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Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

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Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#71

Post by quickben »

davedx wrote: post #59
joe_the_user wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could not detect civilizations at our level because standard transmissions decay the square of the distance and so such would be quantum noise by the time they got to the nearest start. And less than that by the time they further.

According to the SETI FAQ, it would be possible for alien civilizations to detect our higher powered radar systems with SETI setups similar to our own. Do you dispute this claim from SETI? Can you provide a citation?

He was approaching this from physics and whatever that inverse distance power propagination law is called for 3d space.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#72

Post by acqq »

defined wrote: post #33

Something to consider is that the universe is 13-odd billion years old, and from our perspective, the edge of the observable universe is about 46 billion light years away. At interstellar distances, it is very difficult to detect something unless it is emitting something: electromagnetic energy or gravitational waves (and those are only possible to detect when there are super-massive bodies doing something extremely…

And analyzing the biology history, from 4.6 billion years of Earth existence, or from 13.7 billion years of universe's, for only 60 years humanity can detect the signals from space. Every step toward that wasn't "inevitable" but improbable. There weren't multicelular life until around two billion years ago, but it took then two billion years and a lot of accident to have the communicating capable humans.

And then, how long are we to last with this capabilities? We are much less smart than most believe, especially in preserving conditions for a communicating civilisation.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#73

Post by robotresearcher »

camillomiller wrote: post #49
robotresearcher wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson (sequels to the more famous Neuromancer) have this idea. AIs obtain independence from humans in cyberspace (VR) and eventually make contact with AIs from elsewhere.

Cool! Will check em out

Disclaimer: this stuff is mostly just hinted at, while the plot is mainly about people working within this context. But so awesome. Blew my teenage mind in the late 80s.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#75

Post by wongarsu »

tremon wrote: post #63
dx034 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure someone has simulated that but it appears highly likely that a planet with plants (or any carbon based life) will at some point "generate" fossil fuels. And maybe, if we hadn't found oil, we would've come up with more efficient ways to use electricity generated from renewable sources. Would've taken longer but we could've made up for that later in the process. Batteries were known at the time of the oil revo…

That's a nice thought experiment. Our capability of harnessing energy from renewable sources (but not electrical energy) covers 3,000 years already: sailing ships and windmills. By the time magnetism and later electricity were discovered, we already had wind-powered propulsion, milling, and water drainage. What made them impractical for industrial uses (the first applications for coal power were steam-powered textile…

Apart from hydro power as a very steady energy source, we also have thousands of years of history of using another arbitrarily controllable renewable resource: wood. We even processed wood to turn it into coal. And in the absence of trees we could have been burning other plants.

Granted, the amount of wood you can extract within a decade from an area without turning it into a desert or grassland is limited, but in the last 400 years we turned our focus more and more on sustainable forestry and as a result got quite good at using wood in a renewable, carbon-neutral way.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#76

Post by mannykannot »

amelius wrote: post #53
skgoa wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I have always viewed this. There is no reason why a civilization would blast out EM waves in a 360°*360° sphere at incredibly high energy levels indiscriminately forever and ever. Instead what we have seen right here on Earth over the last 100 years is that technological progress lets us do ever more with ever less energy. Unless we are talking about detection from a relatively low range, a range where the…

I suspect that some thermodynamics law says that if you burn an amount of energy, you inevitably emit IR radiation. More energy means more radiation.

Yes, but every star emits IR.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#77

Post by mannykannot »

davedx wrote: post #57
Chathamization wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that’s the thing, if our galaxy had lots of 20-21st century Earth level civilizations, we would be able to detect them with our existing SETI programmes. But we couldn't. In general, SETI couldn't even detect such a civilization even if it was in the star system closest to earth: > If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to our own, could they detect signals from Earth? > In general, no.…

OP said: 'the universe could full of earth-level societies and we wouldn't know'. It's a very extreme claim and the SETI FAQ answer directly contradicts it.

The SETI FAQ says that in the right circumstances, we might detect some of the closest ones, so the OP's statement is not contradicted.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#78

Post by indubitable »

joe_the_user wrote: post #16
indubitable wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paradox itself makes no such assumptions or speculation. It simply says that everything we know indicates that life and presumably technologically advanced life should be everywhere, yet we see it nowhere. There's an absolutely phenomenal article on the Fermi Paradox at WaitButWhy [1]. Your objections are mostly just scratching the surface of the wide array of possible explanations for it. [1] - https://waitbutwh…

You are simply mistaken. The article you link to filled with speculation concerning "type II" and "type III" civilizations. If you assume earth-level civilizations as advanced, "where is everyone?" has a simple answer - "I don't know because we couldn't see them anyway". If you assume some other civilization as advanced, you are speculating . That's what speculation means.

Again the paradox has nothing to do with that. The paradox is simply in the discrepancy in what we see versus what our current state of knowledge leads us to expect we ought see. The article covers a wide array of possible reasons for this, including the possibility of advanced civilizations not existing which seems to be your focus.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#80

Post by pmontra »

jacobush wrote: post #23
pmontra wrote: post #8

If you sleep you're at the mercy of who doesn't sleep. You can take countermeasures but you're going to have surprises when your wake up. Btw, the latest scifi I read on the subject is http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/fermis-last-surv...

I'm thinking in a way, those awake may be at the mercy of those who sleep. Say the sleepers could hide - they could avoid a lot of turmoil, like these bamboo species that germinate for a hundred years, thus avoiding herbivores and vermin. Sleepers also can presumably also conserve resources better while those awake may build, and loose empires in the process.

They would be betting they're able to hide themselves and their resources for all those years. It also requires faith in their own scientific discoveries (the universe will be like what they predict it to be) and much group discipline and trust. What if we could go to sleep for some 100k or 1M year to wake up in a planet that had fixed the excess CO2? Would everybody do it, no cheating? Not with current humankind. Great matter for scifi.
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