So if they are right, the Earth is incredibly rare and would be a great find for space faring civilizations. They also had plenty of time to pass by and find this incredibly rare life bearing sphere. But they didn't. You can flip things how ever you want, the question remains - why haven't we seen anyone?
They actually haven't had much time to pass by. Earths only been around for 4.6 billion years, a couple hundred million of that was spent being a cooling ball of magma. Space is fucking huge and the universe is still very young. It's very likely we are on the early end of the development of life in the universe. A lot of things had to happen before our complex life could evolve.
As you said, after the formation of Earth, it took only a few hundred milion years for life to develop. That is incredibly short, almost instanteneously as soon as conditions for life were met, life formed. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, formed almost as soon as galaxies could form. So here we have a situation where a inteligent civilization could have formed anywhere in our galaxy 13 bil years ago or at any point in time after that. Chance is, if they had, by now they would have conquered the whole galaxy. Absence of any sign of inteligent life can be wxplained by the Great Filter. It could be any of the following: 1) interstellar travel is never feasible for any civ, no matter how advanced, 2) Earth-like planets are so rare, that we are probably the only inteligent civ in our galaxy, 3) Earth-like planets are not that rare, but inteligent civs tend to destroy themselves before they manage to spread out to other planets...
We don't know what the Great Filter is, but it must be pretty destructive for a civ. I just want to point out the fact that the Great Filter is probably still ahead of us and that we shouldn't take our existence for granted. We need to meticulously examine and neutralize any possible threats to human civilization. This is not fearmongering. It's just common sense, after you take all the facts into account that I laid out.
Actually life needs complex elements that only form in neutron star collisions(kilonovas) It could have been that the universe needed to be a couple billion years old before the elements that could create complex life actually came into existence. Everything else is pretty accurate, and I do think interstellar travel will end up being impossible, even terraforming other planets seems like it's a couple thousand years away.
As far as earth-like planets being rare, even if they are only 1 in 10,000 there would likely still be tens of millions in our galaxy alone.
We don't know what the Great Filter is, but it must be pretty destructive for a civ. I just want to point out the fact that the Great Filter is probably still ahead of us and that we shouldn't take our existence for granted.
If there is a great filter...
I mean, as you said, we're pretty early to the scene. Why can't we be the first in this galaxy? Perhaps planets like earth aren't rare over the lifetime of a galaxy, but they are rare in these early years of a galaxy. In other words, earth just developed quickly, so now we're here before any other earth-like planets have had a chance to develop intelligent life.
interstellar travel is never feasible for any civ, no matter how advanced,
I like the idea behind the concept of the Great Filter, but that point does not seems logic as it would imply that irregardless of how advanced a civ is, they would not be able to build anything that can even make just a one way travel to a star just a few year light far away. Right, it is not simple, but a civ even just a couple centuries head of us should be able to do it.
It's simple. We're the first intelligent life in the galaxy. There is nobody else yet in our galaxy.
Also, probably nobody capable of traveling the stars wants to settle a planet. Once you figure out how to make huge spaceships (which you'll need to travel interstellar space) you've essentially learned how to make cities in space. Our solar system would support a lot of people if we just used the resources available for space habitats, and by "lot" I mean in the quadrillions. And it turns out that all you need to support that population is a star to provide energy, and some planets to source materials from.
So with that in mind, why bother finding another habitable planet?
Or there are plenty of societies at least as advanced as we are, but we can't find each other because space is big and our stars tend to drown out our own puny EM emissions.
Yeah agreed, there's no way we're picking up alien radio broadcasts, not over the noise produced by a star.
On the other hand, if a civilization were creating a Dyson sphere, or other large constructions, we'd be able to see those unusual elements in the light spectrum coming off the star. So it is conspicuous that we haven't seen anything like that.
There's a fair question of "would it ever be practical to do such large constructs". As far as energy capture, between advances in energy efficiency and solar capture, one could imagine having energy beyond our greatest ambitions with no or minimal space based solar energy collection. The resources involved to construct such a thing would involve a mass equivalent to an entire planet to make a super thin shell, and we'd want to be pickier than just any old matter.
Similar to people dreaming of Mars colonization as a workaround for climate change. Anything we could do to make Mars livable would be even harder than engineering Earth's climate. Now maybe population growth may demand more area one day, or non replacement birth rates become so normal that population just starts shrinking.
There is the possibility that no one can "win" against the physics, and things didn't get much more advanced in space for any species than they are today for us. If that's the case, then we shouldn't be surprised that other hypothetical civilisations cannot be found.
The thing is, out of a population of trillions (or even quadrillions as you say), you only need a few thousand to travel to the stars to colonize another planet. With how large the population is, that is bound to happen. Just like there were bound to be pioneers travelling to the new world to settle it, despite how dangerous the journey was. And how there will be pioneers to settle the moon or mars or further out.
And a civilization like that would absolutely send stuff to other star systems, if only for science, so most of the research for the journey would already be done. And this is assuming that a civilization wouldn't want ever greater quantities of resources for ever greater projects, or access to other star systems for reasons we cannot fathom today (maybe neutron stars or black holes have some incredibly tempting uses? Or maybe there's some useful resources out in the galaxy that we have yet to discover?)
Basically, a successful civilization like that is bound to spread out, it's difficult to see scenarios where a successful civilization would be so homogenous in thought as for that to not happen. Amd then it's before we even get to sending AI probes to "colonize" space and gather data.
Also, probably nobody capable of traveling the stars wants to settle a planet. Once you figure out how to make huge spaceships (which you’ll need to travel interstellar space) you’ve essentially learned how to make cities in space.
I don't think it is a valid point. Yeah, if we can build a ship that take us to Alpha Centauri it would lool like a small city, but that does not mean that it can last forever and the traveller would never need to settle on a planet. And looking what the humans did in the past, it seems logic that while a part would want to continue to explore, another part would want to settle on a planet.
Our solar system would support a lot of people if we just used the resources available for space habitats, and by “lot” I mean in the quadrillions. And it turns out that all you need to support that population is a star to provide energy, and some planets to source materials from.
So with that in mind, why bother finding another habitable planet?
Because it is habitable and can be used as a transit point, advanced outpost, refuelling base or any other use you can do of an habitable planet where to do things you have not to fight even with the environment (tourism for example).
Maybe it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light? So it may not be a thing where aliens can just swing by our solar system to snap a few photos before heading off to the next one.
I'm sure that's the case. You can travel to other stars without ftl, it's just a lot slower and probably one way. It's really pretty limiting for society, for instance, without ftl an interstellar "civilization" is basically out of the question, you can't govern another star system without at the very least faster communication.
Maybe it's because we're not as evolved as we think. If aliens did appear, how many kooks would want to attack them because they are different?
If they land in one country, would other countries get jealous or scared, thinking that country now has an advantage? Shit, what happens if the neighbouring country had nukes; would they launch?
More likely is that if aliens had detected life here, Earth would be marked as a red, no-go zone, because of how unstable, tribal and violent we are.
Every conservative on earth would demand we attack the flying illegal aliens. Our planet's dumbest of dipshit right-wingers would be outside shooting at clouds all night long.
Why would they contact us? Kopernik got a lot wrong, but he was right in that we are nothing special. A species advanced enough to contact other lifeforms must run across planets in various states of ruin 12 a day.
What if we are the only ones obsessed with alien and space travels? What if there are quite a few aliens, but they are busy eating fruit and sleeping in the sun.
What, it wasn't enough to just gesture meaningfully at the state of the entire godamn planet when looking for reasons why aliens might want to avoid us?
I was going to say this. To those species who are capable of interplanetary colonization, we look like savage war goblins who can only negotiate transaction-based societies and are compelled by number-go-uo at the expense of letting children starve.
The space is huge and FTL travel is impossible. The only reason someone will visit us is if they built a generational space ship. And the only reason to do that is if you have destroyed your own planet and have to colonise another one. We will only see those, who came for our planet and don't care about us.
Yup. It's the answer that conflicts with sci-fi, but fits out best understanding of how things work. It's also the answer people don't want to hear.
Also we only know of one planet that has life on it. There's really nothing we can do with statistics with a sample size of one. So it's just as likely that we're the only sentient life in the universe as it is there's millions of of sentient lifeforms out there. That is to say we simply don't know.
But I still like sci-fi where there's a lot of interesting aliens that can fairly easily warp around the universe to hang out. But it is fiction.
The argument David Kipling made seems reasonable. Statistically the chance if there being almost no civilisations or the universe just teeming with life are the biggest. The parameters have to be tweaked just right for there being just a few civilizations in a galaxy. It's not teeming with signals and chances of parameters being just right is low, so most probable is we being alone.
So their whole argument is that tectonic plates are needed for complex life to emerge. There isn't much proof for it either way obviously but I find the argument flawed.
In any case, here is why I think aliens are here, either waiting for us to divest ourselves of our economic system and destructive ways (capitalism breaks when you mix in easy space exploration and heavy automation) or observing us and how changes emerge in our society like we do with secluded tribes.
Any advanced civ can tell a planet has life on it from a great distance. If simple life is rare, they would of had a probe here a long long time ago.
We started modifying the climate over 3000 years ago. Any civ within an 1000 light year range would have had enough time to notice and make it here. That is around 7 million star systems.
An advanced civ would have covered every single solar system with Von Newman probes.
I think the fernie paradox is more of a test than a rule. Any civ that can't pull itself out of the muck is probably bad news for galactic society, so they wait and see.
I find the idea that all intelligent species have the same dominator instinct driving them to explore, exploit, and colonize to be flawed. Not even all humans have this instinct, it's just that our western societies are all about domination so we grow up thinking it's the norm.
I agree, that is why I didn't bring up the possibility of enslavement or colonization. I'd even say the chances are higher of a civ being benign than not when reaching a space faring stage. I base this on mostly nothing.
I do believe an intelligent creature is probably at least mildly curious. Couple that with the likely hood of an advance civ having enough resources to build whatever projects they want, only a small subset of their population would need to be curious enough to make it a reality.
Even on the remoteest of chances that there is it a sapient life form capable and technologically advanced enough to contact us in this galaxy cluster, much less nearby?
Why the hell would they? We are obviously fucking crazy.
Xenoanthroplology. We're obviously not crazy and our many cultures are presumably much different from theirs. There would be enormous amounts to learn from studying our differences and our similarities.
Unless they've already simulated alien life in computer models... Then there's not a lot left to learn.
Timeline wise, we could be at the beginning of when other species are becoming sentient. Or we could have missed them by a billion years. The gap to get in contact is so massive that the odds are stacked against it ever happening.
Distance and time. No one seems to have a clue how far a light year is ... I mean maybe ur finding someone in ur own galaxy over a big enough timeline but sorry 2000 light years to the nearest galaxy? Not a chance.
Yep, relativity is a bitch. Even if we could do the speed of light, our time here would pass so quickly that by the time we reached some place that had life, ours might have stopped existing.
And yes, I know a light year is not a measure of time, but distance, but it still takes time.
100 different civilizations could have happened in our galaxy in the last 1 million years with only a few centuries of them emitting detectable signals.
And it could be worse, it could be 10 civilizations in the last 1 billion years.
I think this is part of it. If the speed of light is the speed limit of matter, it would be very difficult to travel anywhere within reasonable amount of time considering norminal life spans of even the longest living things on Earth.
I like to think about it differently:
That this planet is an incredibly unique and rare thing and humans are even more incredibly unique in the universe. And from that one thing makes us and our planet very very special.
Blipblop: “Those creatures on that planet are perplexing. Constantly at war, decimating their natural resources, consuming everything in their paths. Like a cancer overtaking an organism. Should we contact them?”
I'd seen this before, but was happy to reread it for gems like this:
"You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
There are many ideas and no definite proof. I like the idea that species either try to reach the stars and fail because it costs too much energy, or they find a sustainable lifestyle and not leave their home planet as Dr. Fatima pointed out in a good video
Nice, thanks. I’m of the opinion that any form of civilisation is doomed in about 200 Earth years’ equivalent past their industrial revolution. It is a bit crude, but I will say: so far 100% of the cases I’m analysing have collapse as an expected outcome.
What even makes you think the industrial revolution is a given? It happened exactly once at earth. Also: We are not doomed. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism but both are possible outcomes
