The Fermi paradox July 8, 2016

[Valtér Hégér]

 

A presentation at the Memphis Astronomical Society, July 8, 2016

Valter Heger

 

Enrico Fermi once made an interesting observation.  If the conditions for life seem relative easy to assemble and a count of the number of stars seems so large, then there should be plenty of chances for life to evolve elsewhere in the galaxy.

We should be able detect signs of advanced civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy. 

However, there seem to be other observable civilizations out there?  Fermi's question is, "Where are they?" 

 

One of the basis for this question is Drake's equation. 

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Making reasonable assumptions for quantities leads to the estimate that there should be thousands of civilizations in just our galaxy.

The number of such civilizations, N, is assumed to be equal to the mathematical product of (i) the average rate of star formation, R*, in our galaxy, (ii) the fraction of formed stars, fp, that have planets, (iii) the average number of planets per star that has planets, ne, that can potentially support life, (iv) the fraction of those planets, fl, that actually develop life, (v) the fraction of planets bearing life on which intelligent, civilized life, fi, has developed, (vi) the fraction of these civilizations that have developed communications, fc, i.e., technologies that release detectable signs into space, and (vii) the length of time, L, over which such civilizations release detectable signals

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There seem to be several classes of potential solutions to this observation. 

I am going to present them and we will have a vote on the notion that intelligent collective minds work as a team and lead to meaningful answers.

 

Many of the solutions congregate around the notion of a "Great Filter". 

This is the notion that the steps to evolution of an intelligent civilization have one or a few difficult hurdles to overcome.

One big question is are we before the Great Filter or beyond.

 

A1)  "Life is hard".  One possible candidate for the great filter is that the transition from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life took a long time (2.5 B years) and as such, might take a lot longer in other systems.  This is also a form of "The We are the First civilization" conjecture. 

 

A2) "Intelligent life is rare" 

The universe may be teaming with simple squid.  Maybe the Earth moon system is very stable but rare to achieve.  Thus allowing evolution with the major climate upheaval when the planet starts to change its axis of orientation. 

 

B)  "We Kill Ourselves" 

Another solution is that as soon as a civilization acquires advanced knowledge of nuclear and biological weapons, it proceeds to wipe out most life on the planet and reverts back to a pre-stone age existence which is unable to advance because during its first accent, it consumed most of the available [energy] resources for civilizational advancement. 

Civilizations do not make it past the Great Filter barrier.

Star Trek "Return to Tomorrow". 

 

 

C)  "Golden Age" 

We are seriously underestimating how hard it is to advance beyond our current state of existence.  We use up our energy reserves without discovering new ones.  Moreover, we used up the minerals and ores onto which create another civilization. 

Soon, Earth will die not in a great bang, but in a whimper in the cold and silent Earth.  Back to the “Snowball Earth” for 100K years

 

D)  "Great costs" 

It costs a lot both in terms of money and resources to travel beyond our solar system.  The Kuiper belt is full of rocks ready to smash our voyages to bits of matter.  Stay at home and build your civilization.  We have many challenges here to be solved, from Global warming to pollution control and clean up from our "technological evolution" and debt.

 

Finally, the fun part,

Solutions to Fermi's paradox that are just plain weird.

 

T)  “Dyson spheres harbor life.

It really is not detectable with current technology.

 

U)  "We evolve to a trans biology species"   

EM communication is passé.  EM civilizations out there are undetectable from the background.

 

V)  "The great silence". 

We evolved from predatory ancestors.  Thus, we should turn off all of our EM transmissions and hope that some super intelligence does not come here to harvest our planet or Sun.

 

W)  "Prime Directive" 

Earth has been deemed to be a quarantined and advanced civilizations have a sort of "Prime Directive" not to reveal their existence to Earth!  Funny short story, "It's Made of Meat!"

 

X)  "Who cares to visit the home world of “The Donald” " 

We are in the middle of nowhere and no one cares to travel this way. 

In fact, they don't want to come into contact with us.  They know about us, our beliefs and history and from what they know, they shun us. 

Sort of like the joke that if we met Cro-Magnon Man, we would avoid him at all costs. 

They are so much smarter than we are, that they say that humans don't bother to drive out to the middle of Mongolia to communicate with an ant farm. 

 

Y)  "Dark Star". 

Advanced civilization go out and destroy other likely candidates long before they attain the power to be a threat to them. 

Sort of a strong argument against broadcasting our location. 

Ref 1

 

Z)  "AI or spiritual or dream existence" 

We are part of an advanced alien computer simulation. 

Our existence [history, beliefs, war, and economics] is just something run by some dork in the equivalent of 27th century in his parent's basement playing "Dungeons and Dragons" on a Friday night broadcasting to fellow dorks.

 

 

[1]  https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Dark-Forest-Theory-of-the-cosmos-which-is-a-response-to-the-Fermi-Paradox

 

[Brian Hancock]

Excellent topic- looking forward to it.

Brian

Sent from my iPhone

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[Valtér Hégér]

I know one person expressed interest in my other talk.  Please share. 
http://www.meetup.com/memphis-technology-user-groups/events/230862519/
Tuesday 7pm at FIT

[Valtér Hégér]

nice article:
http://phys.org/news/2016-08-earthly-life-premature-cosmic-perspective.html

[Valtér Hégér]

I read an article the other day on Facebook, which argued that we are not taking into account the fact that signals diminish over distance.  Moreover, that only certain parts of the planets have transmitters, which further reduces the odds that the signals can be detected elsewhere.  

Interesting read, but I can't find it now.

[Ric Honey]

I'd be interested in the article if you find it again, because the idea that we aren't taking the inverse square law of wave propagation into account is nutty. Every physicist and electrical engineer knows that, we're also smart enough to account for Doppler shift of distant bodies moving away from us a higher rates the further they are (expansion of the universe)...

We can calculate how big an antenna would be needed to pick up signals from Earth at other nearby stars.....
Back in early AM radio days, we pumped out some very powerful signals....

Ric

On 5/7/2017 1:00 PM, Valtér Hégér wrote:

I read an article the other day on Facebook, which argued that we are not taking into account the fact that signals diminish over distance.  Moreover, that only certain parts of the planets have transmitters, which further reduces the odds that the signals can be detected elsewhere.  

Interesting read, but I can't find it now.

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