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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

arxiv.org

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Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#101

Post by calebh »

bena wrote: post #90
jandrese wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that we have a giant noise source in the middle of our solar system that shoots the noise floor through the roof when you're trying to detect laser comms over light years. Plus, even at lightspeed you're talking multi-year roundtrips to our nearest interstellar neighbors. Our entire history of radio emissions has only made it to around 500 solar systems currently. Even if someone was listening and res…

> Plus, even at lightspeed you're talking multi-year roundtrips to our nearest interstellar neighbors. That's something I think people ignore. It takes 4 years to get to the next closest star at the fastest possible speed. And that's ignoring all of the other issues with long term space travel. 4 years. To a place where we're relatively certain doesn't have life capable of technology. The assumption that other intell…

You're completely ignoring the time dilation effects of relativity. From the perspective of a fast moving spaceship, the distance between stars contracts, and from the perspective of an outside observer, the time experienced in the spaceship slows down. This is why I believe that interstellar travel will be feasible, although creating any sort of empire will be impossible. Here's a quote from the Wikipedia article on time dilation:

"Theoretically, time dilation would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to advance further into the future in a short period of their own time. For sufficiently high speeds, the effect is dramatic.[2] For example, one year of travel might correspond to ten years on Earth. Indeed, a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel through the entire known Universe in one human lifetime.[12] Space travelers could then return to Earth billions of years in the future. A scenario based on this idea was presented in the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle, and the Orion Project has been an attempt toward this idea."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Velocity_time_di...

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#102

Post by jandrese »

Zimahl wrote: post #79
jandrese wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that we have a giant noise source in the middle of our solar system that shoots the noise floor through the roof when you're trying to detect laser comms over light years. Plus, even at lightspeed you're talking multi-year roundtrips to our nearest interstellar neighbors. Our entire history of radio emissions has only made it to around 500 solar systems currently. Even if someone was listening and res…

> multi-year roundtrips to our nearest interstellar neighbors. At lightspeed it's an instantaneous trip to the traveler. It's only a multi-year trip to those who are still on Earth.

That comment was in reference to communicating with the star system. Nobody is traveling in that case.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#103

Post by jandrese »

calebh wrote: post #101
bena wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus, even at lightspeed you're talking multi-year roundtrips to our nearest interstellar neighbors. That's something I think people ignore. It takes 4 years to get to the next closest star at the fastest possible speed. And that's ignoring all of the other issues with long term space travel. 4 years. To a place where we're relatively certain doesn't have life capable of technology. The assumption that other intell…

You're completely ignoring the time dilation effects of relativity. From the perspective of a fast moving spaceship, the distance between stars contracts, and from the perspective of an outside observer, the time experienced in the spaceship slows down. This is why I believe that interstellar travel will be feasible, although creating any sort of empire will be impossible. Here's a quote from the Wikipedia article on…

Constant 1 G acceleration requires three things:

1. An infinite power source

2. A reactionless drive

3. A spacecraft made of material so strong that it can survive collisions with rocky material at velocities very close to c. Or a Star Trek style deflector shield.

Warp drive is probably easier to achieve.

Detonating nukes behind your spaceship will never give you anything close to 1G constant acceleration over a long period of time.

Time dilation has some definite drawbacks as well. Say for example you have a very redundant ship that can repair damage from micrometeorite attacks in a few minutes. The hits are very rare, maybe once a year at most at normal velocity. But now you're traveling at a high fraction of C and you're hitting tens of fragments per second, and always at a high fraction of C. Your repair process is effectively working in slow motion and could very easily get overwhelmed. Without a sci-fi energy shield your spacecraft is ablated to death long before you get anywhere.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#104

Post by jcranmer »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #19
shawn wrote: post #9

It has always seemed arrogant to think that aliens exist anywhere within our galaxy. Look at how many galaxies are out there. Now realize that the universe extends far beyond our Hubble sphere. We can’t hope to colonize even a fraction of 1% of our galaxy, even with wildly futuristic technology. There is one option, though: Become our own aliens. If we set up colonies separated by time and distance, we will culturall…

>We can’t hope to colonize even a fraction of 1% of our galaxy, even with wildly futuristic technology. If you can do any colonization at all it shouldn't be that much harder to colonize the whole galaxy. Once you've got the ability to colonize exponential growth will take over and pretty soon* you'll be everywhere. *In the context of the Fermi paradox, we're wondering why no aliens have already colonized the galaxy…

There is a basic epistemological flaw that goes on in the Fermi Paradox (and similar arguments): the argument rests on the idea that, given enough time, an event which has non-zero probability will eventually happen. The flaw is that there is no consideration of if enough time has actually passed, since the probabilities we talk about are often characterized on the level of "we don't conclusively know it to be impossible."

If you look at the statement you yourself make, it requires a lot of assumptions:

* Interstellar colonization is possible (this is explicitly taken as a hypothesis, though)

* The ability to colonize another star system is the ability to colonize a large number of star systems. This is to say, the social consequences of colonization are not going to grow larger with size. A possible counterfactual would be that large civilizations might put more energy into securing control of known systems rather than embarking on further colonization--and the anecdotal evidence from the history of Earth is that this is indeed the case.

* Colonization is a logistic process (which is probably what you really meant when you said exponential, but the difference is a technicality for this discussion). If interstellar travel is really as difficult as our knowledge of physics suggests it to be, then interstellar colonies are likely to develop as completely independent civilizations without maintaining strong ties to their parent motherlands, and subsequent colonization efforts are going to include attempts to "colonize" already-colonized systems and consequently logistic growth wouldn't be achieved.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#105

Post by taylorswift_ »

carapace wrote: post #95

We're in quarantine. To other life forms humans look like H.R. Giger's xenomorph aliens from the movies. We're obviously intelligent, yet we absolutely refuse to communicate with other life forms. we're not even interested in the possibility. We consume other organisms with rapacious abandon, converting them into more of ourselves as fast as we can. We are strip-mining the oceans of protein, our chattel livestock out…

where is this lake in WA state? have you been there? are you reptilian?

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#106

Post by sulam »

maxerickson wrote: post #97
sulam wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe more advanced technology enables interstellar travel (maybe not, maybe is not practical at all) We have practical interstellar travel today if you don't artificially constrain your thinking to sending blobs of mostly water with lifespans measured in decades.

What are your parameters for practical? Like, how much mass, how fast, cost, etc?

Voyager-class.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#107

Post by carapace »

taylorswift_ wrote: post #105
carapace wrote: post #95

We're in quarantine. To other life forms humans look like H.R. Giger's xenomorph aliens from the movies. We're obviously intelligent, yet we absolutely refuse to communicate with other life forms. we're not even interested in the possibility. We consume other organisms with rapacious abandon, converting them into more of ourselves as fast as we can. We are strip-mining the oceans of protein, our chattel livestock out…

where is this lake in WA state? have you been there? are you reptilian?

> where is this lake in WA state?

I' don't know. Even if I knew I wouldn't say in a public forum like this, it would be irresponsible.

> have you been there?

No. If I wanted to talk to aliens I wouldn't go rubbernecking at them like a yokel.

> are you reptilian?

We're all reptilian. ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory

The "reptilian" thing is a human psychological issue, there are no reptile aliens secretly ruling Earth.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#108

Post by [deleted] »

carapace wrote: post #95

We're in quarantine. To other life forms humans look like H.R. Giger's xenomorph aliens from the movies. We're obviously intelligent, yet we absolutely refuse to communicate with other life forms. we're not even interested in the possibility. We consume other organisms with rapacious abandon, converting them into more of ourselves as fast as we can. We are strip-mining the oceans of protein, our chattel livestock out…

[deleted]

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#109

Post by taylorswift_ »

carapace wrote: post #107
taylorswift_ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where is this lake in WA state? have you been there? are you reptilian?

> where is this lake in WA state? I' don't know. Even if I knew I wouldn't say in a public forum like this, it would be irresponsible. > have you been there? No. If I wanted to talk to aliens I wouldn't go rubbernecking at them like a yokel. > are you reptilian? We're all reptilian. ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory The "reptilian" thing is a human psyc…

but how do you know it exists if you've never been there? who told you?

> there are no reptile aliens secretly ruling Earth.

perhaps not ruling it...

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#110

Post by 8bitsrule »

expectation that the universe should be teeming with >intelligent life

It's only a paradox if you're capable of entertaining such an expectation. Based on my life experience, I'd estimate the probability is about the same as finding a bottle of my favorite drink sitting on the doorstep.

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