Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

[Dominatus]

Where is everyone? That is the question the Fermi Paradox poses. There are many possible answers to this question, from the practical that is based on our current observations, to the theoretical attempts to understand extraterrestrial thinking and motives. The school wifi is slow at the moment, so I will upload my answer later (it is very similar to the answer in Carl Sagan's Contact). I want to know what everyone here thinks the most probable answer is. Are we alone in the universe, and if not then why haven't we heard anything from other civilizations?

[cicatrix]

Because they too, as we are presently, are banging their heads against the speed of light limit.

[Dominatus]

Finally downloaded google docs, now for my answer. Grab a seat, it's pretty long.

I believe that the galaxy is teeming with life. Though unconfirmed thus far, it is not an unreasonable assumption to make, especially in accordance with the Drake Equation. So why haven’t alien lifeforms contacted us? Why is it that our messages to the stars go unanswered? Perhaps this is because of the sparsity of the stellar neighborhood in which we live. The solar system, our sun, they are often considered “backwaterâ€Â. The nearest star is around 4 light years away from us. And there are only a few stars within a dozen light years. Elsewhere in the galaxy, it is more common to see numerous stars within a few light years of each other, stars that may be able to support life.

I believe that in these systems, should complex life emerge and should the formation of these systems coincide with each other than extraterrestrials here could be at very similar technological levels when first contact is made. The two possible outcomes involve peaceful coexistence… and war. Either a community is ignited between the planets, or they figure out ways to destroy each other. These outcomes will be touched on in regards to our own system.

Earth, being so isolated, likely has no neighbors that bear intelligent life, at least not nearby. Though it is unfortunate in some respects, in others it may be a blessing. Think about the human race. How often are we divided, fighting amongst ourselves? On a galactic scale, the warlike civilizations are more likely to wipe themselves out, or in the previous example of a stellar community, to wipe their neighbors out. Warlike species will inevitably destroy themselves, unless another species presents itself first in which case their own destruction may be delayed. The civilizations that live in peace are the ones likely to survive, thrive in this galaxy and exist in a diverse and amazing community.

Humans are, unfortunately, one of these violent races. We are a young species still, and haven’t destroyed ourselves yet. There is still hope, should we put aside our differences and join together as a single species, one of peace and not war. Once this happens, I believe it won’t be very long until we receive a message, as a kind of “hello, congrats on not killing yourselves off, and welcome to the galaxyâ€Â, possibly followed by an alien emissary that we greet with open arms, trusting this newcomer. They share FTL technology, along with other amazing technological secrets. We open up trade with others in the collective, and learn to avoid responding to the more violent new civilizations until they have adopted the same peace as we have. It would not do to invite a group that may decide to exterminate other species in the galaxy, or build up a massive weapons arsenal with the excuse that it serves to deter the more technologically advanced races from attacking…

Eventually, humans will live alongside other intelligent beings in the galaxy, with trade going to multiple worlds. Before that day can come, we must put down our weapons, our hate and distrust and reservations, and greet our fellow man with open arms, embracing him the same way we embrace our differences. We are like children, and we must grow up before we can sit with the adults.

[Bill Phil]

Galaxy scale extinction events are probably the most likely. Either caused naturally or artificially, it's a hazard.

[Cirocco]

why haven't we heard from other civilizations? Because space is huge. Like, mindbogglingly huge. Even if life is abundant, intelligent life will be less abundant. Probably there are/have been/will be a lot of civilizations out there that are capable of interplanetary or intersolar communication, but they will be so mindboggingly far away that it simply is impractical to contact one another if you don't even know where to look, let alone what to look for. We still have trouble spotting smaller planets that are one solar system away with a good degree of certainty, let alone look for signs of intelligent life on them.

There is one picture that I once saw on teh intertubez that perfectly summarized it for me. It was a picture of our galaxy (top down view of spiral galaxy) with about 3 blue pixels in one of the arms. The subscript was: "that blue dot has a radius of 60 lightyears. Every single bit of information sent into the universe by humans is inside that dot."

Now add to that that electromagnetic signals lose signal strength and coherence the further they travel, and you've got an explanation (note: one, there may be others) for why we haven't heard from other civilizations.

space is stupidly, insanely, mind-blowingly huge. Searching for a signal sent by another civilization is like looking for a specific iron atom in a haystack when you only have an optical microscope, no clue what iron looks like and the haystack is constantly being tossed around.

Actually, it might be harder than that.

note that I am no statistician and that the above comparison is purely based on wild guesses and calculations that I just made up in my head.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Cirocco

[YNM]

Uh... Because they ignores it ?

I'm not sure, but if our messages are pretty regular once being heard, they might dismiss it as a pulsar. Or, likely that we don't aim it well (the arecibo message was actually directed rather sloppily with M13, not in a site where it's supposed to be years again). So probably they doesn't notice it...

Or most of them are reluctant to know.

[Dominatus]

That is an interesting viewpoint, but should FTL be possible and practical then why haven't they popped in for a visit? There are likely numerous civilizations that know of each other, maybe even some that can travel between the stars. At this point, I think aliens would form some sort of governing body to unite each other. From their they may decide, hey, since we obviously aren't alone, there are probably other races out there. And with that they go about trying to find and unite the people of the Milky Way. Signals can't travel faster than light, of course, and that 60 ly bubble is very small. But it's also mind-bogglingly large. Surely an FTL capable civilization that is keeping an eye open to spot other civilizations would have picked up some signal by now, right? So either we are alone, FTL is impossible, or they know we exist and are deliberately keeping quiet.

[CptRichardson]

Galaxy scale extinction events are probably the most likely. Either caused naturally or artificially, it's a hazard.

Until lately, yes this was a thing in the form of Gamma Ray Bursts and Hypernovae events. Any developing life would get reset by several million years or more by such an event, or outright scoured from the surface of a planet.

Beyond that, we've got issues with getting radio signals through the interstellar medium, meaning only the most massive and directed bursts of radio signals go through, and also that small issue of 'Space is Big, and there is a lot of Big Space'.

[cicatrix]

We (humans) are used to thinking that 'we are a young race' and the others might be more advanced than we are.

Think again this universe is still only 13 bn years old. So there might be not enough time for advanced life to emerge across it .

It can quite possible be the answer to the question? What if WE are the oldest race (one of the oldest races) in the universe? What if WE are the most advanced? What if the others are still trying to figure out fire? What if WE are the ones to discover the others and not vice verse?

[Cirocco]

... should FTL be possible and practical ...

that's a pretty big "if".

There are likely numerous civilizations that know of each other, maybe even some that can travel between the stars.

We have no way of knowing that. The estimations for intelligent life differ widely, and like I said, space is mindbogglingly huge. It's hard enough to spot planets the next starsystem over, let alone see what's on them. The hypothesis that there quite a few civilizations out there I can understand, that doesn't seem too farfecthed because of the sheer giant number of possible habitats out there. But while life may be abundant, intelligent life is (while probably still relatively plentiful) probably far less abundant. Adding to that that said intelligent life needs to be sufficiently advanced to communicate reliably on an interstellar basis... Well that makes it a far harder sell to me that you'd just happened to have several of those in "close" proximity. A lot of people seem to take it for granted that any alien civilization we encounter would be more advanced than we are. But that's not neccesarily the case. EDIT: aaaand I got ninja'd by cicatrix on this one

It's very hard to estimate this sort of stuff when you only have one example to work with, obviously. But assuming that humans are not too far from the "average" civilization, when I look at the current fields of focus of the human race, I don't think that it's super likely that there's many inter-stellar capable civilizations living within 1-2 star systems of eachother.

That being said, what I believe might be more likely is that life either evolves on two different planets in a single system, or spread on two (or more) planetary bodies in the same system through panspermia. It's a lot easier to notice and communicate with your planetary neighbor than it is going intersolar. And if two such civilizations can somehow find a way to co-exist and co-operate, then things can get really interesting. Two-planet civilization without the need for actual travel? Yes please!

[Merandix]

I think the Fermi-paradox is one of those paradoxes that stems from a guess in the wrong direction.

The age of the universe suggests that the oldest civilisations likely aren't THAT much older than us. That leaves only a fairly small period of time to discover us. And even then that civilisation would be required to have zero ethics. Any sane civilisation would stay out of pre-interstellar civilisations (us).

Besides, you need to fly into a very specific 50-100 ly radius area to even DETECT our presence.

My main problems with the Fermi-paradox?

- assumes too much age variation in civilisations

- assumes very high probability of life sustaining planets, life, and intelligent life.

- assumes every interstellar capable civilisation has no research ethics.

[Argylas]

Oh boy. Prepare for a long read.

I really am a bit pessimistic every time someone mentions the Drake equation as a proof that the universe must be teeming with life. Intelligent life nonetheless. However, what bugs me the most is that people always look at just one part of the equation - the one about how many planets, stars and galaxies are there in the universe. Yes, the number is mind-boggling. Yes, in all practical terms it almost verges on infinity.

However, what about the parts in Drake's equation about "the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets" and "the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point"? We have no proof whatsoever that life-supporting planets are abundant. Yes, we know life can continue to thrive in extremely inhospitable places - like in extreme heat, extreme cold and even survive in the vacuum of space. But what if in order for life to start there must be a very narrow and specific set of circumstances present? Like for example if the tilt of the Earth was off by a millionth of a degree less, life could not have originated here at the time it did? Or if the distance of the Earth to the sun was with a couple of hundred kilometers less, this would have made the originating of the precursors of living microorganism impossible?

No one can give even a guesstimation what are the chances for a planet to have just the right circumstances to allow for life to originate on it. We have only one instance of this happening we know of and this isn't statistically viable to predict anything. Some estimates for the number of stars in the universe put them at at least a quadrillion stars (that's one with 24 zeroes behind it). But what if the chances of having a planet with just the right conditions to originate life (which may be way smaller than just being habitable) and having life actually originate there are less than one in a quadrillion? Then we are screwed big time.

Now, I may sound pessimistic, but I just wanted to warn against overestimating the chances for life in the universe based only on the part of the Drake equation we know something about. Until we find extraterrestrial life we can't even begin to fathom what the number of life originating planets in the universe are. Hopefully its big and we soon find signs of life on Mars, Titan or Europa (or somewhere else).

Also, what if there is life around us, but we simply cannot realize it is there? We still don't have a very good understanding and definition of what living matter actually is and what differentiates it from non-living matter. And we continue to find organisms and particles that stretch our imaginary divide between the two (like viruses and many others). What if the differences between us and the aliens are temporal? Like if there is life on Mars, but its looks like a pile of rocks and it takes tens of thousands of years for it to make a simple movement (having a life span of millions of years for example)? We would never notice it is alive. Or what if its scale is just too big for us to comprehend - like a solar system, which is "alive" and intelligent, but its thoughts are minute variations in the orbits of the planets orbiting its sun, which we cannot even detect? These are all great ideas for sci-fi fodder, but the truth is we can't even begin to imagine the possibilities.

So these are two of the reasons the little green men have not visited us yet. Others include the small area of space we have reached around us, the possibility aliens are avoiding detection intentionally, etc., etc. However, I somehow think they are less likely than the ones stipulated above. I really, really hope there's intelligent life out there we can comprehend and detect in our stellar vicinity. However, I prefer not to get my hopes too high before we receive any definitive proof that such a thing exists.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Argylas

[EdFred]

I chalk it up to the Star Trek: First Contact situation. We haven't done anything worth noticing.

[cicatrix]

I still think that we are the most advanced race so far... probably one of the most advanced ones.

[Cirocco]

well... while it is true that we don't have a conclusive idea of exactly which parameters are required for life as we know it to start, we do know what conditions are required for the chemistry required for certain basic aspects of life as we know it (self-replicating organic molecules for DNA, fosfolipid double-layer for a cell wall). It's not too huge a leap to assume that the conditions required for life to begin lie close to the ones required for all the building blocks.

Of course, like Drake's equation, this is all based on certain assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, but the trick is to make sure the assumptions seem as probable as possible.

I do agree that in searching for or hypothesizing about extraterrestrial life, one should always include "life as we know it" as a caveat where applicable.

[magnemoe]

Until lately, yes this was a thing in the form of Gamma Ray Bursts and Hypernovae events. Any developing life would get reset by several million years or more by such an event, or outright scoured from the surface of a planet.

Beyond that, we've got issues with getting radio signals through the interstellar medium, meaning only the most massive and directed bursts of radio signals go through, and also that small issue of 'Space is Big, and there is a lot of Big Space'.

Yes, add that this was more common in an younger galaxy making it hard to get very old civilizations.

As for radio signals, why send them, note that we are using less and less high power radio but move to small low power cells.

With no FTL its unlikely someone will spread far.

[mrfox]

We (humans) are used to thinking that 'we are a young race' and the others might be more advanced than we are.

Think again this universe is still only 13 bn years old. So there might be not enough time for advanced life to emerge across it .

It can quite possible be the answer to the question? What if WE are the oldest race (one of the oldest races) in the universe? What if WE are the most advanced? What if the others are still trying to figure out fire? What if WE are the ones to discover the others and not vice verse?

Or perhaps, our earth being over 4 billion years old, and yet our civilization has merely existed in the last blink of an eye, other civilizations have already visited eons ago and are now long gone.

[wasmic]

Humans are, unfortunately, one of these violent races.

How do you know? We might be one of the most peaceful species in the Milky Way. That thought makes me shudder from trying to imagine the atrocities that may have happened throughout the galaxy...

[Vaporo]

How do you know? We might be one of the most peaceful species in the Milky Way. That thought makes me shudder from trying to imagine the atrocities that may have happened throughout the galaxy...

That always bugs me. People always assume that humans are horrible, crude, honorless, violent monstrosities that are below every other life in existence. Every time I read a book or see a movie where the aliens don't contact humans (or the elves and dwarves refuse to associate with us) because we are so violent I get a little twitch in my eye. I would like to see a book where humans visit another planet and, instead of finding the most peaceful creatures in existence, find a race composed largely of sadistic maniacs that we are afraid will develop space travel because they are so violent (or better yet, humans go out into space and find that most alien races are more violent than us).

We still don't have a very good understanding and definition of what living matter actually is and what differentiates it from non-living matter. And we continue to find organisms and particles that stretch our imaginary divide between the two (like viruses and many others). What if the differences between us and the aliens are temporal? Like if there is life on Mars, but its looks like a pile of rocks and it takes tens of thousands of years for it to make a simple movement (having a life span of millions of years for example)? We would never notice it is alive. Or what if its scale is just too big for us to comprehend - like a solar system, which is "alive" and intelligent, but its thoughts are minute variations in the orbits of the planets orbiting its sun, which we cannot even detect? These are all great ideas for sci-fi fodder, but the truth is we can't even begin to imagine the possibilities.

Have you ever read Dragon's Egg. It's a book about life that develops on a neutron star. It's quite interesting.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Vaporo

[Jovus]

Any serious attempt at this question cannot be prosecuted. All any answer does is expose the biases of the postulant. There simply isn't any data (much less enough).

One other interesting possibility: perhaps it is disadvantageous to contact other life. There could be any number of reasons for this, and we see this behaviour in various earth biological systems as well. This disadvantage could run the gamut from there being an actively hostile force that hunts down and exterminates species who try to communicate (cf. Saberhagen's Berserkers) to it simply being an otherwise-useless expenditure of energy that has been optimized away (e.g., Watts' Blindsight).

Back to the first point, it's a popular idea that species tend to wipe themselves out before reaching a sufficient level of civilization. This is a very temporal viewpoint, made popular only by the situation of the Cold War and the driving philosophies of the civilizations behind it, i.e. 'progress' as sublated from the days of H.G. Wells and so forth. For kindred proof, the answer at that time was 'because they don't want to warn other species before they take over,' though they didn't have the question as strictly formulated as we do.

It has at least two principal assumptions. The first is, species are ever capable or likely to wipe themselves out or cause their own civilizations to catastrophically and dramatically collapse. We have no proof of this capability even on our own planet, though it's a popular viewpoint that this is a constant danger. (See above about driving philosophies behind our current thought...) The second is, over time under 'normal', i.e. non-catastrophic conditions, civilization has a tendency to increase. There is no proof of this, and in fact I would argue the reverse is true. Over the long term we humans at least tend to move in a broad and chaotic cycle, and the idea of general increase comes from only looking at around the last 500 years of Western history or so (and doing it extreme violence, at that).

[magnemoe]

How do you know? We might be one of the most peaceful species in the Milky Way. That thought makes me shudder from trying to imagine the atrocities that may have happened throughout the galaxy...

Interestingly, humans are not violent compared to most larger mamals, more personal, how often are you in serious fights? Now look at other animals.

We are good at large scale organized stuff including war and has tools, witout neither it would be no civilization

[Streetwind]

Here's what I consider an excellent (if slightly long-ish) article on the Fermi Paradox, its implications, and its possible solutions... in layman's terms.

"Depending on where The Great Filter occurs, we’re left with three possible realities: We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re ....ed."

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

[Mazon Del]

That always bugs me. People always assume that humans are horrible, crude, honorless, violent monstrosities that are below every other life in existence. Every time I read a book or see a movie where the aliens don't contact humans (or the elves and dwarves refuse to associate with us) because we are so violent I get a little twitch in my eye. I would like to see a book where humans visit another planet and, instead of finding the most peaceful creatures in existence, find a race composed largely of sadistic maniacs that we are afraid will develop space travel because they are so violent (or better yet, humans go out into space and find that most alien races are more violent than us).

The problem with all the stories where this actually takes place, is that through some route or another, humans have become hyper peaceful, and the 'hyper violent' aliens are...just human grade violent. I agree that this is somewhat frustrating.

[Accelerando]

Honestly, why should we be hearing from other life-forms if there's so much of it? Most radio signals, as Cirocco mentioned, as well as most other kinds of signal, with few exceptions drop off into the cosmic background noise after around 2 light-years with our current technology, well before reaching any other stars. And as technology improves, our radio signals get fainter and weaker, because we can afford to transmit more, with less. I think that more advanced technological sapient life-forms could easily be invisible just because they don't want to pay the power bill to transmit signals around the galaxy.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Accelerando

[magnemoe]

The problem with all the stories where this actually takes place, is that through some route or another, humans have become hyper peaceful, and the 'hyper violent' aliens are...just human grade violent. I agree that this is somewhat frustrating.

As for humans do you use Swedes or isil terrorists as your norm?

As for being violent, you also have to be smart to avoid getting wiped out by your enemies, being very violent tend to give you lots of enemies.

Violent criminals tend to also have poor impulse control, its this part who send them to court.