Our Galaxy Should Be Teeming With Civilizations, But Where Are They?

Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy? Enrico Fermi thought so -- and he was a pretty smart guy. Might he have been right?

It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)

The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.

Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.

So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"

This sounds a bit silly at first. The fact that aliens don't seem to be walking our planet apparently implies that there are no extraterrestrials anywhere among the vast tracts of the Galaxy. Many researchers consider this to be a radical conclusion to draw from such a simple observation. Surely there is a straightforward explanation for what has become known as the Fermi Paradox. There must be some way to account for our apparent loneliness in a galaxy that we assume is filled with other clever beings.

A lot of folks have given this thought. The first thing they note is that the Fermi Paradox is a remarkably strong argument. You can quibble about the speed of alien spacecraft, and whether they can move at 1 percent of the speed of light or 10 percent of the speed of light. It doesn't matter. You can argue about how long it would take for a new star colony to spawn colonies of its own. It still doesn't matter. Any halfway reasonable assumption about how fast colonization could take place still ends up with time scales that are profoundly shorter than the age of the Galaxy. It's like having a heated discussion about whether Spanish ships of the 16th century could heave along at two knots or twenty. Either way they could speedily colonize the Americas.

Consequently, scientists in and out of the SETI community have conjured up other arguments to deal with the conflict between the idea that aliens should be everywhere and our failure (so far) to find them. In the 1980s, dozens of papers were published to address the Fermi Paradox. They considered technical and sociological arguments for why the aliens weren't hanging out nearby. Some even insisted that there was no paradox at all: the reason we don't see evidence of extraterrestrials is because there aren't any.

In our next column, we'll delve into some of the more ingenious musings of those who have tried to understand whether, apart from science fiction, galactic empires could really exist, and what implications this may have for SETI.

Your argument is only an expression of your preference for an explanation that supports your a priori belief in a particular religious creed. It is not compelling.
--Vercingetorix

My views on the likelihood of the origin of the Universe being rooted in mindless, purposeless accidents, I must confess, is biased by an a priori belief in math. I have suspected for some time that members of the Atheistic Church of Darwin do not suffer from such a bias.

I don't think anyone is looking for radio-bright planets

Shostack is on Art Bell "fairly" frequently. He made the point that nevermind the '36 Olympic broadcast and such, military radars send out high-powered directional beams.

Saw something on TLC about orbital clutter. The Brits have a site that puts out 2-2.5Megawatts (NORAD equivalent) tracking stuff.

Black-hole hunters look for energy anomalies.

OTOH, the last intelligent life produced radio wave passed by the Earth the day before Marconi did his Alexander Graham Bell imitation. The planet that sent that last signal was involved in a catastrophic collision that destroyed all intelligent life.

Now excuse me while I finish my aplication for a grant to pursue technical, off-planet, remote viewing...

Also it might improve your understanding of this question if you ceased to refer to organic materials as "dead matter." Something that is dead must once have been alive. Materials that can be so arranged as to form a living thing are not by themselves dead. Death is property of a once living entity and ceases to have meaning when the dead entity is no longer recognizable as the remains of its former self. The raw materials of which the entity was made may well be rapidly incorporated into some other living thing (often this happens before the original owner is really dead). Pondering this may be the key to ending your confusion especially if you consider how this process worked on the molecular level in the prebiotic environment.
--Vercingetorix

So dead things were rapidly incorporated into living things in the prebiotic environment? So if I would just stop mentioning dead matter and consider how things lived and died back before there was any life at all everything would become clear to me? I can do that, but not at the molecular level. And will I have to join the Atheistic Church of Darwin in some ritual to conjur up the magical prebiotic environment where things live and die?

Molecular self replicators started the process and its been going on naturally ever since.
--Vercingetorix

I take it this was revealed to you at one of your prebiotic seances.

There is no reason to think otherwise ...
--Vercingetorix

And dont' pay any attention to the little man behind the curtain, right?

Beliefs relating to God, whether they are theistic or atheistic, are religious beliefs.

I shouldn't need to point out the obvious, but "religious" describes a category of belief. It is therefore absurd to categorize anything as "religious" that is, by definition, not a belief. It is a logical fallacy to categorize something that is non-existence i.e. a lack of belief. To illustrate: it is perfectly logical to say my car is red, if I own a red car, or even hypothesize that the car is red if I have a car and you don't know the color. But it is non-sensical to describe my car as red or hypothesize about its color if I don't even own a car.

Incidentally, when you use "God" as you do in your posts, you are essentially "begging the question", which basically means the construction of your logic is not sufficiently grounded to be considered a useful argument.

All of which says nothing about my personal beliefs. I'd just like to point out that it reflects badly on everyone when people try to carry points with overt logical fallacies, particular if they continue to do so after it has been pointed out. I will frequently argue against my personal beliefs if the other person is coming to a conclusion I agree with using invalid reasoning. Sloppy thinking helps no one. (Unfortunately, most people take having the flaws in their arguments exposed personally. So much for the human race...)

I shouldn't need to point out the obvious, but "religious" describes a category of belief. It is therefore absurd to categorize anything as "religious" that is, by definition, not a belief.
tortoise

Members of the Atheistic Church of Darwin have a belief. It is that God does not exist. It is a religious belief because it is in reference to a Supreme Being, which is a religious notion. For some mysterious reason the ACD members are afflicted with a compulsion to convice everyone their religious beliefs are science, and are not religous at all.

"My views on the likelihood of the origin of the Universe being rooted in mindless, purposeless accidents, I must confess, is biased by an a priori belief in math. I have suspected for some time that members of the Atheistic Church of Darwin do not suffer from such a bias." -- nika

Your view of the universe is limited by the perspective of your religious belief system which was probably imposed on you from early childhood. You continue to think of everything in religious terms. The extent of your delusion is most apparent in your inability to recognize that there is no such thing as a religion of Darwinism.

You also confuse belief with knowledge. Mathematics falls entirely into the realm of knowledge as does biological science. Math and biology enjoy a fruitful collaboration. Today the existence of the process of evolution is the single most thoroughly documented fact known to man. I don't know where or from whom you are getting your opinions on this subject but you are clearly being misinformed.

It might be worth your while to attempt to define exactly what you mean by "mindlessness" and "mind." You believe (because you have been so taught) that a supernatural being possesses this "mind." Look for the contradictions.

"So dead things were rapidly incorporated into living things in the prebiotic environment?" -- nika

Of course not. Prebiotic means before the first self-replicating cellular life form. There are however molecular self replicators (e.g., polymers). Some of these are quite simple and very regular -- mineral crystals, alpha helices and beta pleated sheets of amino acids, phospholipid membranes, molecular films and coatings, even lipid/water interfaces. All of these structures can occur without the involvement of cellular life yet all are found in living things today.

All of this information is accessible. If you continue to depend entirely on your religious beliefs without reference to any of the factual information on this subject your understanding will never improve.

"I take it this was revealed to you at one of your prebiotic seances." -- nika

No, I think it was revealed to me during one of my kids' grade school science projects.

"Members of the Atheistic Church of Darwin have a belief. It is that God does not exist. It is a religious belief because it is in reference to a Supreme Being, which is a religious notion. For some mysterious reason the ACD members are afflicted with a compulsion to convice everyone their religious beliefs are science, and are not religous at all." -- nika

You are projecting. The question of god's existence is irrelevant to science. It is possible to study nature without ever invoking the god hypothesis. This does not imply any particular belief about god, it simply means that the god concept is unnecessary and useless here.

When some folks invoke a god during their uninformed intrusions into science they are usually doing so based on their belief not in God but in a book about a god. Their entire faith is in the book which they foolishly think is literally true. If they actually trusted their god they wouldn't be afraid to examine nature and rely on their own ability to understand. Instead they want to hold god to a contract precisely because they have so little real faith in this god. Throw away the book and have trust instead of blind faith in a book.

The question of god's existence is irrelevant to science. It is possible to study nature without ever invoking the god hypothesis. This does not imply any particular belief about god, it simply means that the god concept is unnecessary and useless here.
--Vercingetorix

OK. Forget about God. But don't close your mind to the possibility of an intelligent agent of some sort. True science doesn't rule any possibilities out. That is where methodological naturalism goes wrong. It begins its investigation having already concluded that no intelligent agent is responsible for nature turning out the way it did, yet there is no scientific basis for this conclusion. It is not as though science has proven that the intervention of an intelligent agent is not a possibility - so that possibility shouldn't be ruled out. Yes it is ruled out. This philosophical/atheistic bias has destroyed the scientific objectivity of methodological naturalism. If the scientific fact is that an intelligent agent of some sort or another is responsible, it can, by definition, never be discovered by methodological naturalism. If what we find in nature could only be there because of the intent of an intelligent agent then real science would continue to make progress while methodological naturalism would continue to bore everyone with more and more far-fetched theories that just get sillier and sillier. Hmmmmm .....

I will be out of touch for about 4 days. So you guys will just have to get along without my wit and wisdom for a while. ;o)

See ya!
nika

"It begins its investigation having already concluded that no intelligent agent is responsible for nature turning out the way it did, yet there is no scientific basis for this conclusion." -- nika

It really begins with the tacit recognition that because all of its tools are made of matter and use energy it is incapable of using them to investigate things which are not made of matter and which do not use any of the forms of energy known to us.

"It is not as though science has proven that the intervention of an intelligent agent is not a possibility - so that possibility shouldn't be ruled out. Yes it is ruled out." -- nika

Every time supernatural intervention has been proposed it has been rejected because investigation always reveals natural causes. The original god of the Bedouin Khabiru was a genie activating a volcano. Volcano genies don't exist and have been long abandoned as an explanation for volcanic activity. This same scenario plays itself out every time supernatural intervention has been proposed as the most likely explanation for this or that observation. We keep finding other simpler natural causes. The gods of antiquity were most meddlesome and their manifestations in myth and story were glaringly obvious events. For whatever reason, these gods have been long absent. They are not likely to return. The definition of god continues to evolve so that today most believers conclude that god is entirely spirit, does not intervene except in ways that cannot be detected, and is largely unknowable through the senses.

"If the scientific fact is that an intelligent agent of some sort or another is responsible, it can, by definition, never be discovered by methodological naturalism." -- nika

When man knows all there is to know about physical reality he will be a god himself (if he isn't already). Even so, man will never know anything beyond nature. The supernatural realm will only ever be found in his imagination, its place of origin.

Have a nice holiday.

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