The Fermi Paradox

[Fluttershutter 2,702]

What do you think is the answer to the Fermi Paradox?

The Fermi Paradox is a contradiction between the seemingly high probability of advanced extraterrestrial life existing, given the vastness of the universe and the apparent ease with which life arose on Earth, and the lack of any conclusive evidence of such life. Essentially, it asks: if the conditions for life are common, why haven't we detected them yet? 

 

 

 

The Dark Forest Theory is popular right now because of the awesome books.

My thinking, because I'm a cynic, is a sort of absolute filter. I think intelligence is just a bad survival strategy that collapses under the weight of all it's own contradictions and intelligent species always go extinct before they can make any real impact in space.

[Otaku-sempai 607]

I think, perhaps, that higher civilizations are separated too far both in space and time to easily encounter each other. We might spot signs of a Dyson Sphere around a star tomorrow only to find that the civilization has been extinct for thousands of years. Even if their not, meaningful communication might be impossible, what with signals needing to take centuries or more to reach each other. 

Edited June 11 by Otaku-sempai

[Iforgotmybrain 6,304]

1 hour ago, Otaku-sempai said:

I think, perhaps, that higher civilizations are separated too far both in space and time to easily;y encounter each other. We might spot signs of a Dyson Sphere around a star tomorrow only to find that the civilization has been extinct for thousands of years. Even if their not, meaningful communication might be impossible, what with signals needing to take centuries or more to reach each other. 

I agree with this. It could also be that we’re one of the first species to reach space at all. The universe is still fairly young I think? Lots of time for advanced civilizations to develop still.

Now, If there is a filter of some sort, I personally think it’s most likely the development of nuclear weapons. Humanity itself came very very close to annihilating itself multiple times throughout the Cold War, often due to mistakes such as false warnings and miscommunication. And even now we have more than enough nuclear weapons to end the majority of life on Earth. Not as likely to happen as during the Cold War, but still, as long as two countries have nukes that risk of total annihilation is always going to be there.

[Night Sky 674]

The universe may well be teeming with life, but unless we're wrong about the rate of cosmic inflation (and we may be), then any thought of us ever meeting up with anypony beyond our local supercluster is out of the question, physically. Yes, the rate of expansion may slow or even reverse, yes, in theory somepony out there may have or will invent the hyperdrive...

That is, I could be wrong. 

Our local supercluster is a much smaller sandbox in which to find advanced civilizations. My thought is that they are more common Billions of light years away. Some of those galaxies were and are pretty radioactive, but they've been around much longer, so life has had more time at least. Life needs time, and travel takes time. 

I am quite convinced that the government is hiding something. 

That's not a political statement, it is a question of integrity and transparency, to use some nice fresh meme words.

AJ calls it honesty.

I don't know what they're hiding. 

But I don't believe it is nothing either.

They're being very naughty boys and they need to tell us what they've found.

IMAO, the Fermi Paradox probably has been all but solved already, they're just not telling us. 

Edited June 12 by Night Sky

[Pentium100 2,282]

The universe is very big. Seriously. 

So, IMO there are multiple reasons why we have not seen any indications of other intelligent life, though both come down to "the universe is big".

1. It may really be impossible to go faster than light. That means it would take hundreds or thousands of years for some aliens to travel to Earth. It may not be possible to do that or even if they can figure out the technology, it may be too expensive for them and not worth it. If we had such technology, how many volunteers would there be to travel 1000 years to some planet that MAY have life. How many would trust the spaceship to last 1000 years with only what spare parts you could take? Also, 1000 light years is "very close". Our galaxy is 100000 lightyars across and the closes other galaxy is 2.5 million lightyears. Anyone up for a three million year trip (in one direction)? Nobody? How about a 50000 year trip? And the three million is the closest galaxy. 

2. Even i it is possible to travel faster than light, but not instantly (let's say a 1000 light year distance takes 10 years), it still would be impractical, but less so. However, who's to say that someone would notice Earth? Our radio signals reach, at best, 110 light years and in that distance they are so weak that it is likely impossible to receive them. So, from distance, our planet looks like it may have life on it, but no real evidence for it. Anyne up for a long trip to see if there's anything there? 

3. The radio signal problem works in reverse too. We may not be able to receive any radio signals from some far away planet because they either have not reached us yet or because they are so weak, it is impossible to receive them. That's assuming we would be able to recognize them and decode them even if they were strong enough. 

 

Imagine being on a small island in the middle of the ocean 500 years ago. You may not even know that there are other people somewhere. After all, maybe no ship came close to your island and all you see is water in all directions. Maybe the whole planet is water and your island is the only land there is? Maybe there's life somewhere on the continent, but you have no way of going there and they are not bothering with you and your island?

[Dawnshine Wonder 2,567]

The other problem is when we look out into the distant reaches of the universe, we see it as it was billions of years ago, much of what used to be there, is now gone, and that could include life on other planets. Eventually stars will run out of fuel, and that would take out most life with it, save for creatures that may live on ice planets that heat the water underneath with geothermal energy. But bodily functions cease when frozen, and as far as we know, all complex life needs water.

[Street Light 295]

idk ^~^

id like to think intelligent life exists. maybe it's like stellaris and there's an advanced civilization monitoring us but we happen to be within their galactic borders and it's commonly practiced to steer clear. Maybe it's an empire where interfacing with other species' isn't a thing and it's inhabitant and predominant species is the kind that obeys all designations when given by a higher power as it was what led them to the stars to begin with. 

or, maybe the answer is in frequencies. Wave-particle duality posits that being able to pass through an energy barrier is possible with the proper wave frequency of the particle. there are lots of theoretical limitations for it.

Maybe the biblical firmament is real, and beyond is the realm of other gods of other civilizations or universes, each keeping us out. i mean, i am a Christian, but I do like to be curious and test my faith with theory and the like :3 

Maybe we lack the technology to intercept their transmissions. Perhaps they don't use technology that is discernible to us, and instead appear as cosmic phenomenon or enigmatic occurrences

[Dawnshine Wonder 2,567]

13 minutes ago, Street Light said:

idk ^~^

id like to think intelligent life exists. maybe it's like stellaris and there's an advanced civilization monitoring us but we happen to be within their galactic borders and it's commonly practiced to steer clear. Maybe it's an empire where interfacing with other species' isn't a thing and it's inhabitant and predominant species is the kind that obeys all designations when given by a higher power as it was what led them to the stars to begin with. 

or, maybe the answer is in frequencies. Wave-particle duality posits that being able to pass through an energy barrier is possible with the proper wave frequency of the particle. there are lots of theoretical limitations for it.

Maybe the biblical firmament is real, and beyond is the realm of other gods of other civilizations or universes, each keeping us out. i mean, i am a Christian, but I do like to be curious and test my faith with theory and the like :3 

Maybe we lack the technology to intercept their transmissions. Perhaps they don't use technology that is discernible to us, and instead appear as cosmic phenomenon or enigmatic occurrences

The universe may actually be older than predicted as well, this is because of the thing called the particle horizon, no one can see anything beyond it, but the universe has been expanding for a very long time, there is no viable way for scientists to find out just how many galaxies are beyond that particle horizon because any light that is further away from that point cannot reach us, ever. All they can rely on is an educated guess based on their own math. But as been said, the universe is very big, it may even be infinite.

[Otaku-sempai 607]

5 hours ago, Street Light said:

idk ^~^

id like to think intelligent life exists. maybe it's like stellaris and there's an advanced civilization monitoring us but we happen to be within their galactic borders and it's commonly practiced to steer clear. Maybe it's an empire where interfacing with other species' isn't a thing and it's inhabitant and predominant species is the kind that obeys all designations when given by a higher power as it was what led them to the stars to begin with. 

or, maybe the answer is in frequencies. Wave-particle duality posits that being able to pass through an energy barrier is possible with the proper wave frequency of the particle. there are lots of theoretical limitations for it.

Maybe the biblical firmament is real, and beyond is the realm of other gods of other civilizations or universes, each keeping us out. i mean, i am a Christian, but I do like to be curious and test my faith with theory and the like :3 

Maybe we lack the technology to intercept their transmissions. Perhaps they don't use technology that is discernible to us, and instead appear as cosmic phenomenon or enigmatic occurrences

If there was a firmament arching over the sky then it would surely be detectable. Let's not enter the province of flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists. However, your last notion of advanced forms of communications is interesting. Some form of tachyon communication might make it possible to at least exchange data with distant galactic civilizations at faster-than-light speeds. 

[Street Light 295]

3 hours ago, Otaku-sempai said:

If there was a firmament arching over the sky then it would surely be detectable. Let's not enter the province of flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists. However, your last notion of advanced forms of communications is interesting. Some form of tachyon communication might make it possible to at least exchange data with distant galactic civilizations at faster-than-light speeds. 

i don't find faith in biblical allegory to be conspiracy uwu 

[Otaku-sempai 607]

9 hours ago, Street Light said:

i don't find faith in biblical allegory to be conspiracy uwu 

Biblical allegory starts entering conspiracy territory when it stops being presented as allegory. 

Edited Sunday at 12:55 PM by Otaku-sempai

[Street Light 295]

34 minutes ago, Otaku-sempai said:

Biblical allegory starts entering conspiracy territory when it stops being presented as allegory. 

we'll have to agree to disagree 

if you wanna continue in DMs that's fine but this isn’t the place for a faith-based discussion ^~^

12 hours ago, Otaku-sempai said:

 Some form of tachyon communication might make it possible to at least exchange data with distant galactic civilizations at faster-than-light speeds. 

Back onto topic, though, i both mean this as well as any form of theoretical quantum entanglement to transmit information nigh-instantaneously. Or even psionics that may or may not be biologically feasible for another species :3

the problem that I was referencing is that our scope is limited to what we know, what we theorize, and even what we understand. we only have the informational context that exists for us far out here in our private section of the spiral arm uwu

Edited Sunday at 01:29 PM by Street Light

[DubWolf 17,724]

Because space is huge  .

Imagine Earth being your house, and then having a neighbor’s house being 3 or 4 average size countries away, or a LOT farther still, and that’s the only neighbor you might have. Oh, and you haven’t invented cars yet. Good luck ever finding or getting to them.

I guess we’d rely on receiving deliberately sent signals from… whoever.

[Dawnshine Wonder 2,567]

2 hours ago, DubWolf said:

Because space is huge  .

Imagine Earth being your house, and then having a neighbor’s house being 3 or 4 average size countries away, or a LOT farther still, and that’s the only neighbor you might have. Oh, and you haven’t invented cars yet. Good luck ever finding or getting to them.

I guess we’d rely on receiving deliberately sent signals from… whoever.

In the case of radio signals from civilizations sent from distant parts of the universe, they may not have had enough time to reach us, given even the observable universe is billions of light years wide. By the time they would reach us, it would probably be too late and all we would be really doing is observing past events, civilizations from billions of years ago could already be extintct by now, it is possible animal and plant life could exist on other planets but not all animal life would have a civilization like humans do. Highly intelligent life may be rare in the universe for all we know, of all the species that exist on Earth, only one of them became smart enough to build automobiles, computers and advanced infrastructure like sewers, power grids and what not.

And if no detectable life on other planets exist within our galactic neighbourhood, it would be much harder finding it anywhere else, between galaxies is an empty cold void with mostly atoms from gas, subatomic particles and background radiation, perhaps a few orphaned planets sent drifting through space that got kicked out their solar systems for one reason or another. The majority of the universe is like that, and galaxies and filaments of gas that formed them take up a small fraction of what we call space, the rest is a cold, dark and lifeless vacuum.

[Dreambiscuit 10,877]

This is a tasty subject.

Okay, in my opinion the universe is probably bursting with life and much of it intelligent. But intelligent life doesn’t mean it has the same technology as we do (radio signals), a desire to contact others, or the means to blanket the limitless heavens in order to discover other civilizations. Even if all these things are in play, there are so many forms of energy, technology and communication that we could have aliens right next door with their equipment cranked up to 10, and we’d still be oblivious to the fact.

Consider some of these possibilities; many on earth think it was a bad idea sending Voyager out into the cosmos with a big fat invitation for all life forms, good or bad, to drop in anytime. Species more intelligent than humans might want to avoid attracting potentially threatening attention to themselves, and elect to conceal their existence, even if they’re aware of ours.

Many believe aliens are already here and are being hidden by human governments, with lots of interesting evidence to suggest it.

And then, there may be alien civilizations who are just trying to blanket the stars with radio signals, just like us, and simply haven’t made the connection of being in the exact place at the exact moment someone else is listening and is capable of response. In a universe so vast, overlapping with another species is a long shot at best, even with all the technology needed to do so. Consider the famous ‘Wow’ signal from back in 1977, which came from space and lasted 72 seconds; no one knows what it was but it may well have been a random sweep by an alien civilization, with earth as just another dot among trillions of others. Unless a signal remains in one place and repeats, with someone diligently listening on the other end, the odds of success aren’t great. Any race sending signals across the universe won’t have time to linger on any one planetary system if they’re ever going to cover the endless possibilities. So by that reckoning it’s no wonder we don’t have aliens coming out of the woodwork.

In my opinion, the universe works in intangible ways that attract certain things together, like synchronicity, and increase the possibilities of life finding other life. Personally I believe alien life is out there, is aware of this planet, and that there’s a strong probability of us being aware of them.