Johnny Rotten

For the uninitiated, Fermi's paradox asks-- given what we can safely assume about the number of suns and planets and the age of the universe--"Why isn't the presence or passage of extraterrestrial intelleigent life everywhere around us?"

For a better explanation and some exploration, you can try this link for starters. Every possible explanation seems to be considered in that document, and none of them come out satifyingly plausible. Even our little solar system should have seen countless von Neumann colonization waves by now. Yet by all appearances, the Universe outside of our planet is a desert.

I believe the generally accepted age of the Universe is around 15 billion years. That's enough time for a civilization to reach what we would perceive as godhood, in my opinion. The least fantastic answer I have been able to put together is that this civilization eventually ruled over all existence, then decided to wipe the whole slate clean relatively recently. As you can see, even Occam's Razor can't cut through to a generally rational, simple explanation, in my mind, at least.

The possibility that our reality is false and we're somehow trapped in an enclosure is unsatisfying to me because it is necessarily impossible to explore this notion.

And if there is no afterlife, then even death will bring no answers.

Should I just give this one up as an imponderable?

CSflim

the answer in my mind is quite simple:

1. The probability of life evolving on a given planet is miniscule (unknown...but almost certainly miniscule).
2. But the universe is a REALLY big place
3. Therefore the probability of life existing elsewhere in the universe is quite high
4. But the universe is a REALLY big place
5. So the chance of the two lifeforms interacting are miniscule!

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lordjeebus

I think one important issue is that we can only speculate as to the probability that intelligent consciousness capable of recognizing itself will evolve on a given planet with life. For Earth, the only planet with a rich history of life that we know of, this is a very new development. Given that we don't really understand how biological processes create such consciousness (if in fact consciousness can be explained as a biological phenomenon), I don't see how we can estimate the chances of it spontaneously evolving elsewhere. It may be that the odds are 1 in 10^100, for all we know. The fact that we know that we exist and are conscious doesn't help because we need consciousness to consider this question in the first place.

CSflim

exactly! Fermi's paradox makes rather unfounded claims with regards to the probability of life evolving.

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debaser

The other possibility is that interstellar travel is so inefficient (even at its best) that highly evolved alien species avoid it.


PS I love your sig CSfilm.

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numist_net

if the human race is any indication, I think that other races that may have progressed past our current place probably ruined their planet and all died, because that is the path we are taking now.

Assuming that a few didn't, they next have to get over the travel hump, because we cant travel faster than light, and even if we could safely approach that speed, we are still looking at countless years in transit. Wormhole manipulation would be a technology that would take an extremely long time to develop, and there would still have to be someone at both ends keeping both sides open (Mr. Hawkings came up with that one). This means that they still have to go countless years to keep the other side open, so the chances of that are almost infinitismely small.

Plus, of all places, why would they go here? Because all our signals travel at around the speed of light, no one out there knows we exist because our signals havent reached there yet, assuming they would be detectable at that distance.

Lastly, on a less serious and more Calvin & Hobbes note; if there were intelligent life out there, it would surely be avoiding us.

Mr. Moe

I am going to paraphrase a little part of Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Use the equation N = (N*)(FP)(NE)(FL)(FI)(FC)(FL)

Where
N*=The number of stars in the milky way (estimated at 4x10^11)

FP=The fraction of stars that have planetary systems (estimated at 1/3)

NE= The number of planets in a given system that are ecologically suitable for life (assuming that Jupiter, Titan, Mars, Europa and of course Earth could be capable of sustaining life in our own solar system, this isn't very rare. Sagan estimates it around 2)

FL= The fraction of otherwise suitable planets on which life actually arises (the basic molecular basis of life is readily made in the most common cosmic conditions, as in compounds that can copy themselves. This fraction is again estimated at 1/3.)

So far there are 1x10^11 planets that may have a simple form of life on them

FI=The fraction of inhabited planets on which an intelligent form of life evolves
FC= the fraction of planets inhabited by intelligent beings on which a communicative technical civilization develops (we can group these together, and assume that it is very unlikely that we as humans derived as intelligent beings, however there are many many many other possible steps to form intelligent beings. So Sagan estimated it at 1/100, 1% of all life carrying planets have had an intelligent civilization)

FL= The fraction of planetary lifetime graced by a technical civilization. (How quickly do these civilizations kill themselves off? Using us as an example, we have lived on the earth for 1/10^8 of the earth's total existence. And we could destroy ourselves tomorrow.)

Putting all these numbers into the equation. N=10. This number could be as low as 1, or much higher depending on a few of the variables. So at any given time, in our galaxy, only 10 civilizations are at least capable of our technology. This in my opinion means that it is very, very unlikely that we will ever come across one of them.

bermuDa

occam's razor could still apply.

if i boil it down to the simplest answer:
Life is an exclusive anomaly, therefore we are alone in the universe.

if we enter a truth of alien intelligence, then CSflim's response is sufficient.

In the case of things we don't know, we're not always looking for the simplest answers.

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ubertuber

Don't forget that the amount of time that humans have been aware enough to even know that we've been contacted is only in the tens/low hundreds of thousands of years. When you consider the distances between star systems (and therefor how long or difficult intersystem travel would be) you realize that we haven't been open for business for all that long. So, our supposition that we don't know of any contact (and I'm not really endorsing the people that claim prehistorical contact hidden in mythology or religion) doesn't tell you much. Someone could easily have missed us by 10,000 years...

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Johnny Rotten

Granted, but the paradox doesn't refer to contact, but rather the very presence, which should have come through every habitable system in the form of Von Neumann colonization or some other exponentially branching method of distribution. Given even that only ten civilizations have matured enough to expand beyond their solar system, at least one of those ten should have left a reverberating mark, based on what we can safely assume about the sociologal requirements of such a group.

Dragonlich

Well, we can always say that life was in fact "planted" here by some alien race. Some people even claim that the gods of ancient times were aliens.

And anothing thing: perhaps all those UFO sightings and alien abduction stories are true... just because the majority of people refuse to believe it does not mean it isn't so.

CSflim

Well, yes...you could say that...but as always, on behalf of the skeptic, I ask:

Where's the evidence?
I'm not asking for "proof", I am merely asking, what are the factors that you would take into account in coming to this belief.

By occam's razor we can conclude that life did come into existence on this planet.

(Be wary of quoting some statistic showing how hugely unlikely it is for life to have evolved on this planet, as such a claim would miss the point entirely!)

(EDIT: I am aware that you, Dragonlich were not actually putting forward this statement (I don't think!), as such, this post isn't directed at you, but rather anyone whowould actually believe such a statement to be true!)

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duckznutz

we have only been able to detect signals from space . or travel ourselves into space for the last 50 years or so! A blink of an eye in the great scheme of things! Even assuming we are around for another million years before we die out then the that is STILL a relative blink of an eye. There are many anomolies on our planet that 'might' have been the result of visitations long long ago.

Further points to consider : -
1 - You will have driven past many many car crashes . . . but you never actually see one happenning!!!

2 - If we cant find Osama Bin Laden or Saddam on our own planet! What chance have we got . . . . .

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CSflim

Damn right!

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iamjero

Mabey beacuse of the fact that it is pretty easy to figure out how to unleash atomic energy no extraterrestrial civilization has survived with the ability to destroy itself for long enough to evolve into beings capable of managing such power. After all we discovered nuclear energy at about the same time as TV and computers so it can't be that hard to firure out.

Mabey every conscious civilization in the universe has destroyed itself before it could colonize space beacuse unleashing the nuclear genie is rather simple to do.

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Noroku

If you go back to having 10 civilizations in the Milky Way, and yet somehow by this thoery you expect 1 of them to have passed through here, I have this to say:

1. You are far too hopeful, this is a big place, and we're on the edge
2. If they have gotten this far (look how long it took man to sail into the unknown) would we really see them?
3. Nature has an amazing way of adapting, who says our little planet here is habitable to those other 10 civilizations? (They might be alergic to water like in "signs", which btw is freaking stupid, if they have the knowledge to get here and invade, don't you think they'd realize thier death comes from the sky randomly and the planet itself is 70% kill them material)

The.Lunatic

Do i discount the possiblity that life exists somewhere else in the universe no.

I've never understood though why anybody thinks intelligent life exists somewhere else in the universe. I say its 100% chance that it doesn't exist, and if someday its proven that it does i'll at least try and eat my fucking hat.

People think because of all this tech shit we've got on earth that intelligence is a great survival tool its not.

Life = survival of the fittest. whats the best thing at surviving plants of course, but nobody cares about them.

and

Insects. Why do we discount them. Because they're small, but on a planet with lower gravity they could be huge. Not that that matters, but for the humans to think about extraterstrial life size seems to matter.

Regardless. Who here thinks the human race will be around in 1000 years from now. I don't. Therefore our existence is what around 200000 year out of 15 billion years of universe. Needless to say we suck at surviving. Sharks have been around for like a billion years or something they fucking own at surviving we do not. If by some AMAZING chance we do survive as a species.

its going to take some technology as in 1k years this planet will suck balls.

Then i do see the possiblity of finding what we would refer to as lower lifeforms somewhere in the universe, but they won't contact us.

We are alone in the universe as far as intelligent life is considered and i'd like to believe alone in entirety.

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