The Fermi paradox ?

[Strange2]

The Drake equation suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations (the Fermi paradox) suggests that technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly.

What do you think, are we proving the Fermi paradox correct?

[BillTheCat]

Good question... I don't pretend to understand the maths but the principles are interesting. In terms of Drake and Fermi I tend to take the Douglas Adams approach, i.e.:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space..."

I certainly believe that there is life on other planets elsewhere in the universe (but not that we are being visited), however there are two major factors involved:

• Size (see Douglas Adams quote); and
• Time

The Universe is old....................................................... There is every chance that if you take Drake (with pessimistic inputs yielding less than 1 civilisation per galaxy) then even if more than one civilisation arose then they would miss each other in time.

Drake (with optimistic inputs yielding many civilisations per galaxy) is fine but even so the distances (even within the galaxy) are HUGE.......(see Douglas Adams quote). As such, even the valiant attempts of SETI are unlikely to point at the right patch of sky at the exact time that the transmission arrives.

Getting back to the original question, it is my expectation that all dominant beings will rise and fall according to the vagueries of their planet, system and their own impact. The dinosaurs got smacked by an asteroid, who knows whether we'll pollute ourselves out of existence and what will come after...but eventually Sol will go nova and thats that for our solar system.

In a nutshell: Space and Time are so incredibly big that the odds of contact diminish accordingly. More's the pity.

[Strange2]

Hey Bill,

Mind- boggling sums it up..The Hubble telescope is capable of detecting about 80 billion galaxies. Just using the Hubble data alone there would have to be at least 100 stars in the universe for every grain of sand on earth. Mathematicians at the University of Hawaii tried to guess how many grains of sand are on the world's beaches. They came up with 7,500,000,000,000,000,000, or seven quintillion five quadrillion grains of sand." now, multiply the two and your have brain fry...lol

You make some good points and I have to agree with you... Distance and Time is the obstacle. Unfortunatly, I do think our own species is proving the Fermi paradox true. That's said, I do think the Fermi paradox only relates to our own species Man and not all forms of life. Most species on earth are self preserving but lack the same intelligence (or stupidity) as our selves. And going by the diversity of life on our planet and the way life has evolve, every living thing is different and not all the same. I think it would be true with other intelligent life forms as well. Ultimately it's the environment and what a species has to do to survival that will shape it's evolution and it's intaligence. On a universal application of evolution. Evolution only makes the minimum adjustments to permit a species to survive and this includes the intelligence of a species. This means that any intelligent species is likely to be very close to us in intelligence unless two, lethally-conflicting intelligent species evolved simultaneously in the same locality. The one which mutated up in intelligence the quickest would become dominant. This may have already happened here on Earth between the Neanderthals and us. Once a species achieves intelligence, their current level of technology will not rely on the level of that intelligence but on the duration and persistence of their scientific research. I don't think ET is a super being just one which evolved along time before we did. That is not to say that ET does not have abilities which we would put into the realm of the para-normal. What would you say about the ability to detect muscular electrical activity from a distance of twenty feet under water? Or how about the ability to detect changes in temperature to one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius? Sounds pretty far fetched eh? The shark does both and it's been around for over 200 million years. ET could have super senses of that sensitivity but no sense of (say) smell. We have a sense of smell because it aids the survival of our species in our environment. ET may have evolved in another environment where smell is not needed but other senses are. Neither species is superior, just evolutionarily distinct.

Anway, until we can get ET in the psychologist's chair and measure relative intellect, my theory will remain just that.

Cheers

[Shazzoir]

Strange 2, that post of yours was amazing.

Loads of stuff that I tend to believe said in a wonderfully clear fashion.

Why aren't you a writer? Or are you?

Great, great post, and thanks for starting this interesting and thought provoking thread

Shazz

[Strange2]

Why aren't you a writer? Or are you?

Hey Shazzoir,

Thanks for your kind words...

As for being a writer... No, not at all. I wouldn't no the first thing about it.. or where to start.

Nice thought though...Cheers