Posted on 11/08/2001 7:52:53 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Thursday November 08 09:37 AM EST
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.
Visit SPACE.com for more space-related news including videos, launch coverage and interactive experiences. Check out our huge collection of Image Galleries and Satellite Views from Space. Follow the latest developments in the search for life in our universe in our SETI: Search for Life section. Sign up for our free daily email newsletter today!
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.
Right, something like the 'big bang' or spiral-shaped galaxies.
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.
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?
Perhaps not enough to colonize the entire galaxy, but certainly enough time to reach out several thousand light years.
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.
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
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.
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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.