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Galactic Settlement and the Fermi Paradox:
A spacefaring species could easily settle the entire Milky Way given billions of years. Yet the fact is that there is no obvious one in our solar system right now. The supposed inconsistency between these statements is the Fermi Paradox, named for the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who supposedly first formulated it. In a trenchant formulation of the Fermi Paradox, American astrophysicist Michael H. Hart called the lack of extraterrestrial beings or artifacts on Earth today "Fact A." He showed that most objections to his conclusion—that a spacefaring civilization could have crossed the galaxy by now—stem from either a lack of appreciation for the timescales involved (it takes a small extrapolation from present human technology to get interstellar ships, and even slow ships can star-hop across our galaxy in less time than the galaxy's age) or else the dubious assumption that all members of all extraterrestrial species will avoid colonizing behaviors forever (an example of what I've called the monocultural fallacy).
William Newman and Carl Sagan later wrote a major rebuttal to Hart's work, in which they argued that the timescales to populate the entire galaxy could be quite long. In particular, they noted that the colonization fronts Hart described through the Milky Way might move much more slowly than the speed of the colonization ships if their population growth rates were so low that they only needed to spread to nearby stars very rarely. They also argued that being a long-lived civilization is inconsistent with being a rapidly-expanding one, so any species bent on settling the galaxy would not last long enough to succeed. In other words, they reasoned that the galaxy could be filled with both short-lived rapidly expanding civilizations that don't get very far and long-lived slowly expanding civilizations that haven't gotten very far—either way, it's not surprising that we have not been visited.
Being a long-lived civilization is inconsistent with being a rapidly-expanding one.
In a 2014 paper on the topic, my colleagues and I rebutted many of these claims. In particular, we argued that one should not conflate the population growth in a single settlement with that of all settlements. There is no reason to suppose that population growth, resource depletion, or overcrowding drives the creation of new settlements, or that a small, sustainable settlement would never launch a new settlement ship. One can easily imagine a rapidly expanding network of small sustainable settlements (indeed, the first human migrations across the globe likely looked a lot like this).
Another factor affects Newman and Sagan's numbers on timescales and colonization-front speeds. Most of the prior work on this topic exploits percolation models, in which ships move about on a static two-dimensional substrate of stars. In these models, a star launching settlement ships can quickly settle all of the nearby stars, limiting the number of stars it can settle. But real stars move in three dimensions, meaning that they can carry their orbiting settlements throughout the galaxy, and that a settlement will always have fresh new stars to settle if it waits long enough.
Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback, at the University of Rochester with Adam Frank, not long ago finished work, with Caleb Scharf and me, on analytic and numerical models for how a realistic settlement front would behave in a real gas of stars, one characteristic of the galactic disk at our distance from the galactic center. The big advances here are a few:
Carroll-Nellenback validated an analytic formalism for settlement expansion fronts with numerical models for a realistic gas of stars. He accounted for finite settlement lifetimes, the idea that only a small fraction of stars will be settle-able, and explored the limits of very slow and infrequent settlement ships. He also explored a range of settlement behaviors to see how galactic settlement fronts depend on them.
The idea that not all stars are settle-able is important to keep in mind. Adam Frank calls this the Aurora effect, after the Kim Stanley Robinson novel in which a system is "habitable, but not settle-able."
A very interesting read.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @03:33PM (57 children)
Get ahold of their maths and history for starters. It's not like space weather is the only thing we could talk about.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:04PM (36 children)
But then what? We agree -1 can have a square root, now what? Do you have a jesus?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:18PM (35 children)
Is that all of math?
Is that all of history?
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:24PM (34 children)
What do you expect? Like literally 'what could you get from a transmission'? We made you? Ok, so what? Others made you? Cool, so what? It's all random? Ok now what? We're still fucked in this world no matter what message we get, we're not going anywhere (as a race, maybe, oh I just used the r word oops)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:40PM (33 children)
So if we talk to aliens who aren't fucked, then we could at least find out a way to unfuck things, right?
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:44PM (32 children)
>So if we talk to aliens who aren't fucked, then we could at least find out a way to unfuck things, right?
That assumes they are in possression of some magical knowledge? What if all universe is fucked and having same trump issues right now? Are you gonna beam bernie sanders commercial to aliens from 5k years ago?
(Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:49PM (31 children)
If they figured out those answers then yes, by whatever you mean by magical, they got it.
Well, then we'd know.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:54PM (30 children)
>If they figured out those answers then yes, by whatever you mean by magical, they got it.
You are trekkie? Still hoping there is a better and wiser out there galactic federation? Sorry to burst your bubble but we'd have discovered it by now, it's either all galactic species are hostile, or we're alone
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:05PM (29 children)
To the limits of our very limited ability to detect such things.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:12PM (28 children)
Like I said CMB is all intergalactic homo-sapiens saying hello, noone cares, we need 25B$ tool to disprove that or realise no matter how many billions we spend we're fucked like the rest
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:20PM (27 children)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:24PM (26 children)
On all you drake-equation fetishists, omg multicellular life, omg dinosaurs, omg intelligence, you're planet denylists of our time (like yeah seriously 30 years ago people said our sun was special and there were no planets outside of solar system, how weird haha. this is you)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:38PM (11 children)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:46PM (10 children)
>My take is that there is a huge potential to speaking to any intelligent life that has developed under different circumstances. Maybe they solved better the common problems we have and made discoveries that aren't a proper subset of our own. If they live under radically different environmental circumstances, then that can help us (or perhaps our gear) live under those same circumstances.
Cool story bro, here's NASA take on it:
pioneer plaque.png
Two genders, 9 planets, oh and if you squint enough there is some info on how to fight diseases??? Is that what you're trying to sell lol
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:48PM (9 children)
Nope. If I were communicating, it'd be more than just an engraved disk worth of knowledge.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:52PM (8 children)
Yeah like what exactly? Can you give us an example what people of earth could send without getting raped for it 40 years later and thinking about cosmic scales? 2 genders and 9 planets ain't it my friend, think of something more inclusive, but you'll end up a bigot anyway, so have fun
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:12PM (7 children)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:18PM (6 children)
Is this a joke? Maybe a wikipedia history of any problematic article?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @01:29AM (5 children)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Monday January 20 2020, @02:41AM
And yet every professor tells you to treat wikipedia with a huge grain of salt, he surely got his wool pulled off
(Score: 1) by szopin on Monday January 20 2020, @02:43AM (3 children)
OMG wait you want to send wikipedia to other civilizations>>????? lol sure go ahead pls send them articles with history like palestine and jesus, go fucking do it
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @04:51AM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Monday January 20 2020, @05:14AM (1 child)
Yeah like literally sending other civilizations 'khallow' would be a shitty idea, but some (khallow) will push for it, no dude you are not a good idea for first contact
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @03:16PM
Here, why make some special information package for aliens, when we've already spent almost twenty years (and far more man-years than you can imagine) making a package for us? What's the problem? Is it a matter of security? We could sanitize military data out of the mix, if that's a problem. Is it inaccuracy? We could filter out the latest level of trolling and otherwise stick in a warning that there are biases present and the nature of these will change as the content changes. Even that would be very informative to an alien species.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:27PM (13 children)
This is wrong. As soon as we discovered that other stars are just like ours, we realised there could be planets orbiting them.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:55PM (12 children)
And yet as soon we realised life happened 1 bil year on earth, we are still debating life outside of earth
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:10PM (11 children)
No-one is debating whether life outside our solar system is possible, it quite obviously is.
What we are doing is actively looking for it. We haven't found it yet, but it is early days, and we're not putting much effort in are we?
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:37PM (6 children)
>What we are doing is actively looking for it
lol, so untrue, you had an experiment in 70s that said yes, life on mars, what did NASA do? Send a follow up? Noooope, why even bother, jesus is great
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:08PM
Citation Required.
Have a wee look at this. [nasa.gov] It is a start, even if we're not putting much effort in, as I said.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @05:00AM (4 children)
NASA has been pretty shitty in what it's done over the decades, but even they have done more than a dozen missions [wikipedia.org] in that 40 years span. And yes, that's Wikipedia.
Too bad that so many missions don't mean a thing to you because they didn't stick a labeled-release experiment on them.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Monday January 20 2020, @05:12AM (3 children)
>Too bad that so many missions don't mean a thing to you because they didn't stick a labeled-release experiment on them.
You seem to be angry about ignoring nasa, but also want to praise nasa for their experiment? Can you make up your fucking mind please?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @05:40AM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Monday January 20 2020, @05:47AM (1 child)
Yes it is
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @03:08PM
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @10:55PM (3 children)
>What we are doing is actively looking for it.
cope, NASA has still not followed up on labeled release, but we're actively looking, nope
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 19 2020, @11:10PM (2 children)
Is there any chance you could write in sentences, and use proper words? It will make your comments easier to understand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 20 2020, @01:03AM (1 child)
A few more replies to get the all time record on reply indentation
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Monday January 20 2020, @07:16AM
I'M IN!!!
(Beats reading Abbott and Costello here bantering back and forth.)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:07PM (19 children)
Btw my alien-kink is thinking CMB is all the civilizations sending their hello, now what? messages. Now what? If life is all over the place, now what? We still are earthbound and gonna suffer like all of them sending those texts thousands of years ago, I guess dab on christcucks? They'll just update their books
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:29PM (18 children)
Earthbound for now. There's no reason to expect that to be a permanent thing. And knowledge is how you're typing stuff on a screen in the first place. Any civilization capable of communicating with us and having the intellectual inclination to try probably has something to offer.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:41PM (17 children)
>Any civilization capable of communicating with us and having the intellectual inclination to try probably has something to offer.
Like what? Hey guys we figured out DNA! There is no god. We're all fucked, make all you will with the brief moment you have? Or do you expect something like: if you blink three times in a rowand then do a dab god appears>?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:44PM (16 children)
So all those aliens are going to have the exact same sort of DNA? Interesting.
How long is this "brief" moment?
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @04:50PM (15 children)
Your life is a brief moment, so brief you will never receive a reply from an alien, who woud've thunk eh?
Oh god they have different DNA? Amazing, now what? Uranium based aliens use uranium in their DNA, amazing discovery
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:04PM (14 children)
So what? It doesn't mean that will always be the case. Posthumans might eventually live billions or trillions of years. That would be more than enough time.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:08PM (13 children)
Are you still counting on it? Noone fucking cares if you live for a 100 or a thousand years, galactic evolution takes place in the billions, again pls answer what do you expect aliens to tell you? Like what we sent in pioneer plaque? Yo: we have like 9 planets and only two genders. Fucking message is outdated not even century of sending it over
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:20PM (12 children)
I'm pretty should I care.
And as I noted, I was speaking of future beings capable of living through a lot of galactic evolution.
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:27PM (11 children)
Let me speak of the generations later on, we have 9 planets and two genders, you will be laughed at as you are now
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:30PM (10 children)
By who? And why do you think that would be the only two facts I'd present, should the opportunity exist?
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:32PM (2 children)
The idea is whatever you think will be 'deep and meaningful' was just raped by last decade of 'intelligents', the whole pioneer message is now fucking problematic, go figure one that will not get ruined by ideologues of future?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:39PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:47PM
Kudos
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:35PM (6 children)
Applying moral values of the future us is harder than fucking launching rockets
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:41PM (5 children)
Because I wouldn't be around to apply them. Otherwise it'd be pretty damn easy. The problems aren't going to change that much.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @05:48PM (4 children)
>The problems aren't going to change that much.
Says the white male launching rockets in 2020, very problematic already right now. Dude just think for a second about the pioneer plaque, it had totally zero wrongthink in the 70s, but now is totally problematic, you will be the same, thrown to the sides of progress, so please stop preaching abou tthe future, you will be the one to get rid off
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:11PM (3 children)
(Score: 1) by szopin on Sunday January 19 2020, @06:20PM (1 child)
Oh, glad you are the one that will write all the bbc/cnn articles about pioneer plaque in the future, problem solved, just have a dictator for life, what happens when you die tho linus torvalds?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 20 2020, @01:28AM
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 19 2020, @09:32PM
You might be wasting your time with that one.
His worldview seems to be too small to really think about the issues in the article clearly.