Is the Fermi Paradox becoming more acute?

Great Debates
301

Yeah, but it all comes down to the fact that it would not take all that long to colonize the entire galaxy, relatively speaking.

Even at a very slow rate, not really trying hard, 10 million years or so, we should have filled it up pretty well. And 10 million years is nothing.

If the galaxy has been colonized, then they would have already found us, and we would find them by simply looking around.

It is the idea that there is another species that is at the same level of technology as us that is inconceivably unlikely.

We are either the first, or we have no future. The most terrifying thing to me would be that we start picking up radio signals from all over the galaxy. That would imply that the great filter is in our future, not our past.

302

“2001 a Space Odyssey” – the movie AND Clarke’s book – was a strange kinda story: At each end we have this standard SF plot about ETs influencing human evolution – and sandwiched between, a completely different and irrelevant standard SF plot about a rogue AI.

303

There were at least two stories in the movie 2001 that were derived from Arthur Clarke’s earlier work. It was a bit of an anthology, really; the bit about the monolith on the Moon came from his short story The Sentinel (1951), and the bit about a human surviving in vacuum for a brief time came from his story Take a Deep Breath (1957). I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole AI subplot was concocted to get that in there.

In any case Clarke was wrong about surviving in vacuum - you’d pass out in less than 15 seconds, as the vacuum would literally suck the oxygen out of your blood.

He may have been right about the Sentinel concept though - placing a monitor station on the Moon would probably work, if you could ensure it was in working order after waiting x million years.

304

That’s almost how long Bowman is in vacuum before he closes the outer hatch and begins repressurization of the Discovery’s airlock, as it happens. Here’s the scene, with Bowman first exposed at the 1:05 mark. By my stopwatch, he’s exposed for 8.76 seconds before he pulls the handle to close the outer hatch. The hatch is closed and emergency repressurization begins 12.97 seconds after his first exposure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpwvJzcfL1w

And see: Survival in Space Unprotected Is Possible--Briefly | Scientific American

305

That’s great; Clarke was right in 1968. Still a bloody dangerous thing to do.

But in Take a Deep Breath I believe he says consciousness might last a minute. You could survive that long, but you would be incapable of volition after less than 15 seconds.

306

You should also NOT take a deep breath beforehand, but exhale fully.

307

Best advice is that you shouldn’t forget your helmet in the first place.

308

I’m with you there.

309

The Fermi Paradox/Drake equation may be about to get another data point:

310

It’ll be bad news for the Great Filter. Means it more likely to be ahead of us.

311

Nah, it could be the jump to multicellular, complex life that’s the great filter.

Single celled life appeared on Earth almost immediately after conditions were right. But it took billions of years after that to get to eukarotic life.

Maybe Venus formed single celled life back when we did, but venus turned into a hellscape before eukarotes could evolve, and the bacteria migrated to the high atmosphere where conditions for survival remained.

312

You may be right (I think you probably are) but nobody knows what the filter or filters are. This would mean that one of the stages in our evolution that might have been the great filter can be ruled out and that slightly increases the chances that it’s in our future rather than in our past.

313

There might not even be a ‘great filter’. Just many little filters that together make it exceedingly unlikely for a planet to have complex life.

314

Agreed. If you have 20 events that are each 70% likely to happen, you’re down to a 0.08% chance of all 20 happening. And I’m sure at least some of the events would easily be much less likely than that without being “practically impossible”.

315

We may now be certain, then, that Venus hosts a humanoid culture exactly like in ERB’s Amtor series. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.

316

Problem is, given the many billions of places that life could have arisen, you need cumulative totals of .0000000001% or so to explain the current lack of galactic civilizations.

I don’t think that the Venus thing, assuming that it is indicative of life and not just a geological process we haven’t thought of changes things much. I think we are going to find evidence of very simple life under just about every rock that we look under. Entropy favors life, and life favors entropy, and that’s one thing that there is an abundance of.

More complex life is probably rarer, as it would require both a stable environment in which to live, but also one just unstable enough to prevent it from getting “complacent”.

Start seeing eukaryotic life, and that’s maybe a bit worrying, as I think that that was probably a pretty big leap of evolution.

317

Okay, so make it 1,000 easy filters of 70% likelihood*. I would think that’s still order of magnitude too small as there are probably millions of little gates that have to be gotten through.

  • 1.25325663996571831810755 × 10-155
318

You have died of dysentery – oh, wait, you are dysentery.

319

Regarding the Drake Equation, I believe there are additional factors to consider which make alien contact unlikely. For example:

Perhaps typical aliens are more pragmatic than humans. They could be immediate-goal oriented. “Why should we embark on a voyage that has no payoff for millennia?” Sending Voyager 1 and 2 into interstellar space was really cool, and I’m glad we did it. But, it was pure folly. Maybe aliens don’t engage in folly.

Perhaps typical aliens believe they have everything they could ever want in their own back yard and have no desire to spread their seed beyond their star system. They may be comfortable existing near home and embrace the concept of replacement population. Anything they need, they can make from elements mined from neighboring planets. Why spend bucho alien bucks traveling clear across the galaxy to get the same exact elements and energy sources they have at home? Empire building may be a purely human trait.

Perhaps aliens simply have no curiosity about anything beyond their horizon. Cats are pretty smart and they have a reputation for being curious to a fault. But, they are curious only about things in their domain. I never saw a cat look at the moon and ponder, “I wonder if there are any mice up there?” Bottle-nose dolphin don’t try to torpedo into outer space for a look around. Alien attitude may be, “sure, there’s undoubtedly lot’s of life millions of light years away…but, so what?”

Perhaps intelligent civilizations abound, but we humans are the extroverted outliers. We’re quite monkey-like in our behavior—beating our chests, poking things with sticks, slinging poo all about. “Hey, look at me!”

Typical alien intelligence beings probably evolved on a pathway quite divergent from human evolution. More reserved. More pragmatic. Less showoffy. Less greedy.

This is how I envision first contact with an alien civilization:

Earthling Bob: Greetings, Blurpo. We Earthlings welcome you with open arms. However, we wonder why it has taken so long to make contact with you, or any other advanced civilization in our Milky Way Galaxy. Wassup with that?

Alien Blurpo: Bob, you poor ignorant Earthling. We surveyed your data banks and archives, and laughed our alien asses off. Subspace? Hyperspace? Wormholes? Kardashev Type III civilizations? FTL communication? Duuuude, what the fuck are you guys smoking down there on Earth??? Yeah, sure, we got tech that can blow your collective monkey-minds to oblivion, but you do understand omnipotence is a fairy tale and not a real thing in our universe, don’t you? Hell, we’re just like you, only better in every conceivable way. Don’t you guys know the difference between science and science fiction?

320

I’ve always been fascinaed with the Fermi Paradox and all its possible explanations, but I proposed this in a GD thread oh, about a year or so ago and I was beaten up pretty badly. :unamused:

My reasoning was thus: the universe is approximately 14 billion years old. According to Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Cosmos, it took about 10 billion years for enough supernovas to blow up and distribute the heavier elements necessary for complex life to evolve. Life began on Earth about 4 billion years ago, as soon as conditions on Earth were conducive for life. So if you accept that timeline (which a lot of responders did NOT) humans should be in the running for firsties, though of course there could be play of a million years or so, which of course is a huge amount of time for an alien race to become more technologically evolved and send out probes throughout the solar system. So, maybe not.

Another explanation I think is a strong one-- life may be very common on any planet that’s conducive to life, but there’s no reason for life to evolve to become intelligent and technologically capable. It may have been an accidental side effect of evolving hands with opposable thumbs and starting to play with tools and fire. Evolution is about adaptation to the existing environment; spiders and cockroaches are supremely adapted to their environment but are not going to be building and launching any Voyager-style probes anytime soon.

tl;dr version:

  1. Yeah, maybe we are first!
  2. Life may be common throughout the Solar System, but intelligent, tech-capable life may be extremely rare.