Three reasons for the lack of aliens - My take on the Fermi Paradox
The Fermi Paradox is a discrepancy where statistically we think the universe should be buzzing and crawling full of aliens, however we really can’t find any evidence that we aren’t alone.
To be specific, we’re talking about advanced aliens who could travel through space, ie. that we could observe today from Earth.
There are a lot of theories around why that is. Some of the top theories are:
- We lack the technology to detect aliens.
- Aliens are hiding from us.
- We don’t know what to look for and alien life could be very different from what we expect.
- Aliens self destruct before they reach too much advancement.
- We’re truly alone in the universe.
I strongly believe that some of the most likely theories haven’t been explored, at least not that I’ve ever seen online.
1. The odds of advanced civilization developing are much much smaller than we thought #
This one is pretty evident I think. Here’s really simply why I think the odds are close to none. People talk about rocky planets, atmosphere, water, and tons of criteria required for life. I’ve got a really simple one: the lifespan of stars is really short and advanced life doesn’t have the time to develop before the star dies.
A typical star has a 10 billion year lifespan. However the amount of time that is “livable” is shorter than that because the sun will become a red giant and boil our oceans, so the “useful” lifespan is more like 6–8 billion years. Earth is 4.5 billion years old, so we’re 56% into our star’s lifespan at best (75% at worst). We have evidence that life appeared on Earth within the first billion years. However it took 4.5 billion years of random protein combinations and evolution for advanced life (ie. humans) to appear, in perfectly optimal conditions.
So my theory is that even if the conditions are perfect, which we now know they are not for most solar systems, the odds that advanced life develops before the star dies are quite small.
2. We are furniture #
Did you step on an ant this morning? It doesn’t matter. However that ant had a job and things to do. At the scale of the universe that’s what we are: ants. What I mean by that is if there is a civilization out there that is advanced enough for interstellar travel, they probably not only not know we exist, they probably don’t even care.
This sounds really revolting because all the theories revolve around us being the center of the universe, and that our presence should be well known, and that we should be sought out by interested civilizations. However I think that’s just narcissism.
Life on Earth is in a period of transition. From 3.7 billions years ago, up until ~50 years ago, not much happened. Then the industrial revolution happened, we built computers, discovered exoplanets, and landed robots on Mars. The next 1,000 years, which frankly are just a tiny little blip compared to the 160 million years dinosaurs reigned on Earth (and they didn’t even come up with cheeseburgers in all that time), we’ll achieve interstellar travel. If not in the next 1,000 then in the next 10,000 it’s still a blip. If we weren’t in this transitory period I wouldn’t be writing this post.
Essentially, at the very moment, compared to very advanced civilizations (the interstellar traveling kind), we are no different from dinosaurs or even microbes. If I had interstellar travel I wouldn’t stop at the planet that has microbes, I’d stop at the planet that has more, I’d stop at the planet that has time travel.
3. Advanced civilizations are really small #
It’s only 2023 and we have already figured out what prosperity and development does to demographics. The Earth’s population growth will have reversed course before the millennium is out (ie. before year 3000).
My theory is that any extremely advanced civilization will probably have prosperity, health, an extended lifespan, and likely … no offspring. So there is no Star Wars or Star Trek-style galaxy crawling with faster-than-light spaceships. A civilization capable of that will not be counted in the billions, nor the millions, but in the hundreds of thousands at most.
So what about those dyson spheres we’re supposed to see around stars, and space ships flying all around? Well looking through the telescope we already know there are none, and that’s because nobody in the universe needs that; not when you’re 100,000 individuals and you have figured out how to travel between stars before your own star dies (if you don’t figure out interstellar travel before the star dies then you die).