers. We desperately want to make the "first contact", crying and yelling and suffering from the depressive thought of loneliness.

Other galactic civilizations simply matured and stopped worrying about such pointless things. They make themselves busy with real business.

Grow up, humans.

Re:Solved?

[Propaganda13]

Exactly. Maybe all those "crazy" people are actually talking to aliens.

Re:Solved?

[gnick]

No - Those people really are crazy.

The aliens talk only to me and I have the good sense not to answer them (at least not out loud). I just carefully carry out their instructions and try to get mixed up with those crazies.

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, found his ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to his newsletter.

Re:What paper?

[b4dc0d3r]

I don't know about you, but I prefer a link to a blog over the actual paper. Mostly because I don't speak Astrophysicsese.

I went ahead and clicked on the blog for you, and the link. Here's the paper (You can get a PDF if you want), it was submitted to the International Journal of Astrobiology.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3863

I understand your reluctance, after all you're the one who posted:

The last damn thing I want is to click a link out of curiosity and within five minutes be standing there having to listen to the IT guy say "here's your sign" or end up in the HR office explaining my seeming poor hand-eye coordination because I accidentally clicked on a link in an email from the fscking HR department. Don't these people have enough work to do?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1112493&cid=26694469

Don't worry, you can continue to click on links out of curiosity. I put one above, go ahead, click it. You know you want to. everyone else is clicking it. Now with more fiber, and it cures Alzheimer's too.

Re:Solved?

[idontgno]

Hence, gamma-ray bursts. The advanced-technology equivalent of flaming laptop batteries.

Re:Hello,

[flamingnight]

Hello (hello, hello)
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone home?

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[geobeck]

True. But it appears the Almighty actually spent his day of rest at the mall looking for a good costume to scare the bejeesus out of Adam and Eve.

Unfortunately, by the time he got there, all they had left was a dorky snake costume.