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Mathematicians show the Fermi paradox might not be much of a paradox
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You mean that your hit chance is 99% yet you miss 3 shots in a row? xD
Generally a lot of the posts in this thread make me pretty sad. =(
Being alone like this is pretty boring and sad. I will continue to believe.
Right, but that's irrelevant to the concept of a limit. Limits can approach any number. If you've got something modeled by the function: f(t) = [t+1]/[2t+8] where t is the number of weeks, then that limit as time goes on is 1/2. In a million years, it's basically 1/2, and in a billion trillion years, it's basically 1/2 (you can check these on a calculator).
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. This metric is the chance of any civilization existing other than our own. That has some probability. It seems that expanding the experiment doesn't add much to the probability. That is, once we get to the Milky Way, we're already at the limit.
The odds of other fish living above water is next to nothing! We are probably alone on this world.
- A fish contemplating life outside the ocean.
- A fish contemplating life outside the ocean.
There is no contradiction.You are assuming that under their predictive model the presence or absence of life is independent for each planet/galaxy/whatever. That's not the case. They are integrating over what they believe is the plausible range of parameter values. Under some parameter values, life will be common and we will be alone only in very small areas. Under other parameter values life will be vanishingly rare and we will be alone even in humongous areas. What their numbers tell us is that the uncertainty regarding parameter values dominates the size of the are being considered in terms of determining the probabilities, for the range of sizes being considered.
My guess is that the sheer size of the Milky Way galaxy alone offers so many "samples" in the forms of planets and moons. Meaning that if out of all those probably trillions of places, only our planet has seen a civilization appear. Then statistically you've probably already reached a point were the odds of a civilization appearing elsewhere is highly unlikely
I like Paul M. Sutter's take on this and similar papers:
I mean, the Drake equation is a thought experiment, and any statistical application is immensely biased by default.
My personal bet, for the fun of it, is that we're over-estimating the likelihood of multicellular life. Maybe there are billions of billions of planets with single-cell life, but there's just no reason for it to transition to multicellular. Huge freak accident that it happened here (and, yes, I realize 'freak accident' on the scale of the universe is a certitude, but that's why I'm guessing we're not appreciating just how freaky it was). Again, that's just my guess for fun and is not based on anything :p
I mean, the Drake equation is a thought experiment, and any statistical application is immensely biased by default.
My personal bet, for the fun of it, is that we're over-estimating the likelihood of multicellular life. Maybe there are billions of billions of planets with single-cell life, but there's just no reason for it to transition to multicellular. Huge freak accident that it happened here (and, yes, I realize 'freak accident' on the scale of the universe is a certitude, but that's why I'm guessing we're not appreciating just how freaky it was). Again, that's just my guess for fun and is not based on anything :p
no kidding. 2 years ago there were an estimated 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. then they figured out, oops, there's at least 10x as many.
To be fair, that doesn't change the number of stars or planets, just galaxies. There's the same number of stars as before, they just group together into smaller galaxies rather than larger ones.
My head hurts. So the galaxies within our cluster will keep stretching away from us while we can't keep up. At what point does the it end. Like it's so hard to grasp how the universe keeps expanding infinitely and there isn't an "edge", so to speak.
What is interesting about these kinds of things is our bias as an observer. Like we may consider ourselves as unique simply because we are here to observe our own existence. It may be the truth that in the huge universe out there advanced civilizations are destroyed and annihilated in a constant basis, but since we aren't capable of observing such occurrences, we may conclude that our existence and the fact that humans still alive to this very day is is one of a kind miracle of some sort.
Who knows... maybe one of those existence-ending catastrophe is right at the next door to our home... but since we can't observe them, we call them "unlikely" while in reality they may be anything but.
Who knows... maybe one of those existence-ending catastrophe is right at the next door to our home... but since we can't observe them, we call them "unlikely" while in reality they may be anything but.
The only civilization.
I'm not too bummed by that. Any non terrestrial life would fulfill my god damned need to see some god damned aliens.
I'm not too bummed by that. Any non terrestrial life would fulfill my god damned need to see some god damned aliens.
The improbability of finding life now shouldn't stop us from continuing to search in the future. Time changes things. We should aggressively pursue the means to probe further into the universe. Even barring the discovery of other life, we could gain greater knowledge and resources.
So what? The conclusion you draw is not correct because that's just not how probability works. You are not thinking about randomness, you are thinking that if there is one in the Milky Way, there has to be at least one in each galaxy. No, it is possible we are the only life on Earth, or there might be another one, maybe in this galaxy, or it could be in 5 billion lyrs away.
Looking at the table it looks like they had a normal distribution with a long leftward tail, so even though the average value is in the tens of millions of civilizations, the median is less than 1 lol. Weird ass probability distribution that is.
I fail to see anything particularly wrong with the paper, but man they have to be looking at some damn small numbers for conception and evolution of life (as well as lifespan) to be able to get probabilities as high as that for no civilized life in the universe. I could see none in the Milky Way but find it hard to do the same for the Universe. The probability of life developing on any one planet would have to be far too low, and what we know of abiogenisis/panspermia tells us that's not the case.
I fail to see anything particularly wrong with the paper, but man they have to be looking at some damn small numbers for conception and evolution of life (as well as lifespan) to be able to get probabilities as high as that for no civilized life in the universe. I could see none in the Milky Way but find it hard to do the same for the Universe. The probability of life developing on any one planet would have to be far too low, and what we know of abiogenisis/panspermia tells us that's not the case.
Honestly I find the whole Lovecraftian notion of horrors that break human minds simply by being seen laughable.
Either a lifeform is going to be perfectly fine to look at, or at worst the brown note is gonna be something utterly underwhelming. Oh yes, regale me with your tales of how anyone who stares into the abnormal line patterns on Apos'troph'e the Maddener's skin for an hour straight with no aside glances will have mild permanent eyesight impairment.
The idea of regular aliens being a threat on purpose gets me, too. If you're space dwelling, you already have all the resources at your disposal you could possibly need. Grow your own food, our flesh probably isn't even edible. Get water out of comets. Terraform barren Goldilocks planets instead of an occupied one if you can already custom-remix an atmosphere. If you have robots, you don't need flesh and blood slaves. The only use Earth has to alien life is as a curiosity, basically. Either just watch quietly from a distance or else go in, get bio samples and leave. Alien threat is a joke.
And with that in mind I really hope we aren't alone in the universe. Barring something inadvertent, I just don't see a reason why it would screw with us other than our own paranoia fantasies. It doesn't hurt that the study of potential biology beyond earth is so darn young and the percentages here are basically a numerical shrug.
Well, just look at humans, for example. It seems like it is built in our DNA to wage war with another, and in our planet Bezos or Musk can probably erase world hunger if they are willing to share their worth to the rest of us but the reality is anything but.
I mean it's not that far-fetched to imagine that even if we someday capable of space-faring and space-dwelling, we would still find a way to make war since "sharing with all" is not something that most people would do, and as such it's not that impossible that another intelligent life may have the same tendency as us as well, even if they are already capable of using space-related technology.
On one hand, sapient life is terrible.
On the other hand, sapient life is usually terrible because it's resource hoarding like a greedy dragon pouting like a five year old, and I find the odds of us or vice-versa aliens actually finding anything "oooh, I need that!" useful on each others' planets to be a lot lower than Hollywood thinks it is.
It'd be raw asshattery if it happened and most people at least want something tangible as a shiny sparkly trophy if they're going on a stupidity crusade.
Well, I bet there will always be something that can spark conflict between us and another intelligent life, should we someday ever meet and interact with one. It's just who we are as a species, and it might be who they are too, as a species. I mean "raw asshattery" is pretty much the default state of mankind everywhere :P
The minimal difference between galaxy and universe seems nuts. There are between 200 billion and 2 trillion galazies in the observable universe, yet the chances we are the only civilization is roughly the same in both?
I'm definitely expecting some shenanigans on an individual level if there were ever a cultural meeting with another intelligent species. And of course dumb people on both sides claiming individual actions are representative of a species and etc.
But humanity has been gradually mellowing out over time by my count, and by the time we could make it to space I'd like to imagine that at least society on the whole isn't that dense. Or at least knows enough about the fiscal risk-reward to not misbehave on the whole. Can't sell massively inflated cost tickets to Plagonia if earth's getting tungsten rodded to death!
Distance isn't really a factor with regards to the existence of other intelligent life. Once you get to colonization you can theoretically make self-replicating probes that travel the cosmos. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The milky way is around 13 billion. The universe is around 15. It's very reasonable that we could be the first intelligent life in the galaxy and maybe in the entire universe. There's also the fact that we haven't actually traveled anywhere with probes except our solar system. A civilization that has had probes out for a million plus years probably has had some form of intelligent life confirmation.
Heck, we may even win the inconceivable lottery and have a ET probe land on mars or another planet in our solar system and replicate itself.
Also, we as humans haven't been around long. A probe could have come and gone during the ages.
Adolescence is a bitch.
Heck, we may even win the inconceivable lottery and have a ET probe land on mars or another planet in our solar system and replicate itself.
Also, we as humans haven't been around long. A probe could have come and gone during the ages.
Adolescence is a bitch.
A simple explanation of it. A very good series and worth watching them all.
The Fermi Paradox isn't about humans discovering aliens, the point is that we have no evidence they exist. Aliens with massively advanced technology could have visited Earth, but have not (to our knowledge).
The Zoo Theory explanation of the Fermi Paradox is one possibility, and is used in Star Trek under the Prime Directive rule.
How vast is time compared to the observable universe. I always think those who take the stance of "it's so big there has to be more" never take time into the equation.
Isn't earths life only a blip in all of time? What are the chances of two planets with living creatures with one able to observe the other within the time window of the average expectancy of the creatures survival?
Seems far more likely to me we will never line up with anything else in the observable universe.
Isn't earths life only a blip in all of time? What are the chances of two planets with living creatures with one able to observe the other within the time window of the average expectancy of the creatures survival?
Seems far more likely to me we will never line up with anything else in the observable universe.
The Milky Way is both a younger galaxy, Earth is in a younger portion of the galaxy, and it took humanity a long time to arise on Earth. If other civilizations exist, they are likely older than us. They may be extinct now, but their tech should have outlived them. There could be spacefaring drone ships, for instance, as evidence of that civilization.
The problem is pretty much this: as far as we know, we are Earths first intelligent species. In 4.5 billion years. Any number of intelligent races could have risen and fallen in the grand scope of things in that time frame, in our galaxy alone.
Others may be evolving now but not at our level, and still others may be so far beyond us that we wouldn't even recognize them or their technology.
Others may be evolving now but not at our level, and still others may be so far beyond us that we wouldn't even recognize them or their technology.
Null results are different than "absence of evidence."
I should add that "evidence of absence" is a null result. The Vox article doesn't make that distinction, and adds to the confusion. The Drake equation asks that you ignore the fact that we have incomplete data to even form a conclusion, much less gain an understanding of "N" as a meaningful value.
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I agree with the observation that this is basically useless.
Cue reporters writing headlines "scientists prove aliens don't exist."
Cue reporters writing headlines "scientists prove aliens don't exist."
Would time not erode that all away eventually though? Or is it something like billions of years for that to happen?
that's probably just 2-300 year's worth of human history?
extremely short compared to the age of the universe which is in billions
humans know very little in the grand scheme of things
Wasn't the Fermi Paradox just dealing with the chances of us encountering other life, based on the assumption of a certain technological barrier?
What about all the civilizations before that point in advancement? Sure we won't ever meet each other but it doesn't mean we are alone.
Plus they are expanding this to cover over a googolplex amount of star systems. That and their own margin of error being so high, I'd question the science behind this.
What about all the civilizations before that point in advancement? Sure we won't ever meet each other but it doesn't mean we are alone.
Plus they are expanding this to cover over a googolplex amount of star systems. That and their own margin of error being so high, I'd question the science behind this.
It honestly wouldn't be shocking to me if intelligent self aware civilizations are exceedingly rare. As in maybe 1 for every several galaxies. Life itself I'm willing to bet is abundant, but creatures similar to us are probably far rarer than many think. The amount of steps that have to occur to arrive at something like us is enormous. Just look at how many different species Earth alone has had and we are the only ones to ever evolve higher intelligence and modern technology.
Now consider how many planets are dead. Then how many planets that did evolve life that get either get wiped out from one of the millions of ways life can be destroyed on a planet or that dont ever evolve intelligence.
So life itself I think is abundant in the Universe, but creatures like us far less so.
Now consider how many planets are dead. Then how many planets that did evolve life that get either get wiped out from one of the millions of ways life can be destroyed on a planet or that dont ever evolve intelligence.
So life itself I think is abundant in the Universe, but creatures like us far less so.
I question the accuracy of the prediction because it is based on guesswork, but if we ignore that minor detail then the results are actually very useful because they tell us the order of magnitude of the probability range.
A few adjusted parameters and we could have very easily seen a result that the probability range is between 0.0000000003% and 0.00000008%.
Not if those specific parameters are for the moment near impossible to comprehend, much less be understood/observed/calculated and further used for reliable mathematics
These numbers are depressingly high. I hope a better model will give out better results as we learn about our universe. if a fossilized life of any kind is found on another planet, I believe it will significantly affect these figures. Finger crossed we do!