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Fermi Paradox Predicting Humankind's Future?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 19, 2007 12:31 PM
from the magic-eight-ball dept.
from the magic-eight-ball dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Fermi paradox says that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, at least one of them should have colonized the entire galaxy by now. But since there is no evidence of this, humankind must be the only intelligent life in the galaxy. The Space Review has an article on how the Fermi paradox can be applied to human civilization. It says that, like the extraterrestrials, humans have three choices: colonize the galaxy, remain on Earth, or become extinct."
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More likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure- you *might* be able to theoretically build a ship that could go further but all politics is local. Look at our politics- could we gather the will to build a 10 trillion dollar multi-generation star ship?
I think civ's do okay, never get off the planet the started on, and eventually die out from lack of resources, some kind of self destruction, or being wiped out by an external event.
Re:More likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's figure out how first.
Besides why would an alien race need the whole galaxy? A small section would do. Even so they could have died out millions of years ago. Or we could be the first advanced race and as we reach out amoung the stars we shall find other less advanced races.
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I don't think Fermi is full of it. All the "There can be no intelligent life if they haven't already a) been found by us or b) taken over the galaxy, theories are pretty foolish. There could be intelligent life inside 10 light years from us, and we wouldn't know it now; hell, we could be living on a planet seeded with life by an advanced society and we wouldn't know it...Maybe the dinosaurs were killed off by an automated terraformer. =P
Basic probability also suggests that it is extremely unlikely that we are an isolated occurrence...You'd have to buy into Creationism to think that such as we could never have happened anywhere else.
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, if you are only looking for life. If you are looking for intelligent life, the chances are much smaller.
If they were here in the first 99% of those 10 billion years, they would have missed us. We may be marked as a "potential revisit" but the likelihood of any existing lifeforms knowing that we are here is very small. The likelihood of us knowing that THEY are around is even smaller.
If the number of potentially viable planets is of any meaningful size, we could be one of a billion planets out there that they plan to eventually come back to.
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Insightful)
They've actually had about 50,000 years to visit us, less if you only want to count "recorded history". Indeed, any visits done 50,000 years ago would have been to a group of "intelligent" primates who, in all probability, would have had great difficulty in having the contextual skills needed to show intelligence to the visitors.
So, Fermi's paradox is that something impossible is expected of aliens civilizations, that we have no way to tell has happened. And this is taken seriously, why?
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, unless they set up an "Alien Burger" on the moon with a sign forty miles on a side, we'd never know they were around. Omni-directional radio of terrestrial origin has very little chance of ever being received in another solar system.
There is also the whole "What are the odds of intelligent live evolving at all?" question. It may be that, despite the age of the universe, the conditions for intelligent life took a long time to come together. Or that the process of evolution tends to take a while to produce a space faring civilization.
There are way too many variables to just automatically say, "If it were going to happen, it would already have happened."
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. I take it personally when my belief system is used as a synonym for stupid, ignorant or "intellectually backwards". Just as, say a Muslim would takes it personally when Islam is equated to terrorism, or sci-fi fan is equated with "Trekker" (or Trekki, if forget which). I can usually take someone hitting a nerve in stride, but that nerve has been rubbed raw.
The reason I say you'd have to buy into Creationism, is because in Creationism, God created man, and no other species. That would be the only explanation for how an intelligent species could exist without there being the possibility for other intelligent species.
Well, there is nothing that says we are not the first intelligent species in the universe. I agree that it is HIGHLY unlikely, but someone has to be the first. Also don't assume that everyone who believes that God created man believes that God stopped there.
It's not that Creationists lack common sense. It's that they are so rabid about anything that might possibly in some world conceivably be a challenge to their beliefs, that they refuse to accept anything outside their little book. If they were open-minded at all, they wouldn't be pure Creationists. Just that simple.
There are "jihadis" that are even more rabid in their beliefs, but to say that all Muslims are equally closed minded is just as offensive as your argument. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you mean any disrespect, but stereotyping religions is no different using stereotypes as a basis for racism.
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Interesting)
The Fermi Paradox assumes the light-speed limit.
There are an awful lot of hidden assumptions in your bald statement that the speed of light automatically limits travel to a range of 4 or 5 ly. Why not 3, or 6, or 10? It doesn't take much to allow for hops from one star to the next, and if you've got the tech to build starships, you've got the tech to colonize a star system that doesn't have Earthlike planets. (Ie space colonies, not terraforming - although the latter may also be possible.)
I think civ's do okay, never get off the planet the started on, and eventually die out from lack of resources,
Quite likely a civilization that never gets off its home planet will eventually run out of resources. But there are resources aplenty for those that take that first step. That's why people talk about He3 mining, solar powersats, mining asteroids, etc. Remember O'Neill's question: "Is the surface of a planet the right place for an expanding industrial civilization?" The answer is "no".
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Funny)
If it does, I can't see how it'd ever be right, given the fact the universe is still expanding. No civilization can ever populate the entire universe with slower than light travel.
Could be that more than 4-5 light years makes travel a little... hairy. I mean, people start to ...wig-out at those kinds of distances. There's a lot of distance to cover, with a lot of dangerous particles flying in the same space, so it's safe to say the further you go the more... close shaves you'll have!
Har har har I kill myself.
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Informative)
An insertion here about relativity: if the ship were traveling fast enough, you mightn't need several generations just for 4-5 years. Because of relativistic time dilation, the astronauts in the spaceship would feel considerably less time elapse, while the journey would seem to take decades to everyone on earth. The question then becomes whether people would be willing to spend trillions of dollars on something only their children and grandchildren would see.
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Informative)
4.3 ly nearest star 3.6 years
27 ly Vega 6.6 years
30,000 ly Center of our galaxy 20 years
2,000,000 ly Andromeda galaxy 28 years
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Re:More likely (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, amongst the nearest alien species this is called the "Brakloo'tj Paradox".
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Only two choices. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not so much a matter of "if" but of "when". Ask the dinosaurs.
The paradox with the paradox (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, it has taken primates some-odd half a million years to evolve into humans capable of inventing devices that can decipher energy waves from space. It has taken the Earth some 200 million years (from early life to humans) to evolve life on this scale. Assuming other planets have roughly the same time scale, we can only assume those planets inside a 200 (give or take a 100) million lightyear radius contains no life.
The paradox with the paradox is as follows: Earth contains intelligent life. Earth has not colonized the galaxy. Earth's evidence in space only reaches back into the 1930s when the very first signals were sent into space.
Re:The paradox with the paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
You're forgetting the age of the earth and the age of the universe. The universe was already over 10 billion years old before earth came into existence. Even if every other earth-like planet really needs at least 4.5 billion years too evolve an advanced civilisation, I still don't see why such a planet couldn't have formed one or two billion years before earth has.
The odds are really simple: if the evolution of intelligent civilisations is likely, then some of those must have a multi-million year headstart on us. Why aren't they here? The possibilities are limited:
Could be there's a few other options, but basically they all boil down to: we're incredibly lucky, or we're doomed.
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"The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?" (Score:5, Interesting)
This stuff is a big deal, and the Great Filter paper actually manages to draw some useful concrete conclusions from the question, or at least useful concrete questions.
Also related, albeit a little more tangentially, is "Are You Living In A Computer Simulation? [simulation-argument.com]". "We're in a simulation and there are no extraterrestrials in the simulation" must be considered one of the leading possible answers. (I'm not advocating it either way, I don't have an answer. Nor do I consider this post anywhere near a complete list, just some relevant pointers.)
It's our Manifest Destiny! (Score:5, Funny)
We should terraform any planets that are not already Earthlike, use the energy of however many stars it takes to achieve our goals, and find some black hole into which to pitch any planets that become inconveniently polluted.
Any semi-intelligent life we encounter along the way will obviously be inferior, since it has not colonized the universe first. If it gets in our way (or even if it doesn't) we should trample it under our jackboots, but only if necessary. Whenever possible we should altruistically force them to accept the inestimable benefits of the English language, democracy, and McDonald's hamburgers.
Re:Remain for how long? (Score:5, Interesting)
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NOT being honest! (Score:5, Interesting)
We weren't too small minded to risk lives hiking over mountain ranges or floating in very-likely-to-sink boats across open ocean to other continents, remember? Primitive Asians floating across the Pacific to populate South America or hoofing it in across the northern straights were taking on something at least as dicey as we currently see activities in space. Villages wiped each other out, disease killed off whole tribes - all of the stuff that people say would keep us from colonizing elsewhere. Sure, some of those efforts would fail - just as they have for tens of thousands of years. But some will succeed, too.
we use our resources to make trivial things that amuse us for a short period of time (ipod, iphone, etc)
That's because we evolved from, and still are short-lived primates. Our brains were wired to deal with much more short-term issues. Planning through the coming weather change is about as far as we ever needed to go, mentally. Only some people have the wiring to do big picture stuff... and guess what: they tend to get jobs doing big picture stuff. As for trivial things like iPods: you'd rather have a society with somewhat better antibiotics, but completely absent all of the things that make life a pleasure? The iPod is just a newer take on cave painting and tribal dancing. The fact that we evolved into creatures that put handprints on walls and invent group songs to sing doesn't mean we can't also do things like invent solar cells, fly transplant organs through the air to another city where they're needed, or manage to live past 25. Being productive, inventive, and joyous are not mutually exclusive - they're interdependent.
rather than doing useful things (cure diseases, etc).
I'm sorry to hear that you died of Polio. Or was it Smallpox? Or maybe spoiled food because we haven't invented refridgeration yet. Anyway, sorry you died.
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Re:NASA Called... (Score:5, Funny)
Does that imply that there exists a person on Slashdot with a sufficiently low UID to give orders to NASA?
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Re:Fermi paradox (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the Fermi Paradox takes all that into consideration. The time to colonize the galaxy, once a species has become space faring is minuscule in comparison to evolution. The paradox is based on the idea that the space faring civilization will colonize the galaxy before other species have a chance to evolve and the probability of two space faring civilizations existing at the same time is incredibly low.
If another civilization were to have started colonizing the galaxy, it's unlikely it would have been in the time periods you point out, 10,000, 20,000 years ago. It's more likely they would have begun tens to hundreds of millions of years ago, and yes, that is enough time to colonize the entire galaxy.
The Earth is believed to be about 4.6 billion years old. Life emerged in the first few hundred million years, probably around 4 billion years ago. Multicellular life sprung up around 1 billion years ago. Mammals have been around for about 200 million years. Homosapiens started out, probably around 200 million years ago. Now, let's say that instead of taking 3 billion years to go from single cell to multi-cell, it only took 2.5 billion years. That's a 500 million year head start. And there's no reason to think that's impossible. It's believed that the evolution of multi-cell was likely a fluke and not necessarily a forgone conclusion, largely because it took so long to show up. So that "fluke" could have probably happened any time after single-celled life began (well, any time after the first few hundred million years of it, at least).
Also, intelligence isn't necessarily a forgone conclusion of evolution. Dinosaurs had a lot more time to evolve than we have and they never developed our kind of intelligence. So let's say an animal in the dinosaur period had developed intelligence. That was over 65 million years ago. Plenty of time to colonize the galaxy.
The time to colonize the galaxy would, with only modest technological advancement from where we are now, would probably be a few million years. A very thin line on the timeline of evolution.
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