The Fermi Paradox: possible solutions
Why isn’t Earth crawling with alien life forms? Why don’t we find traces of past visitations? Here are some possible explanations — one is pretty flippant.
An overview of the explanations
The Fermi Paradox is a thought experiment that was conducted by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 and raises the question why, in spite of overwhelming statistical odds for intelligent civilisations in our galaxy, we have not encountered any alien artifacts or creatures. It is unreasonable to believe that the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way have spawned less than many thousands of advanced civilisations, and even slow interstellar travel, which is nearly within the reach of Earth technology, requires just five to fifty million years to colonize the entire galaxy. Think of what that means: if the dinosaurs had reached the current level of human intelligence, they should be all over the galaxy.
So, if we are not the only life form (monumentally unlikely), then hundreds of alien civilisations should have already visited earth, a fact that should be immediately obvious to us. But this is not the case. We have not found an alien screw driver or the equivalent of a Hershey bar wrapper. At the very least we should be receiving microwave communications from them. But again this has not occurred.
Various solutions have been proposed to the Fermi Paradox. They are mainly based on the assumption that extraterrestrial life may not be as abundant as we are assuming; that intelligent life and civilisation may be extremely rare; that technical civilizations tend to destroy themselves; or some combination of these factors. Technological civilizations may invariably self-destruct with nuclear or biological warfare, nano-technological catastrophe, badly-programmed super-intelligence, or a Malthusian catastrophe after the deterioration of a planet’s ecosphere.
Robin Hanson has said that the reason why we have seen no evidence for alien life might be the existence of a “Great Filter,” something that prevents pure matter throughout the universe from giving rise to expanding civilisations that develop to a point where they can be seen by other civilisations, or in fact travel to them. Here is a summary by him on TEDx:
This was subject of my article: If we find life on Mars — we are all doomed! Can you guess why finding alien life on our neighbouring planet could spell the long-term extinction of humanity?
Get The Friedel Chronicles’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
A decade and a half ago, on April 1st 2010, I playfully proposed my own solution to the Fermi Paradox. In our galaxy and in this universe in general, intelligent civilisations at some stage invariably start building large hadron colliders. Once these achieve a critical energy level (perhaps 14 TeV?), the scientists start generating miniature black holes, naively assuming that they will disappear due to Hawking evaporation. They don’t, and a number migrate to the gravitational centre of their planets, where the pressure is large enough to lead to an exponential accretion process.
And thus do all fledgling civilisations, all over the galaxy, end. A short time before it would have been possible to undertake interstellar space travel and colonise the galaxy. In the aftermath of an LHC experiment. Every time.
A vexing new paradox arises from this proposal: if my theory is wrong it will be rightfully derided or ignored. But if I am right, I stand to win major academic awards.
But then I will no longer be around to actually receive them, right? It’s a lose-lose situation.
More on the solution to the Fermi Paradox to follow
Also read:
- The true dimensions of Space — It is far, far emptier than you ever imagined.
- What space aliens really look like — Certainly nothing like the ones you see in movies.
- Disasters: asteroids, tsunamis and Yellowstone — Which is the most devastating natural disaster we might encounter? Which is the most likely to occur?
- If we find life on Mars — we are all doomed! — Can you guess why finding alien life on our neighbouring planet could spell the long-term extinction of Humanity? A thought experiment.
