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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 06 2018, @11:55PM
Well, okay, but I can see it as an indirect conclusion. Something is "statistically" wiping out independent intelligent ponderers (IIPs), otherwise we should either be surrounded by lots of galaxies with humans (dominance theory) or by lots of other species (Trek model).
So what's wiping out IIPs?
Maybe they usually blow themselves up or create dangerous run-away bots/critters, but I find it unlikely that ALL intelligent species in a universe (or reachable sector of) would end themselves. Therefore, some singular and (statistically) inevitable event is doing it. It takes only one species to create run-away bots. (If 2 do it at almost the same time, mostly likely one will be superior.)
That still does not mean WE are the dominant species (or parents of), only that a dominant creature/bot is inevitable. It's like a virus nobody has an immunity against.
The theory still has worthy competitors though, such as intelligent life is actually rare.
One oddity though is that our galactic cluster is relatively small. Statistically we should be in a big cluster. That feature may be protecting us from something, at least for a while, giving us a statistical edge. It's a possible clue.