# Is the Fermi Paradox becoming more acute?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 10, 2016, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574 "2016-07-10T16:35:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/61 "2016-07-14T02:57:54Z")
Well, if they’re looking for life, Earth has been farting suspicious amounts of oxygen for a couple billion years. Waiting for TV signals seems stupid. It could take a thousands of years for the signal to get anywhere and many many thousands of years for them to get here and who knows what’s waiting for them when they get here? I’m guessing in thousands of years we’ll be capable of defending ourselves, if that’s the sort of galaxy we live in.
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/62 "2016-07-14T04:02:08Z")
> [@levdrakon](#):
>
> Well, if they’re looking for life, Earth has been farting suspicious amounts of oxygen for a couple billion years. Waiting for TV signals seems stupid. It could take a thousands of years for the signal to get anywhere and many many thousands of years for them to get here and who knows what’s waiting for them when they get here? I’m guessing in thousands of years we’ll be capable of defending ourselves, if that’s the sort of galaxy we live in.
Against an antagonist who is a thousand years more advanced than us and populates multiple planets? Seems about as likely as a 10th century Eskimo village defending themselves from a 2016 US army battalion.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/63 "2016-07-14T06:09:46Z")
> [@Shawn1767](#):
>
> The thing I find ridiculous about the Fermi Paradox is that according to it, the human race doesn’t exist. We haven’t colonized the galaxy. I guess if someone on another planet comes up with their own version of the Fermi paradox, they’d conclude we don’t exist. Also, it usually only takes into account the Milky Way and excludes the billions upon billions of other galaxies that may harbor planets and life. The distances are just too vast to say for certain that “Welp, because we haven’t seen complete colonization of our lone Milky Way galaxy, life must not exist!” I think it’s idiotic.
Fermi’s Paradox does not apply to us because we have unambiguous evidence of our own existence. It only applies to beings whose existence is unsupported by any evidence, when evidence ought to be abundant.
As for the rest of your post you might be interested to know that the SETI Institute itself completely and vehemently disagrees with you:
[Fermi Paradox: Could we be alone in our part of the galaxy, or more dramatic still, could we be the only technological society in the universe?](http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/fermi-paradox)
(from link):
> [@](#):
>
> Fermi realized that **any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy**. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it’s quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.
>
> So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn’t see any clear indication that they’re out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: “where is everybody?”…
>
> A lot of folks have given this thought. The first thing they note is that \*\*the Fermi Paradox is a remarkably strong argument. \*\*You can quibble about the speed of alien spacecraft, and whether they can move at 1 percent of the speed of light or 10 percent of the speed of light. It doesn’t matter. You can argue about how long it would take for a new star colony to spawn colonies of its own. It still doesn’t matter. **Any halfway reasonable assumption about how fast colonization could take place still ends up with time scales that are profoundly shorter than the age of the Galaxy** …
>
> Consequently, scientists in and out of the SETI community have conjured up other arguments to deal with the conflict between the idea that aliens should be everywhere and our failure (so far) to find them.\*\* In the 1980s, dozens of papers were published to address the Fermi Paradox. They considered technical and sociological arguments for why the aliens weren’t hanging out nearby. Some even insisted that there was no paradox at all: the reason we don’t see evidence of extraterrestrials is because there aren’t any.\*\*
So: professional SETI specialists take Fermi seriously, but have apparently put no dent worth mentioning in his argument. If they can’t do it then you would do well to give up and try your luck against some other titan of the history of science, because Fermi has you soundly beaten.
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/64 "2016-07-14T06:50:09Z")
> [@dracoi](#):
>
> I’m not sure I agree with you about that.
>
> First, if you had light-speed travel, the time dilation means that the trip would be near-instantaneous from the passenger’s perspective.
If you had light-speed travel, you would _turn into light_. Which is gonna be a job to clean up, I can tell you that 🙂 It’s just not feasible on any practical level.
Even 5% of the speed of light would be a mind boggling achievement to reach, one that would require levels of magitek, magic materials and energy generation schemes we can’t even fathom.
> [@](#):
>
> Second, a self-replicating probe would be a lot like the Voyager probes. There was a short-term goal, but they are still providing useful information decades later. We’d be looking at perhaps 100 years to get to the nearest stars (assuming 5-10% of light as a more realistic speed), but then it would produce data on a continuous basis forever.
And that data would come back home 10 years later, and no concrete action could be taken upon that data for at least another 100. Garbage. We can’t plan that far ahead. Hell, we can’t plan 5 years from now.
> [@](#):
>
> Third, humans have a relatively short life span. There’s no reason an alien species couldn’t live 10,000 years and have a very different perspective on what “too long” means.
> Fourth, by the time a race gets to Dyson-sphere technology, they can’t live entirely on their planet anymore. That much energy would fry the planet. So they probably live on space stations of some sort. Once you’re used to living on a space station, it’s not such a stretch to put engines on it and send it off to some other star. Even if you know it will be your grandkids who arrive, the impact on your personal life is pretty small because you were always going to be living on that space station. Only the view out the windows has changed.
Sure, but at that point it becomes all pointless speculation. I was answering the question from our own point of view, and within a timeframe that can be measured in generations. It’s quite possible there is a species out there that lives for untold aeons, lives on a migrant fleet and has already colonized or consumed hundreds of thousands of worlds we can’t even see from here (Tyranids, anyone ?).
What difference does it make ?
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### Author:  [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/65 "2016-07-14T08:19:59Z")
> [@Kobal2](#):
>
> It’s quite possible there is a species out there that lives for untold aeons, lives on a migrant fleet and has already colonized or consumed hundreds of thousands of worlds we can’t even see from here (Tyranids, anyone ?).
>
> What difference does it make ?
If we are prepared to accept civilisations that have colonised hundreds of thousands of worlds, then we need to ba able to find reasons why this colonisation hav not extended to every system in the galaxy. There are lots of possible reasons why such an expansive civilisation might not expand to colonise every world, but we don’t know which one is the real answer. And of course we don’t even know if expansive civilisations exist in the first place.
This is the heart of the paradox; the question can be stated simply, but we don’t know which of a myriad answers is the correct one. Or even if there is only one answer. But if the reason they are not here turns out to be an existential threat to our own civilisation then it is worth considering.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/66 "2016-07-14T13:58:55Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#):
>
> The issue with the Fermi Paradox is that there’s so many assumptions baked into it that it’s impossible to even begin to know which one is incorrect and by how much … [snip]
It is a fact that Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen are relatively common in our galaxy. These elements combined with the single most common element, Hydrogen, produce methane, water, and ammonia. It looks like the only critical factor is that this commonplace water needs to be in it’s liquid state, then life will spring forth with near certainty.
Based on this _assumption_, and it is an assumption is every way, it would logically follow that we should be finding life out there. The basic building blocks are common, we have time in great abundance, a sun that is average in every way, there’s no reason we shouldn’t find life thriving everyplace we look.
Thus the Fermi Paradox, “Where is everybody?”
Of course, there may well be other critical factors required and we’ll not even begin to understand what they are until we actually do find life out there. The search continues …
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### Author:  [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/67 "2016-07-14T14:59:00Z")
> [@Blake](#):
>
> Against an antagonist who is a thousand years more advanced than us and populates multiple planets? Seems about as likely as a 10th century Eskimo village defending themselves from a 2016 US army battalion.
Well, they could be 10k years more advanced, but assuming FTL is impossible for everybody, it could take 1,000s of years for them to spot our communications, and easily much more than that for them to send anything here. We could easily have reached our own “tech singularity” by that time so would they really be able to do anything to us at that point? Anyway, it just seems if their goal was to wipe out life, the Earth has been showing signs of life for a couple billion years so they must be waiting for signals and that seems wasteful. Sort of closing the barn doors after the horses have left (or developed their own hyper-level of tech).
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/68 "2016-07-14T19:49:00Z")
**Nelson Pike** : Cool quotes from SETI! Thanks!
Alas, I would have to disagree (mildly) with one thing in that quote: yes, ten million years is a very short time in the history of the galaxy…but it is a very long time in the history of individual species. Humanity has not existed for a tenth that time, and rocketry-competent humanity not for one one-hundred-thousandth of that time.
The longevity of civilizations is one of the scariest terms in the Drake Equation. We have no way to know if a technological/industrial civilization is actually sustainable or not. There are reasons to hope it is, but it is far from certain.
Entire civilizations might rise…and vanish…in the short time it takes our rocket to make the journey to the nearest extra-solar life-sustaining planets.
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### Author:  [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/69 "2016-07-14T20:07:45Z")
> [@Kobal2](#):
>
> And that data would come back home 10 years later, and no concrete action could be taken upon that data for at least another 100. Garbage. We can’t plan that far ahead. Hell, we can’t plan 5 years from now.
Isn’t that a lot like asking why we are sending probes to Pluto when no concrete action can be taken on that data? Or probes sent to Mars looking for life that may be a billion years extinct?
Any information about an extra-solar system would be of enormous theoretical value. There’s only so many planet-formation or life-origination simulations you can run against our sample size of 1. Having even three or four detailed extra-solar surveys would be pure gold to certain scientists.
You can argue that there’s not much practical application for theories of solar system formation and I wouldn’t disagree. It’s hardly useful for building the better mouse trap, but we’re still spending a lot of time and money studying that issue. Humans are just incurably curious, and I think a similar level of curiosity would drive most intelligent species.
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### Author:  [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/70 "2016-07-14T21:34:07Z")
> [@levdrakon](#):
>
> Well, if they’re looking for life, Earth has been farting suspicious amounts of oxygen for a couple billion years. Waiting for TV signals seems stupid. It could take a thousands of years for the signal to get anywhere and many many thousands of years for them to get here and who knows what’s waiting for them when they get here? I’m guessing in thousands of years we’ll be capable of defending ourselves, if that’s the sort of galaxy we live in.
Suspicious amounts of oxygen may correlate to a high probability of life, but it doesn’t necessarily correlate to a high probability of _intelligent life. If the aliens got a load of Fred Mertz however, and figured a significant % of Earthlings looked and acted (“aw, shuddup, Ethel!”_) like him, they may be motivated to exterminate us as gesture of kindness to the universe to prevent Mertz’s from spreading out and populating the galaxy and beyond.
Apparently, our early radio signals have traveled ~200 light years from earth thus far. According to [this link,](http://www.icc.dur.ac.uk/~tt/Lectures/Galaxies/LocalGroup/Back/250lys.html) ~250,000 stars reside within 250 light years of us. There well could be a super-intelligent civilization or two lurking within earshot of our signals. And, if as I posited earlier, an advanced civilization may want to, and be capable of, cloaking it’s existence to prying eyes/ears, we’d be oblivious to them. A ~200+ light year alien drone sortie could be a _Sunday drive in the park_ for a super-intelligent civilization. Who knows?
Do I think this is a likely scenario? No. But, it’s possible. The inverse square law degrades signal strength and despite wishful dreaming of FTL travel via wormholes and whatnot, I don’t believe anything approaching c is possible for any type of non-light matter. But, maybe ~50% c is achievable—and that could potentially put us at risk.
Solution: we need to start broadcasting photos of me (wearing my form-fitting boxer-briefs) into outer space. I’ll sacrifice myself to the wanton desires of alien space-chicks in order to protect mankind from planetary annihilation. You’re welcome.
> [@Blake](#):
>
> Against an antagonist who is a thousand years more advanced than us and populates multiple planets? Seems about as likely as a 10th century Eskimo village defending themselves from a 2016 US army battalion.
The \*Eskimos \*would no doubt recruit polar bears and use their 100+ types of snow to level the playing field against the U.S. battalion.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/71 "2016-07-14T22:28:00Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> **Nelson Pike** : Cool quotes from SETI! Thanks!
>
> Alas, I would have to disagree (mildly) with one thing in that quote: yes, ten million years is a very short time in the history of the galaxy…but it is a very long time in the history of individual species. Humanity has not existed for a tenth that time, and rocketry-competent humanity not for one one-hundred-thousandth of that time.
>
> The longevity of civilizations is one of the scariest terms in the Drake Equation. We have no way to know if a technological/industrial civilization is actually sustainable or not. There are reasons to hope it is, but it is far from certain.
>
> Entire civilizations might rise…and vanish…in the short time it takes our rocket to make the journey to the nearest extra-solar life-sustaining planets.
YVW- glad you are enjoying the site.
Wiki indicates that before the impact of humans the average mammal species life expectancy was about 1 million years. (The longest species survival lifetime is thought to be some plankton species which lasted 13 million years)
However, IMO it is reasonable to suppose that our phenomenal intelligence may allow us to overcome even such imposing challenges as our homicidal mass psychology, and our Y chromosone degradation, thus sustaining the \*h. sapiens \* lifetime indefinitely.
As for the Drake equation it and not Fermi is the one I have trouble with, mainly because of the number of variables whose value we cannot in principle know of without a sample size of God knows what, randomly dawn from the galaxy, about ?half? of which is ?permanently? blocked from our view by the galactic center.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/72 "2016-07-14T22:30:12Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> ‘Beings composed of pure energy’ is a popular and fun SF trope, but has anyone ever come up with a remotely plausible framework for how that would work?
>
> Energy doesn’t tend to interact with other energy directly, and energy doesn’t tend to stay in one place without dissipating or dispersing.
>
> Never mind a sentient being. How can you make any complex system out of pure energy?
Your comments are correct. Your question’s answer is No.
It may be good to distinguish original life, and life-like organisms developed by such life, e.g. robots. One might be able to imagine the latter based on photon beams are something, but original life — life that evolves from the primordial non-life — almost certainly derives from specific complex molecules, e.g. DNA.
This fact was made clear to me by Erwin Schrödinger’s _What is Life?_ (Re-reading that short book just now, I can’t really recommend it however — it may be tedious and obvious.)
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### Author:  [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2016, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/73 "2016-07-14T23:10:47Z")
> [@Tibby or Not Tibby](#):
>
> Suspicious amounts of oxygen may correlate to a high probability of life, but it doesn’t necessarily correlate to a high probability of \*intelligent \*life.
True, but for them to wait until they find a radio signal doesn’t seem like a good idea if they’re afraid of other intelligent life. By the time they detect it, it could take them many thousands of years to get here and do anything about us. Our AIs and other technologies could be godlike by then. Just seems like waiting until you detect the signals it could well be too late if we do turn out to be aggressively expansive.
So, I’m not too worried about what they’re up to because they’ve had a couple billion years to find us and wipe us out and they haven’t, and I’m not that worried about them picking up our radio signals because that doesn’t seem like a good strategy if you have ill intent.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2016, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/74 "2016-07-15T01:39:38Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#):
>
> . . . However, IMO it is reasonable to suppose that our phenomenal intelligence may allow us to overcome even such imposing challenges as our homicidal mass psychology, and our Y chromosone degradation, thus sustaining the \*h. sapiens \* lifetime indefinitely.
I’d never heard of Y chromosome degradation. As a male, I find the concept worrying! 😉 What’s happening to us?
> [@](#):
>
> As for the Drake equation it and not Fermi is the one I have trouble with, mainly because of the number of variables whose value we cannot in principle know of without a sample size of God knows what, randomly dawn from the galaxy, about ?half? of which is ?permanently? blocked from our view by the galactic center.
I like the Drake Equation, but, yeah, a lot of the terms are unknown. To my mind, the D.E. is tautological: it’s self-evidently true. It’s just vague, because of the unknown terms.
It’s sort of like saying F = ma, where we know m, but don’t have a clue what a is. The equation is true…it just doesn’t help us a whole lot!
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2016, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/75 "2016-07-15T01:58:31Z")
The concept of Y chromosome degradation is not universally accepted:
> **[Y chromosome | Degeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome#Degeneration)**
>
> By one estimate, the human Y chromosome has lost 1,393 of its 1,438 original genes over the course of its existence, and linear extrapolation of this 1,393-gene loss over 300 million years gives a rate of genetic loss of 4.6 genes per million years. Continued loss of genes at the rate of 4.6 genes per million years would result in a Y chromosome with no functional genes – that is the Y chromosome would lose complete function – within the next 10 million years, or half that time with the curre How...
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### Author:  [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2016, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/76 "2016-07-15T02:13:39Z")
I admire the man as much as the next Chicagoan, but could Fermi simply be wrong?
Not that I think he is. I just think we are thinking on time scales that are simply too small. But why assume he is right?
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2016, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/77 "2016-07-15T02:39:10Z")
He wasn’t right or wrong, because he wasn’t making a factual claim. He was simply asking a question to stimulate our thinking about the subject. There are many potential answers tomthe Fermi Paradox.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2016, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/78 "2016-07-15T05:04:08Z")
> [@dropzone](#):
>
> I admire the man as much as the next Chicagoan, but could Fermi simply be wrong?
>
> Not that I think he is. I just think we are thinking on time scales that are simply too small. But why assume he is right?
Many contributors to this thread have tried to go beyond mere assumption.
Expert astrophysical consensus, including that of SETI proponent researchers, appears to be that Fermi’s argument is a good one.
See quotation and link in reply #63.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2016, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/79 "2016-07-15T05:34:08Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> The concept of Y chromosome degradation is not universally accepted:
>
> [Y chromosome - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome#Degeneration)
My information came from the book _Adam’s Curse_ by Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes. I have not read the relevant chapters for a while, I’ll take another look.
Wiki is often very helpful, and I have enjoyed it on a near-daily basis ever since I got wired years ago. However, sometimes it prints nonsense, and the first sentence of its section on Y chromosone degeneration is really off the deep end:
\*By one estimate, the human Y chromosome has lost 1,393 of its 1,438 original genes over the course of its existence, and linear extrapolation of this 1,393-gene loss over 300 million years gives a rate of genetic loss of 4.6 genes per million years. \*
The human Y-chromosone is not any _300 million years old_, (the human species in less than 300 _thousand_ years old, isn’t it?) and when one’s introduction is that badly falsified then everything that follows should be rewritten, preferably by different author.
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### Author:  [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)
#### Post date: [July 15, 2016, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-fermi-paradox-becoming-more-acute/759574/80 "2016-07-15T05:52:55Z")
Now MIT I’ll pay attention to:
[THEORY OF THE “ROTTING” Y CHROMOSOME DEALT A FATAL BLOW](http://wi.mit.edu/news/archive/2012/theory-rotting-y-chromosome-dealt-fatal-blow)
…even if they repeat the part about the 300-million year old Y-chromosone, which they need to explain a lot better than they do. I caught that 300 mya was the time of the first appearance of the Y-chromosone, _any_ Y chromosone, presumably ancestral to all species’ Y chromosones, but to allude to it as the human Y chromosone must involve some kind of abstruseness of technical expression.
It’s 150am here, and I am not up to a careful reading. Will get to it later.
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