#fermi paradox

[prokopetz]

It's fun watching sociologists try to refute the Fermi paradox because 90% of the time it's like "the idea of Fermi paradox says more about the institutional psychology of the STEM community than it does about the nature of universe because it reveals their unexamined assumptions about the nature of extraterrestrial life, and here's why", then proceeds to unwittingly put the commentor's own unexamined assumptions about the nature of extraterrestrial life on full blast.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The likelihood that other technologically sophisticated societies exist is smaller than previously thought, because basic amenities we take for granted on Earth—continents, oceans, and plate tectonics—are cosmically rare.

[...]

Most geologists will agree with Stern’s and Gerya’s argument that plate tectonics should be included as a criterion for long-term planetary habitability. Earth’s tectonic system allows the planet’s atmosphere and hydrosphere to remain in communication with its interior, in a remarkable, self-perpetuating cycle. Subducted ocean crust—seafloor that slips down into Earth’s interior—carries water back into the mantle, and at shallow depths, this water lowers the melting temperature of mantle rock, giving rise to unusual magmas that create the continental crust—what we surface dwellers live on—which is rich in rare elements, like phosphorus, that are critical to life.  At greater depths, subducted water acts to decrease the viscosity of the mantle, allowing it to churn, or convect, more vigorously—which in turn drives plate motion. When the Earth’s mantle exports heat via convection, it encourages the liquid iron outer core to convect as well, and this generates Earth’s protective magnetic field, which shields the surface environment from harmful cosmic radiation. Without plate tectonics, continents would quickly be eroded to sea level. But tectonic collisions continuously rejuvenate Earth’s topography, providing rivers with more energy to transport nutrient-rich sediments to shallow marine environments. In other words, plate tectonics is entangled with all the phenomena that support life on Earth.

17 July 2024

[psyfis]

some possible explanations for the fermi paradox, according to wikipedia (inspired by this vid)

downloadable as a zine on my etsy!

[apollohour]

* practically impossible to surpass, making life (particularly intelligent life) hard to develop ** way to communicate intention, so all species function under the assumption other species are predatory and a threat to their existence. Either destroying other alien life or just staying silent. *** of the universe means that it's practically impossible to meet other species **** the ability to reliably find life yet. We struggle to correctly identify and image planets and view things in ways which is affected greatly by general relativity, who's to say we (or even they) can pin-point life yet?

<P.S. I probably made a mistake in here because I did this quickly in the middle of the night, please feel free to tag/reply with corrections or just more info! we love space here <3>

[futurebird]

Listen if your kid wants to raise humans, you need to understand they live in large groups. You can’t just plop a few thousand in a habitat and expect them to thrive — most kids get a small solar system or even a galaxy arm. Then your humans will make their little civilizations and wars and cultures it’s such a fascinating hobby! … one planet? well that ought to do. (I guess.)

---

I'm a little worried about the humans the next door neighbor's kid keeps. Maybe I'm just being nosey, but I know that they only set up one planet for them (in an otherwise barren solar system designed to contain them.) I suppose it's easier if you just suppress space development. Saves you the trouble of using radiation zones to keep them contained-

They originally had 3 planets, but two were 2nd hand and their plate tectonics and atmospheres broke before the humans even got established.

From what I hear their civilizations are a little on the brutal side and I can't help but wonder if this kid's stingy set-up is in part to blame. Every human keeper enjoys watching war behaviors natural disaster response, but there is a fine line between observing nature, and putting creatures in a limited environment where suffering and disasters are inevitable.

The whole population is bottlenecked from some long ago event, but the kid says they don't even know what it was!

I remember some of the kits for keeping humans they sold when I was young. We knew a lot less about how they worked back then.

You'd just try to keep several thousand in bio box, and inevitably, if they didn't all kill each other they would find the borders of the box and focus all their energy on escape.

Human intelligence is remarkable for their size. Not saying they can think like we do exactly, but I often wonder if they are conscious like we are. It's possible in some rudimentary way.

[elbiotipo]

Every video about alien civilizations and the Fermi Paradox sooner or later always mention that same stupid "prisoner dilemma" "logical" theory, basically "what if aliens kill other civilizations before becoming a threat!!!1!!1" which, as far as I know, came from a science fiction book (The Killing Star) which got really popular and people started treating as some real thing that makes sense when it falls apart once you think more than five minutes about it. Because civilizations, as we know, are very simple, logical things that operate in binary switches of "kill/don't kill". It's a logical thing, you know? don't you know the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's a logical game, it's just logical to kill your enemies, it's logic, and aliens should be logically trying to exterminate us!

Interesting that this became so widespread, because it seems to reveal a fear on people that advanced civilizations will just strike us from the map. Which has some political subtext too. In Soviet science fiction, alien civilizations were thought to be communist and pacifist, because what other kind of civilization would explore the stars otherwise? Which gave us this awesome meme:

(Usamerican Wojak: Noooo, why are you invading, colonizing and extermining us?

Evil Aliens: Haha, we are created in your image and likeness, we are a reflection of your system, we are your fears of yourself.

Soviet Chad: Wait, so you explore space, build communism and you don't colonize or exterminate anything?

Communist Aliens: Naturally.)

It's just kinda funny that in Soviet science fiction, a major theme was that advanced civilizations will just abandon war and explore things and such, while in Usamerican science fiction it's sometimes even given as a logical development that aliens would just want to exterminate everyone, so much that you find it in otherwise coherent discussions of possible alien civilizations.

[gallowglassvt]

Today, I learned about the dark forest hypothesis. Basically, it's the idea that the reason we haven't encountered intelligent alien life yet is because they're deliberately hiding out of fear that the wrong civilisation might find them.

Not only does this reinforce the whole "humans are space orcs" idea with more mortar than a brick shithouse, it's also making me think that we miiiiight wanna shut the fuck up? Like, before we get met by a prospective intergalactic Columbus?

[plasticfreckles]

late night thought about uncanney valley, extraterrestrial life (mostly mass effect aliens), monsterfuckery and all that

brought to you by the fermi paradox hypothesis that alien life may be so immensely different from human life that we'd never find each other bc we're looking for Humanoid Signs and the Inhabitants of HIP-413b are looking for HIP-413b'ian Signs

i watch star trek and i play mass effect and consume monster pornography and im like

they kinda sexy

but lets be real if I opened the door to go to work one day and Garrus Vakarian stood in front of me

best case, uncanney valley hits like bruh your cosplay so good, so screen accurate it actually freaks me out

worst case, i shit myself and vomit on the spot or just straight up die bc I'd be terrified

like sort of, the appeal is that they're inhuman, yeah, but also that they're not real?

bc im trying to imagine a creature that's easily taller than my room height, covered in some sort of biological, scale shield against radioactivity with its waist the circumference of my forearm and extremities the dimensions of... idk sth tall and skinny you get the idea

he could tell me there's no shepard without vakarian all he wants i will not survive that encounter and not even bc he'd kill me or I'd kill myself bc honestly

i dont think the human mind is equipped for that. The average human mind can barely comprehend that the number of ESTIMATED stars in the OBSERVABLE universe is this number: 10^24. TO THE POWER OF TWENTY-FOUR. I DON'T EVEN KNOW 24 PEOPLe. Like for all that math is what makes up the universe [or so I've been told. i have dysalculia, i wouldn't actually know] if Just Some Guy can't process that how tf would JSG process The Very Model Of A Scientist Salarian?*

We all played Andromeda and watched Jaal stalk down those stairs and went 🥵 but if this mountain of skin easily thrice my mass came stalking down stairs towards me?? REALISTICALLY??? Evfra could call off his snipers and get the cleanup crew bc i died right there and evacuated every last of my orifices thankyouu.**

[angara [AND KETT HOLY SHIT] only get worse when u think about their origins but since I'm passed on before anyone even speaks it's not conducive to my point so im ignoring it]

also i think salarians would be worse bc they look rather close to what ThE gReEn MaRsMeN are depicted as

quarians and asari are just larping and cosplaying probably

but you know what would absolutely yeet me into the next life? NA'VI bc they hit alienism and uncanney valley at the same time and now translate that into conceivable carbon-based intelligent life? absolutely not goodnight

I once spent 10 bucks on an exclusive character in a Crusty Dating Sim in which you met that character's alien creators and MC straight up vomited and back then I laughed but honestly? probably same

-

*dont actually tell me i dont wanna hear it

** dont talk to me about societal shift or whatever from having grown up with aliens and landing on an alien planet in an alien galaxy for human expansion thats not what this is about. its about that, take em outta mass effect and plop em in front of your door you're dead on scene

[name-brand-nessie]

My REAL Roman Empire is the Fermi paradox

[heartplaces]

in regards to fermi’s paradox, by me.

i’ve never written a poem so fast, but once i started i couldn’t stop. it has everything to do with, well… everything.

the fermi paradox is about the existence of extraterrestrial life, and why we haven’t found it yet. the five hypotheses mentioned are just a drop in the bucket of everything we’ve come up with. i’ve always loved that, and i love what they say about humanity as a whole— the good, the bad, the ugly. it teaches us a lot about us.

this poem is tough. it comes from the gut more than the heart, but the love is still there. in these unstable and uncertain times, i hope you all know it’s with you, too.

[huggingtentacles]

A common argument as to why aliens aren't making their presence formally known to humans is that "To them we are like ants, they wouldn't care about us" to which I call bullshit. Genuinely.

There are hundreds of people who care about ants a lot. Who spend hours and hours studying them, doing experiments and shit. Not just ants, there is always a guy obsessing over some bacteria in his glass vessels and shit, of course aliens would care about us. There would be at least one guy obsessing over humans and studying them extensively because he has Alien ADHD or something.

[rickmctumbleface]

On alien star maps that show our part of the Milky Way, there's an image of a mushroom cloud and it says "Here there be assholes."

[unsuresoul]

What if we are alone in this universe? Not because there is no other life out there, but because all other life was dead by the time we came along. How do you think that would affect humanity? Would we try and learn from the mistakes of long dead civilizations, or would we drive ourselves mad searching for someone or something that is no longer there?

[bethanythebogwitch]

Every time I see or hear people discussing the Fermi paradox they talk about stuff like the great filter, aliens hiding from us, humans being the first intelligent life, etc, but I almost never hear what I think is the simplest and most probable solution. That the aliens are really far away from us because the universe is fucking huge

[onespacedown]

Honestly, the speed of light, as a concept, sounds amazingly like a bit of pseudoscience from a high-concept hard sci-fi novel trying way too hard to come up with an interesting but wildly implausible solution to the Fermi paradox. Yeah, so it turns out that space and time are secretly the same thing, and you can't get anywhere interesting within your lifetime because if you go too fast through space, your speed through time starts offsetting that. Also, infinite speed through time corresponds to a finite speed through space, so you can't ever go faster than that. Also, light goes that speed, so it exists outside of time, and is everywhere and everywhen it will ever be at once. But it can also slow down. That's a thing it can do.

It would be called Snail Space, and it would be an international bestseller, despite the fact that the premise makes no scientific sense.

[amatobrooklyn]

final sketch. now a few days of coloring. I played that game all night yesterday.. an indescribable feeling of existential dread. All my life, touching on the topic of space, I feel incredible fear. void, what a beautiful word. Thinking about the Fermi Paradox and the Great Cosmic Filter, I ask only one question, how? although it might be more correct to say who? maybe one day the great void will reach us too