Loading ...The Fermi Paradox
Given the immense size of the known universe, we should expect to not be alone as far as life is concerned. In fact, probability says that we should be only one of a great many advanced civilizations. Concerning this, the Fermi Paradox says the following:
The size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.
This either means that advanced civilizations are common and there is a reasonable explanation as to why we have not been in contact with them, or that the conditions necessary to support life as we understand it are so absolutely unique that they happened only once; that idea is fleshed out more completely in the Rare Earth Hypotheses.
Popularity: 2% [?]
3 Comments
Make A CommentComments RSS Feed TrackBack URL
June 25th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Well, there’s always the idea (don’t know if this is mine or not) but maybe that they’re only evolving as fast as we are, and are thus, only able to do what we can do? and that being said, as we have yet to travel to any other planet with a manned ship, maybe those other lifeforms are in the same predicament. I mean, we’ve just barely gotten one satellite out of our own solar system. If there are other lifeforms in the universe (or to be more realistic, in our galaxy) I can only see it taking us many centuries or even thousands of years to be in contact with them.
It’s pretty trippy.
August 11th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Even if they’re more advanced than we are, why come out to the boonies of our galaxy. They may easily be as resource strapped as we are, and investing them in staying alive in this crazy place.
It does certainly seem that life requires moderate conditions. We live in a moderately sized galaxy, out in the suburbs on the arm (not the extra dense centre). We orbit a medium sized sun, not as close as some planets, but not as far as other ones.
Maybe instead of doing statistics like: there are a billion, billion stars, so if only 1 in a billion have a planet with life on it, the univers is teeming! … We should say: Out of a billion, billion stars, 99.9999% of them have extreme conditions unsuitable for life. and take it from there.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:00 am
I know this is an old post but I stumbled on to it and I just have to throw in my opinion.
The very thing that suggests the existence of these civilizations explains why we haven’t found evidence of them. Given the age and size of the universe the odds of us finding any evidence, regardless of how many civilizations there are, are so astronomical as to be zero. In addition to that with the age of the universe there have likely been many civilizations that have died out for one reason or another.
So while there probably are advanced civilizations out there we will probably never find them. Unfortunately this is true regardless of our technological advancements. Simply put, the universe is too big for us to really find anything in it.