alien expansion vs. the fermi paradox
The last time we tackled the Fermi paradox, we talked about what it means to be intelligent and how trying to speak to an intelligent species separated from us by an evolutionary gulf we can barely begin to describe in a meaningful way would probably leave us at a loss for words. This time, we’re going to look at a paper which is trying to answer the paradox by refuting the notion that intelligent alien species could be spreading throughout our galaxy at an exponential rate just like humans and should therefore, be easy to detect because they’d be just about everywhere we look and listen. While the paper itself makes very good points about alien efforts to colonize other planets and how selective pressures would apply to their civilizations, we have to note that the idea they’re tackling isn’t an explicit part of Fermi’s question and the paper misses some crucial points.
From a strictly numerical standpoint, human expansion has been exponential. In the last few hundred years, our population soared thanks to better nutrition, medicine, more advanced technology and reduced mortality. Of course, let’s note the qualifiers. We’re only expanding as fast as we are because we have the means to do it and survive in large enough numbers. And this is exactly what Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum note. The hypothesis that an advanced alien civilization, even a rare one, would expand at an exponential clip as it gets older and its population grows simply doesn’t work. To support growing populations scattered across worlds separated by light years may not even be necessary. If the society thrives in relatively small numbers and the forces of evolution on the world in question resulted in a slowly procreating intelligent species, there might be no pressure to settle the cosmos and a cultural bias to stay planted firmly where the aliens evolved. But Fermi wasn’t proposing the idea that technologically advanced aliens are perpetual expansion machines. He asked why we would expect intelligent aliens to be common occurrence in the universe if it’s so hard to find them.
And you may be surprised that alien cultures don’t figure in the paper and neither do the complexities of a vast expansionary effort. Galactic scale colonization involves traveling across tens of thousands of light years and claiming billions of solar systems. Just claiming them is somewhat tenuously plausible. But actually living on alien worlds and easily setting up colony after colony is a monumental task that could only be accomplished by an extremely old and technologically advanced species surviving on a very rare combination of luck, know- how and a drive to go out and explore far and wide for millions upon millions of years. Living on other planets isn’t like exploring new continents. It requires radical adaptations and technological feats that compensate for the differences in just about everything, from air pressure, to atmospheric composition, to surface gravity. The odds of an intelligent species living long enough to spread across billions of solar systems while avoiding a potential extinction event or cataclysms like devastating cosmic events and keeping a huge interstellar supply network up and running for trillions and trillions of individuals across thousands of light years are pretty small and we have to take that into account when looking for ET.
Ok, so how do we look for alien empires in light of these facts? Haqq-Misra and Baum quote ideas with which we’re already quite familiar. Look for planets that most resemble our own and try to find aliens as close to our culture and conception as possible because we’d be able to recognize them more readily. Nothing really new or groundbreaking here. And to be honestly blunt, neither are their conclusions that sustainability plays a big role in whether an intelligent species can grow and leave the planet on a scale astronomers would notice. It’s also rather disappointing that questions about alien cultures and worldviews don’t come into play either since many important decisions that can determine how, or even if, a civilization will advance are based on cultural biases and politics. For example, the number one reason humans are in space today is thanks to the money and resources provided by the militaries of the U.S. and the USSR in their quest to get a drop on each other in a global PR war and with ICBMs. How and why would aliens end up in space and what would they choose to do there? That’s the question on which we should be focusing if we want to find space faring intelligent life.
See: Haqq-Misra, J. & Baum, S. (2009). The Sustainability Solution to the Fermi Paradox J. Br. Interplanet. Soc. 62:47-51, 2009 arXiv: 0906.0568v1
SETI has punctiliously observed there isn’t an operating cell phone within 50 lightyears radius of Earth. Del Rio Texas proved nobody is listening to at least 35 lightyears radius. One imagines every world with liquid water (local examples from -40 C pore water to 120 C deep sea vents) is scummed with life, and much of it eventually intelligent life.
The kicker is mandated charity. Societies degenerate into jackbooted State compassion obsessively nurturing babies who should die, the stupid who should die, and the old who should die. This is financed by by shearing, flensing, and then grinding up its productive. The final stroke is exponentially borrowing against a future than can never cover the debt. The Krell of Altair-4 were crushed by the Machine That Gives You Everything For Free.
One could also point out the Fermi Paradox is culturally biased, i.e., human culture that is.
The theory (Fermi would laugh at this) was only a lunch-time thought experiment, but it genuinely points out one aspect of human nature, if we can expand, we will.
Thus, technically advanced aliens would do the same, no?
And if they could/did, where are they?
Now some would argue they’re here, but I don’t buy into the Star Trek-type humanoid alien meme.
If we truly hold to the theory of planetary/life evolution, our most closest interstellar intelligent relative probably resembles a vacuum cleaner, more than a humanoid.
But some would argue for convergence also, but that doesn’t mean we’d think the same either.
“Societies degenerate into jackbooted State compassion obsessively nurturing babies who should die, the stupid who should die, and the old who should die.”
How exactly do personal political views apply to a sweeping topic like the evolution of intelligent life on other planets? Across the world you can find everything from nanny states to free-for-all, loosely marked territories which have no taxes, no government services of any sort and you survive pretty much by the rules of natural selection, and everything in between. By the way, would you venture to guess how many spacecraft Somalia has built? Or how many R&D projects it has going? None on both counts. When all you do is try to survive by what amount to feral laws, you’re society is going nowhere fast.
“SETI has punctiliously observed there isn’t an operating cell phone within 50 lightyears radius of Earth. Del Rio Texas proved nobody is listening to at least 35 lightyears radius. One imagines every world with liquid water (local examples from -40 C pore water to 120 C deep sea vents) is scummed with life, and much of it eventually intelligent life.”
First, no one responding does not necessarily mean no one is listening. I’m actually of the belief that intelligent space faring life is very rare, if it exists at all but let’s not start throwing assumptions around as if they prove a point.
Second, I’m less concerned with the assumption that a world with liquid water would be teeming with life. It stands to reason that if liquid water is possible, the conditions for some form of life are probably met and given enough time, there’s a pretty good chance that life develops. But again, life evolving and life evolving to a point where the intelligence required to eventually leave one’s planet and explore the stars might exist are completely different things. Never mind the requirement for appendages capable of creating the materials needed. Let’s look, briefly, at what had to happen for us to evolve here on Earth, starting with the assumption that we’re working from the model of a world with liquid water which has life…
Evolution had to find its way through some very specific points, all of which happened through a combination of chance and more chance. Certain environmental conditions mixed with certain random mutations led to some species thriving while others died off. Had the age of the dinosaurs not come to an end, we may never have evolved in the first place. Had the climate in Africa not shifted as it did, when it did, apes may never have developed a mutation in the hips and stood up which may have prevented them from developing a higher protein diet which may well have been a primary contributor to the increase in brain size.
And if that change in diet didn’t happen about the same time a random mutation allowed for primate brains to grow larger (there was some research last year suggesting this was due to a lack of an enzyme, if I’m remembering correctly, which regulated brain sized that was quite interesting), the capacity for the intelligence we enjoy today might never have developed. And these are just a few of the many major time sensitive developments that were required for us to be here today. Considering the fact that history is contingent, going back and changing one tiny thing could drastically alter the way the world exists today, especially if you go a long way back and provide a huge amount of time for that small change to impact the future.
Point is, I see no reason to assume intelligent life, on the level required to travel into space, is anything more than unlikely to happen. And that’s before getting to the argument that such an intelligent species would then have to avoid destroying itself as it’s a pretty safe bet that the technology required to travel through space would require also developing the means for said species to destroy itself. And of course, they have to avoid an extinction level event due to circumstances beyond their control. And all of that assumes they have a reason to leave their world in the first place, as gfish mentions above.
In other words, basing an argument on the assumption that a lack of evidence in the small bit of space we can attempt to search with any measure of accuracy is proof of anything is a nonstarter. It relies on far too many assumptions which have no basis for being made other than assuming that our experience is a common one. As far as we know, our experience could be unique and until we have other species from other worlds to compare to, assuming anything at all is building a pretty weak foundation for further discussion.
Hmm… I also wrote a blog entry about the Fermi Paradox. Actually, I wrote the first part a couple of years ago, and have been adding some new thoughts recently. My current ‘solution’ is that the aliens are designed, not evolved, and they are just gambling on whether or not we will survive long enough to design our own replacements. In other words, Fermi asked the wrong question because he approached the question as a physicist. My approach is a cross between biology and computer science, and results in changing the question.
That led me to go around visiting other blogs that mention the paradox. I definitely reject the UFO angle…