Dagmar Lives!
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.
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Yeah, they could poke their eye out with one of those space ships.
Look at life on Earth, through the evolutionary process. There are several physical and behavioral manifestations in animals that on the surface seem exorbitantly high in cost. Huge elaborate antlers on some species of deer, lemmings swarming off cliffs, fish fighting (and dying) to get upstream only to spawn and die. But in reality, each can be explained as the price paid (in internal resources at least) for survival of the species and any one animal's protégée. The elaborate antlers on a stag, for example, allows in to win one-on-one battles with other males, thus allow it to be most likely to breed and have offspring. When lemmings breed too much, resources are taxed badly, and when a critical match is reached, they all stampede for better pastures (not looking for cliffs, but they're to stupid to know when one is coming up!). Salmon could simply breed in the ocean, but this makes it harder for their offspring to survive and prosper in the competitive ocean environment, so streams are a better place for it's offspring, even if it means the parent dies--the species is favored by this behavior.
Well, at some point the same will happen to us. We'll reach a point when resources get so scarce and costly on Earth that the ones in space will be a bargain. When that happens, we'll be in space, and as we continue to consume resources, we'll have to go further and further to get them.
Unless, of course, we make like the lemmings.
Dagmar Lives!
Yeah, but Pioneer's transmitter is only an 8 Watt source. Presumably if you had the energy to move a giant starship at a significant fraction of the speed of light, signal strength would not be an issue.
I think it is insoluble, particularly if the fuel has to be carried by the ship.
My approach would be to reduce the material needs of the passengers to near zero (i.e., send intelligent robots).
I sincerely think that this is the correct answer to the Fermi problem. There's always room at the bottom, as Dick Feynman used to say.
Agreed. I've never liked the explanation that EVERY single E.T. civilization is leaving us alone because we are not "mature" yet. There is no possible way that EVERY advanced civilization has the same morals and ethics. In fact, if the universe knew what was good for it, it would destroy us before we destroy them.
We're either alone, ahead of the game, so far behind the game as to not see a trace, or (religious explanation) kept separate from the rest of the universe, by God, due to our corrupt nature.
Yes but I was actually responding to someone's SETI screen name. I was thinking of someone transmitting from a planet with the intention of being found by a SETI somewhere else. Either that or just stray communications from another planet that we would happen to pick up. This is what SETI is all about yet it isn't finding anything.
Wern't 1950's breasts great? They had some sharp, pointy bras in them days.
I hate to reveal my age, but I remember long tight skirts and tight fuzzy sweaters. They certainly had an effect on me. I had to remain sitting sometimes or walk funny. It was embarrassing. If only now.
Hasn't found anything so far, you mean. But we've only just started to look; if we'd found something by now, it would surely mean that extraterrestrial civilizations are overwhelmingly abundant throughout the galaxy.
A planet like Earth we'd be able to see clear across the galaxy, if we happened to look in the right direction.
The first is the fact that our solar system is locate at the very edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. In other words, we are so far in the back woods, that it would not be worth contacting us.
This is also the reason why I think we have not recieved in alien broadcasts. Or we may have recieved some alien broadcasts and thought is was just static because their forms of data encryption and data compression are to alien for us to understand.
The second is the fact that they would have to go through two asteroid fields to get to our planet, Earth. The first is the asteroid field that is right past Pluto. Then they would have to cross the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter.
The third is that from what we understand, Earth has no real special resources to speak of. Also, if any aliens recieving our, radio, televsion and internet broadcasts: They would think the human race was completely insane. Which they maybe questionably right.
So what alien race would want to come to a planet that they would consider to far and to difficult to get to, with no special resources to speak of and forced to deal with a species they consider completely insane.
Considering all that I have just stayed, I would think twice before wanting to go to Earth.
We are it, there aren't any other advanced life forms. I suspect alien algae is our most highly developed universal neighbor.
I usually hold steadfast to the "I'll pretend I'm from Missouri" stance ("I'll believe it when I see it" philosophy). Not in this case, though. I'll go with my GUT on this one!. . .
Bottom line with me is "We've got company folks". That's IMHO, of course!
By the way, this is some prove that the alien life does exist. For example we found bacteria in orbit around Earth. Also, don't forget about those Mars rocks found in Antarctica fossils of what appear to be microbes.
Now prove to me that there is no other life in the Universe
Sure, but we are where we are. We each get 26,000 days. Some more, some fewer. It might be interesting to live on Alpha Leonis, but then we would wonder if it might be better to live on Sol.
If we inhabited every star in the galaxy, who would have time to read the list of Imperial planets. Just read the list, not even to look at a picture of each one. Could the list be read in a lifetime? Would such a life be considered well-spent, a success?
Don't take this to mean I wouldn't be personally interested in going on an expedition to another star. I would want to bring a few books. During the journey there might even be time to figure out what the heck Husserl was going on about unless the ship needed constant maintenance.
The second is the fact that they would have to go through two asteroid fields to get to our planet, Earth. . . .
The third is that from what we understand, Earth has no real special resources to speak of.
2. Asteroids are actually infrequent. It's mostly empty space, really empty. Even the Kuiper Belt is sparse. It would ruin your day to hit one even so.
3. Earth is special, but probably only to us. It's probably not worth much in the grand galactic scheme of things. Not yet, anyway.
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