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We May Be All Alone In the Known Universe, a New Oxford Study Suggests (fortune.com)
A new study by Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute determined that it's quite likely humans are alone in the observable universe. Fortune reports: The study looked at the Fermi paradox -- the apparent discrepancy between the seeming likelihood of alien life, given the billions of stars similar to our sun, and the scant evidence that such life actually exists. The paradox was named after physicist Enrico Fermi, who famously asked his colleagues at Los Alamos, N.M.. "Where Is Everyone?"
The study authors then examined various hypotheses and equations used to resolve the Fermi paradox. The results weren't pretty: "Our main result is to show that proper treatment of scientific uncertainties dissolves the Fermi paradox by showing that it is not at all unlikely ex ante for us to be alone in the Milky Way, or in the observable universe. Our second result is to show that, taking account of observational bounds on the prevalence of other civilizations, our updated probabilities suggest that there is a substantial probability that we are alone." SpaceX CEO Elon Musk cited the study's conclusions as an "added impetus" for humanity to become a spacefaring civilization capable of extending life beyond Earth. He tweeted: "This is why we must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a spacefaring civilization & extending life to other planets..."
The study authors then examined various hypotheses and equations used to resolve the Fermi paradox. The results weren't pretty: "Our main result is to show that proper treatment of scientific uncertainties dissolves the Fermi paradox by showing that it is not at all unlikely ex ante for us to be alone in the Milky Way, or in the observable universe. Our second result is to show that, taking account of observational bounds on the prevalence of other civilizations, our updated probabilities suggest that there is a substantial probability that we are alone." SpaceX CEO Elon Musk cited the study's conclusions as an "added impetus" for humanity to become a spacefaring civilization capable of extending life beyond Earth. He tweeted: "This is why we must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a spacefaring civilization & extending life to other planets..."
The Fermi Paradox is an utterly useless test. It takes variables you have no data on and then says to compute their probability.
Statistical probability, to be of any use in the real world at all, must by definition be based off already measurable data. That we have basically no measurement of any of this data means it is impossible to use the supposed equation of The Fermi Paradox to determine anything at all.
That this "equation" is mentioned with anything like passing respect should be considered a joke. That a paper from Oxford uses it is, one would hope, a joke from a couple drunk frat students hoping to get an easily published paper out to boos their careers.
As long as we don't have the right estimation of the probability that life exists on a planet, we cannot really assess if life exists or no. Now given the gigantic (known) number of galaxies containing a gigantic number of stars, even if that life probability is low, that would be quite a stretch to conclude life exists only on Earth.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
If an Asteroid decides to come this way then we can't do much about it.
A few colonists on Mars won't make any difference - they'll be dependent on Earth to resupply them with stuff even if they're making their own water and potatoes.
If we never accomplish interstellar travel, then in 5 billion years we die with our Sun's expansion
Correct, but even 1 thousand more years of living at the current rate of destruction isn't going to work out either so that's not much of a concern.
No sig today...
>The universe is still young by cosmological scales. Why do they assume that extraterrestrial life has to be zipping around the universe building Dyson spheres and shit? How do they know that there isn't life elsewhere that is less advanced than us, as advanced as us or more advanced but not starfaring?
Because our sun is pretty young by the standards of similarly metal-rich stars, and life appears to have started on this planet pretty much as soon as liquid water was able to exist on the surface, suggesting that the odds of life forming are very high. Unless we assume there was something very special about the inert rocks here (and it's generally considered poor science to assume we're in an unusual part of the universe), that in turn suggests that a similar process probably occurred around many other similarly metal-rich stars a billion of years before our planet existed. Even assuming life started on one of the other planets and migrated here via early-system impacts doesn't extend the timeline much (and if life migrated here from another star then it boosts the odds that the same thing happened to other stars as well)
And, given a billion-year head start, even one expansive space-faring species has had enough time to colonize the entire galaxy several times over by now. The fact that we see no evidence of that suggests that either we don't know how to look, or that in all that time not one species has arisen that is at all inclined to leave its home planet. Because once a species is firmly established in space, and thus has all the technology necessary for (slow) interstellar travel, and the proven inclination to expand beyond their world into artificial environments, it seems almost inevitable that some group will eventually head for another star - either for the uncontested riches waiting there, or to get away from a stellar civilization they find unpleasant, or even just out of curiosity.
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