Do We Really Want to Solve Fermi's Paradox? with Stephen Webb

the Fermi paradox remains one of the greatest mysteries of the universe the galaxy is well old enough to have been entirely colonized or at least visited by now so Fermi asked where is everyone this has led to many proposed solutions to that paradox ranging from intelligent life simply being very rare to aliens hiding their existence from us but there is also another group of solutions that are quite unsettling and even spooky to the point that if we ever do find out the reality of the paradox we may wish we hadn't my guest today has compiled a list of the proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox and we talked specifically about the spookiest once welcome to event horizon with John Michael Gautier [Music] [Music] [Music] in today's episode John is joined by dr. Stephen Webb dr. Webb is the author of numerous popular science books including measuring the universe the cosmological distance ladder as well as if the universe is teeming with aliens where is everybody 75 solutions to the Fermi paradox and the problem of extraterrestrial life dr. Webb earned his PhD in theoretical particle physics at the University of Manchester his many interests include 50 sci fi football cosmology and asteroid biology Stephen Webb welcome to the program now Steven there is one area of the solutions to the Fermi paradox that sort of make you wonder if or at least makes me wonder if we really want to know the answer and this is things like machines civilizations that may have once been biological or made by something biological but just does not interact with us because it does not care about the biological it only cares about the technological therefore there may be essentially like the Mass Effect game I don't know if you're familiar with it but it had this concept of Reapers that their whole reason to exist was to convert life to be machines you know and then that the reason we don't see it is because they don't want us to know that they're there you know and that's someday they'll pounce on us so what are some of the solutions that get into that the spooky territory that you know this this galaxy may actually be rather dangerous well there's you mentioned danger that there's actually a lot of different types of danger I think so there's natural phenomena that's pose dangers supernova gamma-ray bursts and so on there's just planetary phenomena that pose dangers to civilizations you are they are planets climactically stable over sufficient times we know earth has undergone various mass extinctions so there are natural events and of course there's the possibility that life itself a technological life is self-limiting and we look at what we're doing to the planet and you can easily imagine humans posing a threat to the future of humanity so that's without getting into the dangers possibly posed by extraterrestrial civilizations if they exist so one possible solution to the Fermi paradox is that actually life technological life doesn't last very long we'll find out won't we I guess in the next few decades whether we have a future do you think we will what's your gut gut feeling on the on the future of the human species do you think we will make it and get past this I have a tendency to say I think we will I don't think we face any insurmountable problems difficult problems yes but not insurmountable what's your view I'm with you and it comes I think partly from that early exposure to the science fiction so Asimov's foundation trilogy for instance it's part of my mental background that we will survive and we will get out there and yes we will always have difficult problems but I think we we have the capacity to solve them I hope so I'm with you I'm an optimist but one of the paths one of the technological paths into the future that we can possibly foresee is the creation of I think you call it a technological life-form or technological non-biological civilization and that worries many people this idea of artificial intelligence if it reaches a level of power and potency and Prasad's that threatens us and it has motivations of which we are unaware or don't fully understand then potentially what we're bringing into being is a is a threat to ourselves it's another way that biological life-form in any case might be self-limiting we might give rise to two children that take our place it doesn't in itself resolve the Fermi paradox because if these very potent organisms or they're not organisms they silicon-based presumably life-forms if they exist where are they it becomes then more difficult though because we don't really have a full understanding of what their motivations might be one of the the arguments that Stephen Jillette made in that original article I read is that biological life-forms have this most requirement almost this inbuilt requirement to to breathe to populate more and more of a particular niche and why would that stop the planetary level wouldn't we want to go out and and get out into the galaxy whether that sort of motivation would carry over into some sort of machine based civilization I don't know you can imagine though the machine based civilization thinking well actually there's all of this real estate out there there's all of this time in which a civilization another machine that civilization could have colonized the galaxy actually we'd better claim our steak quickly and we go and do that and we get out where the civil we're the first civilization to go out and colonize the galaxy so if if that sort of thinking takes place that we might be the first therefore we stake our claim then maybe yes what we find is a wave of colonization that takes place not through biological civilizations but from these artificial civilizations so that's quite a worrying thing isn't it that's actually we might have these berserkers for instance from a fred saberhagen science fiction story the machines essentially that go out and and take over now that's a worry that's a worry and one wonders to that is that a solution that everyone is listening but no one is transmitting and that the civilizations the transmit would get destroyed by whatever may silently control the galaxy so that that to me i think is the most terrifying one is that there's something lurking out there therefore no one says anything yes and and it's been the basis of some interesting stories in recent years and and what a terrifying prospect that is isn't it that actually no one is willing to put their head above the parapet it's kind of one of one of the things that signature glossy galovski hard to pronounce his name advance was that if you look for plutonium and I know you mentioned this in your book that that something that unnatural sure does occur in very minor quantities maybe in certain situations like natural nuclear reactors but if you saw plutonium in a star in large amounts that might be a technical signature and in fact there actually is a candidate for that Przewalski's star but it also says you know we have advanced nuclear technology enough to where we can populate our star with plutonium stay away from us you know so you you kind of wonder if you could interpret certain things with and study that says well maybe we really should not be proactively contacting anyone and no you know ban mehdi essentially absolutely not that's an interesting question isn't it so so we have this idea of SETI search for extraterrestrial intelligence but there's also Metis messaging extraterrestrial intelligence and it again throws up not just technological questions about ethical questions I mean it who speaks for Earth who should be responsible for these sorts of signals and we're reaching the stage I think aren't we we won't be too far off where individual billionaires actually can decide well I'll send a signal and that worries me that we have a society where individuals or we will have soon where individuals might take it upon themselves to do this or a rogue nation state indeed if you actually detected something and published it then a rogue nation state could say well we're going to send the first message indeed yeah which I think indicates that we need to think about these things you could argue about the relative risk or not but I think it's certainly a question that should be debated and not just left to individuals or the possibility of rogue nation states doing whatever it is that they want to do so yes that it raises I think ethical questions now the last thing that I want to get to is an idea related to convergent evolution we see things happening on earth evolutionarily speaking for example sharks being shaped very similar to dolphins and things like that because of the utility of it to evolving a species seems to be you know it produces the same result now presumably this would be the same for any other carbon-based water based civilization so that brings up a question another solution at the Fermi paradox is that what if planets are more likely to be ocean worlds with no land and only aquatic life where that life could be intelligent but try mastering fire underwater or you know building a building a car with fins now do you see that as as a viable solution that we just have special circumstances with this planet that has you know a certain amount of land and a certain amount of ocean but that probably isn't gonna be the case for other exoplanets what's your view well we have this large number there the large number of planets and I'm sure that there will be rocky planets out there that are similar to earth with a similar ratio of ocean to land I think what you've raised there's an interesting question about what exactly is it that we're looking for so you can imagine a water world where there's intelligent life forms but they're not gonna build a radio telescope they're not gonna master fire they're not gonna have technology in the way that we have technology because they won't have the natural resources available to them and so they will live their lives doing whatever it is that they do to survive on that planet we're all making our way in the universe in whatever way we can but they're not going to do what we do and I think there's a sense in which that search for extraterrestrial intelligence is actually a search for ourselves we're looking for creatures that are too makers that they're social creatures because if you're gonna cross the universe will send a signal across the universe typically that's going to be the product of a society they develop high level of technology they develop a complex grammar in which they can discuss these sorts of questions about the nature of intelligence on other planets they are intelligent themselves and I don't see much evidence on here on earth that intelligence is some sort of convergence evolutionary process I mean the you look it's humankind's cousins the Denisovans and the Neanderthals high level of intelligence they had some technological ability didn't do them good we're looking for creatures that develop Science and Mathematics so it's very very very specialized what we're looking at when we're looking for extraterrestrial intelligence I think in some ways we're looking for creatures that are so like ourselves and yet we'll share nothing with us except prebiotic chemistry I find that slightly strange this slightly strange expectation that we have that we should see those sorts of creatures out there I'm not saying that we wouldn't see all sorts of weird and wonderful types of life-forms out there but whether they have evolved the ability to disturb the universe in a way that I think that we will in the future I find I find unlikely that we will now doesn't that give us a clue though animal intelligence here on earth there are many different intelligent animals that exist that aren't really all that related to us such as octopuses does that give us an insight does their behavior say well aliens might be very similar in a certain way and ultimately if an alien civilization can build a radio transmitter than they must on some level be fairly like us in some way right what well I think if you flip it but yes I think there would be I think there would have to be something in common if if we detected a radio signal and that was a list of the first few dozen prime numbers for instance or some decimal representation of Pi or whatever it happens to be then I think that in itself would tell us an awful lot not just the fact of their existence but the fact of their interpretation and understanding of the world is rather similar to our own all of that weaving of science fiction when I was young drives me to think that actually if we were to find Haley in life it would be alien it would be different it would have evolved in response to quite different evolutionary pressures you mentioned life around Red Dwarf for example if we found like that it would be very very very different to life here on earth and I would be astounded if we ever got radio signals from a planet orbiting that sort of stuff if we did I think it would tell us something incredibly profound I think more likely would be that if we detected a signal we would again face almost like a philosophical question of what does that signal mean what is it that they're trying to say I think there would be some doubt over whether it actually was a signal I think there'd be a debate about is it a signal or it wasn't hoaxed by earth one indeed yeah which raises a whole other question the initial detection of gravitational waves one of the things that run through the discoverers minds was is this a hoax is this malicious as someone injected a signal to make us look foolish or just for malicious purposes so I think if we did find something actually there would be intense discussion about what exactly is it that we found and it could be maddening because if the radio astronomers come and say we've detected a signal that's unambiguous and everybody's like well what's it say and they're like we don't know it's radar the aliens have radar and they're like well what else do we know about the civilization well nothing essentially and it could be centuries before we glean anything else out about this civilization we've discovered so it could be maddening it would be potentially totally maddening I mean they're so far away you can't share a knock-knock joke with them so you just reliant on whatever it is that's coming your way potentially for a long long time now great if if we receive a beacon and then we point our telescopes at the beacon and then we start getting their encyclopedia Galactica tremendous I suspect that that's first signal if we have a worth of have it would be maddening as you say rather than enlightening some internal communication between their ships and we can't decipher it we have no way to know what it is potentially that or potentially something like the WoW signal that we mentioned earlier that we think was that it was it not what was that I kind of expect that but there is some on you know unambiguous things that we could see yes it would be hard you know laser communication or something like that we wouldn't really be able to decipher it but it really couldn't be produced by Nature yes or at least in a certain way if it happened in a certain yeah I mean we we haven't even mentioned optical SETI which is a whole other approach and it has its advantages definitely has its disadvantages narrow beams and so on but yes optical SETI I I think we have to just accept that this is a difficult problem and we might not live to see a resolution but all we can do is I think keep on trying keep on looking but maybe broadening our search just on the off-chance because it is such a difficult problem I think we need to what a invest more in it but be look perhaps in ways that we haven't thought to look before and that's interesting because in this age as you mentioned earlier the the age of the billionaires funding things we now have private you know well we've always at least for the last 25 years had private individuals doing things like building the Allen telescope array or you know give me see Pawnee or whatever and you know also with break break they listen so we we have this option now we're private searches for study could become far more common than they are you are and we might be able to look more efficiently and in new ways such as you know using the spectrograph to look for CFCs or the vegetative red edge or all these ideas but I wanted to bring up one other solution to the Fermi paradox and that is that we are early in the game maybe it's the opposite of what we discussed where maybe we're first in this galaxy and you mentioned that which would mean that we would sort of be the the ancient ones you know the the definers of the Milky Way galaxy and if we spread out into it you know space is vast we might never do it but if we did we might do things like to go into science fiction David Brent uplifting where we find these locked in intelligent creatures on worlds that they can't get off of and we can help them you know say they have a gravity well that's too big for rockets or something like that what's your view on that do you think that we should even do that or should we just leave things as they are you mentioned science fiction and that the long-term implication if we are the first that then yes we need to consider that but it's actually I think a live question isn't it because we will be exploring Mars increasingly in the next few decades I'm sure there will be missions to the moons of those giant planets we're not going to find advanced technological civilizations on those objects but it's possible that we might find life and I think we have to be very careful right now about the protocols for exploring our immediate neighborhood even actually here on earth if we were looking for the shadow biosphere and we might for instance go I don't know to Antarctica and start deep drilling reaching places that have been isolated from the rest of the environment for tens of millions of years I think in all of these situations actually it's a real current cause for concern that we don't want to go polluting otherwise pristine environments that might mask a potential signature we need to be absolutely sure that any life we find out there originated there and it wasn't brought by us by accident to these places so I think it's actually more of a current concern than those far-off science-fictional scenarios that you mentioned we need to be thinking about it actually right now yeah especially you mentioned places in Antarctica like sealed off lakes and things like that that have been you know isolated for so long that they might be perfect places to look for a shadow biosphere now my last question for you is there was a paper no a couple of years ago now I think that laid out the case that we might not just be alone in this galaxy and alone as a result of the time in which we live in this galaxy but we might be utterly alone entirely in the universe permanently do you think that's too cynical of a solution of the forant paradox that we are utterly absolutely alone always cynical I I wouldn't say my preferred solution to the paradox would be that we share a universe with beings with whom we can one day communicate I think that would be tremendously exciting it would not surprise me though if it turns out that we are ultimately fundamentally alone it would be somewhat I think spooky if we look out the vastness of the universe and it turns out to be just us but I it would not necessarily surprise me that we are the only conscious sentient intelligence beings in the galaxy or indeed even the universe and perhaps that makes it the spookiest solution of all mm-hmm that we are absolutely alone why is that and I don't think we would ever be able to answer that question no it would be it would be strange strange indeed one billion years from now we would still be asking why are we alone all right doctor thank you for joining us today it's been a fantastic discussion and when you release the next edition of the book I hope you'll come back and visit us absolutely it's been a pleasure so what do you think the solution to the Fermi paradox is do you think we should be worried let us know in the comments below next week we'll delve back into the other solutions for the Fermi paradox with part two of my interview with Stephen Webb he has compiled over 75 of them see you then John you haven't told the viewers to subscribe for ages like subscribe and share [Music]

Channel: Event Horizon

Views: 362,865

Keywords: fermi paradox, enrico fermi (academic), physics (field of study), aliens, ufo, space, alien, space ship, planet, science, science fiction, solution, great filter, documentary, universe, kardashev scale, interstellar, galaxy, astrobiology, exobiology, extraterrestrial, life in the universe, exoplanet, dyson sphere, proxima b, kic 8462852, ASMR, Where are all the aliens?, Stephen Webb, Ted talks, John Michael Godier Event Horizon, Event Horizon, where is everybody?, teeming with aliens

Id: D1gTyKcwIP4

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020