Submitted by EricFromOuterSpace t3_z86hpt in space
Reply to comment by ablackcloudupahead in Extragalactic SETI looks for life beyond the Milky Way. But where? In game theory one solution is a Schelling point — a single event that draws different group's attention. A binary neutron star merger could act as one, because observers across the universe will all be looking in the same direction. by EricFromOuterSpace
This is one of the reasons why the fermi paradox has always befuddled me. The central question of the fermi paradox is “if the universe is full of life then why haven’t we heard anything“. And it always seemed obvious to me that the reason why we haven’t heard anything is because we’ve been listening for less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second on the full year calendar of the universe‘s existence, and we expect to have just heard alien civilizations that could be millions of light years away.
Like, an entire interstellar empire could exist on the other side of the galaxy right now, literally strip mining entire stars for energy consumption, that has existed for 10,000 years, and we wouldn’t know about it for tens of thousands of years more at the bare minimum simply because of the speed of light. An alien civilization that just invented the radio yesterday that exists 100 light years away would be completely undetectable for at least another 100 years, and that’s assuming that they continue to use Omni directional radio transmissions; already on earth those are being phased out.
It’s just odd to me that the fermi paradox has such an iron grip on the discourse around the search for extraterrestrial intelligence; like, space is really freaking big, and that fact alone is the biggest limiting factor on why we probably haven’t heard anything.
>And it always seemed obvious to me that the reason why we haven’t heard anything is because we’ve been listening for less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second on the full year calendar of the universe‘s existence, and we expect to have just heard alien civilizations that could be millions of light years away.
>Like, an entire interstellar empire could exist on the other side of the galaxy right now, literally strip mining entire stars for energy consumption, that has existed for 10,000 years, and we wouldn’t know about it for tens of thousands of years more at the bare minimum simply because of the speed of light.
10,000 years is also a fraction of a fraction of the time the universe has been in existence. If the universe is full of life, then you'd expect civilizations to exist and show their mark on the environment at some point over the past 14 billion years. A human-like civilization could colonize every star in the galaxy within just a few million years even at sub-light speeds, and even if you assume it takes a colonization mission 10,000 years after arrival until it's built up to the point that it can send out a colonization mission of its own.
We didn't exist at the same time as the vast majority of life on this planet, but we can see the remnants and learn a great deal of those past ages. Yet out of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, we only see life on one single, solitary planet.
I always wonder about some of the assumptions built in to this. Like the idea that we'll just continue to grow in numbers forever. I mean human history shows a decrease in birth rates as living standards improve; maybe most species just find a stasis point of how many of them exist and it's less than "the whole galaxy". If that's true, then it's really not surprising we don't see any. If there were 100 individual stars with civilization around them in our galaxy, even if they'd been there a billion years there's basically zero chance we'd have seen them
In my opinion I’ve always viewed the Fermi Paradox as a qualitative thought experiment, not hard and fast rule.
Thank you! You're the first person other than me who I've seen express this opinion. What's the paradox here? It's an interesting question with interesting possible answers, but I don't think it's a paradox
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