5 Unsettling Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

Where are everybody? This single question was pondered by physicist Enrico Fermi as he gazed at the night sky. The universe is so incredibly vast that he thought to himself. It is so densely populated with countless galaxies in every direction we look. Each of these galaxies contains billions of stars and billions. more planets and if even a small percentage of these planets are habitable given the sheer number of them, the universe must be absolutely teeming with life and if the universe is teeming with life at least some of them must have become intelligent, perhaps even become intelligent. to be carriers of space. civilizations, but if that's the case, why haven't we found them all?

What we have here is a logical line of thought that tells us that extraterrestrial civilizations likely exist, and at the same time, we find no evidence that they exist. This contradiction forms the basis of what is known as the Fermi

paradox

and has many re

solutions

, some are a bit strange like the zoo hypothesis which basically states that the Earth was created by aliens as a kind of experiment and the reason why Why we can't find aliens in our galactic neighborhood is because they are hiding other

solutions

that are quite ridiculous, like the idea that several governments have gotten in touch and are simply hiding the evidence, but on a more serious side of things, There are many resolutions to the Fermi Paradox that are not only plausible but perhaps rather worrying without.

Additionally, here are five of them that we find particularly disturbing and we really hope are not really foreign. Our first solution is that there are, in fact, other civilizations, perhaps in star systems quite close to us, but, oh, we've had to find them because Everyone is actively hiding from us and each other in this scenario, everyone is listening and no one speak, fearful that even a single transmission could attract a hostile civilization. This is known as the Dark Forest hypothesis, in which the universe is compared to a quiet forest and each civilization is like a creature that inhabits it afraid to speak, perhaps other civilizations are already aware of the danger that surrounds them and therefore That remains silent while our naive Planet continues screaming at the trees without knowing that the forest is filled with terrifying hungry people. alien wolves, this was described perfectly in the 1987 novel The Forge of God, in this one of the characters explains that we have been sitting here in our tree singing like silly birds for over a century and now we wonder why no other birds he responded, the galactic skies are full. of hawks for that and the idea that other civilizations could be hostile is not very far-fetched when you look at how humans have treated each other on earth when two different worlds have collided just remember what happened when Europe discovered America maybe the forest Galactic is not filled with a group of docile creatures avoiding an apex predator, but rather populated solely by hunters, all willing to strike first for self-preservation.

Some theorists have taken this a step further and have pointed out that perhaps it is actually the nature of intelligent life to destroy others that they come across; if the galaxy has a limited number of useful resources, say rocky planets, then it would be the better for a super advanced civilization to eliminate any competition in sight and keep all the resources. In a similar way to how humans have taken over Earth, it is generally accepted that the most efficient way for a super predatory civilization to do so would be through the use of lethal probes that would be sent to star systems showing signs of life.

This is known as the Berserker hypothesis and implies that if we ever encounter an alien spacecraft roaming our solar system, we have no way of knowing whether its purpose is communications exploration or simply our annihilation. Oh, lovely with all the unknowns, maybe we'd better stay. Staying calm and avoiding danger in the dark, our next resolution is the idea that somewhere along the path of evolution, somewhere between the formation of life and becoming a spacefaring civilization, there is some kind of barrier that prevents life advances or destroys it. This barrier is known in its entirety as the Great First Filter, but was advanced by economist Robin Hansen in the original publication from the 1990s.

Hansen's original publication listed nine steps that must be met before one can travel to the stars. Step number one: a habitable star system that includes a stable solar climate and a habitable solar climate. planets step two the formation of reproductive molecules such as RNA step 3 the combination of these molecules into simple single-celled prokaryotic organisms step 4 the evolution to complex single-celled life or eukaryotic organisms step 5 the development of sexual reproduction which greatly improves genetic diversity step six the evolution of multicellular light step 7 the emergence of intelligent creatures capable of using tools step 8 the formation of these creatures into a civilization with the potential to explore space which is where we currently find ourselves and finally step number nine a rate exponential rate of colonial expansion into the cosmos, so the idea is that the great filter could be between any of these steps that prevent most life from moving towards space colonization and therefore prevent us from easily finding them, for For example, if mass extinction events such as asteroid impacts or supervolcanic eruptions occur too frequently.

There could be millions of planets around the Galaxy perpetually stuck on step number six unable to evolve into intelligent tool-using beings because life on their Planet keeps getting wiped out over and over again and they have to keep starting over or maybe the big one filter be self-destruct at some point in Step 8 as a civilization advanced enough to explore the universes also advanced enough to invent weapons that could totally self-destruct like nuclear bombs. The problem that all this poses to humanity is that we do not know if we have already passed the great filter or if we still have a way to go.

Finding more clues around the Galaxy could help us reduce this, for example, if we find independent multicellular life in Mars. Oh, we could assume that the steps above do not contain the filter as it would be unlikely that two adjacent planets would pass through it, this would actually prove to be bad news as it would mean that the filter is more likely to be in front of us, On the other hand, it could be that step two is the formation of Reproductive molecules are much rarer than we originally thought, and therefore life is less common than we anticipated.

If this were true, it would mean that we have long since passed the great filter and are not in any imminent danger of extinction and linking with the Mad Forest Hypothesis perhaps the gray filter is another civilization that simply eliminates those who reach step 8 and they begin to pose a threat. There are dozens of possible filters. It could be that the first steps are easy and planets everywhere are teeming with microscopic life. but that it rarely progresses beyond that point or that the filter could be time itself as it can simply take an incredibly long time to advance from one step to the next leaving life open to any number of catastrophes or perhaps interstellar travel are simply too expensive or too difficult or too dangerous on a lighter note, although it is possible that the filter that prevents civilizations from exploring the Galaxy is not a grand extinction but simply does not feel like it, some theorists have argued that if a civilization reaches a certain point of comfort and sustainability in their solar system, they may simply not see the need to expand outwards, if this is true, perhaps humanity's curiosity that makes us truly unique abroad, an unfortunate possibility of finding an alien civilization is that we may have absolutely no way to communicate with them on this line. to think that the solution to the Fermi

paradox

is that extraterrestrial civilizations are actually transmitting messages throughout space.

Oh, we just can't detect them or we just don't recognize the messages. It's been hard enough deciphering codes that other humans have left us. how to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and imagine how long it would take to understand the language spoken on the isolated North Sentinel Island, if it were possible right now, but as complex as human languages ​​are, at least people everywhere share things in common as emotion and biology that can serve as a basis for understanding each other, not to mention that most of our languages ​​probably share common roots, even if those roots go back hundreds or thousands of years, but we have absolutely no idea how an alien species could communicate. and this could be the reason why we have yet to find them.

Humanity sends waves in the electoral magnetic spectrum to send long-distance messages, but we have no idea if other civilizations would use or understand them. They could communicate in other ways, such as sending streams of neutrinos by adjusting the color or composition of their host star or using some natural phenomena that we are yet to discover, it is also possible that the communication problem is not a result of how different the stars are. species themselves, but how advanced one of them is. what it has become, if another civilization is advanced enough they may understand our messages but simply ignore them as we are too primitive to even care on a biological level;

There is only a fairly small difference between us and chimpanzees, but this small difference has allowed us to dominate this planet, invent computers, airplanes and also Coca-Cola. Imagine that if an alien life form is just a tiny bit more intelligent than us, we might simply be unable to understand them or their targets in the slightest, in the same way that a gorilla has no chance of understanding how the GP works. . Another resolution of the Fermi paradox says that the universe is full of life. We are simply looking in the wrong places. As humans, we live on a rocky planet orbiting a G-type main sequence star also known as a yellow dwarf, although its light is actually white, by the way, because of this, our search for life in the cosmos usually consists of searching rocky Earth-like planets near stable stars that are similar to our sun, but what if According to planetary scientist Alan Stern, the most common form of life might not be on rocky planets but on icy planets, if moons like the Jupiter's Europa, with a thick outer shell of ice and presumably a liquid interior, contains the necessary ingredients for after all, they may be the most common habitat in the Galaxy.

Living in the subterranean ocean of an icy world would grant additional protection against solar asteroid impact events and other dangers from outer space. It would also make a wider range of orbits around its Sun habitable. If these underwater worlds throughout the galaxy host the majority of intelligent life, it would make sense why we haven't found them yet - their structure would by nature block much of transmissions, which would make them harder to detect and at the same time make them less likely to explore their surroundings, if such worlds exist, they could have entire eons in which civilizations rise and fall without even venturing through the ice sheet, without knowing that an entire universe exists outside of its Moon, it would be very difficult to locate such life, since we would probably have to be physically there. landing on the moon before we could detect signs of it On a similar note, others have suggested that, apart from icy moons, the dominant habitable planets could be water worlds, rocky planets similar to Earth but with much less continental mass, They could be in these.

Ocean planets on which intelligent life develops but is never able to take to the stars as one side has said, in which case the evolution of creatures like us with hands and fire and all that sort of thing may be rare in the future. galaxy, in which case, when we build spaceships and go out there, we might find a ton of life, but they're all dolphins, whales, squids that could never build their own spaceships. It would certainly be a surprise to discover that terrestrial life forms are the exception in the Galaxy, but it would certainly help explain why we have not yet received radio signals from alien civilizations - perhaps they simply do not have that kind of technology.

It has also been proposed that highly advanced civilizations might not live on planets or moons at all and instead live permanently onspace stations, this would allow civilizations to move freely around their solar system or perhaps even between stars and unfortunately that would mean that our exhaustive search for Earth-like exoplanets is a bit pointless, these stations would probably be so small that it would be very difficult for us to detect them unless they came quite close to our solar system. The final and perhaps most disturbing resolution of all is that there is no paradox to our assumption that there is life in the universe. common is simply false and humanity and the Earth are an abnormality this is not a resolution that sits well with most people not only because it paints a bleak picture of an empty universe but because it seems to violate the Copernican principle the Copernican principle is the general principle The assumption in cosmology that the Earth is not special and that, according to probability, there is a very small chance that we will always be the exception.

Some irregularity or surprise. We are much more likely to be average, which means we should not be alone, but our very existence may be what. breaks this principle, if our exhaustive searches of the Galaxy continue empty-handed, we may be forced to accept that we are the anomaly and that we are actually alone in the Milky Way, but just because we may be alone at this moment does not It's like that. It means that we will always be Maybe our strangeness is not in the location or the method in which we evolve but simply when we evolve we can be far ahead of our galactic peers on the evolutionary time scale the first to develop telescopes for space travel and advanced mathematics While on other planets intelligent life is just starting to figure out how to use basic tools and start fires, on another note, we're actually not sure if interstellar travel is possible if it turns out to take too much time or simply not worth the resources we're spending. civilizations may never make contact and will simply remain isolated in their solar systems, but so far this is all just speculation, as far as we know, our civilization is the only one that exists and we may have to accept the fact that the endless expanse of the space is in fact, completely devoid of life