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Fermi's Paradox II: What's Blocking Galactic Civilization? Or Are We Just Blind To It?
Space.com ^ | November 8, 2001 | By Seth Shostak, Astronomer, Project Phoenix, SPACE.com

Posted on 11/08/2001 7:52:53 AM PST by MeekOneGOP

Thursday November 08 09:37 AM EST

Fermi's Paradox II: What's Blocking Galactic Civilization? Or Are We Just Blind To It?

By Seth Shostak
Astronomer, Project Phoenix, SPACE.com

  
Could galactic empires exist? In a previous article, we noted that there has been plenty of time for aliens keen on colonizing the Milky Way to pull it off. However, we see no signs of galactic federation ("Star Trek" aside). Why does the cosmos look so untouched and unconquered? What is keeping advanced extraterrestrials from claiming every star system in sight?

This puzzle, known as the Fermi Paradox, has burned up a lot of cerebrum cycles when scientists tried to reconcile the lack of company with the expectation that there are many advanced alien societies.

One possible explanation is that interstellar travel is just too costly. Consider how expensive it would be for us to populate another star system. Imagine sending a small rocket to Alpha Centauri, one that’s the size of the Mayflower (180 tons, with 102 pilgrims on board). Your intention is to get this modest interstellar ark to our nearest stellar neighbor in 50 years, which requires about 150 billion billion joules of energy.

No one’s sure what aliens pay for energy, but here on Earth the going rate is about ten cents a kilowatt-hour. So the transportation bill per pilgrim would be $40 billion. That’s a lot of moolah, a lot more than it takes to buy each emigrant a few thousand six-bedroom palaces and set him up for life. The fact that the trip is costly, in whatever currency, is reason enough to deter any alien society from trying to settle distant real estate. With far less expenditure, the extraterrestrials could pursue the good life at home.

Of course, if energy costs can be brought way down, for example with fusion or matter-antimatter technology, or by capturing more of the radiation spewed into space by the home star, this explanation might not hold water.

But even if the aliens can afford colonization, maybe they haven’t got the stamina to see it through. Subduing the Galaxy takes more than sending a ship full of restless nomads to the next star. The nomads have to settle that star, and then spawn pilgrims of their own. And those émigrés have to produce yet more settlers. And so on. If each and every colony eventually founds two daughter settlements (a pretty decent accomplishment), then 38 generations of colonists are required to bring the entire Galaxy under control. Even the Polynesians, who swept across the western Pacific domesticating one island after another, didn’t manage this. Maybe the aliens can’t do it either.

On the other hand, if a few of them remain committed to expansion, their project might still succeed – just more slowly.

Some researchers suggest that the Galaxy is colonized, but we just don’t notice. Arthur C. Clarke pointed out that truly advanced engineering projects would be indistinguishable from magic. Perhaps the evidence of alien presence is so beyond us that we simply don’t recognize it (somewhat like mice in The Louvre checking out the Mona Lisa). Another thought is that the aliens find Earth an interesting nature park, and have arranged matters so that, while they can observe us, we can’t observe them. The idea that we may be some aliens’ high-tech ecological exhibit is called the "zoo hypothesis."

These explanations, and a bushel-basket more, have been proffered to deal with the Fermi Paradox. Any of them might be true. Nonetheless, some scientists find them too contrived, too unlikely to work in every case. Will all the aliens find colonization too costly? Will they all run out of empirical steam? Are we so special that someone has really gone to the trouble to put us behind invisible bars?

Or is there a much simpler explanation?

Next time, we’ll consider some of the more obvious – if more disquieting – resolutions of the Fermi Paradox.

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TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: enricofermi; fermi; fermiparadox
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EXCELLENT article. "Live long and prosper", fellow FReepers!
1 posted on 11/08/2001 7:52:54 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
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To: MeeknMing
38 generations of colonists are required to bring the entire Galaxy under control.

Assuming the alien generation is as long as ours, this would take about 1200 years. If the galaxy is about 12 billion years old (if may be 15, or more), then that's only 0.00001% of history. Not much. Consider what Earth would be like today if civilization started only 5,000 years earlier than we did. We'd have been to the moon by the time the Egyptians built the Pyramids in our timeline. Imagine where we'd be today.

2 posted on 11/08/2001 8:03:35 AM PST by Darth Reagan
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To: MeeknMing
Perhaps the evidence of alien presence is so beyond us that we simply don’t recognize it (somewhat like mice in The Louvre checking out the Mona Lisa).

Right, something like the 'big bang' or spiral-shaped galaxies.

3 posted on 11/08/2001 8:06:33 AM PST by A Vast RightWing Conspirator
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To: Darth Reagan
Assuming the alien generation is as long as ours, this would take about 1200 years.

Of course, this makes zero sense, given that the Galaxy happens to be a few tens of thousand light-years across and that you would have to go 'around' the core to reach to the other side.

4 posted on 11/08/2001 8:08:14 AM PST by A Vast RightWing Conspirator
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To: A Vast RightWing Conspirator
Apparently they aren't too concerned with travel time. Must have figured out how to open a wormhole/shortcut.
5 posted on 11/08/2001 8:10:02 AM PST by Darth Reagan
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To: RadioAstronomer; longshadow; Physicist; VadeRetro; Junior
SETI ping.
6 posted on 11/08/2001 8:12:14 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: Darth Reagan
Well, if the stars start going out or getting real dim, then a stellar civilization has started creating a Dyson Sphere (really a swarm). That would be one indication of a species or civilization that would exist and hardly notice us.

Species and civilization might evolve and turn into themselves by using nanotechnology and creating virtual worlds. Why go to another star system if everything you want you can create?

7 posted on 11/08/2001 8:16:31 AM PST by techcor
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To: MeeknMing
I have another hypothosis that is rarely proffered. What if we are the first or the only current advanced civilization? Someone has to be first. The odds are against it but at least it fits the available facts. What if the Universe is just too dangerous a place for any single civilization to last very long? Note that we always look for alien life via radio but our own age of radio is rapidly waning. Electromagnetic signal propogation may be completely obsolete in only another hundred years time (I like to envision communications based on quantum entanglement but I don't know if entanglement degrades over time and what that time might be, any physicists out there?), which would leave us with only 200 odd years of radio signals spreading out through the galaxy. That doesn't even count as a blink in cosmic time. The odds would seem to be against any other civilization hearing that little blink unless two civilization were at the same or similar stage of development at the exact same time minus/plus the distance/time for the signal to reach from A to B. Pretty bad odds of that happening. I happen to believe that life may be common but that civilization is extremely rare and fragile. Colonies may be established but a true galactic civilization would seem to be out of the realm of possibility.
8 posted on 11/08/2001 8:18:29 AM PST by okie_tech
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To: A Vast RightWing Conspirator
If you add 12 million years, 120 million years or even 1.2 billion years for travel time, you get the same result -- still a small fraction of the available time. If you postulate traveling at one percent the speed of light, and allow several centuries to colonize each new world, you still have time left over.

Perhaps not enough to colonize the entire galaxy, but certainly enough time to reach out several thousand light years.

9 posted on 11/08/2001 8:20:28 AM PST by js1138
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To: MeeknMing
It's only a paradox if there actually are "advanced extraterrestrials". Personally, I don't think that's a given. I have no problem believing that the galaxy is teeming with life, but advanced space faring life is another ball of wax entirely.
10 posted on 11/08/2001 8:20:55 AM PST by mvscal
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To: MeeknMing
Maybe when a race reaches a level of technology in which it can construct completely realistic virtual realities to inhabit, it loses the desire to conquer physical reality. I see signs of this already. Many of the players of Everquest and such games completely lose themselves in them, to the near-exclusion of all else in their lives, and that's just with the crude technology we have right now. If civilization were sufficiently advanced that they could transfer their consciousnesses into the virtual worlds they love so much, I have no doubt that many if not most of them would do so, and effectively vanish from ours.
11 posted on 11/08/2001 8:21:09 AM PST by John Jorsett
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To: MeeknMing
Civilization only progresses directly to it's ability to destroy it's self. When that point is reached it's gone.

Therefore, none wil exist much more advanced than us and to look in areas older than us is useless. Only new star systems should be looked at, but unfortunately, I think they look for more advanced older systems.

12 posted on 11/08/2001 8:35:48 AM PST by lotus
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To: MeeknMing
Nothing is impossible. I think, therefore, I am. The best way to travel from galaxy to galaxy is by PURE THOUGHT! By the way, when's the next comet suppose to be here? I need to hitch a ride.....
13 posted on 11/08/2001 8:38:28 AM PST by splint
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To: MeeknMing; OLDWORD
The article refers to, but does not quote, the Fermi Paradox. Enrico Fermi, a great scientist and philosopher, was conflonted with the fact that there are (in Carl Sagon's words) "billions and billions of stars (and planets)." some capable of supporting life and billions of years older than Earth.

Presumably, some of them would have developed space travel, and with all those options, at least one of those alien races should have "discovered" Earth, since the envelope of our electronic spectrum, showing that we are hear, now reaches beyond Alpha Centuri. Fermi's response was, "So, why are they not here?"

The anser may be found in the first law of the Federation in Star Trek, which is "non-interference." We would be to these space travelers as primative as head hunters in Boreo are to us. The simplest explanation is that they are there, they know we are here, but they are leaving us alone until we become sufficiently civilized to be invited to join the Federation.

"The simplest explanation that is consistent with the facts is most likely the correct one." Occam's Razor.

Conressman Billybob

14 posted on 11/08/2001 8:47:28 AM PST by Congressman Billybob
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To: Congressman Billybob
The Occam's Razor conclusion would be that there are no other civilizations. Since there is no evidence of intelligent life. (including here on Earth ;-)
15 posted on 11/08/2001 8:51:29 AM PST by okie_tech
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To: MeeknMing
Bumped for later read.
16 posted on 11/08/2001 8:52:04 AM PST by sadamico
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To: MeeknMing
Maybe all these other planets have leftist governments, who say it wouldn't be fair for anyone to go to another planet until everyone could.
17 posted on 11/08/2001 8:53:31 AM PST by lds23
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To: Congressman Billybob
The simplest explanation is that they are there, they know we are here, but they are leaving us alone until we become sufficiently civilized to be invited to join the Federation.

It's not that simple; because it is most unlikely that every civilization in the galaxy plays by the same rules. All it takes is one rogue civilization to break the rules.

18 posted on 11/08/2001 8:55:55 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: Darth Reagan
38 generations of colonists are required to bring the entire Galaxy under control.

Assuming the alien generation is as long as ours, this would take about 1200 years.

Actually, the author means a generation in the following sense:

We establish a colony on a more-or-less earth-like planet, with perhaps 100 or 1000 people. Very possibly less earth-like. Those people begin to hard-scrabble out a life on that planet. They establish a civilization, multiply, build a population, etc. It could be a thousand years, or thousands of years, before they decide they can spare enough resources to take on the large project of sending out another colonization ship, if they ever do.

So 38 generations of colonists could be a pretty long time.

19 posted on 11/08/2001 8:56:57 AM PST by butter pecan fan
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To: MeeknMing
Then there is CS Lewis's hypothesis: There may be others out there, but if they are, then they -- unlike us -- may not be fallen. God may have arranged things in such a way that Earth is under a sort of cosmic quarantine. If we came into contact with them, the inevitable result would only be bad news for them.
20 posted on 11/08/2001 8:56:58 AM PST by Stefan Stackhouse
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