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..."

Comments

Out there might be the wrong place to look

[xtal]

http://brighterbrains.org/arti...

Based on the exponential rate of technological development, I'm guessing the actual answer to where everyone might be is likely some variant of this hypothesis.

Regardless, Elon is right.. Mars. Stat.

Re:It's a Calculation problem

[m.alessandrini]

I don't know, it's true that there are billions of billions of stars and planets, but thinking of the billions of billions ways how random atoms and molecules can combine, to obtain something that vaguely resembles life, i.e. starting replicating and self-organizing and all the rest, I think it's not so absurd to think that it could have happened only a very few times in all the universe.

For once a religion worthwhile pursuing.

[Qbertino]

"Keeping alive the light of consciousness and spreading if throughout the universe so that it won't die" seems to me for once like a religious imperative worth pursuing. It actually would keep people away from tribal bullshit and have us all work together.

Let's update our cults to that one. I'm all in for it. ... There is even the imperative to have and raise children in it - pretty much spot on a perfect upgrade to the abrahamic revelation cults if you ask me.

Re:Don't give up

[Immerman]

In fairness, if we have the technology to effectively colonize Mars, then deflecting an "planet-killer" asteroid should be fairly trivial. And if we're able to travel between stars at even a few percentage of light speed, then it's probably easy enough to just keep moving the Earth further from the sun to maintain a pleasant environment - some size large ion drives on the moon, firing for several million years, should tow the Earth along just fine.

Of course, once you've done that it's not such a stretch to put some size-large lights on the moon as well, to illuminate the Earth in lieu of the sun, and head into interstellar space. With the aid of some mildly efficient mass-energy conversion the moon should provide plenty of power for the journey. The real question is, do all the terraformed planets head to the same star, or do we scatter in all directions?