4 ms·

In my mind, Fermi's Paradox looms very large. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Pxtl 13y ago
Yup. I'm pretty sure we're screwed and interstellar colonization is impossible. At best, we'll get a probe that takes a thousand years to tell us what it found, and we'll only explore a handful of neighbouring systems this way before something eventually scrapes humanity down the memory hole.
unepipe 13y ago
Honestly, I've come to disagree with the "paradox". The ability to send physical evidence of other intelligent life is based on a certain speed limit of the universe. So that doesn't serve as much of a lack of evidence. Habitable planets are too far apart for much interstellar travel to occur readily given that the speed limit is c. Beyond that, the power of a radio signal is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, and we have things like magnetic eddies at the edge of our heliosphere, so it might just be incredibly improbable for any civilization to have generated the types of signal creation that we would pick up. In the hypothetical/fantastical, other advanced civilizations might have long distance, superluminal communication technology, but that's not something our civilization could actively intercept. tldr; I don't buy Fermi's paradox.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  The Fermi Paradox doesn't necessarily say that intelligent life doesn't exist. The impossibility of interstellar travel is compatible with the Fermi paradox. The point is that if interstellar colonization is possible, the age of the universe practically requires galaxy-wide colonization as an inevitability. Yes, it would take millions of years to colonize an entire galaxy. Tens of millions, even. Guess what? 10 million years is only 0.1% of the age of the universe. So if one civilization develops interstellar colonization, they experience geometric growth and claim the entire galaxy. So either there is no civilization that has a 0.1% lead on us (which is statistically absurd if Earth-like planets are common) or interstellar colonization is impossible.
  - maaku 13y ago
    It goes beyond that. Even if interstellar travel is not plausible, you'd still expect to find solar systems completely transformed by intelligent life (think Dyson spheres, although maybe not so extreme). If interstellar travel were merely supremely difficult, then you'd expect regional clusters of stars exhibiting these properties. These would be bizarre astronomical oddities that we'd have likely noticed by now.
    - unepipe 13y ago
      I'd still maintain we simply can't detect it.
  - unepipe 13y ago
    Damn, thank you for the informative response! This makes more sense, I misunderstood the Fermi paradox.
VladRussian2 13y ago
The Fermi paradox is "why a highly developed civilization isn't behaving like a Western colonialists or tourists toward primitive natives of some remote wilderness".
- Pxtl 13y ago
  The universe is old. If habitable planets are common, then it's functionally inevitable that intelligent life exists with a billion year head start on us. Would they eschew expansionism? Maybe. Would they always eschew it 100% of the time? Definitely not. And this is a Darwinean process - the ones that decided to stay home are the ones you don't meet. And they've had a billion years to change their minds. Consider that the likelihood is numerous billion-year-head-starts, one species would inevitably try it.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    i'm not saying that they wouldn't pursue expansionism. A half-billion years ago they could have had a thriving colony on our planet. And, as you said, there is a plenty of time to change their mind, literally, and bodies, so planet surface existence isn't a key anymore, or at least it isn't a big deal to let go the planet which has potential for development of new civilization. We're just so low on the development ladder, that we're a national park, designated wilderness, off-limit for the ones who can reach us.
splitrocket 13y ago
As far as we understand physics, actually traveling through interstellar medium is very very slow. Light itself takes next to forever to go from here to there. Most likely, intelligent species realized it was much more fun to explore inner space rather than outer space. I'd wager we won't see them: they've surrounded their local stars with Dyson Spheres, communicating with highly directed, encrypted, massively wide-band, low power communications that would look rather like background radiation unless they were pointed right at us and we were meters away. Think about how important latency is to high frequency traders. In an information ecosystem, the laws of physics become paramount: latency and bandwidth are king. Physically being far from the action is essentially choosing to banish yourself to the hinterlands when everything exciting/valuable is happening at the hot core as close to the ball of fusion in the middle. update: Thinking further, if anyone has in fact developed FTL, you can bet your ass they don't want anyone else to have it. In space, Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest MotherF&@$%^# around. A baseball going 99% C is a weapon of mass destruction (http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/), much less a ship, which would essentially be a planet destroyer you literally couldn't see coming.
macspoofing 13y ago
Perhaps most (all?) advanced civilizations annihilate themselves (or get annihilated) before they have a chance to colonize other worlds?
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  That's one of many theories. One of the other popular ones is that we're in some sort of galactic natural park until we're ready to cope with joining the civilized folks.

Pxtl 13y ago

Yup. I'm pretty sure we're screwed and interstellar colonization is impossible. At best, we'll get a probe that takes a thousand years to tell us what it found, and we'll only explore a handful of neighbouring systems this way before something eventually scrapes humanity down the memory hole.

unepipe 13y ago

Honestly, I've come to disagree with the "paradox". The ability to send physical evidence of other intelligent life is based on a certain speed limit of the universe. So that doesn't serve as much of a lack of evidence. Habitable planets are too far apart for much interstellar travel to occur readily given that the speed limit is c. Beyond that, the power of a radio signal is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, and we have things like magnetic eddies at the edge of our heliosphere, so it might just be incredibly improbable for any civilization to have generated the types of signal creation that we would pick up. In the hypothetical/fantastical, other advanced civilizations might have long distance, superluminal communication technology, but that's not something our civilization could actively intercept. tldr; I don't buy Fermi's paradox.

Pxtl 13y ago
The Fermi Paradox doesn't necessarily say that intelligent life doesn't exist. The impossibility of interstellar travel is compatible with the Fermi paradox. The point is that if interstellar colonization is possible, the age of the universe practically requires galaxy-wide colonization as an inevitability. Yes, it would take millions of years to colonize an entire galaxy. Tens of millions, even. Guess what? 10 million years is only 0.1% of the age of the universe. So if one civilization develops interstellar colonization, they experience geometric growth and claim the entire galaxy. So either there is no civilization that has a 0.1% lead on us (which is statistically absurd if Earth-like planets are common) or interstellar colonization is impossible.
- maaku 13y ago
  It goes beyond that. Even if interstellar travel is not plausible, you'd still expect to find solar systems completely transformed by intelligent life (think Dyson spheres, although maybe not so extreme). If interstellar travel were merely supremely difficult, then you'd expect regional clusters of stars exhibiting these properties. These would be bizarre astronomical oddities that we'd have likely noticed by now.
  - unepipe 13y ago
    I'd still maintain we simply can't detect it.
- unepipe 13y ago
  Damn, thank you for the informative response! This makes more sense, I misunderstood the Fermi paradox.

VladRussian2 13y ago

The Fermi paradox is "why a highly developed civilization isn't behaving like a Western colonialists or tourists toward primitive natives of some remote wilderness".

Pxtl 13y ago
The universe is old. If habitable planets are common, then it's functionally inevitable that intelligent life exists with a billion year head start on us. Would they eschew expansionism? Maybe. Would they always eschew it 100% of the time? Definitely not. And this is a Darwinean process - the ones that decided to stay home are the ones you don't meet. And they've had a billion years to change their minds. Consider that the likelihood is numerous billion-year-head-starts, one species would inevitably try it.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  i'm not saying that they wouldn't pursue expansionism. A half-billion years ago they could have had a thriving colony on our planet. And, as you said, there is a plenty of time to change their mind, literally, and bodies, so planet surface existence isn't a key anymore, or at least it isn't a big deal to let go the planet which has potential for development of new civilization. We're just so low on the development ladder, that we're a national park, designated wilderness, off-limit for the ones who can reach us.

splitrocket 13y ago

As far as we understand physics, actually traveling through interstellar medium is very very slow. Light itself takes next to forever to go from here to there. Most likely, intelligent species realized it was much more fun to explore inner space rather than outer space. I'd wager we won't see them: they've surrounded their local stars with Dyson Spheres, communicating with highly directed, encrypted, massively wide-band, low power communications that would look rather like background radiation unless they were pointed right at us and we were meters away. Think about how important latency is to high frequency traders. In an information ecosystem, the laws of physics become paramount: latency and bandwidth are king. Physically being far from the action is essentially choosing to banish yourself to the hinterlands when everything exciting/valuable is happening at the hot core as close to the ball of fusion in the middle. update: Thinking further, if anyone has in fact developed FTL, you can bet your ass they don't want anyone else to have it. In space, Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest MotherF&@$%^# around. A baseball going 99% C is a weapon of mass destruction (http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/), much less a ship, which would essentially be a planet destroyer you literally couldn't see coming.

macspoofing 13y ago

Perhaps most (all?) advanced civilizations annihilate themselves (or get annihilated) before they have a chance to colonize other worlds?

ceejayoz 13y ago
That's one of many theories. One of the other popular ones is that we're in some sort of galactic natural park until we're ready to cope with joining the civilized folks.