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Space Earth Science

We May Be All Alone In the Known Universe, a New Oxford Study Suggests (fortune.com) 519

Posted by BeauHD from the late-night-thoughts dept.
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..."
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We May Be All Alone In the Known Universe, a New Oxford Study Suggests More

We May Be All Alone In the Known Universe, a New Oxford Study Suggests

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  • Fermi Paradox is useless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @03:11AM (#56851942)
    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.

    • Fermi's paradox is telling us something, just not a lot. There is probably no other expansive, technological civilization in the Local Group. That has always looked most likely and it probably always will.

      • Re:Fermi Paradox is useless (Score:5, Informative)

        by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @04:09AM (#56852072)

        Simple answer to the paradox is that space is just too big. Technology to visit other stars may not be possible, or be sufficiently rare that expansion can go undetected.

        • Simple answer to the paradox is that space is just too big. Technology to visit other stars may not be possible, or be sufficiently rare that expansion can go undetected.

          It could also be, that if you are travelling between stars or maintaining a high tech civilization you eventually realize, "Hey, Advertising our existence to the world may not be a good idea."

          Even if you're not of the mindset to (wipe out your rivals before they wipe you out, just in case they're hostile) you will probably have the mindset: don't advertise your whereabouts just incase people who ARE of that mindset exist.

          • Also, if your civilization has gotten to the point that you can travel between the stars, you might not be communicating in a way that Earthlings can pick up on. Imagine a group of people from the 21st century hiding in various locations and communicating using tools they have available (e.g. smartphones). Now have people from the 18th century try to detect said communications and see if these 21st century people are there and, if so, where they are. I doubt the 18th century people would have any luck detec

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jbengt ( 874751 )

              Imagine a group of people from the 21st century hiding in various locations and communicating using tools they have available (e.g. smartphones). Now have people from the 18th century try to detect said communications and see if these 21st century people are there and, if so, where they are. I doubt the 18th century people would have any luck detecting communications from the 21st century people.

              You think that 18th century people wouldn't notice a cell tower?

        • The "space is just too big" argument doesn't work. First, there are no physics barriers to visiting other stars, purely engineering ones. Second, many stars are relatively close together. If you have a cluster of stars which are at most a light year away from each other and with many on the order of light months, the idea that one couldn't go from one to the other is the height of arrogant assumptions that technology isn't going to improve. Third, many of the signs of a lack of civilizations are far strong

          • First, there are no physics barriers to visiting other stars, purely engineering ones.

            Engineering is applied physics so that statement is something of a tautology.

            Second, many stars are relatively close together.

            That statement is true in a sense but misleading. The fastest spacecraft we have ever launched will take tens of thousands of years [earthsky.org] to travel even the 4.3 light years to our nearest star. "Close" when you are talking about distances between stars is in reality still an almost unimaginably vast distance so close isn't really very close.

            We see no attempts by anyone to apparently communicate with other civilizations

            That seems like circular reasoning. You are saying we don't have evidence of other civilization

          • The "space is just too big" argument doesn't work. First, there are no physics barriers to visiting other stars, purely engineering ones.

            There are also social barriers. In order to reach our level of technology, a civilization likely needs to be hypersocial like us. Technology also brings with it a lot of security and comfort. A space faring species likely has reached the point of post scarcity. So in order to get on a generational ship you would have to give up all your friends, family, comfort, safety, etc.... I don't see most people being willing to do this. We are already as a society unwilling to take as many risks in the past a

          • If you have a cluster of stars which are at most a light year away from each other and with many on the order of light months

            Our NEAREST star is over four light years away.

        • With current technology, it is estimated that we could send a mission to other stars in a matter of ~1,000's-10,000's of years (using something like "Project Orion" nuclear pulse propulsion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ). That's a long time from a human perspective, but it's very short compared to the lifetime of the universe, and if we envision a "binary colonization" (we send two missions to nearby stars -- Alpha Centauri and Epsilon Eridani, for example -- and they each land and built two missions

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bongo ( 13261 )

            Quite. We started evolving to human, around 3 million years ago, and meanwhile, most of what we count as "technology" today only appeared in the last 12,000 (agriculture), to 300 (Western Enlightenment), to 115 (flight), to 70 (nuclear), years ago. We haven't begun to scratch the surface, and we don't even know where the surface is yet. Another 2000 years is nothing, yet unimaginable to us today.

            My own simple explanation for the Fermi "paradox" is the Prime Directive.

            Would you visit another world by zooming

      • Re:Fermi Paradox is useless (Score:5, Insightful)

        by meglon ( 1001833 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @05:01AM (#56852168)

        Fermi's paradox is telling us something, just not a lot. There is probably no other expansive, technological civilization in the Local Group. That has always looked most likely and it probably always will.

        No, it hasn't always looked most likely, and quite frankly it never will.... at least not in the next 1000 years or so. Our data points for life in the observable universe, the local group, or even our galaxy is so infinitesimally small that one would have to be a complete idiot to suggest it says anything other than "we don't have a fucking clue."

    • Re:Fermi Paradox is useless (Score:5, Informative)

      by smi.james.th ( 1706780 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @03:49AM (#56852028)
      I'm going to be pedantic here and point out that there's a difference between the Fermi paradox and the Drake equation, I think you're referring to the latter. Fermi simply asked the question - if the universe is so big and so old, where is everyone else? Frank Drake came up with the equation and the variables to which you're referring, and Carl Sagan popularised it by estimating these probabilities quite optimistically high.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mentil ( 1748130 )

        The universe is only 'old' from our point of view. A much colder planet where its life's metabolism and reproductive rates are low, might evolve much slower than life on Earth. Imagine microbes that reproduce once a millennium. From their point of view, they wouldn't have a Fermi paradox because either there'd be aliens zipping around everywhere already, or the universe is still 'only a few 10s of billions of years old'.

    • 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.

      I totally agree . . . what about the "non-observable" universe . . . ?

      There could be critters composed of Dark Energy, living on Dark Matter out there.

      We cannot see them, because "they" do not want us to.

      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.

      I think the the paper is intentional disinformation, written by critters composed of Dark Energy, living on Dark Matter.

      They want to convince us that we should not go out looking for them, because they think that humans would find them very tasty.

      Yum-yum.

    • I wouldn't even start to consider applying the Fermi Paradox until we have thoroughly explored our own solar system.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ilguido ( 1704434 )

      The Fermi Paradox is an utterly useless test. It takes variables you have no data on and then says to compute their probability.

      There are not variables in the Fermi Paradox [wikipedia.org], otherwise it would not be a paradox but an equation or a function. I do not know why you mentioned an equation, but probably it is because you do not know what we are talking about.

      Note: I find it particularly annoying that random guys on the internet think they are masters of the known universe and _every time_ there is a discussion, you have to read caustic, trenchant comments using words like "utterly useless", "drunk frat students", "easily published pape

    • Re:Fermi Paradox is useless (Score:5, Informative)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @08:40AM (#56852840) Journal

      The Fermi Paradox is an utterly useless test. It takes variables you have no data on and then says to compute their probability.

      You mean the Drake equation, not the Fermi Paradox, and you're wrong about its usefulness, as you'd know if you bothered to read the paper. The authors make a very convincing statistical argument that the Drake equation actually resolves the Fermi Paradox.

      Statistical probability, to be of any use in the real world at all, must by definition be based off already measurable data.

      True

      That we have basically no measurement of any of this data

      False. As the paper points out, we can estimate the distribution of many of the astrophysical numbers with relatively low uncertainty -- a few orders of magnitude. And while the others are much more difficult, when we don't know how to estimate a parameter, it is often feasible to bound the parameter and estimate the degree of uncertainty. In this case, the authors construct plausible estimates for the uncertainty of the really difficult parameters. The uncertainties are enormous precisely because we know so little. For example, they estimate that our best estimate of f_l ranges over 200 orders of magnitude. They note that this is a conservative estimate, that the actual uncertainty may be much larger, but that larger uncertainties merely strengthen their result.

      The authors assume that the parameter values are uniformly distributed, calculate the resulting PDF of N and conclude that based on our best knowledge (which is very poor -- that's the whole point of the paper, to make sure the paucity of data is properly considered), there is a significant probability that we are alone in the galaxy, and in the observable universe. Their PDF also shows that there is a significant probability that we are not alone. In fact the probabilities of being alone and not being alone are close to equal.

      Thus, the paper rigorously demonstrates that the Fermi Paradox is not paradoxical, precisely because we cannot estimate the parameters to Drake's equation. They show that because our knowledge is so poor, universes that are both empty and teeming with intelligent life fall well within the bounds of a careful, rational, and mathematical analysis based on our best knowledge.

      In short, they rigorously demonstrated that your intuition about Drake's equation is correct, that our knowledge of the parameters is so weak that the resulting equation does not allow us to predict anything.

      However, they also note that the amount of effort we've put into SETI provides us with actual data we can use to revise our estimates of the Drake Equation parameters, albeit only a little bit. They apply Bayes Theorem under a few different models to update their uncertainty estimates, and use the updated parameters to recalculate the probability that we're alone. This is a process that we can continue over time, updating the parameter PDFs based on observations (of various kind, not just SETI null results), gradually narrowing the uncertainty.

      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.

      You should read the paper. It's actually quite carefully reasoned and interesting.

    • The Fermi Paradox is an utterly useless test. It takes variables you have no data on and then says to compute their probability.

      We do have data. Quite a lot of it actually. So far all the data we have has not given any indication of life anywhere but on Earth but it is data all the same. Now the universe is a big place and we've only looked at a tiny bit of it so far but to say we have no data is simply not true.

      • So far all the data we have has not given any indication of life anywhere but on Earth but it is data all the same.

        It is data, but it is wholly irrelevant to the question. We can detect planets, but can't tell if they support life or not from here. We can only take a good guess at whether they support an industrialized society with radio communications. While I personally believe that the most likely explanation is that any so-called intelligent life wipes itself out before it achieves a much higher level of technology than what we're dealing with, it's also possible that the period of using radio communications is very

    • The Fermi Paradox is not the Drake Equation.

      What I think the authors did is use a Drake equation, calculate the uncertainties, guess distributions for the uncertain parameters and calculate the chance of seeing no life in the visible/accessible universe. They solve Fermis Paradox by showing it is not unlikely at all that we are alone (thus no paradox).

      I for one like this kind of research since it clears up some popular misconceptions about Fermis Paradox (like, that it is a paradox).

      From the abstract (empha

  • Let's ask the oracle! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SciCom Luke ( 2739317 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @03:17AM (#56851956)
    "Are we alone in the universe?" she asked.
    "Yes," said the Oracle.
    "So there's no other life out there?"
    "There is. They're alone too."

    • SciCom Luke wins the thread. I think we're done here, folks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bongo ( 13261 )

      That reminds me that there's the notion that,

      reality REPEATS itself. [1]

      When something appears, it kinda appears everywhere. So it would be surprising if there were not a lot of other "M-class" planets out there.

      Besides, the belief that we are alone, has a weird "we are special God-created creatures" stink about it.

      As an atheist, I would assume life is everywhere, as there is nothing special about us. The only question is, how far away are they?

      [1] reality, Nature, the universe, fundamental laws, etc.

      • Your first three paragraphs are great, but the next two are pure bias. I agree with your conlusions, but if you're open minded you need to be open to things that annoy you. "We are alone" in no way implies there is a god. That's a weird bias you picked up.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bongo ( 13261 )

          I agree with your conlusions, but if you're open minded you need to be open to things that annoy you. "We are alone" in no way implies there is a god. That's a weird bias you picked up.

          Fair point about being open to ideas I don't like. I agree.

          The implication comes from, why would this one planet be so different to the, something like, ten raised to the twenty-four planets, in the universe? Even if we are one in a trillion... there's plenty of life out there. The universe seems to have had no trouble manufacturing a wide variety of stars and planets all over the place, everywhere. Why does it suddenly struggle to manufacture life, and so does it only a single time?

          Once it got going here,

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            Assuming that we are alone, the reason for it would likely simply be because complex life is so astoundingly improbable, and that we just plain got very lucky.

            Of course, it's difficult to imagine such a vanishingly small probability that it would not be likely to recur somewhere in the vastness of the universe... but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.

            And I don't mean to suggest that we necessarily are alone or make any statement about the likelihood of complex life.... I just mean that if we are alon

      • Indeed it would be shocking if there aren't other "M-class" planets out there, and there's almost certainly other life in the universe or likely even our solar system. But quite possibly no other intelligent life.

        Intelligent life is a rare fluke of nature, on Earth we have only a few that can build tools at all, and only one that can build complex tools, harness fire, and clearly has language capabilities. It's not normal for a species to evolve a stupidly enormous energy-guzzling brain.

      • Besides, the belief that we are alone, has a weird "we are special God-created creatures" stink about it.

        Only to those already predisposed to confirmation bias thinking humans are somehow special. Objectively the only thing we can actually say is that we have not yet found any evidence of life anywhere but Earth. Any further conclusions are unjustified at this time. Thinking we are "special god creatures" is an unjustifiable stroking of one's own ego that is unsupported by any verifiable evidence.

        As an atheist, I would assume life is everywhere, as there is nothing special about us. The only question is, how far away are they?

        That is a reasonable theory but so far it is unsupported by evidence either for or against. I agree that it see

  • It's a Calculation problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @03:41AM (#56852010)
    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.

    • Re:It's a Calculation problem (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @03:52AM (#56852044)

      We know Jesus lives in Heaven and Superman (used to) live on Krypton. So that's 3 planets already in the numerator. But don't try and bullshit me about global warming. NASA needs to cut that shit out.

    • Re:It's a Calculation problem (Score:5, Interesting)

      by m.alessandrini ( 1587467 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @04:07AM (#56852068)
      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.

      • I think it's not so absurd to think that it could have happened only a very few times in all the universe.

        Planets capable of supporting life may well tend to produce it. Look at how our own planet produces periods of relative stasis only because life exists.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I prefer the Copernican (Mediocrity) principle regarding life in the universe. Its simply too vast for us to be special. If we cannot discover life like ourselves, then we should probably try to discover life unlike ourselves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      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.

      Doesn't that depend on just how low that probability actually is? As vast as the observable universe is, it is still of finite size and age, and will eventually end at some finite point in the (extremely) distant future, and it is quite far from inconceivable that we are simply just lucky to be here.... at all.

  • Out there might be the wrong place to look (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @03:50AM (#56852032)

    http://brighterbrains.org/arti... [brighterbrains.org]

    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.

  • oblig xkcd (Score:5, Funny)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @04:16AM (#56852084)

    https://xkcd.com/384/ [xkcd.com]

  • For once a religion worthwhile pursuing. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @04:22AM (#56852094)

    "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.

  • So the conclusion of the article is something weâ(TM)ve known since the beginning of mankind: we donâ(TM)t know if weâ(TM)re alone in the universe.
    Not really worth writing about, is it?

  • then it's as equally terrifying as if we aren't alone.

  • We don't have to worry about LGM's (little green men), but we do have to watch out for the LGM's (large green motherfuckers).

  • There could be plenty of microbial life out there, which came into being independent of life on Earth (i.e. no common panspermia source, if applicable) that we'd never be able to detect via looking for alien spacecraft or radio emissions. Considering how many billions of years life on Earth was limited to single-celled microbes, it's plausible that conditions on some bodies wouldn't be suitable for macroscopic life. Even if microbial, this would have major philosophical/religious implications.
    Intelligent li

  • I only skimmed TFA, but the points it makes are interesting. The Drake equation is well known - multiply the probabilities of all the factors required for a civilization. The interesting point is this: those probabilities have ranges, in many cases with a lower bound of zero. In the absence of knowledge, if you actually randomly choose values from the entire range, then odds are good that at least one of the parameters will be close to zero - thus giving you an empty universe.

    Of course, our real goal should

    • Instead of multiplying the probably with the total number of stars, we should multiply each probability with the inverse square distance of the star, and then integrate over the universe.

      The square distance is a decent measure of detectability.

  • They're out there, folks, believe me. That's why we need Space Force. Space Force will stop them.
  • As much as its nice to think that ET might come here with magic to wash away all our troubles, the fact is we wouldn't react to it well. Even if ET tried, those mentally ill and greedy among us would use their blessings to subvert the benefits

    In all likelihood, ET would not care to preserve us and contact with ET would not be good for us.

    Given the possibilities, we are better off alone until our society evolves to control the megalomaniacs.

  • ...are grossly overestimated he said

    The problem with the Drake equation is it tends to look at the problem from a physicist/astrophysics point of view. if you look from a biological perspective, things become even murkier.

    1. We still have no understanding how life appeared on earth. yes we can propose a mechanism for the creation of amino acids, but that is a long way to creating even basic life
    2. We have no way of calculating the likelihood of creating complex life. On earth this appears to go go back t

  • The odds that there is other life is 50/50: Either there is or there isn't.
  • On the Fermi Paradox when the Drake Equation - more of the variables in that one are getting filled in all the time. Last pass at it shows at a minimum 10,000 possible intelligent species out there in the universe. It's just the distances between us and them is mind boggling long.

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @07:47AM (#56852622)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • While star hoping within the Milky Way is beyond our current technology and engineering, it does seem plausible with generational ships. What we know about physics and the limits imposed by c, suggest that travelling between Galaxies is not.

  • Just because we havenâ(TM)t seen it, doesnâ(TM)t mean it isnâ(TM)t there.

    That being said, perhaps every time âintelligentâ(TM) life develops and becomes more and more (vulnerably) dependent on technology it ultimately either wipes itself out or nature comes along and does it. Look how vulnerable we are now to something as simple as a large solar storm. Wipe out the solid state circuitry on this planet and see how long we last (as intelligent life.)

  • The following possibilities exist:

    1. We are alone in the universe and will remain so forever.
    2. We are not alone in the universe, being preceded by one or more civilizations.
    3. We are alone in the universe at this time but conditions exist for other civilizations to evolve in due time.

    Given the vast size and diversity of the universe, #1 seems almost ludicrous absent the intervention of some higher power (i.e. "Intelligent Design"). We occupy a rather mundane planet orbiting a ordinary star in a humdrum ga

  • More planets for us.

  • I've always hated the Fermi Paradox . "If there's intelligent life in the Universe, why haven't they come here?" There are a ton of possibilities that don't involve no other intelligent life in the Universe. Perhaps interstellar space travel isn't possible so all of the civilizations are stuck on their own planets. Perhaps they have expanded but simply haven't found Earth yet. (Space is huge, after all.) Perhaps they did find Earth and are purposefully not visiting the planet out of some kind of Prime Direc

  • First Ones (Score:4)

    by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2018 @02:31PM (#56855024) Homepage

    I always liked to think that we might be alone and we are the First Ones. First Ones as in Babylon 5 first ones. The universe is still young, 14B years, and has a lifespan predicted to be in the trillions of years. Some one has to be first, why not us?

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