RonO
2024-08-26 19:17:09 UTC
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-alien-life.html
In a recent thread on Mars water I proposed that a possible explanation
for the Fermi Paradox was that extraterrestrial intelligence might be
like us in terms of probably never needing to go any place else. Our
population may be decreasing by 2050 if we can improve the standard of
living in the 3rd world enough by that time. Some of most well off
populations are already in decline. There is no reason to colonize
another solar system. Everything we need will last us in this one until
our star goes through it's red giant aging issues, and we can likely be
able to survive that billions of years from now by building habitats out
on the fringes of our solar system. The human race doesn't seem to be
far sighted enough to worry about some solar activity wiping out life in
this solar system to go to the bother and expense to set up a colony in
another solar system. Our whole galaxy might be in trouble if Andromeda
does collide with the Milky Way.
The Phys.org article has three solutions to the Fermi paradox:
exceptionality, annihilation, and communication barriers.
Intelligent life may just be very rare in this universe. Life was
stalled out on single celled lifeforms for around 3 billion years before
multicellular life evolved. It could just as easily been stalled out
for another 3 billion years or until our star becomes a red giant and
destroys life in this solar system. Given our own experience of
shifting around as single celled life for 3 billion years. How long
would the transition take to do it somewhere else? It took 8 billion
years of star deaths to create the elements that made life possible in
this solar system. How long did it take somewhere else that was
suitable for sustaining life after it had evolved. You need to have a
suitable planet created in a star poor region of the galaxy so that the
deaths of neighboring stars would not extinguish any life that managed
to get started. Active stellar regions that exist closer to the center
of our galaxy are not places that you would expect life to survive for
very long if it ever got started. We are currently on the edge of one
of the spiral arms of our galaxy. If we were in a region of the spiral
arm more densely packed with stars life would probably not have survived
3 billion years to evolve multicellular lifeforms.
Maybe it is the destiny of most intelligent life to over exploit their
resources and destroy themselves. We could still do that, but it
doesn't look like it is going to happen. The same self centered
attitude that brought us to the brink of destroying life on earth is
going to prevent us from doing it, and is likely the reason that we may
never leave our solar system. We can live happily here for billions of
years.
The least likely is communication barriers. The article claims things
like Star Trek's prime directive as keeping other intelligent life forms
from contacting us. The simple fact is that the Star Trek fantasy
universe may never be possible. We need warp drive, and Star Trek
claims to use antimatter, but they use tremendous amounts of antimatter.
Just think of how much antimatter is needed to produce the matter in
food replicators. Transporters apparently work by disassembling things,
storing the information in a transporter buffer and then reassembling
the matter. Just think of how much antimatter it took to reassemble
Worf every episode. Scotty survived in the transporter computer buffer
for decades until rescue. There just may not be any aliens zipping
around the galaxy to communicate with us. They may all be subject to
relativistic limits, and it just isn't worth going someplace else if
every thing you knew is long in the past if you ever get back. Any
exploration of significant distance is a one way trip into the future.
There are no 5 year missions possible in this universe at this time. If
you could accelerate fast enough to explore at a significant fraction of
the speed of light, and got back in 5 years (your time), by the time you
got back a couple centuries may have passed on earth. Wiki claims that
a constant 1 g acceleration would allow someone to cross the known
universe in 1 lifetime, but my guess is that our solar system would no
longer exist at the end of that journey.
Ron Okimoto
In a recent thread on Mars water I proposed that a possible explanation
for the Fermi Paradox was that extraterrestrial intelligence might be
like us in terms of probably never needing to go any place else. Our
population may be decreasing by 2050 if we can improve the standard of
living in the 3rd world enough by that time. Some of most well off
populations are already in decline. There is no reason to colonize
another solar system. Everything we need will last us in this one until
our star goes through it's red giant aging issues, and we can likely be
able to survive that billions of years from now by building habitats out
on the fringes of our solar system. The human race doesn't seem to be
far sighted enough to worry about some solar activity wiping out life in
this solar system to go to the bother and expense to set up a colony in
another solar system. Our whole galaxy might be in trouble if Andromeda
does collide with the Milky Way.
The Phys.org article has three solutions to the Fermi paradox:
exceptionality, annihilation, and communication barriers.
Intelligent life may just be very rare in this universe. Life was
stalled out on single celled lifeforms for around 3 billion years before
multicellular life evolved. It could just as easily been stalled out
for another 3 billion years or until our star becomes a red giant and
destroys life in this solar system. Given our own experience of
shifting around as single celled life for 3 billion years. How long
would the transition take to do it somewhere else? It took 8 billion
years of star deaths to create the elements that made life possible in
this solar system. How long did it take somewhere else that was
suitable for sustaining life after it had evolved. You need to have a
suitable planet created in a star poor region of the galaxy so that the
deaths of neighboring stars would not extinguish any life that managed
to get started. Active stellar regions that exist closer to the center
of our galaxy are not places that you would expect life to survive for
very long if it ever got started. We are currently on the edge of one
of the spiral arms of our galaxy. If we were in a region of the spiral
arm more densely packed with stars life would probably not have survived
3 billion years to evolve multicellular lifeforms.
Maybe it is the destiny of most intelligent life to over exploit their
resources and destroy themselves. We could still do that, but it
doesn't look like it is going to happen. The same self centered
attitude that brought us to the brink of destroying life on earth is
going to prevent us from doing it, and is likely the reason that we may
never leave our solar system. We can live happily here for billions of
years.
The least likely is communication barriers. The article claims things
like Star Trek's prime directive as keeping other intelligent life forms
from contacting us. The simple fact is that the Star Trek fantasy
universe may never be possible. We need warp drive, and Star Trek
claims to use antimatter, but they use tremendous amounts of antimatter.
Just think of how much antimatter is needed to produce the matter in
food replicators. Transporters apparently work by disassembling things,
storing the information in a transporter buffer and then reassembling
the matter. Just think of how much antimatter it took to reassemble
Worf every episode. Scotty survived in the transporter computer buffer
for decades until rescue. There just may not be any aliens zipping
around the galaxy to communicate with us. They may all be subject to
relativistic limits, and it just isn't worth going someplace else if
every thing you knew is long in the past if you ever get back. Any
exploration of significant distance is a one way trip into the future.
There are no 5 year missions possible in this universe at this time. If
you could accelerate fast enough to explore at a significant fraction of
the speed of light, and got back in 5 years (your time), by the time you
got back a couple centuries may have passed on earth. Wiki claims that
a constant 1 g acceleration would allow someone to cross the known
universe in 1 lifetime, but my guess is that our solar system would no
longer exist at the end of that journey.
Ron Okimoto