The Fermi Paradox in Cartoon Form

[78stonewobble]

Nice little videos, with good and funny references.

However, they seem to neglect that we can only barely detect the existance of some planets close to us, much less gather meaningfull information about the enviroments on these planets and offcourse that ie. our radiowave transmission impact on the milky way is miniscule.

In a sense we haven't sampled the milkyway and much less the universe for the existense of life or even intelligent life. We have only really sampled, to some degree, the solarsystem.

[magnemoe]

Nice little videos, with good and funny references.

However, they seem to neglect that we can only barely detect the existance of some planets close to us, much less gather meaningfull information about the enviroments on these planets and offcourse that ie. our radiowave transmission impact on the milky way is miniscule.

In a sense we haven't sampled the milkyway and much less the universe for the existense of life or even intelligent life. We have only really sampled, to some degree, the solarsystem.

True, the only thing we know is that its no intergalactic empires/ civilizations who colonize any planet they find and keeps it going for an million years.

[78stonewobble]

True, the only thing we know is that its no intergalactic empires/ civilizations who colonize any planet they find and keeps it going for an million years.

Yeah.

My own personal guess / answer is this:

Life is somewhat rare and hard to have evolve. Possibly a 1.000 to 10.000 places in the milkyway.

Intelligent life is quite rare. Possibly 10-100 places in the milkyway.

Interstellar travel is possible, but prohibitively costly in terms of ressources and energy. Most intelligent races, sofar apparently, will only colonize a few planets as "backups" and at that level are able to keep population growth under wraps.

There are no technological singularity, meaning progress cannot continue indefinately. Eg. processing power can only attain x density, beyond which hard physical laws prevent further advancements.

...

Though I would prefer warp/hyperdrives to be possible... I find scifi dreams too awesome to let go.

[PB666]

Nice link.

[magnemoe]

Yeah.

My own personal guess / answer is this:

Life is somewhat rare and hard to have evolve. Possibly a 1.000 to 10.000 places in the milkyway.

Intelligent life is quite rare. Possibly 10-100 places in the milkyway.

Interstellar travel is possible, but prohibitively costly in terms of ressources and energy. Most intelligent races, sofar apparently, will only colonize a few planets as "backups" and at that level are able to keep population growth under wraps.

There are no technological singularity, meaning progress cannot continue indefinately. Eg. processing power can only attain x density, beyond which hard physical laws prevent further advancements.

...

Though I would prefer warp/hyperdrives to be possible... I find scifi dreams too awesome to let go.

Note that if life is very rare you are unlikely to have planets with life close in your stellar neighborhood.

You will have to teraform a planet, doing this over interstellar distances will be way harder than an manned interstellar mission.

Yes at the time you can build an manned starship you are also able to make independent asteroid colonies so you don't really need an planet. However without an planet 95% of the reasons to go to another star goes away.

My take is a bit more optimistic. however it might well be 20 lightyear to the next planet with an biosphere we could live in. Now after a lot of work you have some colonies, you do some teraformin and improve the planets, the next planet out is even longer away and pretty crappy. Think an partially teraformed mars. Do you bother make another colony, yes you know about an nice planet but its 120 lightyear to it. You demands is likely to go up as you have colonies and no pressure to move on.

I also think that intelligence is pretty rare, most intelligent species don't create an advanced technical civilization. Most of them again don't go interstellar. Just an handful has colonized other stars.

[DaMichel]

I think if there is an advanced civilization, they might just choose to ignore us. Advanced as they may be they probably have high moral standards and will not just come here to murder us for our land to live on. Since resources are abundant everywhere there is really no reason to travel here except for colonization.

I totally would not be surprised if we were observed by gravitational lens telescopes from 100 lightyears away or something like that. Hopefully we will soon be able to use telescopes ourselves to find smallish earth-like planets. With spectral analysis we could find indication for live, i.e. oxygen/methane/co2/smog in the atmosphere. Then we could at least estimate how likely it is that live develops.

[78stonewobble]

Note that if life is very rare you are unlikely to have planets with life close in your stellar neighborhood.

You will have to teraform a planet, doing this over interstellar distances will be way harder than an manned interstellar mission.

Yes at the time you can build an manned starship you are also able to make independent asteroid colonies so you don't really need an planet. However without an planet 95% of the reasons to go to another star goes away.

My take is a bit more optimistic. however it might well be 20 lightyear to the next planet with an biosphere we could live in. Now after a lot of work you have some colonies, you do some teraformin and improve the planets, the next planet out is even longer away and pretty crappy. Think an partially teraformed mars. Do you bother make another colony, yes you know about an nice planet but its 120 lightyear to it. You demands is likely to go up as you have colonies and no pressure to move on.

I also think that intelligence is pretty rare, most intelligent species don't create an advanced technical civilization. Most of them again don't go interstellar. Just an handful has colonized other stars.

True, if life is very rare, ready to settle planets will be exceedingly rare. Tho offcourse even planets with indigenous life, might not be instantly ready for settling either.

One could imagine tho, plenty of "pristine planets", where the basic prerequisites and ingredients for life (as we know it) are there, but where life just haven't evolved yet (or just been wiped out again). Which could presumably be terraformed relatively quickly by just adding either simple existing earth organisms and/or for the task created artificial or genemodified lifeforms.

PS: Thick line under "relatively" offcourse ... What I mean is: Imagine earth with approximately the same ratios of elements including water, primordial atmosphere and so on... Where life is all that is missing to make it, over x time, habitable for human and earth life.

You are right tho, that the barrier could be colonizing even a few stars, rather than developing to intelligence itself.

Edited June 8, 2015 by 78stonewobble

[magnemoe]

I think if there is an advanced civilization, they might just choose to ignore us. Advanced as they may be they probably have high moral standards and will not just come here to murder us for our land to live on. Since resources are abundant everywhere there is really no reason to travel here except for colonization.

I totally would not be surprised if we were observed by gravitational lens telescopes from 100 lightyears away or something like that. Hopefully we will soon be able to use telescopes ourselves to find smallish earth-like planets. With spectral analysis we could find indication for live, i.e. oxygen/methane/co2/smog in the atmosphere. Then we could at least estimate how likely it is that live develops.

In one way we are probably unique in the galaxy, we are in the few hundreds years between industrial revolution to becoming something at least close to level I civilization. (using as much energy as the sunlight falling on earth) You will probably need more for interstellar colonization.

Now why would you disturb something like that? Its an once in an lifetime opportune for an scientist or reporter. Larry Niven War Movie had an fun take on it.

And no, no reason to kill anybody if you know us, file some patents and you own the economy, simple stuff like cheap fusion and room temperature superconductors will break the ground.

Oxygen on exoplanets would be an game-changer. We know its life, first step is an insanely large mirror,then put it in the gravity lens point of sun, then send an probe, do this 6 times to find algae, then more exiting you find reptiles more primitive than dinosaurs, then 8 more algae, then you run into my avatar trying to eat your rover http://i.imgur.com/QNnA8iM.png

80 years later you get the images. Congratulation you have made first contact. none of the parts is very impressed.

- - - Updated - - -

True, if life is very rare, ready to settle planets will be exceedingly rare. Tho offcourse even planets with indigenous life, might not be instantly ready for settling either.

One could imagine tho, plenty of "pristine planets", where the basic prerequisites and ingredients for life (as we know it) are there, but where life just haven't evolved yet (or just been wiped out again). Which could presumably be terraformed relatively quickly by just adding either simple existing earth organisms and/or for the task created artificial or genemodified lifeforms.

PS: Thick line under "relatively" offcourse ... What I mean is: Imagine earth with approximately the same ratios of elements including water, primordial atmosphere and so on... Where life is all that is missing to make it, over x time, habitable for human and earth life.

You are right tho, that the barrier could be colonizing even a few stars, rather than developing to intelligence itself.

Yes, Earth used two billion years of getting the oxygen level high enough for advanced life (fish).

Not sure if this will take so long, if GM alga will speed it up? an million years is still long time. It might be another bottleneck / filter.

[PB666]

Even with sublight colony ships an advanced civilization can colonize the most part of Milky Way within 100 million years. If there was a civilization that had appeared 4-5 billions of years before us (theoretically it's possible) then they would have had plenty of time to do that.

Not likely, the blue stars that formed the early galaxy would have been short lived and rocky planet less, longer lived stars of the second generation probably followed cycles of birth and destruction.

- - - Updated - - -

In one way we are probably unique in the galaxy, we are in the few hundreds years between industrial revolution to becoming something at least close to level I civilization. (using as much energy as the sunlight falling on earth) You will probably need more for interstellar colonization.

Now why would you disturb something like that? Its an once in an lifetime opportune for an scientist or reporter. Larry Niven War Movie had an fun take on it.

And no, no reason to kill anybody if you know us, file some patents and you own the economy, simple stuff like cheap fusion and room temperature superconductors will break the ground.

Oxygen on exoplanets would be an game-changer. We know its life, first step is an insanely large mirror,then put it in the gravity lens point of sun, then send an probe, do this 6 times to find algae, then more exiting you find reptiles more primitive than dinosaurs, then 8 more algae, then you run into my avatar trying to eat your rover http://i.imgur.com/QNnA8iM.png

80 years later you get the images. Congratulation you have made first contact. none of the parts is very impressed.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, Earth used two billion years of getting the oxygen level high enough for advanced life (fish).

Not sure if this will take so long, if GM alga will speed it up? an million years is still long time. It might be another bottleneck / filter.

blue-green algae of some species will survive just about anywhere and under any condition.

All you have to do is get O2 high enough that conifers would survive through the night. Then start tossing out seedlings, and O2 levels will shoot up so fast. Trees will grow so densely you wont be able to see the trees for the trees. On earth the O2 levels overshot the current levels and then cooled down, all this occurring with terribly inefficient high-lignite trees.

What you have to do then before O2 levels reach this, is dig a giant pits, chop down the majority of trees remove the smaller branches and the bark. Cut them into rectangle strips and bury them. Cover them with 100 feet of soil, keep growing. If you don't time the cuts right, lightning strikes will send carbon back into the atmosphere slowing down the oxygenation.

[dansmithers]

Reading about the Great Filter:

[PB666]

You're assuming that a technological civilisation is able to maintain cohesion for millions/billions of years without destroying itself through military or environmental catastrophe.

While not impossible, it doesn't strike me as likely. So far, we've only managed that for a very short time scale, and it's entirely possible that we're not going to manage it for that much longer.

Humans repeatedly fail to understand their own frailties and weaknesses. The worlds populations are heavily driven by ethnocentrism and lack of empathy for peoples of other culture. People who otherwise consider themselves sophisticated are often engaged in warfare for the most ridiculous reasons (Example A. 2nd Gulf War). I mean seriously no-one bothered to think that the proponents of the war had not vetted their data carefully, or maybe that their beliefs were leading the data. The chinese just blew up a satellite in space, do they not consider the space junk they generated may end up colliding with their own future space craft? Before we can have any chance of colonizing space we need to be able to deal with these tendencies on a global level.

A troublesome nation could launch so much shrapnel into orbit that it would be impossible for any other nation to pass through this zone without great risk, and we become confined on earth until we annihilate our species.