Darwin's Extraterrestrials

[Swede]

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. As Enrico Fermi asked if the Universe is conducive to intelligent life, “Where is everybody?”

A new answer proposed by Adrian Kent of the University of Cambridge and Perimeter Institute, is that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect evidence for the improbability of life evolving at all in our universe.

“Intelligent species might reasonably worry about the possible dangers of self-advertisement and hence incline towards discretion” -- the “Undetectability Conjecture,” put forth by Beatriz Gato-Rivera, a theoretical physicist at the Instituto de Fisica Fundamental (previously Instituto de Matematicas y Fisica Fundamental) of the CSIC (Spanish Scientific Research Council) in Madrid. According to Gato-Rivera, we may find ourselves in a universe in which there exist intelligent technological civilizations but they have chosen to be undetectable, camouflaging themselves mainly for security reasons (because advanced civilizations could also be aggressive).

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/12/-darwins-extraterrestrials-todays-most-popular.html#more

[mainer]

1. That's what I would do. Camouflage myself.

Do we really want to advertise our presence to civilizations as warlike as we are?

[ElboRuum]

7. We're already doing that...

Ever since the dawn of the modern age of communications, we've been blasting EM radiation out into space like a boombox stuck on 11. That plus we sent out probes which are destined for interstellar space.

I, however, subscribe to the idea that a civilization that is capable of interstellar travel has to muster all of the resources, intellectual et al, at its disposal to attain a spacefaring culture and therefore would probably have learned the value of cooperation by then. Of course, such a culture would not be in any big hurry to meet us, at least not until we do a lot of growing up.

[MarkCharles]

3. Well, assuming we all agree about the big bang as the starting point

of the universe, and that there are billions of stars in various galaxies out there, we can reasonably predict that the laws of physics, (e.g. gravity, chemistry, etc.) apply in all realms and to all stellar orbital objects, (planets, moons, asteroids, etc).

Assuming, also that the general process of evolution of living things progresses in a similar fashion elsewhere as it does here, it would be highly unlikely that a civilization of any advanced beings equal or surpassing Earth's human beings would be more than a few million years more or less advanced than what we find on our Earth. Of the 4.54 billion years since the formation of our planet, hominid type organisms have been around a distinctly short period of time, with our branch from ancestors of the modern chimp having happened just 5-7 million years ago.

[Orsino]

19. Big Bang, plus a few billion years for many first generation stars to nova...

...plus a few billion more years for many second generation stars to form solar systems, then a few billion more for intelligent life to arise?

Interstellar spacefaring may have only occurred in the last few billion years.

[Fumesucker]

4. Or perhaps sufficiently advanced technology may only be detectable with magical means?

What is detectable of civilization seems to me to be mostly waste energy that is radiated off into space in one form or another.

As technology becomes more advanced then efficiency becomes higher and higher, eventually efficiency becomes high enough that waste energy is very nearly nil, there's minimal energy to detect.

In space even a remarkably powerful laser beam would be largely undetectable unless you were directly in it.

[Humanist_Activist]

6. Not to mention interference...

which is something people rarely talk about, after all, space isn't completely empty, there are gas clouds of various compositions, stars, black holes and many other objects that can disrupt radio signals and hide evidence of large scale megastructures or industrial activity.

Couple that with our detection abilities as they stand now and we may simply not have the equipment sensitive enough to detect such signals through the interference patterns. They would appear as random noise, rather than artificial signals.

[bananas]

10. And compression and encryption make signals look like noise. nt

[Confusious]

11. Or maybe they found some other way to communicate

Like paired electrons, or "subspace" a' la "Star Trek"

[Humanist_Activist]

13. Certainly possible...

We ourselves are broadcasting less into the void than we did in the past, our signals break down much quicker, are more focused and powerful in other ways, and less "leaks out". And that's with standard radio waves. Assuming other civilizations exist, they would have most likely followed a similar curve of technological progress and use of physics. Perhaps a century or two of radio broadcasting that can be heard for light years around, and then mostly silence or a murmur.

[Confusious]

14. My thinking also

Hard wiring for networking and low power radio are becoming more the norm now.

In another 200 years, there might not be any air transmissions, not because of us not being here, but because of tech advancements.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. That's my take on it

It's quite possible that 20-odd year from now we won't be beaming any high-powered signals into space: Everything will be cabled or via satellite. The window for a nearby civilisation to spot us becomes rather rather small, and if we assume it works both ways we'd have no chance.

A human-like civilization based on tau ceti but 100 years ahead of us would be almost invisible.

[pokerfan]

5. A good book on the subject

by Stephen Webb
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens... Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life



http://books.google.com/books/about/If_the_universe_is_teeming_with_aliens_w.html?id=-vZ0BVSHix4C

With fifty posited solutions each one spawning its own essay, it's fairly exhaustive. Recommended.

[krispos42]

8. Sounds good. I just ordered it. n/t

[frogmarch]

9. Where is Everybody...Really?

A blogger explores some possibilities.

http://www.duntemann.com/fermiqsn.htm

They're Already Here.
We're All There Is.
Everybody Blows Up Before They Grows Up.
We're Still In A Protected Wilderness Area.
Everybody Gets Absorbed Into The Overmind Before They Visit.
The Fun Is All In The Fourth Dimension.
We're Psi-Challenged From Birth.
The Bus Doesn't Stop Here.
Bruno's Coming To Break Our Kneecaps
Now That I Can Have It I Don't Want It.

So...What Do You Think?

~~

My favorites in the list are We’re All There Is, Everybody Blows Up Before They Grows Up and The Bus Doesn’t Stop Here. I would add one called The Bus Can’t Get Here.

I think there’s only a slim chance that any UFOs are ET spacecraft.

[Confusious]

12. Considering a Large portion of the population of this planet

Consider themselves god's "special" children, any developed civilization would see that coming here would throw them into a state of insanity.

We also have a long history of placing ourselves the center of things, "god's" universe, the solar system, the galaxy.

We're more trouble then it would be worth.

We probably also don't have much to offer. If you can get between the stars, why bother with the resources of one piddly planet. There are thousands of Jupiters to mine.

[Motown_Johnny]

16. It is also possible that interstellar travel is harder than we think it is

Between dark matter and dark energy it is very likely that there are barriers to interstellar travel besides simply the distance and the speed of light as an absolute.


Everyone loves to speculate on far out ways of getting to the stars in short order but you get little or no speculation on hazards which we may not know about.


Where is everyone? Safe at home.





P.S. It is my opinion that Fermi was joking.

[Phoonzang]

17. I suspect we're already being observed. If a civilization were sufficienty advanced,

replicating an life form like an insect, a bird, or even a human would be simple. These artificial lifeforms would be indistinguishable from "real" ones. So, take a closer look at that weird guy living next door...and think about it...

[Orsino]

18. Nonsense.

It's only in the last decade that we've begun to be able to see anything smaller than a star beyond our own solar system.

Who the hell thinks that spacefaring aliens couldn't have escaped our notice? Given that we've only been looking for a couple of centuries at best, I think that interstellar civilizations are a little beyond our ability to detect--if any currently exist.