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Aliens and the Fermi Paradox
First time accepted submitter sayhem (1842674) writes Various explanations for why we don't see aliens have been proposed—perhaps interstellar travel is impossible or maybe civilizations are always self-destructive. But with every new discovery of a potentially habitable planet, the Fermi Paradox becomes increasingly mysterious. There could be hundreds of millions of potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way alone. This impression is only reinforced by the recent discovery of a "Mega-Earth," a rocky planet 17 times more massive than the Earth but with only a thin atmosphere. Previously, it was thought that worlds this large would hold onto an atmosphere so thick that their surfaces would experience uninhabitable temperatures and pressures. But if this isn't true, there is a whole new category of potentially habitable real estate in the cosmos.
Well, it is always possible we are simply the first. We do have an unusually old population I star and it still took billions of years for humans to come on the scene, so it is possible that the typical case simply takes longer and many suns are younger then our's.
At a certain point that starts looking like an attractive option. If NASA announced that they've managed to create a warp bubble, no matter how small, then I'd say the low hanging fruit is that aliens are in contact with certain elements of humanity and that this isn't widely known because a huge percentage of the world would freak the fuck out.
At Los Alamos, right around the time of the Fermi Paradox, everyone was agog at the green fireball phenomenon. One of the greatest collections of scientists ever assembled were pretty evenly split on the subject. Some though the the green balls of fire flying through the sky and changing direction as if being intelligently guided were some kind of secret earthly craft, while many other were certain they were extraterrestrial in origin. No one doubted they were real, however, and no one thought they were natural.
You don't really hear about this, but it's part of what started Fermi along the way towards his paradox.
As for the usual "OMG, nobody could keep that secret!" meme. Even if someone had 100% proof of alien encounters, the signal to noise ratio is assumed to be no signal and all noise. Someone could have been shouting the truth from the rooftops for forty years and nobody would care because they'd be lost in the din of people seeing little green men and anal probes.
Between "every civilization eventually kills itself" and a high level conspiracy to keep the world from shitting their pants at alien life, I'll pick the conspiracy. The fact that half of humanity isn't really ready to stop killing one another over five thousand year old superhero stories is kind of telling. Hell, half of humanity is confused by shoes.
First off, forget Hitler's Munich Olympics broadcast, that's way to new. The most interesting thing about Earth is roughly half a billion years old, and that's its "unnatural" atmosphere. Our atmosphere shouts, "Life!" like nothing else. The stuff in our air just doesn't cohabit from ordinary chemical processes - it has to be maintained. Not as old, but still older than Hitler's broadcast is the sustained presence of pollutants in the atmosphere. This might suggest, "intelligent, if immature/foolhardy life."
We can almost see this kind of stuff with Kepler, though to get to this level of detail we use several instruments in parallel - Kepler is the first-weeder. We're nowhere near having interstellar technology, so any race that does will likely have commensurate technologies in other areas as well. Most notably, if you're going to travel far, you want to know which direction to go, and as much about your destination as you can. They would have tools that make Kepler look like a child's toy. They would know how interesting Earth is. Where that ranks us with respect to other planets in another question, but I'll bet it's not as bleak a prospect as some say.
Personally I think the presence of us on Earth has to do with it's "sufficiently interesting history", including the collision that formed the moon, several asteroid/comet strikes like the dinosaur killer, etc. Not to mention plate tectonics, the magnetic field that keeps the solar wind from blowing our atmosphere away, etc. Like I said, I think Earth would be on the short-list.
By the same token, I also think they would observe. Our society and existence are fragile enough, one big kick could easily topple the whole mess. Imagine a preemptive strike by one power to prevent another power from getting "the advantages of alien technology," etc. We're also pretty darned "memetically susceptible," and even allowing an alien idea to reach us might upset the apple cart.
Or as an alternative, perhaps the Catholic Church was right, and Galileo (and Copernicus) were wrong. If not the physical center of the universe, if we're all there is, perhaps the Earth is the philosophical center of the universe.
So:
1 - We're all there is, perhaps to become the Progenitors, perhaps not.
2 - There is other life, hasn't gotten here yet, may not bother, may not be able.
3 - There is other life, observing us, careful to remain unknown - the Prime Directive.
4 - There is other life, getting ready to invade/destroy us.
5 - There is other life, in contact only with the Illuminati and Club of Rome.
Personally I'd prefer option 3. Option 2 is equally likely. Option 1 is rather sad. Options 4 and 5 are IMHO silly.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The fact that you gave us weeks worth of material instead of one irrefutable case means that it's all refutable.