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After decades of searching, we still haven't discovered a single sign of extraterrestrial intelligence. Probability tells us life should be out there, so why haven't we found it yet?
The problem is often referred to as Fermi's paradox, after the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who once asked his colleagues this question at lunch. Many theories have been proposed over the years. It could be that we are simply alone in the universe or that there is some great filter that prevents intelligent life progressing beyond a certain stage. Maybe alien life is out there, but we are too primitive to communicate with it, or we are placed inside some cosmic zoo, observed but left alone to develop without external interference. Now, three researchers think they think they[sic] may have another potential answer to Fermi's question: Aliens do exist; they're just all asleep.
According to a new research paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, extraterrestrials are sleeping while they wait. In the paper, authors from Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic argue that the universe is too hot right now for advanced, digital civilizations to make the most efficient use of their resources. The solution: Sleep and wait for the universe to cool down, a process known as aestivating (like hibernation but sleeping until it's colder).
Understanding the new hypothesis first requires wrapping your head around the idea that the universe's most sophisticated life may elect to leave biology behind and live digitally. Having essentially uploaded their minds onto powerful computers, the civilizations choosing to do this could enhance their intellectual capacities or inhabit some of the harshest environments in the universe with ease.
[Related]:
The idea that life might transition toward a post-biological form of existence
Sandberg and Cirkovic elaborate in a blog post
The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos Is Probably Superintelligent Robots
Where even 3 degrees Kelvin is not cold enough, do you think that we would ever make contact with any alien ?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday July 18 2017, @07:26AM
Hah. I'll give you a point there.
"And gliders are a lot easier to develop when you start with a cliff rather than having to catapult them into the sky."
Easy come easy go.
No, actually, flight is MUCH easier underwater.
And there's no obvious reason why adapting underwater flight to atmospheric should be any more difficult than converting from walking or crawling in the dirt to flying.
"Electricity is nearly certain to not be developed on a water world"
Well electricity wasn't *developed* you know, it's a fact of the natural world. It's not unknown underwater either - electric eels are quite familiar with it, as are any creatures that deal with them.
It might be more difficult to develop some of the specific technologies of the sort that we are accustomed to but it might yet be possible to produce broadly similar technologies nonetheless. We really don't know, and certainly can't rule it out.
"Not to mention the issues of life under water and it's impact on the evolution of the brain. Even aquatic mammals have had to evolve some rather strange things like dolphins sleeping one hemisphere at a time in order to not drown. This sort of thing makes is less likely for a highly evolved brain to develop as the brain needs some form of restful sleep in order to drain the toxins. Without that, you'd have to see a different path taken to develop the same brain power that you see in higher mammals."
Err... that makes no sense at all, considering that many of the 'higher' mammals are aquatic. Porpoises, whales, that sort of thing.
I mean, in my day, we'd at least say 'cause no hands.'
:P
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?