New Paper Offers Additional Reasoning for Fermi's Paradox

KentuckyFC writes "If the universe is teeming with advanced civilizations capable of communicating over interstellar distances, then surely we ought to have seen them by now. That's the gist of a paradoxical line of reasoning put forward by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. The so-called Fermi Paradox has haunted SETI researchers ever since. Not least because if the number of intelligent civilizations capable of communication in our galaxy is greater than 1, then we should eventually hear from them. Now one astrophysicist says this thinking fails to take into account the limit to how far a signal from ET can travel before it becomes too faint to hear. Factor that in and everything changes. Assuming the average communicating civilization has a lifetime of 1,000 years, ten times longer than Earth has been broadcasting, and has a signal horizon of 1,000 light-years, you need a minimum of over 300 communicating civilizations in the Milky Way to ensure that you'll see one of them. Any less than that and the chances are that they'll live out their days entirely ignorant of each other's existence. Paradox solved, right?"

It's quite clear what the reason is

[the_humeister]

We humans are God's only children. That's why there's no one else in the universe. And the universe was created 6k years ago. Duh! Scientists... what useful things have they ever done other than bring up heresy?

No heat death for us

[gnick]

Assuming the average communicating civilization has a lifetime of 1,000 years...

Damn - We've got less time than I thought. Here I've been rooting for heat death. =(

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[superyanthrax]

Forgot the at the end?

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[superyanthrax]

Wow that came out poorly. I meant to say, forgot the sarcasm tag at the end?

And I thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was because as they reach our level of civilisation, they built giant particle accelerators for research and turned their planets into black holes.

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[gnick]

...the universe was created 6k years ago.

Hey - There's no room for rounding if you're going scriptural on us. The Earth's creation started the night before Oct 23, 4004 BC. [wikipedia.org] (In case anyone was wondering, Earth is a Libra.)

Re:The First Ones

[sakdoctor]

FIRST POST!

There is no mystery here...

[rwalker429]

The real answer is that they've been trying to communicate with us for years but RIAA, fearing they might play music for us has already had their ISPs throttle their messages into oblivion.

only humans think in this way

[gzipped_tar]

We humans are still a bunch of young, angsty teenagers. We desperately want to make the "first contact", crying and yelling and suffering from the depressive thought of loneliness.

Other galactic civilizations simply matured and stopped worrying about such pointless things. They make themselves busy with real business.

Grow up, humans.

Re:Solved?

[Propaganda13]

Exactly. Maybe all those "crazy" people are actually talking to aliens.

Re:Solved?

[gnick]

No - Those people really are crazy.

The aliens talk only to me and I have the good sense not to answer them (at least not out loud). I just carefully carry out their instructions and try to get mixed up with those crazies.

Middle of nowhere

[kmahan]

It's not like we're located close to Downtown Galaxy. We live out on the edge. There's probably some galactic equivalent of AT&T or Comcast that is telling everyone else "We'll be providing them with service 'soon'. So our monopoly is justified."

Either that or the installer showed up and we were too busy/unaware to answer the door. So they said they'd be back later.

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, found his ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to his newsletter.

Re:Solved?

[ByOhTek]

"Damnit, can't those monkeys from the Sol system just shut up?"
"If we ignore them, they'll go away"
"They've been shooting radio waves at us for decades, I think we've established they aren't going away..."

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Is that Julian or Gregorian?

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[turtledawn]

That explains the drama-queen mood and temperature swings, then.

Re:What paper?

[b4dc0d3r]

I don't know about you, but I prefer a link to a blog over the actual paper. Mostly because I don't speak Astrophysicsese.

I went ahead and clicked on the blog for you, and the link. Here's the paper (You can get a PDF if you want), it was submitted to the International Journal of Astrobiology.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3863 [arxiv.org]

I understand your reluctance, after all you're the one who posted:

The last damn thing I want is to click a link out of curiosity and within five minutes be standing there having to listen to the IT guy say "here's your sign" or end up in the HR office explaining my seeming poor hand-eye coordination because I accidentally clicked on a link in an email from the fscking HR department. Don't these people have enough work to do?

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1112493&cid=26694469 [slashdot.org]

Don't worry, you can continue to click on links out of curiosity. I put one above, go ahead, click it. You know you want to. everyone else is clicking it. Now with more fiber, and it cures Alzheimer's too.

Re:Solved?

[idontgno]

Hence, gamma-ray bursts. The advanced-technology equivalent of flaming laptop batteries.

Re:Solved?

[hax0r_this]

The 1,000 year thing seems like the weak point of this theory. Sure, most communicating civilizations may not last more than 1k years (and this is an idea based entirely on observation of our own civilization). But as soon as you get interstellar travel, how likely is it that the species manage to die off entirely in a short span? Its easy enough to wipe out one planet, but what about the next? And every spacecraft that manages to escape?

Right now our civilization is like a closed source application running on a dev box off the network. If the hard drive dies, the code is toast. But as soon as you get that code in Git, its a whole lot harder to kill.

Ok, so that was a terrible analogy.

Re:And I thought...

[mcgrew]

So the monster black hole at the center of our Milky Way is really Trantor? GaLAXy!!

Re:Solved?

[Yvan256]

I don't know why, but I keep having this dream about "six times seven", whatever that means.

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[InlawBiker]

Then I for one welcome our Alien Overlord. Oh wait, I'm atheist. Shit, now I'm all confused.

Re:Hello,

[flamingnight]

Hello (hello, hello)
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone home?

Re:Hello,

[geobeck]

I think you mean to say "Poems? The lad fancies himself a poet!"

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[geobeck]

The Earth's creation started the night before Oct 23, 4004 BC.

...five, six, seven... so it finished on Halloween? That explains a lot.

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[Hognoxious]

the Pope made a declaration a while back that there's nothing biblical that bars the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Either the Vatican are hedging their bets, or they're on to something the rest of us don't know (yet).

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[amRadioHed]

...though short, it has some pretty dense ideas.

You may want to rephrase that ;)

Re:So

[PitaBred]

So... you're saying that you're not Mr. Spock?

Intelligence out there!?

[Shotgun]

Hell, man! Is there any intelligence down HERE!!

Jeesh! These scientist with all their assumptions and preconceptions. Last week, we were supposed to believe that because we're able to capture a few pixels of UV radiation from a distant star system, and it can be spun into a computer model of the planet's atmosphere. The whole thing is a bunch of naval gazing to keep a bunch of nerds a colleges employed. Get a job, guys.

Re:Solved?

[Walkingshark]

Not to mention when you reach that level of technology, you're more likely to use your time and effort to build a free beer machine and a robot girlfriend/boyfriend/futafriend/tentacle monster (depending on preference) who is always in the moood.

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[geobeck]

True. But it appears the Almighty actually spent his day of rest at the mall looking for a good costume to scare the bejeesus out of Adam and Eve.

Unfortunately, by the time he got there, all they had left was a dorky snake costume.

Re:Hello,

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore, they got comfortably numb, someone set the controls for the heart of the sun and now they've all gone to join the great gig in the sky.

Gelgamek

[Joe the Lesser]

He's just acknowledging the Gelgamek christians.

Re:Hello,

[geobeck]

And "New car, caviar, four star daydream, think I'll buy me a football team" is absolute rubbish, laddie! Get on with your commenting!

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[Mister_Stoopid]

As a devout Christian and avid watcher of American sci-fi TV series, I can confidently report that "In his image" means "looks and acts exactly like a human, with the possible exception of the shape of the ears and / or forehead."

Re:Do we want to be found?

[weighn]

what makes you think they will be peaceful or even tolerant of our existence if do find another civilization?

The fact that their civilization has lasted long enough to get out amongst the far reaches of the galaxy demonstrates that they have left that sort of pettiness behind ...

**crunch** (gets eaten)

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[DavidTC]

I don't know who you think you're arguing against, but it's not me.

Re:It's quite clear what the reason is

[Atario]

I love how, no matter the subject matter, someone on Slashdot inevitably manages to see the blindingly obvious hole in the theory that makes the whole thing fall down and which all the experts somehow managed to miss all these years.

It's positively...stunning.