Posted on 02/24/2002 3:53:44 PM PST by LarryLied
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.
Theoretical physicist Paul Davies claims that people are looking to extraterrestrials as "a conduit to the Ultimate." For many, the prospect of ETI has come to meet a need once met by religion. Even the SETI scientists say they are motivated by a nobler goal than the mere search for intelligence. Imagine, they say, the boost in knowledge, in morality, and maybe even in spirituality, to be gained from a billion-year-old civilization.Robert Jastrow imagines what it might do to our present religions. "When we make contact with them, it will be a transforming event," he says. "I do not know how the Judeo-Christian tradition will react to this development, because the concept that there exist beings superior to us in this universe, not only technically, but perhaps spiritually and morally, will take some rethinking, I think, of the classic doctrines of Western religion."
Any signals we detect, according to SETI astronomer Jill Tarter, will come from long-lived civilizations. This fact, combined with the fact that religions cause so many wars on this planet, means that our first detected signals will come from beings "who either never had, or have outgrown, organized religion," she said at a recent science/religion meeting sponsored by the Templeton Foundation and held in the Bahamas.
Other scientists and theologians at the Nassau meeting thought that pantheistic religions could survive an alien encounter, but most assumed that Western religion would certainly meet its fate when meeting extraterrestrials. Science historian Steven Dick called SETI "a religious quest" that might help to reconcile science and religion. But he assumed this would occur at the expense of Christianity, which could not accommodate the implications of ETI.
It strikes me that today’s scholars may be too quick to pronounce last rites over the faith that actually engendered most early ETI enthusiasts. Throughout the Middle Ages, well-read people believed that a "plurality of worlds" was impossible, following Aristotle’s arguments. In 1277, a council of bishops in France condemned this position, officially opening the way for many to take other worlds seriously.
Whether encouraged or discouraged by their churches, prominent Christians became the most prominent ETI promoters. These included Giordano Bruno and Nicholas of Cusa (fifteenth century), Johannes Kepler (sixteenth century), American Puritan divine Cotton Mather (seventeenth century), and Yale president/minister Timothy Dwight (eighteenth century).
Whether aliens will deliver a knockout blow to any particular religion depends, of course, upon exactly what aliens have to tell us about God. Materialists have traditionally assumed that Jews, Christians, and Muslims, believing in a transcendent God, will receive bad news. And the Christian belief in Jesus’ death for human sin seems particularly problematic to them. How could we reconcile Jesus’ death for all with the existence of other intelligent creatures in the universe?
Christian ETI enthusiasts, however, have a variety of responses to the skeptics:
- Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was a one-time event that covers aliens too. Oxford cosmologist E. A. Milne suggested that missionaries will eventually be preaching the good news to far-flung galaxies.
- Other civilizations may not have fallen into sin and so don’t require salvation. Oxford don C. S. Lewis wrote science fiction fantasies about such alien societies.
- God has become incarnate in the form of alien flesh in as many places where His creatures have fallen into sin. Scholars and rock singers have taken this position. And in the words of hymn writer Sydney Carter:
Who can tell what other cradle, High above the Milky Way, Still may rock the King of Heaven On another Christmas Day?
That's pretty funny, too. When there were only 4 humans on earth Cain slew Able...
That's pretty funny, too. When there were only 4 humans on earth Cain slew Able...
Over population would be anything more than one when it comes to disagreement -- war.
I seriously doubt that civilizations cruising the galaxy would have a tendancy to bypass earth. Wouldn't it stand to reason they are searching the galaxy for other civilizations? You assume that because they would be more intelligent than us, they would have no reason to make contact with us. I think you should re-think your scenario.
That was murder, not war.
Pert near genocide.
ROFL! That's the funniest thing I've read on here for weeks. The inability of pseudo-scientists to realize that their own cult is itself a religion never ceases to astound me. BTW, the first time I ever heard of the Fermi quip, it was given as "If they're out there, where are they?" Upon reflection, I think I like this version best. I've used it myself many times to the consternation of Trekkies, Saganoids, and others of their ilk.
The paradox is resolved if all civilizations rise to their individual interstellar peak and quickly burn out.
It appears we are alone for all practical purposes.
That was murder, not war.
A distinction in degree, not kind. A distinction that was lost on Able...
But when not overpopulated, people threatened by belligerent neighbors can melt into the forest and find some other vancant valley far removed from danger.
But in an overpopulated world, people get in each other's way, disagreements erupt, and people fight to the death because there is no where to go; land is fenced, worked, and owned everywhere.
Did you read my post #44?
I assume nothing about any other civilization.
Our fondness for radio wave technology does not mean that it is the galactic standard.
There appears to be only 4 fundamental forces in all of nature; Strong Force, Weak Force, Gravity, and Electromagnetism EM. Both the strong force and Weak force are confined to the nucleus of the atom. Gravity requires prodigious amounts of energy to manipulate, so the only one that is practical for long distance communication is EM. In an extremely short period of time, we are using EM across the entire spectrum from basically DC to light. We are now radiating that same spectrum into outer space. In fact at certain frequencies, we are the brightest object in the known heavens. So what we are looking for is a race that is doing the same thing we are, unintentional radiation of radio wave into outer space in all directions. Also we are not just looking at one frequency, but millions of them at the same time.
That's what I've always thought. Any civilization that stays around long enough to develop travel between the stars will probably get hit by a civilization-destroying asteroid before that every happens.
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