The Fermi Paradox

I am reminded of an episode of "Cosmos" where Sagan talks about old theories about life on Venus: It's an obscure white blob, it must be covered with clouds, therefore it must be wet and steamy, wet and steamy means swamps, and if there are swamps there must be swamp creatures, like dinosaurs. "Observation: Can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs!"

In this case, it's: Observation, can't see a thing. Conclusion: Intelligent complex beings watching us, hiding themselves from us, and only experimenting on individuals who won't blow their cover.

It's amazing how people's own minds and desires lead them so easily to bizarre conclusions.

Hi,

I am hoping to get commentary and criticism on my web site which defines the complexity of the universe.

It is really simple, and I hope someone can give me some pointers on how to explain it better.

The basic idea is that the complexity of the universe is equal to the information content of the universe. The information content of the universe is equivalent to the objective probability of a state.

A more complex state == more informed state == less probable state.

I am really looking for good questions which then I can respond to to help clarify the ideas.

Markov Chain Universe

Life is somewhat rare, but intelligent life that has managed to survive any local catastrophic events and build the means for space exploration is much rarer still.

I think we can safely assume that there is no time travel or faster than light space travel, since in that case we would be overrun by alien life forms and would not be wondering where they were. If that is true, then suppose that an intelligent alien civilization can travel for thousands of years to reach us, and that it would. The journey would need to be worthwhile for such a massive expenditure of resources. How would it decide to use its resources to visit Earth, specifically? It would have to have seen us with very powerful telescopes that could actually discern that our planet has life on it. It would need to observe that life doing something intelligent-looking, like building a civilization, etc., because it would be a waste of time to visit a planet of grazing herbivores, right? That is, unless it was just looking to colonize and/or take the resources.

If that all makes sense, then Earth creatures have only looked intelligent for a few thousand years, which makes the time in which we could have been discovered, an expedition to us mounted, and to have gotten here very short by interstellar travel standards. The alien civilization would have to be very close (within a few thousand light years, assuming near-light speeds are possible), would have to have been looking right at us at the dawn of "civilization," AND not be distracted by something more interesting or closer.

So, I think intelligent life just hasn't arrived yet, and it may be awhile. Hopefully, we'll still be here then.

How would you do on a hypothetical dolphin constructed intelligence test without any technological aid? Bearing in mind you don't have personal sonar and they do ( giving them "x ray like" vision as well as normal sight.) Unfair test you may cry.

As a species we have been able to construct ever more complex tools due to our hands with -opposable thumbs-! Our species has technology that most people do not understand and could not construct for themselves and can not control. Many have forgotten how to survive as mere human beings and have become like utterly dependent domestic pets. Our technology destroys our natural life support system, and lets us temporarily forget about the harsh realities of population dynamics, be comfortable and entertained. How intelligent is that really? Should we hope to meet creatures as "intelligent" as us?

I think that we are not detecting alien life only because we are using the wrong detectors. By using radio or other electromagnetic means, we are limiting the more-intelligent civilizations to our own pathetic media of communications; perhaps the electromagnetic era for them lasted only a short time until they found something better. We could be like aborigines saying that there were no intelligent colonies elsewhere on earth because they didn't see smoke from campfires.

In the Drake equation, Sagan assumed that the radio era lasted about 100 years and that the end of the radio era corresponded to destruction of the civilization. Perhaps the radio era simply terminates when a better means of communication comes along.

If you let your imagination wander away from the limitations of electromagnetism and the speed of light, perhaps they communicate using modulated coherent beams of neutrinos, quantum coupling, or some other technique we can't even begin to imagine.

has anyone considered the possibility that while intelligence may not be rare, The evolutionary necessity to build tools is very rare. example: Dolphins often show signs of very high intellects(syntax understanding, communication, learning) and have no evolutionary need to build tools.

Alien life? Radio? Here they are!

Sesame street aliens discover Dub step.

Next Steps in Mans Évolution

Before the sun goes down for the last time Mankind must have already found the means ( not in small tin boxes) to leave the earth en mass but to prosper in other environments or artificial one of planetary scales

Before that Mankind must learn to connect/fuse intellectual activites since there is no time for the individual brain to develop the capacity required

Forget the maths for a moment and consider a future where Mankind populates the universe. How can we/must we change to achieve this and to do so in harmony and plenty?

Answers please?

Within the next ten years, when the most advance astronomical instrument being design and built will get into service, we will be to observe planets in the hospitable zone around other stars in our galactic neighborhood. We will then be able to indirectly detect the presence of life on these planet by the detection of the spectra of oxygen in the atmosphere or of other atmospheric substance or even the presence of large forest.

In the following decades the radius of astronomical observation will increase to 500 million light years, a radius that include our Galaxy group and will multiply the reliability of our method to assert the presence of life and even intelligent life within that radius. This means that the presence of life on earth is known to all advance civilizations within this radius.

We are the only form of intelligent civilization that we know. Life evolved 300 million years after earth formation, 4 billion years ago. Base on the cycle of stable star such as the sun, earth like planet exist for about 5 billion years; life in microbial forms exist for about 4 billion years; so a civilization can live on a given planet at most for 1 billion years on a given planet. Intelligence civilization only exist since the neolithic which is 12 000 years ago. So we are just entering this phase of intelligent life.

If traveling to other habitable planets would be a logical phase of an advance civilization, then earth would have been colonized million of years ago. It is more likely that the next frontier for us or for any other advance civilization is not territorial but it is about what was inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi : "Know Thyself"

We may soon discover ways to communicate instantly across the visible universe. Maybe there is a cosmic cyberspace where million of civilizations are currently communicating in real time. We might not be far from discovering the new physics which allow us to tune in to the cosmic cyberspace.

But we just on the threshold of the one billion period of civilized life on this planet. It is evolving at an accelaring rate. Assuming the civilization evolution is as much in the order of things as the evolution of life, then we could ask the question of its direction.

Through the evolution since the Neolithic of gradually more advance form of communications , we are gradualing thinking more and more collectively. So there might be a threshold of collective thinking that will be reached where this planet will have a consciousness, will have a being. If this is the order of things in the cosmos, then it likely that the next order of being in the universe is an order of planet beings which together will gradually reach a level of cooperations which will eventually lead to the participation into to even higher order of beings.

Louis, Alaric,

I agree we're about to enter a phase of intelligent life. If we can escape backward science. But has a critical mass been reached where enough students are indoctrinated for the 'rut' to be inescapable?

Alaric it's a shame nobody responded to your question. It is important. We have information overload now going ballistic but communication hasn't improved. Our brains and intellectual power will evolve too slowly. I've developed a model on big projects where specialisation is tiered, and even 'multi helical' from a management and communication viewpoint. It has possibilities.

However. I suspect the Fermi principle may be resolved by the cyclic model of both galaxy and universal eternal re-ionization and reiteration. We seem to have only perhaps another 5bn years max locally. Can we get to a younger galaxy in time? The evidence is the chances are against us, but hey, why not go for it anyway?

Peter

The slightly modified Copernican principle tells us there is nothing special about us. Why would an intelligent species want to visit our home? We want to get off this death trap that is going to explode.

Space near suns is a dangerous place. There are all kinds of rocks, radiation, strong fields, etc.

I think a species capable of going beyond an Oort type cloud for a generation would want and be able to stay out of the danger zone.

Think about it. If you are standing beside an isolated atom and you think atoms are a natural consequence of laws of our universe you'd wonder why you can't see another atom near, as if it is a violation of Principle of homogeneity. But if you look out on a grander scale you'd see there are other atoms and they are (on appropriate scale) spread homogeneously. Of course as intelligent, conscious, technological civilization has evolved on Earth, it should also have done on other planets by now. I think the problem is we are seeing on a smaller scale just around our planet. Biological systems are a natural consequence of our set of laws of Nature. When we have the appropriate technology we will find that life has indeed formed all over our universe.

The elegant resolution of the Fermi Paradox is to reject the Principle of Homogeneity, specifically the modern version of the Copernican Principle. I have posted an informal proof that "people have a privileged position as observers of the universe" on the "A Physicist and a Science Writer Walk Into a Bar" thread. See "Testing for an Isomorphism between Mathematics and the Physical Universe" dated Nov. 28, 2014 @ 10:23 GMT. It is part of a discussion thread starting with Steve Agnew's comment on Nov. 21, 2014.

I thought that there was too much philosophical speculation about how to make definitions that would be useful for all of physics, so I choose a piece small enough on which to construct an informal proof. It shows how to describe the motions of the Sun and the Moon as seen from the Earth using pure mathematics. The extreme improbability (p

The elegant resolution of the Fermi Paradox is to reject the Principle of Homogeneity, specifically the modern version of the Copernican Principle. I have posted an informal proof that "people have a privileged position as observers of the universe" on the "A Physicist and a Science Writer Walk Into a Bar" thread. See "Testing for an Isomorphism between Mathematics and the Physical Universe" dated Nov. 28, 2014 @ 10:23 GMT. It is part of a discussion thread starting with Steve Agnew's comment on Nov. 21, 2014.

I thought that there was too much philosophical speculation about how to make definitions that would be useful for all of physics, so I choose a piece small enough on which to construct an informal proof. It shows how to describe the motions of the Sun and the Moon as seen from the Earth using pure mathematics. The probability of the correlations (including those from my further comments) being random is less than one part in 10-15. This extreme improbability implies that all of math and science are just different facets of the same reality. Empirical data is useful for insight and validation, but is not strictly necessary.

Erratum - The probability of the correlations between the motions of the Earth and Moon on the sky and elementary number theory being random is less than one part in 1015. I left in a minus sign when I had to repost after the Previewer did not show me that the posting operation would break on a unbalanced left pointed bracket.

The probability is really on the order of one in 1020. To get that high improbability one has to further analyze the second order constant associated with the month and the year and to look at a couple of things in the background. Because 2 was divided out three times, 10 needs to be used in three places. The first was the 10*7 = 70, the inverse inclination of the Moon's orbit. Another one is the 10*47 = 470 year lifespan of Copernicanism from 1543 to 2013. The last is in the 1020. The finite symmetries of the Celestial Sphere are represented by the Platonic solids. There are 20 ways, 10 of each handiness, to embed a tetrahedron in a cube in a dodecahedron. The 1020 is the number of chiral ways raised to the number of achiral ways. This arises from the formation of a phase space.

Correction - In calculating my dates for the era of "Copernicanism" I did not take nutation into account. Ignoring nutation the obliquity of the Earth would have been exactly 23.5 degrees about November 1542. That would be about when Copernicus fell ill leading to his death in May 1543. His master work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was being prepared for printing at the time. Including nutation gives an earlier date about July 1545 and a later date about July 2015, which is about when my ideas for a new geocentrism are likely to be widely distributed.

These dates are important for understanding how to interpret "realism" in the new science. Using the Big Bang as the center we have a "holographic" universe in which dynamically changing interference patterns become "simple" for some particular model, so it can be "discovered". Copernicus may be thought of as the last of the old guard preparing the way for the new "centerless" universe of Newton and later scientists. Thus the earlier correlation is with the end of Copernicus's life.

Taking "Now" as the center we have a "Shakespearian" universe. The whole world is a stage upon which to live out the stages of life and the rest of the universe is a backdrop. Mathematically we can extrapolate into the past and future using the simple patterns currently observable.

THE FERMI PARADOX: THE THEORETICAL REALITY SUPPORTING EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITATIONS

Where is everybody?" was a question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi. The 'paradox' is that extraterrestrials should be here, yet there is no indisputable evidence to support that. Or is there? Those pesky UFOs just will not go away!

The Fermi Paradox (after physicist Enrico Fermi) briefly goes as follows. Extraterrestrial intelligences with advanced technology and interstellar spaceflight capability exist. Sub-light interstellar spaceflight violates no laws of physics. Adopting the mantra of quantum physics, 'anything that's not forbidden is compulsory'. The time it takes to explore every nook and cranny of our Milky Way Galaxy via sub-light interstellar spaceflight is a tiny fraction of the age of the Galaxy. There's at least one universally valid reason to boldly go - species survival. No star, no solar system lives forever. We (Planet Earth) can't hide from alien exploration and/or colonization. So, where is everybody? [By analogy, terrestrial life forms like bacteria, ants and cockroaches, birds, and of course humans, have explored and colonized Planet Earth in tiny fractions of the time that Earth itself has existed.] So again, where is everybody?

I can hear screams of 'objection, objection' now. It's obviously too far and takes too long to get from there (wherever that is) to here. Well, life wasn't meant to be easy! Seriously, if you think about it a while, methinks you protest too much!

Firstly, aliens could have a very long natural lifespan relative to us carbon-based terrestrial bipeds. There's no natural law that confines intelligent life forms to an existence of just three score and ten.

Secondly, advanced extraterrestrials may have perfected various hibernation techniques. Put your spaceship on autopilot and sleep the long journey away.

Thirdly, there's that way old sci-fi chestnut, the multi-generation interstellar spaceship. While I feel that's an unlikely concept, especially for exploration, it might not be quite so far out if the objective is interstellar colonization.

Then there's bioengineering, turning an organic body into something that's more machine than flesh and blood, perhaps akin to Doctor Who's Daleks. Given advances in artificial body parts for humans, albeit it hip replacements or dentures or even mundane tooth fillings, that's certainly a valid possibility.

Fifthly, why stop there? Send 100% machines - artificial intelligences in the form of cybernetic 'organisms' or robots or androids or tiny nanotechnology machines. One obviously things of Data from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', or something akin to the original 'Battlestar Galactica' Cylons. Think of the savings in not having to provide life support and other life essentials for biological organisms. We've made a start already down this path. There's nothing different in principle between a Cylon and our Pioneer 10 & 11; our Voyager space probes. It's just that a Cylon is a lot more sophisticated. The day will come when our Pioneers and Voyagers will morph into something approaching a Cylon, or any one of multi-dozens of similar 'beings' in the sci-fi literature. Since AI is nearly immortal (relative to flesh and blood), that takes care of travel time arguments, and the possible environments fit for relative easy exploration (colonization?) are expanded greatly.

Lastly, maybe, just maybe, a sort of warp drive, faster-than-light ship is possible. Aliens whose science is thousands of years more advanced than ours just might have gotten around Einstein's speed limit. I wouldn't want to wager any money on it, but I'd be less than open minded not to admit the possibility, however remote. Add to that, theoretical but allowable 'gateways' between distant points of our Universe, maybe even to other universes - wormholes and Black Holes. Maybe, just maybe, an advanced alien civilization has the ways and means to manipulate such objects and forces to facilitate easy travel in space (and time too maybe). An excellent hardcore science based sci-fi novel that doesn't rely on pseudo techno-babble that illustrates this is Carl Sagan's "Contact".

So yet again, where is everybody?

Answers include (but aren't really limited to) general concepts that suggest that...

They don't exist; never have and never will. What's wrong with that? Well, given the vastness (100,000 light-years across) and timelessness (over 12 billions of years minimum) of our Milky Way Galaxy's entire expanse, the odds that we are the proverbial IT, the one and only, is extremely unlikely. It's a massive violation of the Principle of Mediocrity or the Copernican Principle.

We're the first kids on the block, not the new kids on the block. What's wrong with that? Again, the odds that in all the vastness of our Milky Way Galaxy we should happen to be the first, is unlikely in the extreme. Our Solar System is but 4.5 billion years old; our Galaxy is way, way, way, way older than that.

They exist but don't care to explore space, to seek out new life and new civilizations. They don't want to boldly go or seek communications. They want to be left alone - isolationists. What's wrong with that? That might be true for one, or several alien civilizations, but to extrapolate and suggest that that applies across the board to each and every extraterrestrial civilization is illogical.

They boldly go, but haven't come our way yet. What's wrong with that? Again, it doesn't take that long to explore the entire Galaxy. It would be a fluke if we hadn't of been noted and logged in some other civilization's database.

They're here, but leave us alone. What's wrong with that? Again, that might be true for one, or several alien civilizations, but to extrapolate and suggest that that applies across the board again strikes me as illogical. There is such a thing called the Zoo Hypothesis to explain the Fermi Paradox. It's both a Star Trek 'Prime Directive' concept combined with that of a zoo. Aliens (the zoo keepers) don't interfere with us (though of course every now and then the zoo keepers have to interact with the animals (humans) in the zoo), don't allow others to interfere with us, yet probably wouldn't allow us to escape the cage (meaning probably the confines of our solar system - I mean we have been allowed to travel to the Moon).

They're here and interact with us and our environment - UFOs anyone? What's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing!

UFOs are a perfect answer to the Fermi Paradox!

Further readings: The Fermi Paradox

Hart, Michael H. & Zuckerman, Ben (Editors); Extraterrestrials: Where Are They?; Pergamon Press, N.Y.; 1982:

Hart, Michael H. & Zuckerman, Ben (Editors); Extraterrestrials: Where Are They? [2nd edition]; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 1995:

Verma, Surendra; Why Aren't They Here? The Question of Life on Other Worlds; Icon Books, Cambridge; 2007:

Webb, Stephen; Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life; Copernicus Books, N.Y.; 2002:

Life is a very interesting phenomena. I tend to think that life is a pure chancing event, an anomaly due to the sheer number of possible events in the whole universe. It is like a lottery winner, we know out of a bizillion possibilities, there will be one winner. Then you ask the winner why he even exists.

There is no other plausible explanation but pure chance. By that understanding, it is highly unlikely to have conscious biological beings out there.

My verdict is that we are the lottery winner and lottery winner ought not to ask other lottery losers why they lose.

Now that science has firm evidence for earthlike planets from the passage of those bodies in front of their suns, it would seem likely that the nearest intelligence will be in excess of 400 years away in time. Some of those other planets will then be looking at earth's passage just as we are looking at theirs.

The dispersion of light pulses means that communication would need to modulate something as bright as a 1/1000th of a star, which is already quite a lot of total energy. A massive structure the size of the earth could enhance the signal that others already measure for earths passage in front of the sun.

However, it is much more likely that a civilization would use high energy neutral atom beams instead of just a really massive and bright source of lower energy photons like a sun or even high energy gamma rays.

Science should therefore look carefully for signs of high energy neutral atom pulses in the passages of likely planets across their suns. One possible communication source is with very high energy neutral particles since such atoms have much less background and would tend to journey in the same path as light. In principle, there is a way to modulate the phases of an electron and proton in a stepwise progression of coaccelerations of the electron and proton into a neutral atom beam.

The resultant high energy neutral atom beam would then be highly collimated and have a large amount of information stored in the differential modulation of the electron and proton phases of each atom, but as bunches of redundant and identical atoms. Even capturing one atom would in principle reveal the information of an entire civilization. If we could create and point such high energy and highly phase modulated neutral hydrogen beams to promising planets, then those planets should be transmitting similar high energy neutral atom beams to us as well if they are intelligent enough.

Once civilization reaches the point that we can code and decode such a high energy neutral atom in space, we should be able to participate in the larger galactic communication internet that surely now exists, albeit hundreds of years out of phase with each other. Even if we only received one atom per year, we could still keep in touch with the cosmos.

Although we do not yet understand how to code and transmit the aware matter packets of thought, eventually we will learn how to do that. Our fragile bodies born of our mother earth simply cannot journey far into harsh and inhospitable cosmos of our father time. The aware matter packets of consciousness stored on a single atom, though, can make such a journey. We should be able to have dozens of neutral beams transmitting and receiving aware matter packets from stable orbits around our sun and therefore begin sharing our lives with an increasingly greater portion of this vast universe.

The Fermi paradox is not a paradox but is simply a limitation of our imagination...