Oh Kurzgesagt, you silly, the Fermi paradox is simple to explain:
All of the other civilizations built over time in the galaxy by other species went dark, and their species extinct. As will ours, just as with all of our precursor civilizations (the fun part is knowing that a) All of those other civilizations probably or certainly - in the case of our precursors - died somehow, b) Knowing how ours could die, and contemplating which pill will be our poison).
The promise of a high concept space faring future built on the back of science is a lie.
Eat at Arby's.
Eh
Space is big
Time is long
That we haven't found extraterrestrial life in the fragmentary blip of both space and time in which we've looked is hardly paradoxical
It's the size of the galaxy & the time said galaxy has been around that creates the paradox, though:
If there are plenty of planets (and there are, we now know this thanks to efforts like the Kepler scope), and there has been plenty of past history for intelligent life to develop, and if our own development pace is typical... where is everyone? Someone, by the standards set by high concept futurists & Moore's Law, should have colonized at least a sizeable portion of the Galaxy, if not nearly the entire thing. There should be debris almost everywhere, and signals bouncing off of everything.
Instead, there is no debris anywhere, and no detectable signals at all.
So, either somehow all of these advanced civilizations are undetectable (implausible), or we are so special & unique & Jesus loves us (Gag me; will no doubt be disproven as soon as we're able to dig for fossils in old Martian river beds, goodness knows if that'll be in my lifetime though), or they're all ash & bones on coffin worlds - either of their own machinations or because they ran out of time to figure-out how to travel into space before their sun got too old.
or
or
we've looked at a pebble on a sidewalk in a massive city through a microscope for 5 seconds and said "I can't see any other people!"
That's no a very good analogy for either our optical or radio astronomy observations, though. If there are radio signals bouncing around (and those things have a pretty good shelf life & range, and they travel at nearly the speed of light), we should have detected at least some fragments of them. Wandered into the equivalent of some civilization's expanding radio footprint, like our own on Earth (but presumably much more massive, given a posited civilization that has colonized some substantial portion of the milky way).
Radio signals, being electromagnetic radiation, travel at precisely the speed of light
and we receive fucking tons of radio frequency EMR from space constantly, mostly from the Sun. It's a significant source of interference!
We very well may be receiving quite a lot of precisely that sort of radio footprint right now but since we don't actually know how to precisely identify it, and doing a broad spectrum search of all RF signals for patterns is massively costly in terms of computational resources, we may not even have figured it out yet.
And that assumes aliens are using a specific low frequency band of EM radiation as a communications medium, when even we as a species are gradually abandoning it for more tightly focused frequencies which do not propagate nearly as well. Also that you could actually pick out a pattern and not just a wave of noise due to destructive interference from a massive set of transmitters
Oh Kurzgesagt, you silly, the Fermi paradox is simple to explain:
All of the other civilizations built over time in the galaxy by other species went dark, and their species extinct. As will ours, just as with all of our precursor civilizations (the fun part is knowing that a) All of those other civilizations probably or certainly - in the case of our precursors - died somehow, b) Knowing how ours could die, and contemplating which pill will be our poison).
The promise of a high concept space faring future built on the back of science is a lie.
Eat at Arby's.
Eh
Space is big
Time is long
That we haven't found extraterrestrial life in the fragmentary blip of both space and time in which we've looked is hardly paradoxical
It's the size of the galaxy & the time said galaxy has been around that creates the paradox, though:
If there are plenty of planets (and there are, we now know this thanks to efforts like the Kepler scope), and there has been plenty of past history for intelligent life to develop, and if our own development pace is typical... where is everyone? Someone, by the standards set by high concept futurists & Moore's Law, should have colonized at least a sizeable portion of the Galaxy, if not nearly the entire thing. There should be debris almost everywhere, and signals bouncing off of everything.
Instead, there is no debris anywhere, and no detectable signals at all.
So, either somehow all of these advanced civilizations are undetectable (implausible), or we are so special & unique & Jesus loves us (Gag me; will no doubt be disproven as soon as we're able to dig for fossils in old Martian river beds, goodness knows if that'll be in my lifetime though), or they're all ash & bones on coffin worlds - either of their own machinations or because they ran out of time to figure-out how to travel into space before their sun got too old.
or
or
we've looked at a pebble on a sidewalk in a massive city through a microscope for 5 seconds and said "I can't see any other people!"
That's no a very good analogy for either our optical or radio astronomy observations, though. If there are radio signals bouncing around (and those things have a pretty good shelf life & range, and they travel at nearly the speed of light), we should have detected at least some fragments of them. Wandered into the equivalent of some civilization's expanding radio footprint, like our own on Earth (but presumably much more massive, given a posited civilization that has colonized some substantial portion of the milky way).
Radio signals, being electromagnetic radiation, travel at precisely the speed of light
and we receive fucking tons of radio frequency EMR from space constantly, mostly from the Sun. It's a significant source of interference!
We very well may be receiving quite a lot of precisely that sort of radio footprint right now but since we don't actually know how to precisely identify it, and doing a broad spectrum search of all RF signals for patterns is massively costly in terms of computational resources, we may not even have figured it out yet.
And that assumes aliens are using a specific low frequency band of EM radiation as a communications medium, when even we as a species are gradually abandoning it for more tightly focused frequencies which do not propagate nearly as well. Also that you could actually pick out a pattern and not just a wave of noise due to destructive interference from a massive set of transmitters
Also don't our analogue broadcasts degrade to static after a lightyear or two? We may be overestimating the range of communications
Until recently I was always floating around 50ish, but this last week I can't win a game to save my life
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Oh Kurzgesagt, you silly, the Fermi paradox is simple to explain:
All of the other civilizations built over time in the galaxy by other species went dark, and their species extinct. As will ours, just as with all of our precursor civilizations (the fun part is knowing that a) All of those other civilizations probably or certainly - in the case of our precursors - died somehow, b) Knowing how ours could die, and contemplating which pill will be our poison).
The promise of a high concept space faring future built on the back of science is a lie.
Eat at Arby's.
Eh
Space is big
Time is long
That we haven't found extraterrestrial life in the fragmentary blip of both space and time in which we've looked is hardly paradoxical
It's the size of the galaxy & the time said galaxy has been around that creates the paradox, though:
If there are plenty of planets (and there are, we now know this thanks to efforts like the Kepler scope), and there has been plenty of past history for intelligent life to develop, and if our own development pace is typical... where is everyone? Someone, by the standards set by high concept futurists & Moore's Law, should have colonized at least a sizeable portion of the Galaxy, if not nearly the entire thing. There should be debris almost everywhere, and signals bouncing off of everything.
Instead, there is no debris anywhere, and no detectable signals at all.
So, either somehow all of these advanced civilizations are undetectable (implausible), or we are so special & unique & Jesus loves us (Gag me; will no doubt be disproven as soon as we're able to dig for fossils in old Martian river beds, goodness knows if that'll be in my lifetime though), or they're all ash & bones on coffin worlds - either of their own machinations or because they ran out of time to figure-out how to travel into space before their sun got too old.
or
or
we've looked at a pebble on a sidewalk in a massive city through a microscope for 5 seconds and said "I can't see any other people!"
That's no a very good analogy for either our optical or radio astronomy observations, though. If there are radio signals bouncing around (and those things have a pretty good shelf life & range, and they travel at nearly the speed of light), we should have detected at least some fragments of them. Wandered into the equivalent of some civilization's expanding radio footprint, like our own on Earth (but presumably much more massive, given a posited civilization that has colonized some substantial portion of the milky way).
Radio signals, being electromagnetic radiation, travel at precisely the speed of light
and we receive fucking tons of radio frequency EMR from space constantly, mostly from the Sun. It's a significant source of interference!
We very well may be receiving quite a lot of precisely that sort of radio footprint right now but since we don't actually know how to precisely identify it, and doing a broad spectrum search of all RF signals for patterns is massively costly in terms of computational resources, we may not even have figured it out yet.
And that assumes aliens are using a specific low frequency band of EM radiation as a communications medium, when even we as a species are gradually abandoning it for more tightly focused frequencies which do not propagate nearly as well. Also that you could actually pick out a pattern and not just a wave of noise due to destructive interference from a massive set of transmitters
Also don't our analogue broadcasts degrade to static after a lightyear or two? We may be underestimating the range of communications
UHF barely makes it out of the atmosphere and that is the current #1 world champ radio communication frequency band in use today
ElldrenIs a woman dammitceterum censeoRegistered Userregular
For all we know there could be a massive space empire out there right now that broadcasts the same message at the same time every day in broad-spectrum RF
but their day is 100 years for us
fuck gendered marketing
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
edited August 2016
The Fermi paradox is a bit like Schrödinger's cat in that the popularly discussed bit is backed up by quite a lot of maths. Which most people don't understand so they bang on with their nonsense around incomplete descriptions.
It's an interesting problem that suggests interesting things though. And yes it could well be a problem of timescales but just saying "timescales, duh" completely misses the point.
Mojo_Jojo on
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
The Fermi paradox is a bit like Schrödinger's cat in that the popularly discussed bit is backed up by quite a lot of maths.
It's an interesting problem that suggests interesting things though. And yes it could well be a problem of timescales but just saying "timescales, duh" completely misses the point.
It's a useful thought experiment for a variety of reasons, but I wouldn't use it to draw any ironclad conclusions
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Boourns
For some time now every time I see the name "Simon" I hear Mike Myers singing Well you know my name is Si-mon, and I like to do draw-rings.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Radio signals, being electromagnetic radiation, travel at precisely the speed of light
and we receive fucking tons of radio frequency EMR from space constantly, mostly from the Sun. It's a significant source of interference!
We very well may be receiving quite a lot of precisely that sort of radio footprint right now but since we don't actually know how to precisely identify it, and doing a broad spectrum search of all RF signals for patterns is massively costly in terms of computational resources, we may not even have figured it out yet.
And that assumes aliens are using a specific low frequency band of EM radiation as a communications medium, when even we as a species are gradually abandoning it for more tightly focused frequencies which do not propagate nearly as well. Also that you could actually pick out a pattern and not just a wave of noise due to destructive interference from a massive set of transmitters
what if this is the loser galaxy
Well yeah
gas clouds are easier to figure out
Were the universe's equivalent to
Also don't our analogue broadcasts degrade to static after a lightyear or two? We may be overestimating the range of communications
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
one big gutter in outer space man
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
Until recently I was always floating around 50ish, but this last week I can't win a game to save my life
Nice quantised emissions I can use red shift to approximate distance for. Yay QM.
UHF barely makes it out of the atmosphere and that is the current #1 world champ radio communication frequency band in use today
But what of their vanguard, the Al'exx of Joness?
*looks at messy desk set-up with renewed insight*
My God
This elegant explanation.
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
Lickitung
link i gotta see this
PSN/XBL: Zampanov -- Steam: Zampanov
but their day is 100 years for us
The best astronomy software is SEXTRACTOR. I'm sorry I mean S EXTRACTOR
But what about its Agricultural spinoff, SEX TRACTOR
AHAHA
It's an interesting problem that suggests interesting things though. And yes it could well be a problem of timescales but just saying "timescales, duh" completely misses the point.
It's a useful thought experiment for a variety of reasons, but I wouldn't use it to draw any ironclad conclusions
On average, this thread was blasting along at warp 2.3
@ronya will create the new thread
@Neco is backup