Why isn't the answer to the Fermi paradox obvious?

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The Fermi paradox is that there are likely countless intelligent societies in the universe, but no evidence of their existence.

Seems obvious to me. The same thing that prevents us from traveling to distant stars is probably the same thing that prevents aliens from doing the same: the vastness of space. Distant stars are probably too far to travel to in reasonable time. Wormholes may shorten the distance- but what if its unfeasible for any society to create one?

Optical limitations prevent any telescope from seeing exoplanets in sufficient detail to determine the presence of animal life. All that can really be known are some orbital characteristics. Certainly no alien society is going to send individuals to some distant star in the hopes that life may be spotted. Even if they did send unmanned vehicles to investigate suitable star systems - the chances of us being chosen are still pretty small.

I agree.

Our understanding of space is just so insignificant we can't make catch-all generalizations such as 'alien life doesn't exist due to lack of evidence' or even 'alien life exists everwhere.'

Our telescopes limited and our range of travel is.

Even if we discover faster than light travel (and some theoretical physics concepts are in the works right now) it doesn't mean we can traverse the universe quickly as travelling at the speed of light to places sti takes some time.

Even exoplanets in the nearest systems of our own we can only make 'rough guesses' and estimates of 'possible' bases for 'the possibility' of life to develop.

And, excuse me for my terrible grammar and writing, my computers having an extremely frustrating lag/delay.

i'm thinking we're in a simulation or any/all intelligent races that advance enough don't need to expand to other star systems and probably live on a very small scale in a virtual world.

The Atomic Rocket Project has an exhaustive analysis of this topic in Plain English. I strongly suggest that you look into it.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php

Somewhere on that page is the suggestion that only 1 in 50,000 habitable planets are indeed inhabited.

Also, if there is any intelligent life "out there", it may just not be screaming in our direction on the handful of frequencies that we monitor.

Fnord

Post subject: Re: Why isn't the answer to the Fermi paradox obvious? Reply with quote

The Atomic Rocket Project has an exhaustive analysis of this topic in Plain English. I strongly suggest that you look into it.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php

Somewhere on that page is the suggestion that only 1 in 50,000 habitable planets are indeed inhabited.

Also, if there is any intelligent life "out there", it may just not be screaming in our direction on the handful of frequencies that we monitor.

Post Posted: 59 minutes ago




Indeed. Science on our planet has recently come out of the Dark Ages.

Questions about dark matter and dark energy (if they actually exist) remain unanswered.

And the possibility of other "energies" and "matters" are just around the corner.

Scientists now speculate a star 1500 light years away may even have a Dyson Sphere about it. If there are other older races in the galaxy (as scientists suppose) how much more knowledge of communication they must have.

Instantaneous communication may be possible but the human race is still in it's technological infancy.

you're assuming that the ETs are all on the same level of as ourselves.
Some planetary systems might have formed one percent sooner than ours ( ie 45 million years earlier), and would have had 45 million years longer to evolve, and might have civilizations millions, or tens of millions of years more advanced than ours.

Fermi was taking time into account and saying that there if there WERE alien advanced civilizations that some of them would be a million years ahead of us in technology, and could over come those distances, and that some ETs would also have had millions of year to get here even if they were just plodding along at sub light speed. So why arent they here?

If their technology is only a thousand years behind ours, then they could not contact us.

1215 A.D. - The Magna Carta was signed. At this time, there were no anesthetics, no antibiotics, and "bleeding" or "leaching" someone were the preferred ways to treat illnesses. There was no Theory of Germs; but there were no microscopes to look at them, either. There was no electrical grid, no Internet, no radio, no telephone, and no satellite communication. Gunpowder (invented 1044 in China) had yet to see any use in European warfare. While beer and wine had been produced since antiquity, the first distillation of alcohol had not yet taken place. No movable type yet; but that's okay, because reading glasses had not been invented yet, either.

If their technology is only a thousand years ahead of ours, then what could we possibly have to offer that they would be interested in? What could a culture that is a thousand years behind have to offer us?

We can expect to see some old TV programs flying around space, our own are out there as well.

Of course, this assumes these theoretical aliens use(d) technology similar to our own, but that is all we know.


The point is, the fermi paradox is a paradox, according to statistics, it is nearly inpossible that we are alone, yet if we are not alone, it is nearly inpossible that we didn't see any clues of other life yet.

That said, there is a new theory that states that earth was quite early to the cosmic party, which means that, even if humans are not alone, we are far ahead; the other life might not have invented electricity yet.

The latest theory is that TV and radio shows turn to disorganized noise at around two light years. So the ETs who live eighty light years away who are just now getting Milton Berle's Variety Show are just getting static. So they know we have TV, but they don't know how dumb are programs are.

But it does seem to me that Fermi seems to have ignored stellar chemical evolution in his theory.

His paradox is based upon the idea that an intelligent species would be equally likely to evolve anytime in the whole 14 billion year time the Universe has existed, when in fact that's impossible. It takes several generations of stars to be born, die, explode, and form again, for chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium to become abundant. And those elements are needed to build both planets, and any life forms that might live on them.

In fact it might not have been until the last five billion years ago (when our sun formed) that there were any star systems with anbundant elements like carbon, iron, etc.

The Sun might be in that first "graduating class" of stars to have that. And if so its not impossible that our sun was also "the head of the class"- got formed even earlier than others of its general age- and got started in evolution a little sooner than even its near contemporaries. Other ETs don't exist because they haven't evolved yet, and we could be the first of a future wave of sentient life. Not impossible.

I'm inclined to think that any evidence for non-Earth life will be within this Solar System on another planet or moon.

Perhaps the spectral lines of an exo-planet may show evidence of the chemical processes of life at some point.

I think the chance of communication with any non-Earth organism is vanishingly small.