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Posted on 10/25/2001 9:13:53 AM PDT by RightWhale
Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy? Enrico Fermi thought so -- and he was a pretty smart guy. Might he have been right?
It's been a hundred years since Fermi, an icon of physics, was born (and nearly a half-century since he died). He's best remembered for building a working atomic reactor in a squash court. But in 1950, Fermi made a seemingly innocuous lunchtime remark that has caught and held the attention of every SETI researcher since. (How many luncheon quips have you made with similar consequence?)
The remark came while Fermi was discussing with his mealtime mates the possibility that many sophisticated societies populate the Galaxy. They thought it reasonable to assume that we have a lot of cosmic company. But somewhere between one sentence and the next, Fermi's supple brain realized that if this was true, it implied something profound. If there are really a lot of alien societies, then some of them might have spread out.
Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within ten million years, every star system could be brought under the wing of empire. Ten million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, which is roughly ten thousand million years. Colonization of the Milky Way should be a quick exercise.
So what Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had more than enough time to pepper the Galaxy with their presence. But looking around, he didn't see any clear indication that they're out and about. This prompted Fermi to ask what was (to him) an obvious question: "where is everybody?"
This sounds a bit silly at first. The fact that aliens don't seem to be walking our planet apparently implies that there are no extraterrestrials anywhere among the vast tracts of the Galaxy. Many researchers consider this to be a radical conclusion to draw from such a simple observation. Surely there is a straightforward explanation for what has become known as the Fermi Paradox. There must be some way to account for our apparent loneliness in a galaxy that we assume is filled with other clever beings.
A lot of folks have given this thought. The first thing they note is that the Fermi Paradox is a remarkably strong argument. You can quibble about the speed of alien spacecraft, and whether they can move at 1 percent of the speed of light or 10 percent of the speed of light. It doesn't matter. You can argue about how long it would take for a new star colony to spawn colonies of its own. It still doesn't matter. Any halfway reasonable assumption about how fast colonization could take place still ends up with time scales that are profoundly shorter than the age of the Galaxy. It's like having a heated discussion about whether Spanish ships of the 16th century could heave along at two knots or twenty. Either way they could speedily colonize the Americas.
Consequently, scientists in and out of the SETI community have conjured up other arguments to deal with the conflict between the idea that aliens should be everywhere and our failure (so far) to find them. In the 1980s, dozens of papers were published to address the Fermi Paradox. They considered technical and sociological arguments for why the aliens weren't hanging out nearby. Some even insisted that there was no paradox at all: the reason we don't see evidence of extraterrestrials is because there aren't any.
In our next column, we'll delve into some of the more ingenious musings of those who have tried to understand whether, apart from science fiction, galactic empires could really exist, and what implications this may have for SETI.
If we are, in fact, ordinary, then one would assume that what happens here is also ordinary. If what happens here is ordinary, then all the other ordinary stars would also ordinarily have happen there what happens here. If it takes as long as it has for life to develop here to the level of intelligence and sophistication that we see today, we would have to consider it to be ordinary and expect other ordinary civilizations to be at the same level of intelligence and sophistication as we are at.
Just my rambling speculation. Your ordinariness may vary...
-PJ
Good point!
Spaniards.
I think we will one day build sentient machines. They will probably supercede us. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, think of it as our next evolutionary step. Our children supercede us too after all.
I don't think we will "transfer" our consciousness to anything else. I think that's impossible. But hey, I think when Kirk goes through the transporter a new person comes out with all Kirk's memories. The first one is dead. (Won't catch me on no transporters.)
Whether their "waiting for us" or not, if they exist at any decent level of development, they must be making some kind of noise that we could detect. That's the premise behind SETI. So far, nobody's out there. Or, they could be sitting around in a pre-radio stage of development, sort of like ancient Egypt, perhaps for millions of stagnant years. If so, fine. They're no competition. Get ready, aliens. We're coming!
Another point, made in a recent issue of Scientific American, is that only a tiny portion of the galaxy, represententing about one percent of the stars, is habitable. So this becomes the starting point for the Drake equation.
Then there would be the "99.99% travelers" moving near the speed of light would slow their time down to 1/70 of "flat time" A worker over ten years would oversee 700 years of "flat" time.
Then some would live at 99.999999% of the speed of light and the time dilation would be more like 1/700 or some such. They could regulate over thousands of years.
Here's another thought. If someone takes a trip 10 light years away and is going so fast that time is slowed down by a factor of 10, doesn't it seem like to them that they took a 10 light-year trip in only a year? Doesn't it make it seem like to them , that they are traveling 10 times the speed of light?
There is no question than some beings are more savage than others.
But the likelihood that the more savage group will expand into the universe ahead of the lesser savage is nil.
Let me put it this way.
Who do you think would get to the moon first?
The Muslim Arabs?
The Judeo-Christian West?
The above statement demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of basic organic chemistry. HINT: If what you are saying was true, commercial chemical synthesis wouldn't be possible.
Do you really think it's impossible in principle, or just prohibitively difficult (as I believe interstellar travel to be)?
That response ia a triumph of ignorance and ideology over reality.
Ignorance, brutality, base savagery, combined with a centralized royalty type totalitarianism, stifling exploration, learning and innovation; that's what did them in.
Why do you suppose India and China were not similarly subdued?
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