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Fermi Paradox Paper: Aliens Could Take Their Time Settling the Galaxy

posted by chromas on Tuesday September 10 2019, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly

Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.businessinsider.com/alien-civilizations-may-have-already-colonized-galaxy-study-2019-8

The Milky Way could be teeming with interstellar alien civilizations — we just don't know about it because they haven't paid us a visit in 10 million years.

A study published last month in The Astronomical Journal[$] posits that intelligent extraterrestrial life could be taking its time to explore the galaxy, harnessing star systems' movement to make star-hopping easier.

The work is a new response to a question known as the Fermi paradox, which asks why we haven't detected signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.

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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:25AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @06:25AM (#892102) Homepage Journal

    The authors of the paper draw some interesting conclusions (paper is paywalled, abstract only) about how it might be possible for multiple (many?) spacefaring civilizations to settle significant areas of the galaxy without ever visiting earth. Their hypothesis (IMHO) could include distances/angles of transmission/radio interference which would preclude us from detecting signals from them as well.

    From the paper's abstract [iop.org]:

    We find a range of parameters for which 0 < X < 1, i.e., the Galaxy supports a population of interstellar space-faring civilizations even though some settleable systems are uninhabited. In addition we find that statistical fluctuations can produce local overabundances of settleable worlds. These generate long-lived clusters of settled systems immersed in large regions that remain unsettled. Both results point to ways in which Earth might remain unvisited in the midst of an inhabited galaxy. Finally we consider how our results can be combined with the finite horizon for evidence of previous settlements in Earth's geologic record. Using our steady-state model we constrain the probabilities for an Earth visit by a settling civilization before a given time horizon. These results break the link between Hart's famous "Fact A" (no interstellar visitors on Earth now) and the conclusion that humans must, therefore, be the only technological civilization in the Galaxy. Explicitly, our solutions admit situations where our current circumstances are consistent with an otherwise settled, steady-state galaxy.

    It's an interesting idea, but despite the reasoning (at least that in the abstract), we have nowhere near enough information (again IMHO) to confirm or refute the authors' hypothesis.

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