We've discussed the Fermi Paradox a few times on the forum. A new study makes it even more paradoxical than before. Even setting very significant constraints the galaxy should be replete with lifeforms but none seem to be there.

 

Seems to me, civilisations don't last long enough to colonise other star systems. Seems to me a civilisation might be constrained to just their own star systems. 

 

 

Edited July 19, 20214 yr by martin-w

Or, by some strange combination of probability, we really are this galaxys first technological civilization......

I've thought about this a lot over the years.

The improbability of...... Me!

In order for me (proud partner of Socks the supercat and Sam the wonderdog) to exist, first an entire universe had to come into being, expand and cool....

Stars and galaxies had to form over unimaginable stretches of an apparently newly created thing called time, and one of those galaxies just happened to have a star with a planet that just happened to combine all the right conditions to form a new thing called life.

Alrighty then.

Billions of years pass, and on this exceedingly lucky planet species chaotically come and go, in any number of uncaringly merciless ways.

And finally, after all of that incredibly long chain of nearly random events....

Here we all are.

Our very existence proclaiming that you and I...... And every single one of us, are super-mega grand winners of the most improbable and excessively massive lottery..... ever.

 

Edited July 19, 20214 yr by HiFlyer

The way things are going it seems to me we might be constrained to just our own planet

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

Or, by some strange combination of probability, we really are this galaxys first technological civilization......

 

There are actually some  scientists who agree with you. Brain Cox I recall suspects it might be the case. The concept of us being the first isn't as far fetched as some believe. If true, the human race could be the first example of the universe becoming conscious.

Personally, my guess is that few civilisations get passed the great filterS.  One of the extinction events does the trick and there are probably many. 

 

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

The improbability of...... Me!

 

Yep, something Ive grappled with since I was a kid. 

Edited July 19, 20214 yr by martin-w

1 hour ago, W2DR said:

The way things are going it seems to me we might be constrained to just our own planet

 

I know the feeling. We have challenges to overcome for sure. Unless Elon manages to accelerate our striving to be a multiplanetary presence.

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

the galaxy should be replete with lifeforms but none seem to be there.
Seems to me, civilisations don't last long enough to colonise other star systems.

It is based on the assumption that civilisation is what we define it to be by comparison to ours.
One of the popular manifestations of high development level in theory is travelling to other planets/systems and colonising them.
What if many other civilisations develop into completely other directions, like inner advancement and the like (utopia or not)?
Of course, some may be the predator-type ones and fingers-crossed they won't come by...

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Personally, my guess is that few civilisations get passed the great filterS.  One of the extinction events does the trick and there are probably many. 

This is where I've landed, in terms of my own personal and very special theory. Extinction events do occur. Our paleontologists have identified, what?, 3 or 4 great die offs in our planet's history. Why would we think we'd be immune? Or any other life on any other planet be immune? And if external / natural events are stacked up, there's still man-made / being-made events. Is technology a negative filter in and of itself?

I imagine this planet is extremely lucky and special. I also imagine we'll never know if there's is or has been other civilizations in this galaxy--much less any other of the trillions of galaxies out there *waves hand vaguely*. Remember: space is big.

The very big and obvious problem with stuff such as Fermi, Drake and things like it, is that these fall foul of the Holmesian fallacy, i.e. the famously quotable: 'When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'

Whilst the notion of the phrase itself is indeed sound, the notion of being able to achieve it is, by dint of the fact that there is no way to ever know for sure if you have eliminated 'all which is possible', not even remotely sound. Put simply; you do not know what you do not know.

So, back with the problem at hand, an analogy would be if you orbited 800 miles above Earth in Neolithic times with a powerful directional radio aimed at the planet's surface, transmitting Marvin Gaye's 'I heard it through the grapevine' repeatedly on 104.5 FM, the entire populace of the planet would be completely unaware of it, since there was no concept of radio at that time and there would be little chance of the people spotting your craft visually either. Likewise, we do not know what any aliens might have invented, so we're not really in a position to know about trying to receive or monitor such things. They could be all stealthed up using some advanced technique we are unaware of, and hovering over us right now for all we know.

Even with the ability to observe and receive certain kinds of data, if we couple this with the fact that there is a limit on the observable universe, and there is too a limit on the length of time we have actually been capable of observing it in any truly analytical way too, limited as it is by the speed of the electromagnetic spectrum's radiation and the equipment necessary to record or observe things, we don't even know if the universe is isotropic, we can merely see an isotropic amount of it from our location. This is really indicative of how much we don't know if we can't even say for sure what the shape of something is, let alone anything more complex than that basic feature of it.

Thus people can do all the studies they like on this kind of thing and claim as much as they like about the results, but it's still mostly guesswork in spite of any pretensions otherwise, because there are so many parameters we'd need for a genuinely accurate analysis which we don't have and currently have no way of getting, that any study is so limited by a lack of data that to call it a study, is presumptuous to say the least. It's a bummer that this is the case of course, but sometimes the only honest answer we can give is that 'we don't know'.

We like to think of ourselves as advanced, but we've only been aware of radio since 1886. Compared to some space-faring race capable of traversing galaxies, we'd be like those Neolithic cavemen, so it's no surprise to me that we can't detect stuff, but it doesn't prove it isn't out there, and anyone who claims it does, is falling foul of that Holmesian fallacy.

Now I'm off to monitor my quantumtronic thought-beam receiver so I can feel the latest music chart from Alpha Centuri. Oops, that's a secret, forget I said that.

Edited July 19, 20214 yr by Chock

3 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Or, by some strange combination of probability, we really are this galaxys first technological civilization......

I've thought about this a lot over the years.

The improbability of...... Me!

In order for me (proud partner of Socks the supercat and Sam the wonderdog) to exist, first an entire universe had to come into being, expand and cool....

Stars and galaxies had to form over unimaginable stretches of an apparently newly created thing called time, and one of those galaxies just happened to have a star with a planet that just happened to combine all the right conditions to form a new thing called life.

Alrighty then.

Billions of years pass, and on this exceedingly lucky planet species chaotically come and go, in any number of uncaringly merciless ways.

And finally, after all of that incredibly long chain of nearly random events....

Here we all are.

Our very existence proclaiming that you and I...... And every single one of us, are super-mega grand winners of the most improbable and excessively massive lottery..... ever.

 

Yes, i've been thinking the very same thing once in a while.

But last year or so it occurred to me that there's also the possibility that maybe whole galactic civilizations already have existed and be gone. Given the enormous amount of time passed since the big bang, 13.77 billion years, perhaps the really big coincidence would be for two galactic civilizations to be in existence at the very same time, maybe the chance that a grain of sand from California meets a grain of sand from Mars is still bigger than that.

 

12 hours ago, Rafal said:

What if many other civilisations develop into completely other directions, like inner advancement and the like

 

Yes, that's one of the answers to the Fermi Paradox. It may be that all advanced civilisations evolve to the point where their populations are in control and expanding their presence beyond their own solar systems isn't required. It may be that the evolution of an advanced species is in the direction of AI and a virtual, unlimited realm. I doubt all alien species ( if any exist) are genetically programmed to expand their influence like we seem to be either. The only problem is, that all it would take would be ONE advanced species to survive that does value expansion and the result should be a galaxy replete with colonies. 

11 hours ago, Chock said:

but it doesn't prove it isn't out there, and anyone who claims it does, is falling foul of that Holmesian fallacy.

 

As you rightly say, the Drake Equation is indeed guesswork. Its based on lots of assumptions, and in fact it was just something Drake came up with to entertain people in a lecture he was giving. There have been attempts to fine tune it but yes, it is still based on assumptions.

The Fermi Paradox is a bit different in that it doesn't say "they aren't there" it simply asks "where are they?" as there is no current evidence, which is a reasonable question to ask. There are several answers to the Fermi Paradox as Ive posted before. 

 

11 hours ago, Chock said:

This is really indicative of how much we don't know if we can't even say for sure what the shape of something is, let alone anything more complex than that basic feature of it.

 

We have a pretty good idea the universe is geometrically flat, thus infinite. Not definitive though as it may be minutely curved and enormous, just not within the resolution of our ability to measure. This is why we're probably better of just considering our galaxy, as the Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation do, because if the universe is infinite then there absolutely will be advanced species out there, in fact an infinite number. In fact and infinite number of identical worlds to this one and an infinite number of you and me. Because atoms can only arrange themselves in a finite number of ways, so they have to repeat.

11 hours ago, Wildblue said:

Yes, i've been thinking the very same thing once in a while.

But last year or so it occurred to me that there's also the possibility that maybe whole galactic civilizations already have existed and be gone. Given the enormous amount of time passed since the big bang, 13.77 billion years, perhaps the really big coincidence would be for two galactic civilizations to be in existence at the very same time, maybe the chance that a grain of sand from California meets a grain of sand from Mars is still bigger than that.

 

 

 

You were very insightful. Some scientists say that for an advanced species to be around at the same time as us, in our galaxy, would be a very unlikely occurrence. We know primitive life occurred pretty much as soon as it could on the Earth, in quite hostile conditions. However, multicellular life took one billion years longer. So it seems that advanced life is hard and probably rare. 

Earth is the only place so far where we have detected life. That is not exactly a great foundation for extrapolation.

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

Earth is the only place so far where we have detected life. That is not exactly a great foundation for extrapolation.

Well, since there are an estimated 21,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the observable universe, and we can take a guess that there are probably many more beyond what we can see, and we as a species have landed vehicles on just two of the planets in our own solar system, it's a bit early to say we've looked everywhere. 😉

17 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Or, by some strange combination of probability, we really are this galaxys first technological civilization......

I've thought about this a lot over the years.

I’ve thought about that too, that and the other points you posted make my head spin!