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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, @11:22PM

    by NotSanguine (285) <{NotSanguine} {at} {SoylentNews.Org}> on Tuesday September 10 2019, @11:22PM (#892447) Homepage Journal

    That theory has benefits, but it seems to assume that civilizations will continue to be based around planets, which seems to me dubious.

    I was thinking about this statement and it occurs to me (I'd have added this to my earlier reply, but I didn't think about it then) that it's not so much that civilizations are or will continue to be based around planets, but rather around the stars they orbit. The star can provide the energy required and the debris around it (generally referred to as planets/asteroids/comets/etc.) can provide raw materials to build livable habitats.

    If a planet is/could be habitable, it could be used as such. However, it's just (and perhaps more) likely that a spacefaring civilization would be more interested in stable stars with a minimal radiation fluctuations and planets with stable orbits within its habitable zone than "habitable planets."

    Colonization doesn't necessarily mean farms and fisheries on a planet with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. It could be just as effective with a (or, more likely tens of them) space-based habitat.

    Given that interstellar travel will take decades even for relatively close stars, the technologies for space-based construction, life support and other basic living requirements would have been long addressed by any civilization with the capability to send living beings to other stars.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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