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

"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: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:30PM (10 children)

    by theluggage (1797) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:30PM (#689495)

    The Fermi Paradox is based on a "Fermi estimate" of how long it would take to colonise the galaxy based on a whole host of approximations, assumptions and speculation about how that might be achieved - yet when it leads to a "paradox" everybody ignores the unreliability all of those finger-in-the-wind guesstimates and jumps on the least plausible explanation - that we exist on the far end of some probability curve that leaves us as the only intelligent (allegedly) life in the universe: Hard to falsify but very, very weak.

    Simpler solution: Interstellar travel is hard, slow and expensive. Our best scientific knowledge still says that it is impossible for macroscopic objects to travel faster than light. Our practical engineering knowledge says that getting to even a fraction of that speed would be really, really hard. Ditto for freezing higher lifeforms for centuries without killing them. So convenient interstellar travel really depends on some indistiguishable-from-magic technological breakthrough which is, well, indistinguishable from magic and therefore probably doesn't exist.

    That leaves "generation ships", and if you can build a closed ecosystem that can self-sustain for centuries then you can build space habitats that could let you colonise and exploit every nook and cranny of your solar system far more cheaply and easily (because they don't have to be closed systems) which somewhat takes the lid off any population and resource pressures that might drive you to the stars. Plus, if you can control population in your generation ship (without the traditional collapse of society, reversion to savagery and forgetting you're on a spaceship plot) then you can probably control population at home.

    As a character in Greg Egan's novel Diaspora said - exponential colonisation of the galaxy is what bacteria with spaceships would do.

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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:41PM (5 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:41PM (#689538)

    > you can build space habitats that could let you colonise and exploit every nook and cranny of your solar system far more cheaply and easily (because they don't have to be closed systems)

    Of course they're still a closed system - in aggregate at least. And while that may take the population pressure off for a little while, it's no solution to exponential growth. How long does it take to fill the solar system to the point the some groups don't want to deal with the others badly enough to leave altogether? A thousand years? A million? After all, any feasible "generation habitat" is a generation ship just waiting for a little push towards another star, and enough stockpiled fuel to power them for a few centuries or millenia of journey. And once anyone reaches another star the process potentially starts over again. If it takes a million years for a star to launches only ten successful colony ships, you're still talking about only 11 million years to colonize the entire galaxy.

    • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:01PM (1 child)

      by theluggage (1797) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:01PM (#689581)

      Of course they're still a closed system - in aggregate at least.

      Ultimately, everything is a closed system "in aggregate"... but an interstellar generation ship is a very, very small closed system in itself, whereas a space habitat in a solar system has access to external sources of material and energy (finite, yes, but vast c.f. the size of the habitat) plus support from other habitats (when the last spare part for the tool that repairs the tool that fixes the water recycler breaks).

      And while that may take the population pressure off for a little while, it's no solution to exponential growth.

      ...but exponential growth and factionalism will kill a generation ship faster than they kill a solar system.

      If it takes a million years for a star to launches only ten successful colony ships, you're still talking about only 11 million years to colonize the entire galaxy.

      Sounds like a pyramid scheme. Those totally work.

      Problem is, there's no payoff for a civilisation that sends out colony ships... they're too small to get rid of significant fractions of your booming population (who won't live to see the destination anyway) and the colonies will be too distant (and established too far in the future) to send back ships loaded with gold and exotic foodstuffs (or whatever).

      Then when the colony does succeed and starts building its own ships... do they them out to uncertain, unknown, new star systems (that might have been claimed by a rival colony by the time you get there) or do they go back and invade the known rich, habitable solar system that they came from...? You're filling local space with a load of potential enemies...

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:25PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:25PM (#689592)

        Certainly - but a large city-sized space habitat is probably going to be quite capable of seeing to its own needs indefinitely - especially if they're isolationist enough to be considering leaving the solar system. You only need imported resources for growth, or to replace losses. And factionalism in the face of certain death for everyone if a peace cannot be found? If nothing else I'm willing to bet the goon squad will exterminate the dissenters - problem solved, society is stable again.

        Nearly zero growth in the face of ecological constraints was the norm for most of human history, and something we're going to have to embrace again - colonizing space will do nothing to ease population pressure on Earth, unless Earth has already stopped growing. We're currently making 360,000 new people per day - we can't ship them off fast enough. I'm rather confident that we can intentionally return to that situation for a few centuries in the face of a total lack of resources to support any growth. I'm also confident that once we reach a new system with virtually unlimited space to expand, we'll expand exponentially for a while.

        >Sounds like a pyramid scheme
        It's called exponential growth. A pyramid scheme requires payoff for the early adopters, and you're absolutely right that there's no payoff for the system that sends out colony ships - that's why I don't expect any system to do so intentionally. As I've already stated, I expect the colony ships to send *themselves* out, to get away from the system they're leaving.

        And why would any colony ship go back to one of the systems their ancestors left? Those were already densely populated before they left. They may be rich, but the wealth has already all been claimed. Why would you spend several generations in interstellar space in order to make your descendants beggars at someone else's door? Even if an unknown system has already been "claimed" by the time you get there, the claim will be a lot shakier than those you'd face going back.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:04AM (#689634)

      How long does it take to fill the solar system to the point the some groups don't want to deal with the others badly enough to leave altogether?

      The red planets don't get along with the blue planets, and one side wants to build a Dyson-wall around Jupiter and make Saturn pay for it. But Saturn told Jupiter to stick its fake news up Uranus.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:21AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:21AM (#690607)

      Uh. The milky way's about 100,000-200,000 light years across. 11m years issuing at 1m intervals would only be with teleport-travel, unless you hit c.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday June 09 2018, @01:47AM

        by Immerman (3985) on Saturday June 09 2018, @01:47AM (#690626)

        I'm assuming transport times are trivial - a thousand years to cross between stars? Nothing in the face of a million years of "laying fallow" at the destination. And exponential growth would mean you'd need to go an increasingly long distance to get beyond densely inhabited space.

        Meanwhile, 200,000 light years takes only 2M years to cross at 1/10th light speed. Might be pushing expectations, I'll admit I hadn't considered the travel-time logistics into time projections, but I think it could still work. Especially if you figure at least a few groups never really decide to settle down again, instead wandering from star to star, maybe staying for a decade or ten to restock and upgrade while those who wish to colonize or start a new world-ship of their own get themselves well established.

  • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:47PM

    by Osamabobama (5842) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:47PM (#689542)

    So, to summarize, if you have problems that drive you to seek other worlds, you must solve those problems before you can seek other worlds.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:48PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @08:48PM (#689543)

    While I agree with all your basic premises (hard/expensive to travel interstellar, etc.) there's a couple of nasty problems that remain:

    1. Humans _do_ exponentially expand like bacteria

    2. As discussed in a thread above, even if it takes Sol based humanity 10 million years to "accidentally" colonize 10 nearby stars, on the timescale of a billion years - that's fast enough to cover the galaxy.

    Even though the bulk of human society isn't driven to colonize the stars, as long as we have enough surplus resources to play with things like generation ships, there will be some small segment of the population of billions who will do that. It's easy to see how we wouldn't bother in 100 years, or even 1000, but billions of people for 10,000 x 1000 years? Surely, if it's physically possible, maybe 0.001% of the population will try to do it at least once every thousand years, and if only 0.1% of them succeed, that's 10 colonies after 10 million years, and if those colonies can grow to interstellar capable within a few million years, then you've got 100 colonies after 20 million years, 1000 after 30 million years, etc.

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  • (Score: 2) by BenJeremy on Thursday June 07 2018, @11:54AM (1 child)

    by BenJeremy (6392) on Thursday June 07 2018, @11:54AM (#689820)

    Let's also ignore the fact that civilizations would arise within a very small (in respect to cosmological time frames) window of time. Even more so, any civilization that defeats the barrier to interstellar travel (the speed of light) would also not likely be using RF transmissions to communicate, thus quieting our only solid way of detecting such civilizations.

    I say the likelihood of detecting another civilization, even somewhat close to us, is extremely low. So many variables need to line up, just to make that happen... I can imagine many civilizations rise and die out without ever leaving their planet - consuming all the resources, destroying their own biospheres, environmental catastrophes, or any other number of doomsday events that might happen. If a civilization did escape their own star system, and lasted a million years... how would we know, unless it happened now in our neighborhood?

    Also, how strong are the signals we emit from this planet? Do they overcome background noise at light-year distances? Maybe it's just not easy to "hear" another civilization, unless they project a ton of energy at a specific target, at a specific time. Maybe Alpha Centaurians gave up trying to talk to us 5,000 years ago, because we never answered...

    So much concern over a paradox that, frankly, ignores simple logic and common sense, presumably to submit a more theological desirable premise (that mankind is unique, and alone... and clearly very special)

    • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday June 08 2018, @10:23AM

      by theluggage (1797) on Friday June 08 2018, @10:23AM (#690261)

      Also, how strong are the signals we emit from this planet? Do they overcome background noise at light-year distances?

      Also - we've only broadcast powerful analogue radio signals for about 100 years and we've already started depreciating that in favour of optical fibre where possible and directional up/down links to satellites where not - all using highly compressed digital formats that, the more efficient they get, the less distinguishable from random noise they become (haven't done the math but my hunch is that a perfectly efficiently exploited EM spectrum would look like black body radiation or similar). Civilizations that follow that path are going to blow off 100-light-year thick "shells" of easily detectible communications - plenty of space in the galaxy for "dead zones" that don't intersect any such shells.