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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

arxiv.org

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Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#21

Post by ghaff »

adrianN wrote: post #15
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…

Von Neumann probes could probably colonize a good chunk of the Milky Way given a few hundred thousand years.

That in turn makes assumptions about the practicality of interstellar travel etc. But, yes. The counterpoint to space is big is that so are timescales.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#22

Post by jerf »

mirimir wrote: post #16
light_hue_1 wrote: post #8

It's "papers" like this by people that are either clueless or malicious that make everyone pine for the pre-arxiv days. Everyone considered this option. From the very first day the paradox was posed. We don't know the parameters well, it's within our margin of error that no one else is out there, so it's an option. This is such an absurd claim to take as your own that it's literally on the wikipedia page! It's also e…

Agreed. This is just picking parameters consistent with no detection of extraterrestrial civilizations. The point of the Fermi paradox is that it's a stretch to assume such parameters. It's not prediction about extraterrestrial civilizations collapsing or whatever. It's just an alternative to consider. And perhaps a warning about shouting at the Universe. Although it's probably too late to fret too much about that.

The article is not about picking parameters. The article is one meta layer up from that; they examine the distribution of parameters.

I can't guarantee this is novel paper in general, but it's not something I've seen treated this formally before. I mean, it roughly conforms to what I've been saying for a while, but I only worked the math very intuitively and in a manner that could have been flawed, so I get no credit. They've worked it formally and put it on a solid basis. Plus as we adjust our probability ranges in the future, the analysis can be re-run with new numbers easily and produce concrete, or at least, concretely-vague answers, instead of vaguely-vague intuitions.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#23

Post by mirimir »

ballade wrote: post #11
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we are the aliens though?

Panspermia?

Maybe, but not necessarily even that. The flow of chemical evolution that leads to carbon-based life is just so highly likely. We see some key molecules just about everywhere we look out there. And various simulations (physical, not virtual) create nucleic acids, amino acids, fatty acids, carbohydrates, etc. So there's no reason to think that the Earth is special.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#24

Post by drjesusphd »

adrianN wrote: post #15
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…

Von Neumann probes could probably colonize a good chunk of the Milky Way given a few hundred thousand years.

Yes, this is the essence of the Fermi paradox, and it's often overlooked. 100k years is nothing on cosmological scales.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#25

Post by Buttons840 »

transfire wrote: post #3

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." There is no way we are alone.

Every once in a while we see a headline that says something like "There are more planets than we previously thought", or "There are more galaxies than we previously thought". When people see these they often conclude that the odds that life exists elsewhere are greater than previously thought, but it's also perfectly logical to see those headlines and concludes that the odds of life forming are lower than previously thought, because (per Fermi) "Well then where is everyone?"

Look at the math:

odds of life existing elsewhere = (10^n planets) / (10^(-m) odds of life forming on a planet)

We don't know what `n` and `m` are. It may be that `m` is much larger than than `n`. Yes, the number of planets is very large, but the odds of life forming is apparently very small. It may be that there is a very large number of planets, but a very very very very small chance that life would form on a planet.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#26

Post by mirimir »

jerf wrote: post #22
mirimir wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This is just picking parameters consistent with no detection of extraterrestrial civilizations. The point of the Fermi paradox is that it's a stretch to assume such parameters. It's not prediction about extraterrestrial civilizations collapsing or whatever. It's just an alternative to consider. And perhaps a warning about shouting at the Universe. Although it's probably too late to fret too much about that.

The article is not about picking parameters. The article is one meta layer up from that; they examine the distribution of parameters. I can't guarantee this is novel paper in general, but it's not something I've seen treated this formally before. I mean, it roughly conforms to what I've been saying for a while, but I only worked the math very intuitively and in a manner that could have been flawed, so I get no credit…

OK, picking distributions. I can't imagine that there's enough data to even do that.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#27

Post by adrianN »

ghaff wrote: post #21
adrianN wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Von Neumann probes could probably colonize a good chunk of the Milky Way given a few hundred thousand years.

That in turn makes assumptions about the practicality of interstellar travel etc. But, yes. The counterpoint to space is big is that so are timescales.

Interstellar travel is definitely possible. The only question is how long the trips take. You can build nuclear pulse propulsion vessels fairly easily that can reach a few percent of the speed of light. Those things can cross the Milky Way in less than ten million years.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#28

Post by mdpopescu »

ISL wrote: post #5

If the argument stated above is correct, there is an awful waste of space. (Thanks, Carl!) There is nothing in physical law to suggest that here is substantially different from anywhere else in the universe. To believe that here is manifestly different from every other place in the universe is a really surprising claim.

First, we know with absolute certainty that here is substantially different from anywhere else: we know there's life here, we haven't found life anywhere else. (And the null hypothesis is that we haven't found it because it doesn't exist.)

Second, it's a waste of space only if 1) it was created on purpose and 2) the purpose wasn't "to allow us space to expand". If either of those is false, I don't see how it can be called "a waste of space".

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#29

Post by Luc »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #8

It's "papers" like this by people that are either clueless or malicious that make everyone pine for the pre-arxiv days. Everyone considered this option. From the very first day the paradox was posed. We don't know the parameters well, it's within our margin of error that no one else is out there, so it's an option. This is such an absurd claim to take as your own that it's literally on the wikipedia page! It's also e…

But it's posted in the pop-physics category. It doesn't seem inappropriate as a popular science article.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#30

Post by mdpopescu »

ssijak wrote: post #6
jpm_sd wrote: post #2

TL;DR - It's not a paradox, because we're probably alone. Kind of a letdown!

How did you/they calculate that probability of being alone? Anybody who tries to slap some number on such things as the probability for life to emerge is dishonest at least.

That's the whole point of Michael Crichton's rant in "Aliens caused global warming" [1]

[1] https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publication...

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