Posted on 02/02/2016 1:30:21 AM PST by LibWhacker
Two big ideas often come up in discussions about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. One is the Drake Equation, which estimates the number of civilizations in our Galaxy whose signals we might be able to detect--potentially thousands, according to plausible estimates. The other is the so-called Fermi paradox, which claims that we should see intelligent aliens here if they exist anywhere, because they would inevitably colonize the Galaxy by star travel--and since we don't see any obvious signs of aliens here, searching for their signals is pointless.
The Drake Equation is perfectly genuine: it was created by astronomer and SETI pioneer Frank Drake. The Fermi paradox, however, is a myth. It is named for the physicist Enrico Fermi--but Fermi never made such a claim.
I'd like to explain why the so-called Fermi paradox is mistaken, based on my deep-dive research on the topic, because this mistake had inhibited the search for E.T., which I think is worthwhile. It was cited by Sen. William Proxmire (D-WI) as a reason for killing NASA's SETI program in 1981; the program was restarted at the urging of Carl Sagan, but was killed dead in 1993 by Senator Richard Bryan (D-NV). Since then, no searches in the U.S. have received government funds, even though thousands of new planets have been discovered orbiting stars other than our sun.
Enrico Fermi, a Nobel prizewinner who built the first nuclear reactor, never published a word on the subject of extraterrestrials. We know something about his views because physicist Eric Jones collected written accounts from the three surviving people present at a 1950 lunch in Los Alamos where the so-called Fermi paradox had its roots: Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York (Fermi died in 1954).
According to these eyewitnesses, they were chatting about a cartoon in The New Yorker showing cheerful aliens emerging from a flying saucer carrying trash cans stolen from the streets of New York City, and Fermi asked "Where is everybody?" Everyone realized he was referring to the fact that we haven't seen any alien spaceships, and the conversation turned to the feasibility of interstellar travel. York seemed to have had the clearest memory, recalling of Fermi:
"... he went on to conclude that the reason that we hadn't been visited might be that interstellar flight is impossible, or, if it is possible, always judged to be not worth the effort, or technological civilization doesn't last long enough for it to happen."
Both York and Teller seemed to think Fermi was questioning the feasibility of interstellar travel--nobody thought he was questioning the possible existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. So the so-called Fermi paradox--which does question the existence of E.T.--misrepresents Fermi's views. Fermi's skepticism about interstellar travel is not surprising, because in 1950 rockets had not yet reached orbit, much less another planet or star.
If Fermi wasn't the source of this pessimistic idea, where did it come from?
The notion "... they are not here; therefore they do not exist" first appeared in print in 1975, when astronomer Michael Hart claimed that if smart aliens existed, they would inevitably colonize the Milky Way. If they existed anywhere, they would be here. Since they aren't, Hart concluded that humans are probably the only intelligent life in our galaxy, so that looking for intelligent life elsewhere is "probably a waste of time and money." His argument has been challenged on many grounds--maybe star travel is not feasible, or maybe nobody chooses to colonize the galaxy, or maybe we were visited long ago and the evidence is buried with the dinosaurs--but the idea has become entrenched in thinking about alien civilizations.
In 1980, the physicist Frank Tipler elaborated on Hart's arguments by addressing one obvious question: where would anybody get the resources needed to colonize billions of stars? He suggested "a self-replicating universal constructor with intelligence comparable to the human level." Just send one of these babies out to a neighboring star, tell it to build copies of itself using local materials, and send the copies on to other stars until the Galaxy is crawling with them. Tipler argued that absence of such gizmos on Earth proved that ours is the only intelligence anywhere in the entire Universe--not just the Milky Way galaxy--which seems like an awfully long leap from the absence of aliens on our one planet.
Hart and Tipler clearly deserve credit for the idea at the heart of the so-called Fermi paradox. Over the years, however, their idea has been confused with Fermi's original question. The confusion evidently started in 1977 when the physicist David G. Stephenson used the phrase 'Fermi paradox' in a paper citing Hart's idea as one possible answer to Fermi's question. The Fermi paradox might be more accurately called the 'Hart-Tipler argument against the existence of technological extraterrestrials', which does not sound quite as authoritative as the old name, but seems fairer to everybody.
As for the paradox, there is none, even in Hart's and Tipler's arguments. There is no logical contradiction between the statement "E.T. might exist elsewhere" and the statement "E.T. is not here" because nobody knows that travel between the stars is possible in the first place.
The Hart-Tipler argument, cloaked in the authority of Fermi's name, has made some people pessimistic about the chances for success in SETI. But the suggestion that we should not look for intelligent life elsewhere because we don't see aliens here is simply silly. There are some signs that the pessimism is lifting, most notably Yuri Milner's privately funded Breakthrough Listen project, which promises to contribute $100 million in funding over ten years. But searching millions of stars for signals at unknown frequencies might take more resources. Our searches typically 'see' a spot on the sky no bigger than the Moon at any moment, which is only a tiny fraction of the sky. If we want to find something interesting in our era, we might need to look harder.
I have a few original ideas that need a good writer.
Freepmail me if interested.
the problem with spreading terraforming across the cosmos is the amount of materials you’d have to drag along. this makes it almost prohibitive.
that being said, it’s possible ‘seed pods’ could be sent out, pods that would find a suitable location and start the process.
of course, it’d be very wasteful to spew seed pods across the universe, hoping they might find a suitable planet.
instead, the builders would probably use the gate system to transport the seed pods to planets found to be suitable by the cheaper, more expendable, searcher drones.
Could "seed pods" be transported by comets?
Can’t be these guys, SG-1 killed them all.
Jaffa Kree
If there is life on other planets around stars in some other galaxy, I bet they say exactly the same thing.
One can only hope.
Is all life carbon-based, here on Earth ?
since a comet is nothing more then a rock moving thru space.. then yes, the pods could hitch a ride on an guided rock.
still not very efficient and leaves the chance of the comet splashing down in a star or a planet outside the ‘goldilocks’ zone, thereby resulting in a failed planting
As far as I’m aware.
We might not yet recognize life other than carbon-based, especially if its dynamics are very slow — appearing unchanging to us over a human lifespan or even human history.
I don't know, we've got some pretty alien life forms here on Earth.
You raise a key point.
Making contact requires two parties existing at the same time. And that may the difficult part. Depending on how you manipulate the various factors of the Drake Equation, you may get a few dozen to a thousand or more. The problem is that, even if each civilization has a time frame of ten million years from rise to collapse and they occur sequentially, the total time for 1000 is 10 billion years in a universe that is already 16+ billion years old. Since, as Carl Sagan said, there are “millions and millions and billions and billions,” there is a strong likelihood that there may never be more that two or three civilizations at any one time that are capable of interstellar space flight and they may all be in different galaxies. There will be long periods were there is only one or perhaps even none.
Then there is the “Great Filter.” I’ve attached a pretty good article that explains the concept.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/the-fermi-paradox_b_5489415.html
A majority of seeds that are given off by plants fail to grow.
Or an opportunity for the human race to expand outward on the grandest of all scales...
If there isn’t “anyone” else out there does that mean it’s all potentially ours? Just come and get it?
We’re so preoccupied with the concerns of life here on Earth and there’s a universe to be colonized...
We’re so preoccupied with destroying life here on Earth.
We do have a couple of ‘pets’ running around on Mars.
Ever wonder why we don’t have any on the Moon, which is like closer than an electron to it’s nucleus. ?
"Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science.Which, of course is utter drivel. Michael Crichton should have stuck to writing pop novels and not ventured into passing judgement on the validity of mathematical equations and their role in science, which he clearly did not understand.
The Drake Equation is drivel masquerading a science.
How many of the terms in the equation are knowable within three orders-of-magnitude?
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