The Fermi Paradox is a conundrum proposed by pioneer physicist Enrico Fermi that questions the likelihood of Intelligent Extraterrestrial life. It begins with the Drake Equation or some derivative which guesstimates the possible number of intelligent civilizations in the universe, and then extrapolates expansion rates into the universe from a point location within the cosmos of that species or culture. The paradox concludes that there should have been enough ET’s over the last 14 billion years that even if they moved at velocities achievable by human technology today, they could have swarmed over the galaxy, or even the cluster to which our galaxy belongs, many times over.I think it’s fair to say that we humans don’t know enough about the universe to draw any firm conclusions from the paradox. Still, it’s an interesting thought experiment; The galaxy is over 100,000 light years from rim to rim and contains perhaps 400 billion stars each of which could easily have, on average, a half dozen planets. The galaxy is perhaps 10 billion years old. If there were a single fledgling interstellar civilization in all that space and time, and it expanded away from it’s planet or point of origin on average at the measly rate of one light year every ten thousands years, slower than the Voyager Spacecraft are traveling, and grew in all directions, it would take a mere one billion years to get from one end of the galaxy to another and completely fill it up along the way. Humans could begin constructing spacecraft that could move at ten times that rate right now if we put our minds to it. So if we could spread all over the galaxy, why hasn’t someone already spread all over us? Once cultures started spreading like this it seems likely a ruthless sort of selection would kick in and favor the culture or the faction within a culture which does so the most aggresively, quickly, and successfully. It’s hard to see what would stop it.
The first thing that comes to mind is that none of the equations take into consideration how long it takes to develop and evolve intelligence capable of star trekking, let alone have the desire to do so.
To win the Occam’s Razor argument, let us start with what we do know and go from there:
- We know of only one species that has developed the capability of shooting things out of orbit
- This ability, for all intents and purposes took approimately 4.5 billion years from beginning to end
- As of right now and to the dismay of cryptozoologists and Captain Kirk, neither whales, dolphins or any other creature has developed the ability to launch a space-farring civilization
- Currently there is little archaeological or biological evidence to suggest that another “intelligent” creature evolved before H. sapiens did on Earth, created the capacity to fly into space and either blew themselves up or took everything plus the kitchen into space with them and disappeared without a trace
Some thoughts on scenarios posted by DarkSyd:
- Periodic annihilation: that every now and then part of the galaxy decides to downsize itself and blow Sector Y into oblivion, the same sector which houses a newly minted space-farring civilization. But this is really just a variation of nature-vs-civilization themes. What if an asteroid whiped out humanity right now? Despite the ability to launch things into space we would all be primordial slime starting the cycle over again. If this could happen to us, it could very well happen to any other alien species.
- The Prime Directive notion, imagine if any civilization practiced right now on Earth. Instead of trading technologies and scarce resources with “foreign aliens” both sides must waste valuable productive resources in the production of goods and services. Non-coercive trade is always in the interest of both parties as it ends in a win-win scenario. Gene Roddenberry never took a class on comparative or absolute advantage.
- X-files: all I have to say to someone that truly believes space-farring extraterrestrials live among us is, there are hundreds of thousands of individuals that make their careers studying the cosmos, when was the last time that any of these astronomers reported seeing a Death Star or Borg Cube? Do you really think there is a conspiracy involved in an industry that can be entered with a $150 telescope from Walmart?
Currently I find myself agreeing with the musings of PZ Meyers on ET intelligence. Furthermore, could it not be possible that Homo sapiens are the first one’s to hatch out of a proverbial egg? Are we trailblazers for the galaxy? Are we the (un)lucky ones that managed to squeeze through the collapsing walls and just barely be in the right places at the right times?
Another thought is that for instance, what if humanity hits the scifi “singularity” and we biologically merge with robots, computers and Coleco Vision? In addition, what if at some point down the road, we figure out how to dematerialize any form of matter into usable energy safely and efficiently (but unfortunately not perpetually as in there is some kind of loss/friction). At that point we could calculate how much energy each one of us requires to consume and how much energy we had altogether and then figure out the total time we would have to live as a species (barring a cosmic hiccup). So, instead of wasting resources by launching Welcome Mats into space, we begin a massive, solarwide attempt at collecting every piece of matter including radiating photons and store them in some battery-like form to be used later on. If that is the case then we might build a Dyson sphere around the host stars for further consumption in some form and fashion. Thus, all super-duper-smarty-pant aliens would be “invisible” to our current efforts at observing them because they have done just this (blocked out infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray type of radiation as they could likely try and operate at near-absolute zero temperatures for lossless efficiency).
That fulfills my non-gym oriented activity of the day. Note: if you ever get poison ivy try, IvyStat, it works.