SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
"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: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:37PM (1 child)
Suffice to say I'm not holding my breath.
I liked how they explained it in Jack McDevitt's [wikipedia.org] Academy series: there's a series of nanotech "clouds" traveling in waves through the galaxy killing off civilizations they run across every 4000 years. Without wishing to spoil, the why of the situation ends up rather blackly humorous.
The series also posits some other explanations, like how less-technological civilizations may be more resilient to catastrophes. If we got hit by one of those massive solar flares and 90% of the electronics on Earth got fried, that would make for some interesting times. Or how until we learned to split the atom, it was a lot harder to generally stomp life on earth.
And the whole thing is a bit "out there" because we basically know zero of the terms of the Drake Equation with any certainty, right?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday June 06 2018, @07:39PM
Admittedly this sounds like a really juvenile plot, but that's partly because I'm summarizing it so much. The obvious questions are whether they're natural or artificial, if the latter who's sending them and why, if they're being sent are they actually intended to wipe out intelligent life, etc.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"