The Fermi Paradox

[wholol]

People seem to assume the universe is just around our galaxy.

With our current technology we haven't even been able to go to a single one of our neighbor planets in person yet, our visual observation of the universe is but a minuscule version of our galaxy, the only real things we've seen are from very limited telescopes sent into space to view what we would call " the universe through a key hole".

It's not that we haven't found any intelligent species yet, we just aren't technologically advanced to find one, if there was at least 1 more intelligent species living on the outskirts of our galaxy, given that they are neither millions of years old and extinct already or severely underdeveloped ( primitive), we still wouldn't be able to contact them for another few thousand years given that we: a) don't become extinct ourselves b) keep advancing technologically as we have over the past two centuries.

And that is just our galaxy, imagine how many other galaxies there are out there.

[Keosen]

It all boils down to immense size of the universe.
It's mind bogglingly big, beyond human comprehension, pretty much.
Even if the universe it's full of life the vast distances between the stars are a major obstruction which need a sci-fi-level advanced civilization to overcome.

At the moment we're just scanning the sky for signals, we're doing this for like 40 years that means even if 1 million distinct signals from intelligent beings who live in distant star-systems are travelling directly to earth we won't be able to receive them, ever.

[Realitytrembles]

My opinion is that intelligent life is exceedingly rare in the universe. I think it's something like this:

1) an unimaginable number of utterly dead worlds

2) a fairly large number of worlds where only very simple, single-cell type organisms have developed

3) IMO, far rarer than #2, an very small number of worlds where complex multicellular life has developed

4) even rarer than that in my view is the number of those worlds where 1 of those multicellular species has developed intelligence

5) rarest of all I believe are those intelligent species that survive natural disasters and their own technological adolescence to become multi-planet civilizations

So, in the lifetime of a galaxy, there might be a handful of spacefaring civilizations, most likely separated by huge gulfs of time. The chances of 2 different spacefaring species encountering one another while they both still exist and thrive are I think incalculable.

I give you 1 caveat to this: if early in the lifetime of a galaxy, a species that is the first survives and spreads to the stars, they might choose to engage in a project (spanning millions of years) of deliberately bio-engineering worlds across the early galaxy to much more easily produce life. So far, we have no evidence of this.

[McFuu]

The assumption is that other civilizations would be looking for us. Also if they found us, could they even travel here?
What if Einstein is correct and FTL travel is impossible. There is no punching holes in space and slipping through.

I think the best we could ever hope for would to be colonize and terraform other moons and planets in our own solar system.

[dwarven]

The assumption is that other civilizations would be looking for us. Also if they found us, could they even travel here?
What if Einstein is correct and FTL travel is impossible. There is no punching holes in space and slipping through.

I think the best we could ever hope for would to be colonize and terraform other moons and planets in our own solar system.

Light speed travel is impossible, FTL is technically possible if you are not actually moving quickly, but are inside a warp bubble. Probably incredibly hard to engineer something like that, but it doesn’t break any laws.

Another option would be to upload yourself to the alien equivalent of a flash drive and launch a million copies of yourself across the stars. You could go into hibernate until you get to a star system, or are found millions of years later. I think these artifacts could even have made contact with our own solar system at one point, they are just incredibly hard to detect by design.

[Collegeguy]

Life is not designed or have an objective to make intelligent life.

We were a freak construct made by highly strained environment and most or all intelligent life might face certain de-evolution once those strains are removed.

Life itself is rare, intelligent life is tremendously more rare that there may only be two per galaxy.

Even then, intelligent life is not guaranteed a certain path.

[Doctor Amadeus]

We are rare and one of if not the only ones. We are likely alone.

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Keep in mind all the aliens and I intelligent life doesn’t care about us and haven’t sent us anything. That’s pretty good indication we’re alone.

[IIamaKing]

Lots of space between the worthwhile parts of space. Id imagine they are out there but we cant look well enough to find em yet. I mean how much can we really see in space? 5% of whats around us?

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We are rare and one of if not the only ones. We are likely alone.

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Keep in mind all the aliens and I intelligent life doesn’t care about us and haven’t sent us anything. That’s pretty good indication we’re alone.

Or they did, and its so far away it wont be here for another 200 years. Or they did and we have forgotten it as a race, yes ancient Aliens.(not saying I believe this just saying it is a possibility) Or they did and we were to young to understand or recognize it as a message.

[melodramocracy]

The paradox is idiotic, as it assumes that any other life out there must be significantly more advanced than us, or that our current detection processes are anything but a wild guess.

Human ego really is something to behold.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Lots of space between the worthwhile parts of space. Id imagine they are out there but we cant look well enough to find em yet. I mean how much can we really see in space? 5% of whats around us?

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Or they did, and its so far away it wont be here for another 200 years. Or they did and we have forgotten it as a race, yes ancient Aliens.(not saying I believe this just saying it is a possibility) Or they did and we were to young to understand or recognize it as a message.

Yeah but that’s in all the time that’s past nobody has a way to do that reasonably. I think you provided a good example of us being alone.

[IIamaKing]

Yeah but that’s in all the time that’s past nobody has a way to do that reasonably. I think you provided a good example of us being alone.

There is a window of like 60 years where if a message was sent to earth we MIGHT (and I stress might) have been able to receive and decipher it. I dont think its at all out of the realm of reasonably possibility that We have gotten messages and couldn't understand them. OR that there are messages in transit still. Or Aliens are fucking xenophobes, and dont want to communicate.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, at least not in this case. (again not saying I believe this) If Aliens did visit and help us in days past there is evidence and we choose to write it off. Space is fucking HUGE so big 100000 races could live in it and never see one another, its infinitely vast. Saying "whelp nothing has stumbled into our tiny corner, ergo we must be alone" is just silly and mildly egotistical. Its placing us on a pedestal of uniqueness and importance that we likely do not deserve.

[Deleted]

Human beings are extremely violent and self-destructive. It seems unlikely that if other civilizations are similarly violent then they would not survive. Every year large numbers of countries possess apocalyptic weapons there is a small chance of the world ending. In any year it is unlikely, probably less than 1%. But over hundreds of years that becomes a certainty. Recent events suggest we have no capacity for limiting tribal conflict-indeed things seem to be getting worse.

Perhaps other civilizations might not be violent-but we have no model for that, so we have to work on the assumption that they are similar.

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There is a window of like 60 years where if a message was sent to earth we MIGHT (and I stress might) have been able to receive and decipher it. I dont think its at all out of the realm of reasonably possibility that We have gotten messages and couldn't understand them. OR that there are messages in transit still. Or Aliens are fucking xenophobes, and dont want to communicate.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, at least not in this case. (again not saying I believe this) If Aliens did visit and help us in days past there is evidence and we choose to write it off. Space is fucking HUGE so big 100000 races could live in it and never see one another, its infinitely vast. Saying "whelp nothing has stumbled into our tiny corner, ergo we must be alone" is just silly and mildly egotistical. Its placing us on a pedestal of uniqueness and importance that we likely do not deserve.

To be fair the counter-argument would be that if a single advanced civilization had developed faster than light travel it would have found us even if we can't reach them. I think it is obvious to everyone rockets based on fossil fuels are not going to be able to explore much of the known universe.

[IIamaKing]

To be fair the counter-argument would be that if a single advanced civilization had developed faster than light travel it would have found us even if we can't reach them. I think it is obvious to everyone rockets based on fossil fuels are not going to be able to explore much of the known universe.

Its a very weak counter though, Its assuming they WANT to find others, its assuming they haven't found us and moved on as we are too young. I imagine we all are aware of the Prime Directive from Star Trek. They could be here now, studying us from a duck blind of sorts. They could have a ship on the moon, If they have FTL travel Im sure they have the ability to evade our VERY primitive(comparatively) sensor capabilities.

Shoot, they could have FTL, they could be looking for other races, not concerned with their level of advancement, but they could be on the other ass end of the universe, on a million year journey here.

I laughed at the ego of the Fermi Paradox when I first learned of it some 15 years past and I still laugh at it. To the advanced races we are talking about, we would be little more than apes or monkeys are to us. How well to you think apes and monkeys grasp our interventions into their lives?

[Dundebuns]

The assumption is that other civilizations would be looking for us. Also if they found us, could they even travel here?
What if Einstein is correct and FTL travel is impossible. There is no punching holes in space and slipping through.

I think the best we could ever hope for would to be colonize and terraform other moons and planets in our own solar system.

Einstein never said FTL was impossible. He just said it takes infinite energy to move mass at c. Look at it conversely; it could take an infinite amount of energy to decelerate mass from faster than c, to c.

[dwarven]

I dispute that, we have no reason to believe that FTL travel is possible at all, and that alone would massively retard planetary colonisation.

I agree. Sending a ship to even our closest neighbor star would be a tremendous undertaking. It would take more than 50,000 years at conventional speeds to get there. The best we could do with current tech is send a satellite or probe. Keeping a colony of people alive for that long is a feat we are not even close to achieving.

[Theodarzna]

The Fermi Paradox says that, given the amazing size of the universe and the length of time it has existed, intelligence surely must have evolved across the stars. Life should be common. However, we have found zero evidence of it besides us.

I'd just like to hear what you all think the solution could be.

I suspect it is a mixture of

> Planets that can evolve complex life are rarer than we think.
> Complex life is rarer than we think
> Life is more recent than we think
> Distance between complex life is prohibitive.

[LaserChild9]

The Fermi Paradox says that, given the amazing size of the universe and the length of time it has existed, intelligence surely must have evolved across the stars. Life should be common. However, we have found zero evidence of it besides us.

I'd just like to hear what you all think the solution could be.

I think it's incredibly naive to assume we are alone or that we are the most advanced life in the universe when you consider just how vast it is. We are the only intelligent life that we know of in our galaxy, which considering that it's estimated that there are 100 billion stars in our galaxy, each of which is believed to have at least 1 orbiting planet, means nothing as there are still plenty of planets that could hold intelligent life in our galaxy.

Even if we were to assume that there is only 1 intelligent civilization per galaxy, thats still pretty common. There are estimated to be 2 trillion galaxies, if each were to hold about the same number of planets as ours , that's just short of a septillion (which is a 1 followed by 24 zeros) planets on which life could possibly live.

Personally I think that the universe is probably teeming with intelligent civilizations but the distances between them all is just so vast that the chances of meeting them is tiny.

[Daedius]

You can have countless intelligent alien civilisations in the universe and they'll all never make contact with each other merely due to how vast the universe is.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

I just looked around the room i am in. I didn't see anyone. I am alone on Earth.

[Doctor Amadeus]

To be fair the counter-argument would be that if a single advanced civilization had developed faster than light travel it would have found us even if we can't reach them. I think it is obvious to everyone rockets based on fossil fuels are not going to be able to explore much of the known universe.

Well put, I recognize people feel with the what is said to be overwhelming evidence and numbers to suggest there is life outside us in the universe, and I agree recognize that being the reality.

All the same that isn't a certainty and considering what we have done with our limited ability and considering what some might expect of others, the simple fact is we haven't established anything.

Even some, very very small scale that has to be considered into the we are alone side of this. To be completely honest at this point I don't think if it was recalculated that there was even a 10% chance there could be intelligent life like our own anywhere or even 1% you have some who are completely sold no matter what.

I don't find that any more scientific than any other confirmed bias when it comes to science.


At the very least, other considerations should be explored into the equation of how and if their is life somewhere else, and what that means.


Because even as put, we have zero chance of ever making any contact because we don't have interstellar travel at all, we don't have FTL travel or an equivalent and we also don't live long enough even if we could work around some of the known limits we have in our technology.


I am not a believer in burning the candle at both ends.

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You can have countless intelligent alien civilisations in the universe and they'll all never make contact with each other merely due to how vast the universe is.

Yes right and not of the billions that could be, have even so much as over comb that detail? Really?