The Fermi Paradox

I'm interested in space exploration, aliens and the expansiveness (it's a word, I looked it up) of the universe.  Weird as it sounds, I like learning about things that make life on Earth seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things (weird, right?).  Anyways, I was surfing an internet message board and a user started talking about something called The Fermi Paradox.



"This is a good little read for anyone who's interested, I'll do my best to try and explain it.

To understand the Fermi Paradox first we need to understand the Drake Equation.

The Drake Equation defines a set of parameters that need to be fulfilled for intelligent life to exist somewhere else in the galaxy and then lets the user input their own percentages. (Such as percentage of stars that have planets, percentage of planets in a stars habitable zone, percentage of habitable planets that develop life, percentage of life that becomes intelligent etc.) Now astronomers all have differing opinions on what all of these percentages are, but the first number is the most important, number of stars in the milky way galaxy (somewhere around 200 billion). Using even the most conservative estimates in the Drake Equation you get an answer that intelligent civilizations have sprung up in the galaxy at least 5 times in the past. (The galaxy is believed to be 10 billion years old)

Assuming that a civilization developed interstellar travel capabilities, and traveled to another habitable planet where they set up a civilization and then sent 2 more ships to 2 different planets etc. then the civilization would colonize the galaxy at an exponential rate. Exponentially expanding, at most it would take the civilization 100 million years to explore the entire galaxy and set up outposts on every inhabitable planet. 100 million years may seem like an incredible amount of time, but in terms of the age of the galaxy (10 billion years old), and the age of the earth (4.6 billion years old) it is actually really not.

The Fermi Paradox asks, if there are 200 billion stars in the milky way, and even conservative estimates of the Drake Equation lead us to the conclusion that intelligent life has sprung up multiple times in the galaxy's history. Combined with the fact that a civilization could colonize the entire galaxy 100 times over based on the galaxies age vs. colonization time THEN... Why do we not see any evidence of any civilization besides our own?

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Even though it seems like something out of science fiction, this is actually a serious scientific paradox. The first question would be do we not see evidence of other civilizations because they're not there? or do we not see them because our technology is not sufficiently advanced enough? Or maybe even because the Earth is being intentionally isolated.

It's perfectly reasonable to suggest that any civilization who has the technology for interstellar travel also has the technology to make incredibly destructive weapons. And maybe every single civilization that has arisen in the past has destroyed themselves before being able to begin to colonize the galaxy.

Maybe they are out there and we just don't know it. Try explaining a cell phone to someone who lived 200 years ago. It would probably be inconceivable for them to think you can talk to someone in China from a little box in your hand. And this is just 200 years, now talk about tens of millions of years of technological advancement. As Clarke's third law states: Any technology so sufficiently more advanced than a societies current technology would be indistinguishable from magic. It's really not all that inconceivable that we're surrounded by aliens right now and just don't know it.

Every single encounter in the history of Earth where one civilization was significantly more technologically advanced than another has resulted in the annihilation of a civilization. Maybe for that reason Earth is being kept intentionally isolated by a species that knows of our existence to prevent doing harm to our well-being or perhaps out of fear of their technology being used against them, similar to the way we refrain from interfering in the lives of native tribes in the amazon jungle because we know encountering them would result in their destruction.

Maybe there was a civilization that developed interstellar travel technology and for fear of safety from other potential civilizations that could be enemies built an army of robots to destroy any other forms of intelligent life. Maybe then that civilization died out but their robots still live on scanning the galaxy and have destroyed all other civilizations that have existed.

Or maybe, we don't see evidence of any other civilizations because they've never existed. Our estimates about the qualifications for life are just wrong and Earth is in fact the only place that life exists and has ever existed in the galaxy.

Anyway, it's really something to think about."

Source 

Reading stuff like this makes my brain want to explode.  I feel like Will Ferrell in Step Brothers after him and Mr. Reilly make their two beds into bunk beds, and his head starts spinning thinking about all the activities they can do with their new space.  This is heavy, man.

Are there aliens out there that we can't perceive because to us their tech just looks like weird anomalies?  Could we be boxed off by an alien civilization because they don't want to accidentally merc us?  This is real heady stuff.  It makes me want to write a really shitty sci-fi novel.



This has nothing to do with anything: That new Kanye track is kinda weak.  And for the record, I'm a big Kanye fan.