5 Unsettling Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

where is everybody this only question was pondered by physicist Enrico Fermi as he peered into the night sky the universe is so unbelievably vast he thought to himself so densely populated with innumerable galaxies in every direction we look each of these galaxies contains billions of stars and billions more planets and if even a small percentage of these planets are habitable given the sheer number of them the universe must be absolutely teeming with life and if the universe is teeming with life at least some of them must have become intelligent perhaps even become space-bearing civilizations but if that's the case why haven't we found everyone what we have here is a logical train of thought that tells us alien civilizations likely exist while simultaneously finding absolutely zero evidence that they do this contradiction forms the basis of what is known as the Fermi Paradox and there are many many resolutions to it some are a bit strange like the zoo hypothesis which basically states that the Earth was created by aliens as some sort of experiment and the reason we can't find any aliens in our Galactic neighborhood is because they're hiding other Solutions are pretty laughable like the idea that various governments have made contact and are simply hiding the evidence but on a more serious side of things there are many resolutions to the Fermi Paradox that are not only plausible but perhaps rather concerning without further Ado here are five of them that we find particularly unsettling and we really hope aren't true foreign [Music] [Music] our first solution is that there are indeed other civilizations perhaps in Star systems quite close to us but oh we've had to find them because they are all actively hiding from us and each other in this scenario everyone is listening and no one is talking afraid that even a single transmission could attract a hostile civilization this is known as the Dark Forest hypothesis in which the universe is likened to a quiet forest and each civilization is like a creature that inhabited to afraid to speak out perhaps other civilizations are already aware of the danger surrounding them and that's why they remain silent while our naive Planet continues to call out into the trees unaware that the forest is filled with terrifying hungry alien wolves this was perfectly described in the 1987 novel The Forge of God in this one of the characters explains we've been sitting here in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now wondering why no other birds answered the galactic skies are full of hawks that's why and the idea that other civilizations might be hostile isn't very far-fetched when you look at how humans have treated each other on earth when two different worlds have collided just remember what happened when Europe discovered America perhaps the galactic Forest isn't filled with a bunch of docile creatures avoiding an apex predator but a rather populated only by hunters all poised to strike first out of self-preservation some theorists have taken this a step further and pointed out that perhaps it is actually the nature of intelligent life to destroy others that they come across if the galaxy has a limited number of useful resources say rocky planets then it would be in the best interest of a super Advanced civilization to wipe out any competition in sight and keep all the resources for themselves in a way similar to how humans have taken over the Earth this generally accepted that the most efficient way for a super predatorial civilization to do this would be through the use of lethal probes which would be sent to Star systems showing signs of life this is known as the Berserker hypothesis and it implies that if we ever do come across an alien space spacecraft wandering through our solar system we have no way to know if its purpose is communication exploration or just our Annihilation oh lovely with all the unknowns perhaps it's just best we stay quiet and avoid the danger in the dark our next resolution is the idea that at some point along the path of evolution somewhere between the formation of life and becoming a space-bearing civilization there exists some sort of barrier which either prevents life from advancing or destroys it entirely this barrier is known as the great filter first but forward by Economist Robin Hansen in the 1990s Hansen's original publication listed nine steps that must be met before one can travel to the Stars step number one a habitable star system including stable solar weather and habitable planets step two the formation of reproductive molecules like RNA step 3 the combination of these molecules into simple single-celled prokaryotic organisms step 4 the evolution to complex single cell life or eukaryotic organisms step 5 the development of sexual reproduction which greatly enhances genetic diversity step six the evolution of multicellular light step 7 the rise of intelligent creatures capable of using tools step 8 the formation of these creatures into a civilization with the potential to explore space which is where we currently are and finally step number nine an exponential rate of colonial expansion into the cosmos so the idea is that the great filter could lie among any of these steps preventing the majority of life from advancing to space colonization and therefore preventing us from easily finding them for example if mass extinction events like asteroid impacts or supervolcanic eruptions occur too frequently there could be millions of planets around the Galaxy perpetually stuck at step number six unable to evolve into intelligent beings that use tools because life on their Planet keeps getting wiped out over and over again and they have to keep starting over or perhaps the great filter is self-destruction at some point in Step 8 as a civilization advanced enough to explore the universes also Advanced enough to invent weapons that could totally destroy themselves like nuclear bombs the problem this all poses to mankind is that we don't know if we've already passed the great filter or if it still lies ahead of us finding more clues around the Galaxy could help us narrow this down for example if we found independent multicellular Life on Mars oh we could assume that the earlier steps don't contain the filter as it would be unlikely for two adjacent planets to both pass through it this would actually turn out to be bad news as it would mean that the filter is more likely to be ahead of us on the other hand it could be that step two the formation of reproductive molecules is far rarer than we originally thought and life is therefore less common than we anticipated if this is true it would mean that we've long passed the great filter and we aren't in any imminent danger of extinction and tying in with the berserk hypothesis from the Forest perhaps the gray filter is another civilization just snuffing out those who reach step 8 and begin to pose a threat there are dozens of possible filters it could be that the first few steps are easy and planets everywhere are swarming with microscopic life but that it rarely advances past that point or the filter could be time itself as it may simply take an incredibly long time to advance from step to step leaving life exposed to any number of catastrophes or maybe Interstellar travel is just too expensive or too difficult or too dangerous on a lighter note though it is possible that the filter stopping civilizations from exploring the Galaxy isn't some grandiose Extinction but that they simply don't feel like it some theorists have argued that if a civilization reaches a certain point of comfort and sustainability in their solar system they may simply see no need to expand outward if this is true maybe Humanity's curiosity that makes us truly unique foreign an unfortunate possibility of finding an alien civilization is that we may have absolutely no way to communicate with them on this line of thinking the resolution to the Fermi Paradox is that alien civilizations are in fact broadcasting messages throughout space Oh we either just can't detect them or just don't recognize the messages it's been hard enough cracking codes that other humans have left behind for us like deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and just imagine how long it would take to get an understanding of the language spoken on the isolated North Sentinel Island if it's even possible at this point but as complex as human languages get at least people everywhere share things in common like emotion and biology which can serve as a foundation for understanding each other not to mention that the majority of our languages likely share common Roots even if those roots do go back hundreds or thousands of years but we have absolutely no clue how an alien species could communicate and this could be the reason that we've yet to find them Humanity sends out waves in the election magnetic Spectrum to send long distance messages but we have no idea if other civilizations would use or understand these they might communicating other ways like sending streams of neutrinos adjusting the color or composition of their host star or using some natural phenomena that we're still yet to discover it's also possible that the issue of communication might not be a result of how different the species themselves are but of how advanced one of them has become if another civilization is sufficiently Advanced it's possible that they do indeed understand our messages but simply disregard them as we're far too primitive to even bother with on a biological level there is only a fairly small difference between us and chimpanzees but this tiny difference has allowed us to dominate this planet invent computers airplanes and also Coca-Cola imagine if an alien life form is just that tiny bit smarter than us we might be simply incapable of understanding them or their goals in the slightest much the same way that a gorilla has no chance of understanding how GP s works another resolution to the Fermi Paradox says that the universe is indeed full of life we are simply looking in all the wrong places as humans we live on a rocky planet which orbits a g-type main sequence star also known as a yellow dwarf even though its light is actually white by the way because of this our search for Life across the cosmos generally consists of looking for Rocky Earth-like planets near stable stars that are similar to our sun but what if we're the exception according to a planetary scientist Alan Stern the more common form of life might not be on rocky planets but rather on icy moves if moons like Jupiter's Europa with a thick outer layer of ice and presumably a liquid interior contain the necessary ingredients for life they may be the most common habitat in the Galaxy after all living in the subsurface ocean of an icy world would Grant extra protection against asteroid impact solar events and other dangers from outer space it would also make a wider range of orbits habitable around its Sun if these underwater worlds across the Galaxy Harbor the majority of intelligent life it would make sense why we haven't found them yet their structure would by Nature block much of their Transmissions making them harder to detect while also making them overall less likely to explore their surroundings if such worlds exist they might have entire eons in which civilizations rise and fall without ever venturing through the ice layer unaware that an entire universe exists outside their Moon it would be very difficult to locate such life as oh we would likely have to be physically landing on the moon before we could detect any signs of it on a similar note others have suggested that apart from the icy moons the dominant habitable planets might be water worlds rocky planets similar to Earth but with far less Continental land mass it could be on these Oceanic planets that intelligent life develops but it's never able to take to the stars as one side has put it in which case the evolution of creatures like us with hands and fire and all that sort of thing may be rare in the galaxy in which case when we do build starships and head out there perhaps we'll find lots and lots of life but they're all dolphins whales squids who could never build their own Starships it would certainly be a surprise to find out that land-based life forms are the exception in the Galaxy but it would certainly help explain why we've yet to receive any radio signals from Alien civilizations maybe they simply don't have that kind of Technology it's also been proposed that highly Advanced civilizations might not live on planets or moons at all and instead moved on to permanently live on space stations this would allow the civilizations to move freely around their solar system or perhaps even between stars and sadly that would mean that our exhaustive search for Earth-like exoplanets is just a bit pointless these stations would likely be so small that it would be very difficult for us to detect them at all unless they came rather close to our solar system [Music] the final and perhaps most unsettling resolution of all is that there is no Paradox that our assumption that life in the universe is common is simply false and humanity and Earth is an abnormality this isn't a resolution that sits well with most people not just because it paints a bleak picture of an empty universe but because it seems to violate the copernican principle the copernican principle is the general assumption in cosmology the Earth isn't special that based on probability there's a very very low chance that we are always the exception some irregularity or surprise it's far more likely that we are average meaning we must not be alone but our very existence may be what breaks this principle if our exhaustive searches of the Galaxy continue to come up empty-handed we may be forced to accept that we are the anomaly and we are actually alone in the Milky Way but just because we might be alone right now it doesn't mean we always will be perhaps our strangeness is not in the location or method in which we evolved but simply when we evolved we may just be far ahead of our Galactic peers on The evolutionary time scale the first to develop space travel telescopes and advanced mathematics while on other planets intelligent life is just starting to figure out how to use basic tools and start fires on another note we aren't actually certain if Interstellar travel is even possible if it turns out that it takes far too long or is simply not worth the resources civilizations may never make contact and they'll just remain isolated in their solar systems but this is all just speculation as of right now as far as we can tell our civilization is the only one around and we may need to come terms with the fact that the endless expanse of space is indeed entirely devoid of life [Music]

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 1,157,298

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects, sideprojects, fermi paradox, solutions, life in the universe, solution, where are all the aliens?, where is everybody?, dyson sphere, interstellar, extraterrestrial, astrobiology, are we alone?, science fiction, exobiology, alien, galaxy, universe

Id: 8BwNgZ_Utqs

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023