Where is everyone - The Fermi Paradox

DTAC · Postby **DTAC** » July 22nd, 2014, 9:59 pm

On the subject of why we have never heard any signals from space, we are of course assuming that the only communication possible in the entire universe is radio based, which is human arrogance at it's finest, "If we haven't discovered it, it doesn't exist". Given how old the universe is and the fact that we only "discovered" radio transmission a little more than a century ago, I am willing to believe that there is maybe a better way of communicating across the vastness of space than something as fast than the speed of light, which on a galactic scale (even localised to our Local Group, the tiniest fraction of this galaxy), would not even warrant being called a snail's pace.

If you have the capability to travel between stars, speed of light communication becomes obsolete almost immediately so any advanced species would look to overcome that limitation.

Slartibartfast · Postby **Slartibartfast** » July 22nd, 2014, 10:37 pm

Slartibartfast wrote:Possibility 6) There’s plenty of activity and noise out there, but our technology is too primitive and we’re listening for the wrong things. Like walking into a modern-day office building, turning on a walkie-talkie, and when you hear no activity (which of course you wouldn’t hear because everyone’s texting, not using walkie-talkies), determining that the building must be empty. Or maybe, as Carl Sagan has pointed out, it could be that our minds work exponentially faster or slower than another form of intelligence out there—e.g. it takes them 12 years to say “Hello,” and when we hear that communication, it just sounds like white noise to us.

That was in the article as well. Like I said, it provides more questions than answers but is a very interesting read.

It's cool that you came up with the same theory without reading the article. Bess you become a scientist

mars · Postby **mars** » July 22nd, 2014, 11:29 pm

maj. tom wrote:That space is big. Bigger than you can imagine was ever possible. Humans would spend 100 000 years just exploring a single quadrant of this galaxy we live in. Of course we would have evolved by then. Can't even imagine going to other galaxies.

THIS is what bugs me. Why is the universe so large? Why?

Halfbreed07 · Postby **Halfbreed07** » July 23rd, 2014, 5:18 am

But even of we received a signal from a planet x light years away, won't it be a just as old, or older since that signal moves slower than light?

X2 · Postby X2 » July 23rd, 2014, 10:49 pm

Are we there yet ?

The article doesn't seem to address the possibility that one of the types of civilizations can either manipulate or move through time-space.

The vastness of the universe is necessary to permit the chance of life and all things are possible with time. When you pick up a stone and skip it across the water... that stone took millions of years to be formed and eventually end up on the floor, only to be skipped across the water and sink to the bottom... to continue it's journey. The moment, that instant, has no bearing on your emotion from throwing the stone... the activity took seconds but was millions of years in the making. And in thousands of years, that stone may become grains of sand that end up in a oyster, become the core of a pearl that is harvested and placed on the neck of a sweet young thing.

Maybe that's a type IV ? A God-like being... a "Q", a Dr. Who... a Quantum Leap-er... the only kind of being that could survive the trip... so draped in power, knowledge and capability that to reveal themselves to mere mortals would be more lamentable than enjoyable. Think of doing a magic trick for a barracuda... no appreciation, no happiness, just a stink fish with a bad attitude that will probably bite you just as soon as swim away. We're the barracuda.

As mentioned... maybe we are just a colonization... a lab test... concluded hundreds of thousands of years ago... a success... left on this planet to flourish... what may come of us ? Who cares ! What came of that bean you planted in prep school ? Or the mold you transplanted onto the good piece of bread ? Something happened to it after the class science fair... but you don't care ! The purpose of the experiment is over and the sprout was just as good in the garbage as it is in the ground.

If we found that there was other life in the universe... would it really change us ? WOuld we go all star trek and abandon material wealth... devote mankind to one goal ? Ha... we too damn selfish and vengeful. Our society needs TIME to boil down... to simmer... let the ignorance soak in so the flavour can come out. Maybe we can move forward to a goal, but what goal ? We are wandering the vastness of our universe from the safety of our gravity because not only do we not have the resources or science... we don't have the time to give. Maybe one day we will crack the true secrets of DNA and outlive age and conquer time... but until then, we are just complex beings trying to understand a vastly more complex universe...just so we can write it in our job descriptions.

Slartibartfast · Postby **Slartibartfast** » July 24th, 2014, 9:25 am

Not to mention, if you are a superior race that is exploring different colonies on planets all over the universe, how often will you visit each one. You may only get chance to visit each one once every few thousand years. That means, even if they were here in the past, we would have just been too primitive to make any sense of it. We have only gotten a good understanding of space over the past couple hundred years which is barely a blip in the history of time.

Even if you could travel through time, the time travelling equipment will have to be mobile (bmobile... lol... I now get it) for them to use it efficiently. For example, if they visited Earth 2000 years ago and they realised this society is a long way off from making sense of them, it won't make sense to go home millions of light years away to travel back in time to come back here. Also, they won't be able to observe us closely enough from their home planet to know how advanced we are. And lastly, the earth and the solar system are moving through the galaxy, which means if they travel back or forward in time a few thousand years, they will have still have to travel to where our solar system was/will be at that point in time.

Even if they cater for all of this, I think that they may have specific laws about interfering with the past that may stop them from interacting with us anyway.

Chimera · Postby **Chimera** » July 30th, 2014, 6:47 am

We are measuring time and space travel in light years but for an advanced civilization, you can assume they would have the technology to travel much faster. I hope we see some sign of alien life before I die. Always wondered about that since I was small.

nareshseep · Postby **nareshseep** » August 2nd, 2014, 11:04 pm

Finally got the time to take in this piece, Excellent read.

How big is the universe? We may never know. The thought itself keeps one pondering, and if we reach the boundary, what is on the other side of it?

mark2.0 · Postby **mark2.0** » August 3rd, 2014, 3:54 am

OP informative, but too much darn reading... Next time paint a pic, it tells a 1000 words.

maj. tom · Postby **maj. tom** » August 3rd, 2014, 3:22 pm

Well have a read about the Kardashev Scale, something that theoretically relates to the types of civilizations that may be out there. Technology directly relates to the efficiency that a civilization can harness energy into useful work. This is why there have been massive jumps in human technology since the Industrial Revolution compared to the thousands of years before.

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement, based on the amount of energy a civilization is able to utilize.

In 1964, Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev defined three levels of civilizations, based on the order of magnitude of power available to them:

Type I

"Technological level close to the level presently attained on earth, with energy consumption at ≈4×1019 erg/sec (4 × 1012 watts.) Guillermo A. Lemarchand stated this as "A level near contemporary terrestrial civilization with an energy capability equivalent to the solar insolation on Earth, between 1016 and 1017 watts."

Type II

"A civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star (for example, the stage of successful construction of a Dyson sphere), with energy consumption at ≈4×1033 erg/sec. Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization capable of utilizing and channeling the entire radiation output of its star. The energy utilization would then be comparable to the luminosity of our Sun, about 4×1033 erg/sec (4×1026 watts)."

Type III

"A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ≈4×1044 erg/sec." Lemarchand stated this as "A civilization with access to the power comparable to the luminosity of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 4×1044 erg/sec (4×1037 watts)."

On this scale we are still a Type 0 civilization, despite Lemarchand's conjectures. And we will be so until we find a different means of utilizing energy more efficiently than electricity; perhaps direct solar radiation will be powering us in a few hundred years, rather than solar to electric energy.

"A Type 0 civilization extracts its energy, information, raw-materials from crude organic-based sources (i.e. food/wood/fossil fuel/books/oral tradition); pressures via natural disaster, selection, and societal collapse creates extreme (99.9%) risk of extinction; it's capable of orbital spaceflight; in fiction, societies that fail to improve social, environmental and medical understanding concurrently with other advancements, frequently accelerated their own extinction"

Read much more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
http://www.coseti.org/lemarch1.htm

sMASH · Postby **sMASH** » August 6th, 2014, 11:49 am

Slartibartfast wrote:
Slartibartfast wrote:Possibility 6) There’s plenty of activity and noise out there, but our technology is too primitive and we’re listening for the wrong things. Like walking into a modern-day office building, turning on a walkie-talkie, and when you hear no activity (which of course you wouldn’t hear because everyone’s texting, not using walkie-talkies), determining that the building must be empty. Or maybe, as Carl Sagan has pointed out, it could be that our minds work exponentially faster or slower than another form of intelligence out there—e.g. it takes them 12 years to say “Hello,” and when we hear that communication, it just sounds like white noise to us.

That was in the article as well. Like I said, it provides more questions than answers but is a very interesting read.

It's cool that you came up with the same theory without reading the article. Bess you become a scientist

I came up wiht this idea yeqrs ago as well... While watching a documentary about a type of strims . Their usable band width for sight is significantly broader than humans. They can see past ultraviolet and infrared. Large animals hear lower frequencies hand us, and because of his can communicate over farther distances. Smaller animals hear higher frequencies than us.

We just are too limited .

We have two problems. Our abilities are vastly limited to he possibilities. And we don't have the imagination to conceptualize past out limitations.

Even when we progress past those things, to do anything on a galactic scale in any with while time frame would need space/time folding. That would require significant amounts of energy. That would also require a source that is significantly powerful compared to its dimensions .
This thing about transporting tonnes of fuel to propel pounds of payload is regressive.

The difference between you alive and your dead body; that part is 'life'. If we can figure out what that is, we can figure out if it can happen independently somewhere else.