Because when someone chimes in...
THIS GUY shows up.
Posted on 08/26/2013 4:29:42 PM PDT by LibWhacker
(Phys.org) —Scientists as eminent as Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan have long believed that humans will one day colonise the universe. But how easy would it be, why would we want to, and why haven't we seen any evidence of other life forms making their own bids for universal domination?
A new paper by Dr Stuart Armstrong and Dr Anders Sandberg from Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) attempts to answer these questions. To be published in the August/September edition of the journal Acta Astronautica, the paper takes as its starting point the Fermi paradox – the discrepancy between the likelihood of intelligent alien life existing and the absence of observational evidence for such an existence.
Dr Armstrong says: 'There are two ways of looking at our paper. The first is as a study of our future – humanity could at some point colonise the universe. The second relates to potential alien species – by showing the relative ease of crossing between galaxies, it makes the lack of evidence for other intelligent life even more puzzling. This worsens the Fermi paradox.'
The paradox, named after the physicist Enrico Fermi, is something of particular interest to the academics at the FHI – a multidisciplinary research unit that enables leading intellects to bring the tools of mathematics, philosophy and science to bear on big-picture questions about humanity and its prospects.
Dr Sandberg explains: 'Why would the FHI care about the Fermi paradox? Well, the silence in the sky is telling us something about the kind of intelligence in the universe. Space isn't full of little green men, and that could tell us a number of things about other intelligent life – it could be very rare, it could be hiding, or it could die out relatively easily. Of course it could also mean it doesn't exist. If humanity is alone in the universe then we have an enormous moral responsibility. As the only intelligence, or perhaps the only conscious minds, we could decide the fate of the entire universe.'
According to Dr Armstrong, one possible explanation for the Fermi paradox is that life destroys itself before it can spread. 'That would mean we are at a higher risk than we might have thought,' he says. 'That's a concern for the future of humanity.'
Dr Sandberg adds: 'Almost any answer to the Fermi paradox gives rise to something uncomfortable. There is also the theory that a lot of planets are at roughly at the same stage – what we call synchronised – in terms of their ability to explore the universe, but personally I don't think that's likely.'
As Dr Armstrong points out, there are Earth-like planets much older than the Earth – in fact most of them are, in many cases by billions of years.
Dr Sandberg says: 'In the early 1990s we thought that perhaps there weren't many planets out there, but now we know that the universe is teeming with planets. We have more planets than we would ever have expected.'
The Acta Astronautica paper looks at just how far and wide a civilisation like humanity could theoretically spread across the universe. Past studies of the Fermi paradox have mainly looked at spreading inside the Milky Way. However, this paper looks at more ambitious expansion.
Dr Sandberg says: 'If we wanted to go to a really remote galaxy to colonise one of these planets, under normal circumstances we would have to send rockets able to decelerate on arrival. But with the universe constantly expanding, the galaxies are moving further and further away, which makes the calculations rather tricky. What we did in the paper was combine a number of mathematical and physical tools to address this issue.'
Dr Armstrong and Dr Sandberg show in the paper that, given certain technological assumptions (such as advanced automation or basic artificial intelligence, capable of self-replication), it would be feasible to construct a Dyson sphere, which would capture the energy of the sun and power a wave of intergalactic colonisation. The process could be initiated on a surprisingly short timescale.
But why would a civilisation want to expand its horizons to other galaxies? Dr Armstrong says: 'One reason for expansion could be that a sub-group wants to do it because it is being oppressed or it is ideologically committed to expansion. In that case you have the problem of the central civilisation, which may want to prevent this type of expansion. The best way of doing that get there first. Pre-emption is perhaps the best reason for expansion.'
Dr Sandberg adds: 'Say a race of slimy space aliens wants to turn the universe into parking lots or advertising space – other species might want to stop that. There could be lots of good reasons for any species to want to expand, even if they don't actually care about colonising or owning the universe.'
He concludes: 'Our key point is that if any civilisation anywhere in the past had wanted to expand, they would have been able to reach an enormous portion of the universe. That makes the Fermi question tougher – by a factor of billions. If intelligent life is rare, it needs to be much rarer than just one civilisation per galaxy. If advanced civilisations all refrain from colonising, this trend must be so strong that not a single one across billions of galaxies and billions of years chose to do it. And so on.
'We still don't know what the answer is, but we know it's more radical than previously expected.'
Do I detect some moral superiority and intellectual guilt for being humans?
We can determine the fate of the universe? How megalomanian of them to assume that we can do anything like that.
The sun puts out more energy in one solar blast than all our weapons combined.
Since there is no breathable air on any other planet, and we need oxygen/nitrogen to live, where are we going to get it on a large enough scale for colonization - Ghostbusters?
We are not going to the stars in any foreseeable future. Read some scifi books on this issue and you will see that it is presently beyond our technological capacity.
Hell, we can’t even fix a pothole (or pothead) in Washington, DC, or Spokane, Washington.
Obama can’t balance a budget or even tell us accurately how many states we have.
John Kerry couldn’t tell you what country he fought in, in Vietnam (Xmas in Cambodia? - don’t think so). Now he wants to fight in Syria. He’d probably end up ordering strikes on Kuwait.
Ambassador to the UN Samantha Rice can’t even find the building in order to attend work sessions.
NASA is busy spreading the word about Islam and technology instead of planning space missions.
Oh yes. We definitely are NOT going to the stars, and if there is any intelligent life out there (hattip to Walter Sullivan), they are smart enough to stay hidden and far away from our world’s leaders, esp. Obie and his marxist minions.
We need to clean up our own house before we even contemplate leaving it.
However, if we believe in the theory that there is alien life in the universe, there might be some proof in the persons of Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Ed Schulz, the late Helen Thomas, Rosanne Barr, Lurch, Princess Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama.
If they are not aliens, they may be, nevertheless, the closest thing we will ever see like alien life.
And we’ve been to the moon and have actually sent craft outside what most think of as the solar system with 40+ year old technology.
Figuring your business plan out far enough to cover millions and millions of years in travel time would be quite a trick :)
Some think the pyramids of Egypt are proof positive that ancient star travelers left their footprints here. You know, there aren't any hieroglyphs inside them?
Quite interesting, ping!
This meme is been trending for some time.
The idea that life on Earth was seeded by Aliens.
There is a reason why it is gaining in popularity.
Evolutionists, Neo-Darwinists have lost and the only alternative is Panspermia.
“As the only intelligence, or perhaps the only conscious minds, we could decide the fate of the entire universe.”
That is the height of arrogance.
When you consider that we are but a microbe on a piece of sand circling around one of tens of billions of stars in the backwaters of one of billions of galaxies, in what could be a myriads of universes, these guys have the unmitigated chutzpah to believe that we are going to decide the fate of the entire universe. Talk about being delusional.
We have no idea how prevalent or strong the drive to explore/colonize is among any other theoretical intelligences. Maybe it just doesn’t occur to them, or it’s taboo, or they figure that the galaxy is teeming with listening hostiles ready to pounce if somebody makes enough noise for long enough.
On the other hand I recall a sci-fi story where all the really interesting things like pulsars, quasars, black holes and so on are actually all artificial. When we tell the things that built them that we thought they were natural occurrences and built our physics science around them they are startled, having never considered that they would be looked at as other than beacons that would let everyone know that they weren’t alone.
Freegards
The solar system is ours. Without a revolution in scientific thinking, 100X greater than the Einstein revolution, that’s the limit.
We are not nearly at the limit of the telescopes we can build. Space based telescopes can be built that can see city lights, oceans, forests, etc on nearby worlds, if they exist.
We will eventually find something we can colonize or use, and we can send robots to even hostile worlds for resources, but my opinion has always been we are the only intelligent species out there.
Well there you have a God complex in overdrive.
When you consider that we are but a microbe on a piece of sand circling around one of tens of billions of stars in the backwaters of one of billions of galaxies, in what could be a myriads of universes, these guys have the unmitigated chutzpah to believe that we are going to decide the fate of the entire universe. Talk about being delusional.
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And yet. We know this
The Earth and the Moon are aligned in such a way that the Sun casts a total eclipse for us to see and understand that Einstein was correct.
Very few microbes know this.
I started tuning out at the phrase “...the relative ease of crossing between galaxies”
Hunh? They need to ‘splain that one.
As a species, we're on the downhill slide.
I have another hypothesis to toss out there:
Maybe when a species advances to a certain point, its advances lead to its destruction.
“Not much point.”
Now that is just plain ignorant. One reason it would be difficult to find and communicate with alien intelligent lifeforms is because so many of them were made extinct before they left there planet and their galactic neighborhood to avoid extinction events that killed them all. The Earth is certainly no exception. Human life will become extinct in the not very distant future unless humans colonize the outer solar system and outer galactic neighborhood. Humans are lucky to have gotten this far without a major impact event causing our extinction. It takes a considerable amount of time to develop the capability for establishing self-sustaining communities large enough to guarantee the indefinite survival of humans. Unless humans begin the effort now, a catastrophic event may destroy humanity before the task is accomplished.
Rhe only question is whetherhumans have achieved sufficient intelligence to understand the threat and then decide to meet the challenge instead of sitting around to be hammered to death and extinction.
The universe is a really, really big place. Distances are vast and we are but tiny, tiny creatures. To travel just outside our galaxy would require a fuel tank bigger than earth, unless you just want to coast along at a snail's pace for, like, forever.
I’m not sure how to answer this comment.
We can end hunger. We have the technology to do it. It is just a question of money and the will to do it the right way.
As for ending war, that’s the rest problem. We could eliminate a lot of problem spots but lack the will to use the necessary weapons. Won’t go into details but it could be done.
Red China and the emerging newly armed Russia are the international problems.
However, I’m not “changing human nature”, just eliminating some of those who are causing problems.
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