# Fermi's Paradox: Could We Detect Ourselves? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 28, 2004, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045 "2004-11-28T22:55:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/61 "2018-01-12T11:09:17Z")
TSBG, that short story you mentioned is “The Road Not Taken” by Harry Turtledove, and I can’t believe I managed to beat Andy L to posting about this. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/62 "2018-01-12T11:42:28Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > Yes and no…on the one hand what do high-tech cultures want with Yanomamo people, on the other hand, maybe there’s advanced medicine lurking undiscovered in their habitat–that’s a viable pursuit for our own human scientists. I can imagine that life differs across the galaxy in ways such that studying our biome might be useful to aliens. The aliens that are the subject of my speculation would be immeasurably farther removed from us than the most advanced technological culture on earth is from our most primitive jungle tribes. Ray Kurzweil suggests that within a hundred years or so we ourselves will be transforming ourselves into bio-cyborg hybrids, an era in which he claims full brain uploading and general purpose AI exceeding human capabilities in broad domains will be commonplace. He may have the timing wrong, but here’s the thing. We tend to get excited about incipient technologies and often over-estimate what is possible in the short term. But at the same time, we tend to overlook and greatly underestimate revolutionary changes that are possible in the long term, because it’s hard to grasp the concept of exponential technological growth and the directions it may take. And here I’m talking about the very, very long term – hundreds of thousands of years. And in an alien context – not that it matters, because humans in that distant future will be just about as alien to us as anything imaginable. So my speculation is that such hypothetical advanced aliens would have no use for or interest in our biome since they have outgrown any need to have any biome of their own, and have long since mastered such biological trivialities. They themselves would not have had any biological strata in their beings for hundreds of thousands of years. They’re immortal and independent of material substance. Perhaps they’re exploring the wonders of other universes with entirely different physical laws, and have mastered those, too. What would they care about setting up a colony on Planet Earth like 17th century colonial hegemonists? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/63 "2018-01-12T12:43:36Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > I have heard about–but not read–a science fiction story about alien contact, and I may have heard about it on the SD MBs. [You’re welcome](https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf). ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/64 "2018-01-12T13:55:46Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > TSBG, that short story you mentioned is “The Road Not Taken” by Harry Turtledove, and I can’t believe I managed to beat Andy L to posting about this. I overslept this morning! ---
**Author:** ![blood63](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/97f17d/32.png) [@blood63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blood63)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/65 "2018-01-12T14:21:33Z")
> [@toadspittle](#): > > Actually, that’s only one of the solutions (we’re the first advanced civilization) to the paradox. There could also be a galactic quarantine on us underdeveloped critters (a la the prime directive), or it may be impossible for a civilization to survive its own coming of age (we tend to blow ourselves up). > > [I think there are others, but I don’t recall them.] I like to think that the reason that we are not being visiting by highly advanced civilizations is that interstellar space travel is not feasible. At sub light speeds, travelling to other stars is not a possibility. It would take way too long. And while obtaining the energy to reach practical speeds might be possible, storing the energy to stop where you want to is not. Why is this idea never mentioned with regard to the Fermi paradox? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/66 "2018-01-12T15:28:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **wolfpup** : > > Ray Kurzweil suggests that within a hundred years or so we ourselves will be transforming ourselves into bio-cyborg hybrids, an era in which he claims full brain uploading and general purpose AI exceeding human capabilities in broad domains will be commonplace. He may have the timing wrong, but here’s the thing… Kurzweil has the timing _very_ wrong. We already turned ourselves into bio-cyborg hybrids thousands of years ago. There’s nothing new about “the Singularity”. > [@](#): > > Quoth **blood63** : > > I like to think that the reason that we are not being visiting by highly advanced civilizations is that interstellar space travel is not feasible. At sub light speeds, travelling to other stars is not a possibility. It would take way too long. And while obtaining the energy to reach practical speeds might be possible, storing the energy to stop where you want to is not. > Why is this idea never mentioned with regard to the Fermi paradox? Humans have lousy intuition when it comes to very large numbers (where, in practice, “very large” is more than a hundred or so). Fermi’s whole point was that he actually calculated how long it would take to colonize the Galaxy, and he also calculated how long would be “too long”, and it turns out that, in fact, the first number is much, much less than the second one. ---
**Author:** ![blood63](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/97f17d/32.png) [@blood63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blood63)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/67 "2018-01-12T15:35:44Z")
Please explain this further. I think my point still stands. No matter what time frame, the size of spaces make interstellar travel for intelligent life impossible. ---
**Author:** ![joema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@joema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joema)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/68 "2018-01-12T16:48:37Z")
> [@Blue\_Blistering\_Barnacle](#): > > …Also, I’m no expert, but I’m questioning the range estimates for detection of radio that have been offered. Could we really pick up Arecibo from opposite side of the galaxy? Same for the ranges for commercial radio and military radio. The numbers seem way high relative to comments I’ve seen in other threads… On page 150 of the book “If the Universe is Teaming with Alieans, where is Everybody?” contains the statement about two Aricibo telescopes being able to communicate across the galaxy. I’m not sure how that was calculated. > **[If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?](https://books.google.com/books?id=Y111CQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA150&ots=ksoJjL9jra&dq=arecibo%20other%20side%20of%20the%20galaxy&pg=PA150#v=onepage&q=arecibo%20other%20side%20of%20the%20galaxy&f=false)** > > Given the fact that there are perhaps 400 billion stars in our Galaxy alone, and perhaps 400 billion galaxies in the Universe, it stands to reason that somewhere out there, in the 14-billion-year-old cosmos, there is or once was a civilization at... > **[If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions...](https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Teeming-Aliens-WHERE-EVERYBODY-ebook/dp/B001GQ21OU)** > > If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life - Kindle edition by Webb, Stephen. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or... Some possible detection ranges were discussed in this thread: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=20364700&posted=1#post20364700](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=20364700&posted=1#post20364700) According to one expert in the field, our current technology could detect earth-like TV and radio leakage signals – IOW inadvertent emissions – from an extra-solar planet 1,000 light years away. If the “alien” signal was intentional, IOW directional and restricted to stars with rocky planets in a habitable zone, the detection distance would be far greater. That calculation was not assuming current radio telescopes periodically taking a peak at certain stars, but a $6-10 billion directed effort. That’s a fair amount of money but it’s less than the less than the Large Hadron Collider, about 1/2 the cost of the ITER fusion reactor prototype, and about 1/10th the cost of the Apollo project. So it wouldn’t require a “mega-pyramid” scale effort. However as already discussed we have no idea if non-terrestrial intelligent life (if it existed) would use RF signals at all. Even within our recent memory the earth’s high-power RF emissions are waning due to increased use of fiber optics. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/69 "2018-01-13T02:57:27Z")
> [@joema](#): > > However as already discussed we have no idea if non-terrestrial intelligent life (if it existed) would use RF signals at all. Even within our recent memory the earth’s high-power RF emissions are waning due to increased use of fiber optics. It’s plausible that artificial RF emissions are only a signature of intelligent life during a very brief window of time during its evolution. If so, that’s a very powerful explanation for what we’re NOT seeing. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/70 "2018-01-13T03:19:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Kurzweil has the timing _very_ wrong. We already turned ourselves into bio-cyborg hybrids thousands of years ago. There’s nothing new about “the Singularity”. I think it’s fair to say that what Kurzweil is hypothesizing is a huge quantum leap beyond the development of tools, even advanced technological ones. It’s the literal integration of our own biology with cybernetics, with the ultimate endpoint being the complete elimination of biological dependence from ourselves and from what it means to be human. Today we still get sick and die just as the caveman did, with modern medicine being only the briefest of crutches. If tools and scientific discovery were the first great leap of human development, this would be the second. > [@blood63](#): > > I like to think that the reason that we are not being visiting by highly advanced civilizations is that interstellar space travel is not feasible. At sub light speeds, travelling to other stars is not a possibility. It would take way too long. And while obtaining the energy to reach practical speeds might be possible, storing the energy to stop where you want to is not. > Why is this idea never mentioned with regard to the Fermi paradox? It’s never mentioned because it’s not valid. What does “way too long” mean? Too long for who? Under what circumstances? The second point, about energy, is only an apparent technological limitation with our present capabilities. It isn’t a theoretical limitation like the speed of light, which is in any case only a limitation from an external frame of reference and not from that of the traveler. As **Chronos** mentioned, Fermi’s calculations are not in dispute. What I speculate is questionable is whether highly advanced beings _ **would** _ take such a course of action, not whether they could. It’s kind of like a primitive jungle tribe speculating that if they had our advanced modern technologies, they could build really terrific spears and become better hunters. In fact, they wouldn’t do any of those things at all. They would build cities, schools, factories, and farms. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/71 "2018-01-13T05:14:55Z")
Of the stars within 21ly, [I see](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/nearstar.html) 15 Ks, 6 Gs, an F, 2 As and a bunch of Ms and low-energy dwarfs and degenerates. Ms, as dwarfs or giants, are unlikely candidates for LAWKI, and the F and the As are too short-lived to support the kind of long track evolution that gave rise to us. That leaves 21 viable candidates, except, the number is a bit smaller because some of those are binary or clustered. Red dwarf Ms, or possibly some of the other low-energy stars, might give rise to some exotic form of life that would be great to study but not very easy to understand or communicate with. To find something familiar, we would need to look around a G or K, which would have to have a serviceable planetary system (which might be moons of gas giants) and a suitable metallicity – two of these systems show higher than the sun, most of the others a little or a lot lower, the latter being mostly not so promising. So, in the ~20ly range, there might be 3 or 4 systems of interest for LAWKI. Which does not fill me with optimism, given the numerous other variables the gave us this delightful system. Stray just a little too far from our arrangement and whatever develops, if anything, will not be something we can have a beer with. The farther out you get, the less likely any kind of signal, much less a decodable one, is. Although, there is quite a lot of farther out that we probably cannot get EM signals from. ---
**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/72 "2018-01-13T05:29:20Z")
Just to throw this into the mix, also… I don’t remember where I heard this statement: “The universe is 100% malevolent but only 20% effective” but this may have bearing in this discussion. The centers of galaxies, or any place the star densities are high, is quite inhospitable to the evolution of life. Radiation levels and other cosmic catastrophes are just too high for multi-cellular life to develop. It’s only out “in the boonies” – the less populated spiral arms like where we are in our galaxy – that the radiation levels are low enough (and supernovas, pulsars, black holes, and the odd gamma ray bursts infrequent enough) to give life a chance to evolve. So the number of potential places life could evolve is reduced and the distances between them greater making communication or colonization less practical. J. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/73 "2018-01-13T05:46:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **wolfpup** : > > I think it’s fair to say that what Kurzweil is hypothesizing is a huge quantum leap beyond the development of tools, even advanced technological ones. Yup. And he’s not wrong when he says that it’ll happen within thirty years. But the thing is, it’s happened _every_ thirty years, throughout all of history. Ever wonder why old people are often grumpy, especially about newfangled technology and what “kids these days” are doing? It’s because they’ve already lived through two Singularities, and as a result find themselves in a completely incomprehensible world. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2018, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045/74 "2018-01-13T09:13:37Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > One corollary to all this, in my view, is that the Fermi paradox is not really much of a paradox at all because there are so many possible answers to it. As I mentioned in another recent thread, “paradox” here is just a fancy-sounding title for the observation / realization. Yes there are many possible explanations for why we haven’t seen evidence of ETI yet, but we don’t know which are correct right now, and the whole point of Fermi’s “paradox” is to have that conversation. > [@](#): > > In order to be a putative paradox at all it must implicitly suppose that highly advanced forms of life perhaps hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than ourselves would essentially have the goals and motivations of 17th century European hegemonists: that they would want to colonize and build empires. …or that they would be interested in exploring, or any other motivation they may have for travelling, or that they would engage in any kind of engineering that we could detect from earth (e.g. Dyson sphere). Again, the paradox is not making a positive statement, it’s just asking the question. If no species wish to explore, or do anything we can detect from earth then of course that’s a valid reason why we have not detected any ETI. But at this time we don’t _know_ that that’s the case, and we can debate the likelihood / plausibility versus other hypotheses. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fermis-paradox-could-we-detect-ourselves/277045.md?page=3)