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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @02:38PM (3 children)
Yes and you do realize that the majority of our chemistry evolved by accident right? Furthermore the means by which our chemicals are produced rely heavily on specific enzymes working on specific molecules one at a time.
This is nothing at all like what a species just starting out with chemistry would be able to do. We still haven't managed that in an effective and efficient manner.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:32PM (2 children)
Accidents of chemistry can happen underwater as well.
Which just isn't relevant. It just means it would be different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:09AM (1 child)
That's an incredibly ridiculous insinuation there. There was a rather long period where people were screwing around with chemicals not really knowing what they were doing. But, eventually, there were enough experiments to have a basis for alchemy and later chemistry. You're not going to manage that underwater by accident. It's roughly equivalent to monkeys randomly typing out the works of Shakespeare. It wouldn't work because the monkeys have preferences for certain letters and in terms of underwater chemistry, you're going to have an incredibly hard time isolating any of the elements needed to do the experiments as there's a huge number of substances that are either water soluble or that float in water. Whereas only a relatively few number of molecules will float in the air.
Or to put it another way, the chain of events necessary for non-terrestrial lifeforms to even get the idea to work on chemistry is sufficient to rule it out. Even with being on land, having two hands and a generally well developed brain it took many thousands of years to get past the most rudimentary chemistry.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 19 2017, @04:56AM
No, it's not. First, we're speaking of intelligent beings with equivalent ability to manipulate their environment to humans. Second, unlike monkeys that don't know what they're doing, accidental chemical results can be discovered and replicated because intelligent beings do that sort of thing.
So contrary to your assertion that it is "ridiculous" we see here plenty of opportunity for chemistry discoveries. There would be a huge variety of normal chemistry-related conditions in the environment such as the water/air surface, toxins and such, variety of weird chemicals and dyes emitted by organisms, differences in salinity (including the forming of salt through evaporation of sea water), even existence of pure metals (which can form in a strongly reducing environment on Earth or fall from the sky as a meteorite). Fire is still possible in the atmosphere as well due to methane seeps and lightning.
Which, let us recall was irrelevant to chemistry since most of it was done with fluids, not air.
Aquatic lifeforms would have that time to develop chemistry as well. Not seeing the point.
Really, your post is completely unimaginative. Chemistry developed underwater would be different (not have a strong fire-based component at first), but it would exist. There would be all sorts of mysteries and unexplained phenomena to study.