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A Lonely Universe

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Re: A Lonely Universe

#61

Post by Animats »

lubujackson wrote: post #24
Causality1 wrote: post #2

Either intelligent life is rare in the universe or there's something that happens to it that prevents it from what we envision as the future of our own species, i.e., colonizing and spreading among planets. Maybe 99.99% of species ruin their own climate before getting off-world. Maybe they all decide it's happier living as hunter-gatherers. Unless we're alone, there is some fate that's common to all intelligences and…

The third option is that everything is simply too far apart and any detectible transmissions are either too faint or buried behind all those massive fusion furnaces. For instance, if our best Earth tech was pointed at Earth from a distant star, how far away would we be able to detect our own traces of life? We know that life is "a little rare" at least, but there is a huge range of rarity where life is everywhere acr…

Everything is simply too far apart.

That's very likely. There are only two known systems with possibly habitable planets within 40 light years.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#62

Post by andrei_says_ »

Causality1 wrote: post #2

Either intelligent life is rare in the universe or there's something that happens to it that prevents it from what we envision as the future of our own species, i.e., colonizing and spreading among planets. Maybe 99.99% of species ruin their own climate before getting off-world. Maybe they all decide it's happier living as hunter-gatherers. Unless we're alone, there is some fate that's common to all intelligences and…

Whales for example are intelligent, but I don’t see them ever getting excited about space travel.

Is it not possible for intelligent life to exist but not be interested in more?

Re: A Lonely Universe

#63

Post by furyofantares »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #27
furyofantares wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fermi paradox makes sense within "just" the milky way, so the size of the entire observable universe or the speed it expands doesn't seem relevant.

But what if he was overestimating the the frequency of intelligent life emerging? Yes, it's quite possible that there are many simple lifeforms spread throughout the galaxy, but what if we're the only intelligent life that's emerged in the galaxy? Sure there could be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe but we'd never find know about it because the distance between galaxies is so large.

> But what if he was overestimating the the frequency of intelligent life emerging?

I don't understand there to be any such estimation at all. The paradox is that ONE of the pieces of the equation has to be so improbable that it basically doesn't happen. That's absolutely allowed to be the piece that is nearly impossible to happen.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#64

Post by pmoriarty »

7thaccount wrote: post #48
kingcharles wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the possibility that perfect VR is invented, every person can live inside their own perfect universe, and the whole species just doesn't give a fuck about exploring the (real) universe? That would stop a civilisation from exporting any spacecraft or signals outside its homeworld.

This is my main theory. Humans will eventually abandon their own bodies and live in a VR world. I think you'd still have massive energy requirements in the real world to deal with of course.

"Humans will eventually abandon their own bodies and live in a VR world."

Those who "abandon their own bodies" are effectively killing themselves. Any "copies" which might exist in VR are separate beings, not the ones who chose to die in the real world.

I feel nothing but sadness towards the possible future as you paint it. It would mean the end of the human race.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#65

Post by bnralt »

furyofantares wrote: post #14
bitcharmer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I think just the fact the universe hasn't been eaten by Von Neumann machines means we're alone. Or maybe it'd make sense to consider how big the Universe is, how fast it expands and combine it with how very local is our perception of it. If you do that and account for how young our capabilities to hear and see stuff out there actually are, Fermi's paradox doesn't make any sense just like the certainty of…

The fermi paradox makes sense within "just" the milky way, so the size of the entire observable universe or the speed it expands doesn't seem relevant.

There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Imagine if most of them were teaming with interstellar civilizations, but we happened to be stuck in one of the few where such a thing was rare.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#66

Post by furyofantares »

kromem wrote: post #33
furyofantares wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fermi paradox makes sense within "just" the milky way, so the size of the entire observable universe or the speed it expands doesn't seem relevant.

"Just the milky way" You mean the collection of stars that's 100,000 light years across? How long has life existed on Earth? Of that time, how long has life on Earth been generating signals that could be detected elsewhere? How much of the Milky Way has recieved those signals by now? 50,000 light year radius squared (let's favor your argument by calculating the milky way disc as 2D area) = 2.5 billion square light ye…

Earth is young in the milky way, 4.5 billion years, compared to 13+ billion year galaxy. There's lots of stars in the milky way that are billions of years older. You can limit your question to "just" those stars and ask, why didn't any of them produce life that expanded all over the galaxy (or why can't we see it if they did?)

Re: A Lonely Universe

#67

Post by 7thaccount »

pmoriarty wrote: post #64
7thaccount wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my main theory. Humans will eventually abandon their own bodies and live in a VR world. I think you'd still have massive energy requirements in the real world to deal with of course.

"Humans will eventually abandon their own bodies and live in a VR world." Those who "abandon their own bodies" are effectively killing themselves. Any "copies" which might exist in VR are separate beings, not the ones who chose to die in the real world. I feel nothing but sadness towards the possible future as you paint it. It would mean the end of the human race.

Nothing would be sadder to me to see us stagnate forever. As a non corporeal being, I think you could live nearly forever and learn far more. I think creating "children" could be possible too if we had the technology to digitize people in the first place. I don't think we would give up on exploration either. Just build a ship, send it somewhere, and transport your consiousness over the distance. If you wanted to go back in the physical world, I think you could, or at least a copy of you.

Of course it goes without saying that this is all basically magical sci-fi gibberish.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#68

Post by pmoriarty »

7thaccount wrote: post #67
pmoriarty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Humans will eventually abandon their own bodies and live in a VR world." Those who "abandon their own bodies" are effectively killing themselves. Any "copies" which might exist in VR are separate beings, not the ones who chose to die in the real world. I feel nothing but sadness towards the possible future as you paint it. It would mean the end of the human race.

Nothing would be sadder to me to see us stagnate forever. As a non corporeal being, I think you could live nearly forever and learn far more. I think creating "children" could be possible too if we had the technology to digitize people in the first place. I don't think we would give up on exploration either. Just build a ship, send it somewhere, and transport your consiousness over the distance. If you wanted to go b…

"I think you could live nearly forever and learn far more."

But it wouldn't be you living forever. It would be some copy of you (at best).

Re: A Lonely Universe

#69

Post by shagie »

pfdietz wrote: post #57
thrashh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possibility is that energy is really hard to come by. Humans absolutely struggle to amass much energy. Think of the insane amount of energy required to lift things into space, and how many millions more amounts of energy we’ll need just to build something in space. Heck if you go drive off grid on Earth, you can barely bring any energy with you and you won’t really be able to generate an appreciative amount o…

It actually doesn't require THAT much energy to get into orbit. The energy of a kilogram of mass in low earth orbit is about 9 kWh, although rockets will use a bit more than that (not enormously more, though). Fuel cost remains a minor fraction of launch cost, even with Falcon 9. In comparison, the best aluminum plants in the world use 13 kWh to make a kilogram of aluminum. Yet no one says aluminum is out of reach be…

An interesting problem is "how much energy would it take to launch from a super-earth?"

https://www.space.com/40375-super-earth-exoplanets-hard-alie...

> To launch the equivalent of an Apollo moon mission, a rocket on a super-Earth would need to have a mass of about 440,000 tons (400,000 metric tons), due to fuel requirements, the study said. That's on the order of the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

We may be in a Goldilocks zone not only for distance from the primary star (lots of systems are binary which gets problematic), but also in terms of size of the planet (not to light to loose atmosphere, not to heavy to trap everything), and we've got a nice big moon to keep things sloshing around and stabilize the tilt.

I am of the opinion that life is rare because we live in a surprisingly boring solar system with a terrestrial planet in the right range, not to large and not too small, and with a massive moon.

Re: A Lonely Universe

#70

Post by shagie »

pndy wrote: post #36
Causality1 wrote: post #2

Either intelligent life is rare in the universe or there's something that happens to it that prevents it from what we envision as the future of our own species, i.e., colonizing and spreading among planets. Maybe 99.99% of species ruin their own climate before getting off-world. Maybe they all decide it's happier living as hunter-gatherers. Unless we're alone, there is some fate that's common to all intelligences and…

Perhaps the intelligent life is so rare that we're the first species that exist across the universe and we're destined to reach for the stars - unless of course we manage to annihilate ourselves first. But then, if there's nobody else but us then perhaps all what we experience is just an elaborated simulation of more advanced species - perhaps our ancestors, who decided to keep us and our universe as a kind of memoir…

> A future of Star Trek, where the protective veil of some kind of "prime directive" is being lifted as we reach certain level of development as civilisation and then we get a galaxy-wide club membership feels like naive funny fairy tale. It would be of course great if that would happen but it's more likely reality is, or will be way too mundane and unattractive.

A story on that topic - The Crystal Spheres by David Brin

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-crystal-spher...

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