Do you agree with this explanation of the Fermi Paradox?

Aethelwine · May 15, 2020

Personally I think being so advanced they have probably developed a second life with seamless region crossings and easy mesh creation tools. So why would they bother coming here?

Amina Sopwith · May 15, 2020

Maybe they came, discovered Gor and immediately noped out before the sub-culture could bring down their intelligence level any further. It's a known fact that your IQ drops by three points just by finding out about the place, and then another five points for every day you play there (20 points for every one of those turds that you read). Once they found out there's an actual dedicated following to the dated misogynistic ramblings of a pinhead who thinks that men become stronger when you take away gravity, they probably figured that they might be an incredibly advanced civilisation capable of interstellar travel, but even they couldn't do anything to help us. Sorry Earthlings, you're on your own.

My God, it's full of stars...

Coffee Pancake · May 15, 2020

The solution to the Fermi paradox is a great filter, of which there could be many.

However ... as we're finding small lone black holes orbiting single stars, it might not be unwise to consider that one such filter may be that technological civilizations progresses to the point they make a big enough particle accelerator.

The information required to accurately understand and model space/time, could easily exist on the other side of a research machine that also happens to make micro black holes. Not having this information limits a civilization to it's own local space.

Hawking radiation has not been observed in natural black holes, but if correct does suggest that should one be made accidentally, it will evaporate. Sooner or later we will test that hypothesis in a lab ... on an actual black hole machine ... on or very close to our home world ... because a simulation based on our understanding of something analogous seemed to imply it would be ok.

They who dare, die.

Bree Giffen · May 15, 2020

Obviously as a pre-warp civilization the Federation's prime directive prevents any of the advanced species from contacting us. 🖖

Ted McGregor · May 15, 2020

Also : the Fermi paradox affirms the fact that if we look out there, many of what we see by incoming light is no longer in the state we perceive it in. Including the Cosmic Background Radiation. Any alien civilasation out there looking at US has the same issue : what is seen is already gone ( for miillions or billions of years).

Edited May 15, 2020 by TDD123

kiramanell · May 15, 2020

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Presumably, a sufficiently advanced civilization would consider life too constraining an existence to be of interest. Also physical transportation.

As far as I know, the only way (if any) for information to be propagated faster than the speed of light uses quantum coupling of physical objects, so those objects would have to be physically separated once, and thus the speed of light still limits that initial distribution -- subject to the usual voodoo physics caveats of wormholes, etc.

It's been believed, for a long time, that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment (with opposite traveling photons allegedly flipping state at the same time), proved that FTL communication was possible that way. Alas, as Nr. 2 would tell Dr. Evil, "That theory too has already been debunked."

Quantum Entanglement: Slower Than Light

Lindal Kidd · May 15, 2020

Lots of people here are touching on one part or another of the issue. The Drake equation covers all of these:

The Drake equation is:

N=R∗⋅fp⋅ne⋅fl⋅fi⋅fc⋅L{\displaystyle N=R_{*}\cdot f_{\mathrm {p} }\cdot n_{\mathrm {e} }\cdot f_{\mathrm {l} }\cdot f_{\mathrm {i} }\cdot f_{\mathrm {c} }\cdot L} $N=R_{*}\cdot f_{\mathrm {p} }\cdot n_{\mathrm {e} }\cdot f_{\mathrm {l} }\cdot f_{\mathrm {i} }\cdot f_{\mathrm {c} }\cdot L$

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);

and

R_∗ = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy

f_p = the fraction of those stars that have planets (this one has already been proven to be relatively high)

n_e = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets

f_l = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point

f_i = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations)

f_c = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space

L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space

The Fermi paradox is this: the tendency to fill up all available territory seems to be a universal trait of living things, so the Earth should have already been colonized, or at least visited, but no evidence of this exists (unless you believe the UFOlogists). Hence Fermi's question "Where is everybody?".^[

A large number of explanations have been proposed to explain this lack of contact; a book published in 2015 elaborated on 75 different explanations.^[75] In terms of the Drake Equation, the explanations can be divided into three classes:

Few intelligent civilizations ever arise. This is an argument that at least one of the first few terms, R_∗ · f_p · n_e · f_l · f_i, has a low value. The most common suspect is f_i, but explanations such as the rare Earth hypothesis argue that n_e is the small term. Intelligent civilizations exist, but we see no evidence, meaning f_c is small. Typical arguments include that civilizations are too far apart, it is too expensive to spread throughout the galaxy, civilizations broadcast signals for only a brief period of time, it is dangerous to communicate, and many others. The lifetime of intelligent, communicative civilizations is short, meaning the value of L is small. Drake suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, and he further speculated that the lack of evidence of such civilizations may be because technological civilizations tend to disappear rather quickly. Typical explanations include it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself, it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others, they tend to be destroyed by natural events, and others.

These lines of reasoning lead to the Great Filter hypothesis,^[76] which states that since there are no observed extraterrestrial civilizations, despite the vast number of stars, then some step in the process must be acting as a filter to reduce the final value. According to this view, either it is very difficult for intelligent life to arise, or the lifetime of such civilizations, or the period of time they reveal their existence, must be relatively short.

(Most of this post has been lifted from Wikipedia. I love how the internet can make anyone look smart.)

Edited May 15, 2020 by Lindal Kidd

Lindal Kidd · May 15, 2020

Lots of people here are touching on one part or another of the issue. The Drake equation covers all of these:

The Drake equation is:

image.png.91ece80411c210f5a755fc102390e36d.png