The Fermi Paradox, or: Where is Everybody in Space?
115 replies, posted
So this guy Fermi was having lunch with his colleagues, sciency people in general, they were discussing Intergalactic Empires and the sort of 2-penny 40's-era pre-sci-fi-Golden-Era comic book bullshittery, when Fermi turned to them and asked, "Well, if the Universe is so big and technology develops so fast, then where are all the aliens? Why haven't they come here?"
It is rumoured that he promptly put on shades, jumped in a sports car and drove away, but this has yet to be confirmed.
The Drake Equation
:flashfact: :pcgaming: You know that moderator, the astrophysics guy with the Emperor avatar? Whose name I don't recall? That one? His family is friends with the Drake person :pcgaming: :flashfact:
EDIT: Apparently not really. That's TH89.
So we built antennae, and this Frank Drake guy aims them at Tau Ceti. He thinks he hears the rumbling of an interstellar civilization, when it was actually a nearby city spewing radio waves into the air. Har, har. So he points his antenna at another star. And another. And another.
And another.
"Sure," He says "We've merely browsed the Hydrogen-21 line, soon we will have machines capable of surveying multiple frequencies at a time, looking everywhere."
And we built those, and we scanned the sky. We built Arecibo and a whole set of radiotelescopes working in tandem in New Mexico, which is the equivalent of having a very large radio telescope, only split into cheaper ones. We, in a fit of linguistic perspicacity, called it the Very Large Array.
You may remember it from fucking Contact:
:flashfact: Did you know Jodie Foster speaks like five languages and is also an atheist? On a tangentially related point, Natalie Portman was a semi-finalist at an Intel competition. Hot damn! :flashfact:
Well, you see, we have been pointing it at the sky for a while now, and we found nothing: A deafening silence across all frequencies.
That, and pulsars:
It's like... A set of... Galactic helicopter blades, a pair of them.
These are slightly less unnerving:
So we found nothing, no coherent signals, no intelligence, nothing at all.
Except for one, one minor spike, a glance from some radio source. The tiniest set of bits and bits, gentlemen...
The Wow! Signal
First of all, it's called wow because of the teletype printout:
The letters and numbers represent intensity: The numbers are "regular" signals, and letters represent higher-volume ones (Z being the highest value). In this case, the Wow! signal went on a perfect curve like this:
It lasted 72 seconds, and that was all. It was never detected again.
Some claimed it was military or just human activity, yet this frequency was reserved -- This part is the most interesting, actually, because that frequency is the Hydrogen-21 line, which is reserved specially for astronomical stuffs (brb trolling scientists). I will explain that one later.
Another person claimed it was an Earth-originating transmission bouncing off space debris, but this claim was later retracted due to the unrealistic characteristics of said debris: Shape, density, angles, stuff like that. It doesn't happen.
Jerry Ehman, the discoverer of the signal, said:
Thus, since all of the possibilities of a terrestrial origin have been either ruled out or seem improbable, and since the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin has not been able to be ruled out, I must conclude that an ETI (ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) might have sent the signal that we received as the Wow! source. The fact that we saw the signal in only one beam could be due to an ETI sending a beacon signal in our direction and then sending it in another direction that we couldn't detect. Of course, being a scientist, I await the reception of additional signals like the Wow! source that are able to be received and analyzed by many observatories. Thus, I must state that the origin of the Wow! signal is still an open question for me. There is simply too little
data to draw many conclusions. In other words, as I stated above, I choose not to "draw vast conclusions from 'half-vast' data".
(Emphasis added)
[url]http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/03/wow-signal.html[/url]
Others (See: [url]http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=13802[/url] ) have argued that this is in fact a Benford Beacon: Due to the retardedly, prohibitely, impossible high costs of sending a coherent signal through the depths of interstellar space, beaming continuously to a single location, why not just act as a lighthouse, sending bursts from one star to the other? After all, if you beam continuously at one, it may turn out to be empty. If you beam continuously at all, then you're wasting a lot of power, son (Not to mention that all those stars may be cluttered with dumb matter, gas, and some primeval algae, and nothing at all).
I like the notion of applying economics to this issue, which is what the Benfords do in analyzing how cost-effective an interstellar transmission strategy would be for the civilization sending it. It turns out that short, powerful bursts sent out now and then are far more reasonable than continuous broadcasts, given the realities of energy usage on the interstellar level. We’re a lot less likely to find such ‘Benford beacons’ if we aren’t pointed at just the right place at just the right time. Could the 1970s-era ‘Wow’ signal have been a Benford beacon, one we lacked the resources to follow up on with sufficient rigor to track down its true nature?
Whatever it was, the ‘Wow’ signal stands as a reminder that there’s a lot we aren’t doing. Gregory Benford told TIME that adding up all the SETI observing time over the past half century yields only a few months of data. So what would the chances be of finding a sporadic burst given the listening time and strategies involved? All of which gets me to Project Argus, an inspiring attempt by the SETI League to enlist the service of amateurs in the cause of broadening SETI’s reach. The ambitious goal is to deploy 5,000 small radio telescopes around the globe, providing what the SETI League calls ‘the first ever continuous monitoring of the entire sky, in all directions in real time.’ From the SETI League:
Traditional research grade radio telescopes (the type which NASA used) can view only a small fraction of the sky at a given time, typically on the order of one part in a million. All-sky coverage with these instruments would thus require a million telescopes, properly aimed. At a cost of perhaps one hundred million US dollars apiece, such a network would exceed the Gross Planetary Product. Fortunately, there is another way.
The Hydrogen-Twenty-One Line
Light comes in different wavelengths, which specify the amount of energy carried by it. But I'm a plebeian who doesn't know quantum theory, so I will spare the details: At different wavelengths, absorption/reflection changes, which is why radio waves can bounce of things but x-rays (Nanoscopic wavelength) can merrily fly through molecules and atoms, occasionally flipping a cell here and there into cancer.
Hydrogen has an absorption frequency around 1420 Megahertz. The Wow! signal, according to the best approximation, was broadcast at 1422 Megahertz. Coincidence? To quote every talk show host ever: "YOU DECIDE".
Hydrogen being the most common element in the Universe, this is assumed to be the frequency at which one will broadcast if one wants to talk (It's a bit ironic due to this being, well, the absorption line: But it's not like the signal is going to be disturbed by interstellar matter, out there where the change of two atoms touching is that of a snowball in Hell).
The Drake Equation
Again to this Drake person, who got together with psychologists, geologists, physicists, mathematicians, and generally the kind of people you will find in a University if you follow the trail of curry and the smell of unemployment to the source.
I'm supposed to give this a bit of room to explain, you know, it's an equation in which you throw the values of "Planets per system", "Stars in this galaxy", "Planets in which life develops". We know, ehhh, the first two. And kinda the second one (That's a big KINDA). Yeah, you know the drill, it gives you the number of sentient species in the galaxy, there isn't really much to say, because every time I hear it mentioned I just can't take it seriously.
Here, have an online calculator:
[url]http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious..._equation.html[/url]
This summarizes what I think:
:pcgaming: EXPLANATIONS :pcgaming:
Yeah, well there are a few billion, but I will list a few here:
Poul Anderson's explanation: The great science fiction author thought, considering the huge number of stars and the mass of each system, that a civilization would just get a few "territory" light years and not move on for a few million because all their needs would be pretty much covered. I mean: Fuck it all, so many tonnes already in a single system, might as well stay.
Self-destruction: You know.
Catastrophic universe: Asteroid impacts, comets, gamma-ray bursts, passing black holes, wandering moons, Nemesis-like brown dwarfs, and did I mention the white-hot X-ray-emitting accretion disk of black holes? That one too.
To a New Age nutjob, the Earth is a Haven. To a religious nutjob, the Earth is the limit, where our earthly businesses are to be forever confined, and don't you DARE look up! :argh:
To an astrophysicist, though; the Earth is target practice for asteroids. The Universe is very much a hostile place, we don't know simply because of the Anthropic Principle: If the Earth was a hostile place ravaged by all sorts of cataclysms, we really wouldn't be here to see. If the Earth had a stable ecosystem, like it does now, then we could've evolved, which we did, or so it seems.
It's likely that intelligent civilizations are wiped out by these disasters because they are too self-centered to pay attention or simply because they just happened to be hit when they did not have the technology to defend themselves from these.
Interstellar travel is impossible: Well, not really.
Faster-than-light travel is impossible. Stop asking, YEAH BUT WHAT IF FUCKIN MAGNETS, please, it hurts: It's like arguing to a religious peak oilist :frown:
But interstellar, slower-than-light, relativistic (Near-lightspeed) travel is possible. Since I can't be arsed to explain it all, I will just link to Atomic Rockets:
Noted polymath Charles Pellegrino and Brookhaven physicist Jim Powell have an innovative antimatter powered starship design called a Valkyrie. They say that current designs are guilty of "putting the cart before the horse", which create ships that are much more massive than they need be. Their "spaceship-on-a-string" starship is capable of accelerating up to ninety-two percent the speed of light and decelerating back down to stationary. At this velocity, relativity mandates that time on board the ship will travel at one-third the rate of the stay at home people on Terra (actually it's closer to 1/2.55). They figure this will be adequate for visiting stars up to about twelve light-years from Terra, without using up excessive amounts of the crew's lifespan.
Dr. Pellegrino served as a scientific consultant on James Cameron's Avatar movie. The interstellar vehicles seen in the film are based on the designs of Pellegrino and Powell's Valkyrie rockets, fused with Robert L. Forward's designs. I figured this out when I noticed that the Avatar starship had the engine in the front, which is a unique feature of the Valkyrie.
From Flying To Valhalla by Charles Pellegrino (1993):
This book also makes a strong point about the Fermi Paradox, and explains a bunch of interesting things about how the Cold War was actually a pretty good thing. I scanned those pages but, well, it would be a bit of a crime to post them.
(I actually have this book, and goddamn, son, I don't think you're ready for it)
They are broadcasting on a different wavelength/means: Two hundred years ago we didn't even know wavelengths existed, so what if they, whomever they are, transmit differently? Neutrino beams, gravitational wave 'beams', stuff of the kind: Things we have not yet even grasped and are too far beyond said grasp to properly theorize.
I watched Contact last night. I fucking love that shit.
I like the comparison of the Wow signal to the time we sent out a massively high powered signal from Arecibo detailing our double helix DNA, solar system and all the other stuff written in binary and in terms of a transition in hydrogen etc. One of the arguments against the Wow signal being from intelligence is because it was never seen again, since surely a species would send it repeatedly.
Yet we did exactly that and sent out a pulse of information to the M13 cluster once, and only once.
Well, I read the thread end to end. I guess that's that.
:suicide:
FTL (relative to us that is) is currently impossible with our level of science
[QUOTE=ksenior;28502759]FTL (relative to us that is) is currently impossible with our level of science[/QUOTE]
it saddens me to realize that the day FTL even becomes a blip on the reality radar I'll be six feet under :smith:
[QUOTE=ksenior;28502759]FTL (relative to us that is) is currently impossible with our level of science[/QUOTE]
I know.
Are you implying it will be possible? :colbert:
[QUOTE=ksenior;28502759]FTL (relative to us that is) is currently impossible with our level of science[/QUOTE]
I know.
Are you implying it will be possible? :colbert:
[QUOTE=Kai-ryuu;28502826]it saddens me to realize that the day FTL even becomes a blip on the reality radar I'll be six feet under :smith:[/QUOTE]
I was having a discussion with my friend about that, we'll never see the stars, we weren't born at the right time :(
I think that was TH89 whose family is friends with Drake.
It's definitely not me.
I think that was TH89 whose family is friends with Drake.
It's definitely not me.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;28503149]I think that was TH89 whose family is friends with Drake.
It's definitely not me.[/QUOTE]
Well fuck.
Yeah, it was TH89
this thread is fucking awesome, i love this space shit.
transmissions from jupiter sound like the bowels of hell.
[editline]9th March 2011[/editline]
i wouldn't be so sure about not seeing the stars though, given the rate our science is advancing you might be able to spread your ashes over some nearby galaxy or some shit.
Awesome read!
My dad always tells me that the objective of civilization is to accumulate and preserve knowledge, and that, therefore, the conclusion of any civilization would be to transfer their life to silicon and travel through space in machines or something like that, collecting more and more knowledge.
If we ever achieve FTL travel, will ships be able to travel to the far reaches of our galaxy and record the remnants of our very first radio signals?
[QUOTE=person11;28503366]Awesome read!
My dad always tells me that the objective of civilization is to accumulate and preserve knowledge, and that, therefore, the conclusion of any civilization would be to transfer their life to silicon and travel through space in machines or something like that, collecting more and more knowledge.[/QUOTE]
when it first comes out i'm totally transferring my consciousness to a computer.
I hate knowing how insignificant we are in the universe.
[QUOTE=NeoSeeker;28503569]when it first comes out i'm totally transferring my consciousness to a computer.[/QUOTE]
Why would you transfer your consciousness when you could just reproduce it? You don't need to abandon your body to transfer your intelligence and experiences onto a computer, assuming it's possible at all.
[QUOTE=ThePuska;28503685]Why would you transfer your consciousness when you could just reproduce it? You don't need to abandon your body to transfer your intelligence and experiences onto a computer, assuming it's possible at all.[/QUOTE]
Care to elaborate ?
I have no idea how you could reproduce or transfer a consciousness. Your consciousness is bound to your body, not to some soul entity that could jump from your body to a computer. If there was a way to read people's minds, record all their experiences onto a computer and make the computer think as you do, it'd essentially be you. It would have all reason to believe it's you, because it'd share your experiences. But unless the process involved dissecting your brain or something, your physical body would still continue being alive and thinking. There would be two people with your experiences now. Two people knowing for a fact that they're you.
Either you could commit voluntary suicide and let the computer-you keep living, or you could continue living as two people. Your consciousness doesn't jump.
Good point! But I would rather hope that there would be a way to transfer my own mind instead of copying it. If I copy my mind, I simply give another living thing my memories.. I would still be a mortal meaty blob of carbon based life.
you don't know shit
you never saw that x files episode? they totally do it in the end
I believe I'm an expert on the subject; a Stargate episode I watched addresses that very problem.
fuck stargate, xfiles is the original shit
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;28502847]I know.
Are you implying it will be possible? :colbert:[/QUOTE]
No, I'm saying it COULD be possible
My brain hurts
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;28502847]I know.
Are you implying it will be possible? :colbert:[/QUOTE]
While it's incredible unlikely, [i]if[/i] exotic matter does or can exist 'faster than light' travel (not true, local FTL, but cheating the system type FTL) could be possible.
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