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Russian Physicist Proposes New Solution to the Fermi Paradox

posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the own-worst-enemy dept.

realDonaldTrump writes:

"Alexander Berezin, a theoretical physicist at the National Research University of Electronic Technology in Russia, has proposed a new answer to Fermi's paradox — but he doesn't think you're going to like it. Because, if Berezin's hypothesis is correct, it could mean a future for humanity that's 'even worse than extinction.'

'What if,' Berezin wrote in a new paper posted March 27 to the preprint journal arxiv.org, 'the first life that reaches interstellar travel capability necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion?'" foxnews.com/science/2018/06/04/aliens-are-real-but-humans-will-probably-kill-them-all-new-paper-says.html

In other words, could humanity's quest to discover intelligent life be directly responsible for obliterating that life outright? What if we are, unwittingly, the universe's bad guys?

And if you are not sure what the Fermi paradox is then the link should help, and there is a long explanation of that one in the article.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:03PM (1 child)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:03PM (#689271) Journal

    In other words, could humanity's quest to discover intelligent life be directly responsible for obliterating that life outright? What if we are, unwittingly, the universe's bad guys?

    Original sin rears its ugly head again. We haven't even had a chance to become the universe's bad guys and already this journalist is speaking of us in the past tense.

    The actual science of this paper is merely the assertion that humanity is among the first. That's it. The speculation about the first colonizers of space necessarily stamping out all other intelligent life is a complete fiction. Yes, I read that book [wikipedia.org]. For an example of where assuming this fiction leads us:

    Another interesting implication concerns the predictability of life at large scales. The hypothesis above is invariant of any social, economic or moral progress a civilization might achieve . This would require the existence of forces far stronger than the free will of individu als, which are fundamentally inherent to societies , and inevitably lead it in a direction no single individual would want to pursue. Examples of such forces, such as free market capitalism, are already well - known; however, this hypothesis suggests that resisting them is not nearly as easy as Carl Sagan would like to believe.

    This begs the question. If you assume the existence of such a force, then of course, you will get such a force.

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by deadstick on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:15PM

    by deadstick (5110) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:15PM (#689287)

    Quarter past seven in the morning and I've seen someone use "begging the question" correctly. Maybe today is looking up.