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Fermi's Paradox?
Courtesy of The Nattering Naybob
For my friend… Taking, Are There Other Intelligent Civilizations Out There? Two Views on The Fermi Paradox, just a step further… submitted for your perusal, a chain of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas in a follow up to Ticket to Ride?
Outward stretches the quest for truth. Stars without end. Timeless infinities. A billion, billion galaxies. Man's imagination reaches out and out, while betimes the farthest reaches of knowledge are found in the smallest places… (Wolf 359, The Outer Limits)
Previously we noted lessons learned from our familiar in One Man's Best Friend Part 2 and that feisty feline's seeming ability to leave us clues regarding a potential hereafter in Believe It or Not. Along those lines…
Prior to Mistletoes' death, Ilene at Philstockworld asked… "How are things going with Mistletoes?" Our response at the time: "For now status quo, we can only stand by and make our charge comfortable until the inevitable has to be done. Nothing is immune to death's callings and all things must come to an end."
Our friend responded: "I know, I wish life were designed differently than this. Maybe somewhere it is."
Our response: "It is possible in the non physical planes. The body is the temple of the soul, as such it is a vehicle for the journey or pilgrimage though matter. If fortunate enough to be afforded that interlude, it is a learning experience and constant test…." (which was discussed at length in Ticket to Ride?).
Our friend queried: "Is there a non physical plane? If there is, then what physical or non physical laws of matter or energy could govern it? I'm hitting a mental wall here that I think could be traced to the physical world."
Thus helping to inspire, A Ticket to Ride? A subsequent question from our friend…
Are you predicting/guessing it will take, or already did take 800K years to go from where we are now to having the ability to transfer our brains into the "computer" in a sim universe? (That seems maybe longer than I'd guess, again assuming we don't destroy ourselves as you noted.) How do you think this all started in the first place? Who makes the world and organizes the adventure? And why did this ordeal begin (going back pre-cave dwelling ape, pre-earth, pre-universe)? Is this scenario simply another religion?
Our response… "The hypothetical A Ticket to Ride? was written with the assumption that those intelligent beings existed BEFORE us. viz. they got a jump start in this universe. If true, then they created the sim we are in, and we could be "them" in corporal form. One must also consider the following…"
Fermi's Paradox must be considered. Fermi's paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates, e.g. those given by the Drake equation, for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Early suns burned out very quickly and did not have all the necessary elements to create life. It took 8 billion years and trillions of star deaths to get the elements for life just about right.
Early life, if it existed, got screwed in the deal because their suns didn't have all the soup mix necessary and those suns burned out or died quickly. Omnipotence's kitchen takes effort, learning, mistakes and a stretch of time to bake a good cake or stew up a good soup.
Although 5 billion years have passed since one might have uttered "it's soup," due to the above, intelligent life that persists with the necessary technology, is probably rarer than most imagine or estimate, as in extremely rare, so we echo Fermi's question "where is everybody?"
Very low mass stars are hard to detect at distances greater than 300 light years. Given existing technology, it is estimated there are 200 billion stars in the observable Milky Way and 90% are small enough and old enough to have planets in orbit. Only 10% of these stars were formed with enough heavy elements to have Earth-like planets with 2% of these orbiting within their star's habitable zone.
But being in the Goldilock's zone isn't quite enough. How many of those 360 million potential Earth's have a perfectly aged, distanced and sized, sun and moon, such as ours? Planet's without properly sized and distanced moons have extreme axial tilts and wobble wildly as they rotate rapidly, none of which is conducive to spawning intelligent life forms.
Given our sun's size, age and distance, our moon which formed or arrived on the scene after the earth (4.5 billion years ago) is the PRECISE distance and diameter to slow our rotation enough to prevent cyclonic winds, and act as a gyroscope to keep the earth's axis steady.
Thus creating a perfect solar eclipse, lunar tides (tidally locked) and mild seasonal variations. It is also believed that the gravitational pull from the moon effects plate tectonics on the earth's crust and influences our cores rotation.
Now, factor in the circumstances playing out just right for the Earth's hot rotating molten metal core to provide an electro magnetic shield, viz., the Van Allen belts. Without Van Allen belts or deflector shield encircling Earth, the solar winds (radiation and cosmic rays) would incinerate and sweep all vestiges of water, an oxygen atmosphere, and any chance for life to develop, from the planet's surface.
Without those factors, life might not ever get a foothold. Let's be generous, how about one in a hundred million? This yields (0.00000001 * 360M) or 3.6 in the Milky Way galaxy.
We will not discuss the odds of the galaxy forming, in just such a manner, that the solar system in which Earth exists could form, in just such a manner, viz., asteroid belt, Ort cloud, gas giants, etc. as to allow for intelligent life.
Now, factor in the odds that the intelligent lifeform does not squander these fortuitous circumstances by wiping itself out with the sword of Damocles — its own idiocy, war, famine, pandemic or gets the hammer of Thor dropped on it through a cataclysmic act of nature (e.g., dinosaur asteroid), and eventually manages to develop the necessary technology? For that persistence, we will be uber generous, how about just one in a million, or 0.00000036, in the Milky Way Galaxy.
The obvious answer would be, one planet that we know of for sure, of which our guesstimate above is far less than. Why? As there is a current estimate of 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, so the odds are still stacked in the favor of the existence of intelligent life with just a little luck, some persistence and the technology.
Assuming that most of the other galaxies are like ours, as in 200 billion stars etc. That means 36,000 planets in the observable universe of which we can assume 42% (5.82/13.82) existed after the 8 billion year incubation period, leaving a little over 15,000 possibilities spread over the last 5.82 billion years of which the Earth has been around only 4.5 billion years. What are the odds?
Coexistence? Over that time span and distance, for all those ET's, UFO's, grays and little green men, good luck out there. What are the odds?
Outward stretches the quest for truth. Stars without end. Timeless infinities. A billion, billion galaxies. Man's imagination reaches out and out, while betimes the farthest reaches of knowledge are found in the smallest places…
Speaking of the smallest places or the small and meek, the above discourse spawning from a innocent question regarding a small feline. What are the odds? The conclusion to come in Wolf 359?
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From Are There Other Intelligent Civilizations Out There? Two Views on The Fermi Paradox, by Alison E. Bernan:
So, Tarter questions the Fermi paradox’s central assumption that no one else is here. We just haven’t looked enough. Filippenko thinks we may find an explanation simply by looking at our own behavioral tendencies right here on our home planet. (And of course, there are many other hypotheses to answer the famous paradox—here's a good rundown.)
Presently, we’re exploring the solar system with robotic probes and rovers and hope to send humans in the future. Yet on Earth, we’re simultaneously making powerful technologies that, depending how we use them, will be helpful, dangerous, or both.
