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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: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday June 06 2018, @10:01PM (1 child)
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).
...but exponential growth and factionalism will kill a generation ship faster than they kill a solar system.
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
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.