The Fermi Paradox

Discussion in 'Everything Else' started by bfun, Jan 16, 2015.

  1. If you're bored give this a read. It's the different theory's of why we seem to be alone in the universe.

    http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
     
  2. We're alone because monkey keeps posting scat stories.
     
  3. The aliens are hostile. I post scat stories to protect the earth.
     
  4. Very cool. I think I'm in Group 1 subcategory Prove It. The other articles seem like good reads also.
     
  5. Life and even intelligent life is probably very common. There are probably hundreds of billions of planets in our own galaxy alone, many of which could probably support life. I don't think Earth or the human race are unique. I think the issue is that faster than light travel is simply not possible, so it would be highly unlikely for us to ever make contact with other advanced civilizations over such vast distances.
     
  6. The mathematics make it seem exceeding likely... it's just that one has to draw the line somewhere.

    A few years ago scientists were able to create a mini-universe in a vacuum that lasted for a few seconds on our plane. But it supposedly existed for billions of years relative to itself and any life inside of it. That is Group 2 Possibility 10, except we were the 'gods/architect' of that matrix. You could spend a lifetime following the research on any of the possibilities they summarized into a few sentence.

    But the science starts to blur with and at some-point is overtaken by philosophy. I choose to drawn the line before that. It starts to parallel religion a bit too much for my taste.
     
  7. But we wouldn't necessarily need to travel anywhere to find proof of intelligent life. The article makes a conservative estimate of 100,000 civilizations in our galaxy. If any of them were emitting radio waves we should have noticed by now. If you consider that more than half of those worlds would be billions of years older than us you'd think one of them might have more advanced life than us and would have perfected a way to locate other planets and send radio waves to them. We've identified 47 possible planets and we've only been looking for a few years. How many more will we find in the next hundred years?

    So the scary question is why are all those planets quiet. Is all life doomed to hit a "great filter" and is our time coming?
     
  8. indeed. i'm with bfun on this. we should be like china and just sit it out and wait for the other civilizations to waste their own resources to confirm other life in space.
     
  9. Or the great filter could be behind us and we really are unique and alone. We don't really know and there are so many variables to consider.
     
  10. The most compelling hypothesis I've come across is the Judge-Wilson Theory of Idiocracy.
     
  11. There cannot be just be one planet with life in these infinite galaxys. If this planet has life there will be others somewhere, maybe in galaxys far from our Reach.
     
  12. String theory. Multiverse. Even if we were the only planet with life in THIS universe, there are parallel universes where that might not be the case.
     
  13. How are we cartain there is actually multiverses though?
     
  14. There's no certainty, but the most likely outcome of the Big Bang (if accurate) is a multiverse, not a universe.
     
  15. It's like different save files for god.
     
  16. But you can't save in God Mode...
     
  17. Exactly. My guess is that the universe is just so vast, that we're probably nowhere near other intelligent life. But I don't doubt that it's out there somewhere. FTL travel like we see in science fiction may not be possible, and who knows if alien civilizations would undertake colonization at sublight speeds. Who knows if other civilizations would even communicate using radio waves, and the amount of time we've been looking is like the blink of an eye on a cosmic time scale. With how many planets we are now finding right in our own backyard, I have a hard time believing life on earth is unique, or even that intelligent life is unique. We aren't special snowflakes, and I don't think humans or our planet are unique in the universe.
     
  18. How does the big bang connected to a multiverse theory? Also, hasn't the theroy of a cyclic big bang event been replaced by a more popular theory of an ever expanding universe? One that expands until all energy has been depleted and all goes dark.
     
  19. inflationary multiverse. it's suggested that when the big bang occurred, not just this universe was created but multiple were created as it expanded.
     
  20. Old but gold: http://scaleofuniverse.com/