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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, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:49PM (2 children)
I have to admit I get a bit tired of reading about some recent "research" on why we don't see aliens. "Research" seems to imply there's some sort of -- I don't know -- SEARCH for some actual information, as opposed to rampant speculation. As many posts have pointed out here, there are literally hundreds of seemingly reasonable theories about why we haven't detected communication from aliens.
I'm also pretty sure that the proposal here is not "new" but rather a variant already postulated in more than a handful of sci-fi stories decades ago, though the specific rationale for WHY aliens may be behaving this way may be slightly different.
Personally, I just can't understand why intelligent people get so worked up about the supposed "Fermi paradox" anyway. We can't know whether there's an actual "paradox" until we have some hard numbers to plug into the Drake equation, and we can't get any reasonable estimates of probability for life until we find some more data points. Right now, we only have one data point for the formation of life in the universe, so it could happen again in 1 out of every 2 other stars in the universe, or it could happen in 1 out of every 2,000,000,000,000 stars. We just have no freakin' clue, because we also only have a vague understanding of all the steps and conditions necessary for abiogenesis to occur, let alone constraints on selection pressures necessary to ultimately produce intelligent life.
Anyhow, "research" on elements of the universe and whether it would support or be conducive to HUMAN life (which is the only we know) might be valuable. Speculation (not "research") on what possibly imaginary aliens may or may not be doing is best left to sci-fi stories. Why not channel this "research" energy into some good science-based fiction instead?
One final note: on a cosmic scale, it's possible that civilizations last for millions or even billions of years (perhaps likely, if aliens are actually as common as many people seem to assume). Human history is only a few thousand years old, and mere decades since we barely have come to understand the sort of tech necessary to imagine interstellar communication. Isn't it a somewhat insane form of hubris to assume that we'd have any freakin' clue how a million-year-old civilization would act, what its communication tech might be, or what its even basic priorities might be? It's like asking a prehistoric cave man about what Apple's marketing and product strategy might look like next year. Even posing the question makes little sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @08:37PM
I think we've hit a plateau of human achievement at the moment, so people are free to pursue the interesting yet less useful questions in life. This is a good thing, not every human being can further the cause of science in immediately useful ways, and many advances have come from speculative theorizing.
If we all just stuck to productive efficiency the world would be pretty damn boring.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 18 2017, @08:58PM
Well, SETI searched. Now the time has come for re-search.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford