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"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.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @12:32PM (1 child)
this person has also published a number of papers on cosmology and gravitation stuff.
my preliminary conclusion: if you don't work with complex systems, you don't have any problem "publishing" works on complex systems.
by the way: a galactic civilization is the complex system I am referring to. It's complex in the sense that there are many components, to the point where one cannot easily write down evolution equations for it.
unfortunately, I understand a bit about complex systems, enough not to "publish" the content of 5 mins worth of conversation over a beer with fellow physicists.
there is no argument in this paper.
there is the observation "we are alone".
there is the question "what if whoever's first kills everyone else?".
and then the conclusion "obviously since we are first (because we are still alive) we are going to kill everyone else".
well... what you have there is speculation , because there is absolutely no proof given to the statement that "whoever's first kills everyone else".
it would be physics (or math, whatever) if you used game theory and/or statistlcal physics to show that this statement has a large probability.
not just anecdotal evidence (the author says we kill ants because we destroy anthills when we build houses, which is actually not true, since ants thrive in human cities).
anyway. If I was this person's boss, there would be some yelling.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:50PM
Seek simplicity, not complexity.
Once you have a 2nd data point:
1. jump up and down
2. plot both points on a graph and draw a straight line through it
3. loudly proclaim "we now understand EVERYTHING about this phenomena!"
No need to make things overly complex.
Don't over engineer. Don't gold plate.
The simplest solution tends to be the most economically profitable one.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.