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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 BenJeremy on Thursday June 07 2018, @11:54AM (1 child)
Let's also ignore the fact that civilizations would arise within a very small (in respect to cosmological time frames) window of time. Even more so, any civilization that defeats the barrier to interstellar travel (the speed of light) would also not likely be using RF transmissions to communicate, thus quieting our only solid way of detecting such civilizations.
I say the likelihood of detecting another civilization, even somewhat close to us, is extremely low. So many variables need to line up, just to make that happen... I can imagine many civilizations rise and die out without ever leaving their planet - consuming all the resources, destroying their own biospheres, environmental catastrophes, or any other number of doomsday events that might happen. If a civilization did escape their own star system, and lasted a million years... how would we know, unless it happened now in our neighborhood?
Also, how strong are the signals we emit from this planet? Do they overcome background noise at light-year distances? Maybe it's just not easy to "hear" another civilization, unless they project a ton of energy at a specific target, at a specific time. Maybe Alpha Centaurians gave up trying to talk to us 5,000 years ago, because we never answered...
So much concern over a paradox that, frankly, ignores simple logic and common sense, presumably to submit a more theological desirable premise (that mankind is unique, and alone... and clearly very special)
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday June 08 2018, @10:23AM
Also - we've only broadcast powerful analogue radio signals for about 100 years and we've already started depreciating that in favour of optical fibre where possible and directional up/down links to satellites where not - all using highly compressed digital formats that, the more efficient they get, the less distinguishable from random noise they become (haven't done the math but my hunch is that a perfectly efficiently exploited EM spectrum would look like black body radiation or similar). Civilizations that follow that path are going to blow off 100-light-year thick "shells" of easily detectible communications - plenty of space in the galaxy for "dead zones" that don't intersect any such shells.