Necrotic Obsession

More to the point, will we ever be E.T.?


One of the besetting sins of today’s intellectual climate is the habit of overspecialization. Too often, people involved in one field get wrapped up in that field’s debates and miss the fact that the universe is not neatly divided into watertight compartments. With this excuse, if any is needed, I want to shift the ground of The Archdruid Report’s discussion a bit and talk about Fermi’s paradox.

First proposed by nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950, this points out that there’s a serious mismatch between our faith in technological progress and the universe our telescopes and satellites reveal to us. Our galaxy is around 13 billion years old, and contains something close to 400 billion stars. There’s a lot of debate around how many of those stars have planets, how many of those planets are capable of supporting life, and what might or might not trigger the evolutionary process that leads to intelligent, tool-using life forms, but most estimates grant that there are probably thousands or millions of inhabited planets out there.

Fermi pointed out that an intelligent species that developed the sort of technology we have today, and kept on progressing, could be expected eventually to work out a way to travel from one star system to another; they would also leave traces that would be detectable from earth. Even if interstellar travel proved to be slow and difficult, a species that developed starflight technology could colonize the entire galaxy in a few tens of millions of years – in other words, in a tiny fraction of the time the galaxy has been around. Given 400 billion chances to evolve a species capable of inventing interstellar travel, and 13 billion years to roll the dice, the chances are dizzyingly high that if it’s possible at all, at least one species would have managed the trick long before we came around, and it’s not much less probable that dozens or hundreds of species could have done it. If that’s the case, Fermi pointed out, where are they? And why haven’t we seen the least trace of their presence anywhere in the night sky?

Fermi’s paradox has been the subject of lively debate for something like half a century now, and most books on the possibility of extraterrestrial life discuss it. There are at least two reasons for that interest. On the one hand, of course, the possibility that we might someday encounter intelligent beings from another world has been a perennial fascination since the beginning of the industrial age – a fascination that has done much to drive the emergence of the folk theologies masquerading as science in today’s UFO movement.

On another level, though, Fermi’s Paradox can be restated in another and far more threatening way. The logic of the paradox depends on the assumption that unlimited technological progress is possible, and it can be turned without too much difficulty into a logical refutation of the assumption. If unlimited technological progress is possible, then there should be clear evidence of technologically advanced species in the cosmos; there is no such evidence; therefore unlimited technological progress is impossible. Crashingly unpopular though this latter idea may be, I suggest that it is correct – and a close examination of the issues involved casts a useful light on the present crisis of industrial civilization.

Let’s start with the obvious. Interstellar flight involves distances on a scale the human mind has never evolved the capacity to grasp. If the earth were the size of the letter “oâ€

Wow. Did you write that, Ren? That reads like a proper academic essay (a strange thing to find on a messageboard)! I'm impressed...

Anyway. The idea that space travel is limited to the extent of a planet's natural resources is an interesting one (and, given a moment's thought, probably true). I suppose that, however, given some amount of space travel, it might be possible for humans (or other intelligent beings) to travel to other closeby planets to mine their natural resources and use these to fund further space travel, when their own planet's has been used up - and so, if the Earth was entirely plundered of oil, etc, then Mars, Jupiter, etc, could be next on the agenda.

On second thoughts, though, fossil fuels could be a problem, since natural resources need to be created from compressed dead biological life (ie from the prehistoric era, hence 'fossil fuels') - unless the planet actually had supported biological life at some point, which (given the fact that our solar system at least is entirely lifeless except for the Earth) they wouldn't. Except Mars perhaps - there might have been some life on Mars at some point - probably plants and bacteria (nothing intelligent - but perhaps the right kind of thing to create coal or oil).

However it might be possible that, in the future, different kinds of fuels will be needed to power cars, spaceships, power stations, etc. And that these fuels will be mineable on other planets.

In fact, the search for new sources of fuel and mineral resources will probably be what draws humans out into space travel, if anything. The optimism of space travel as a reach out to meet aliens or god, or whatever, which peaked in the 60s is pretty much gone (now that the reality of the danger and expense of funding space missions has been made well known - e.g. the Apollo disasters). It will be the pessimism of 'the Earth is fucked - there's nothing left, and we can't live here any more', that will motivate space travel, if at all.

In sci-fi novels and films, the idea of mining ships seems to be a enduring one: the Nostradamus in the Alien film is a mining ship and the Red Dwarf in the British sitcom of the same name is also a mining ship, for example. So the idea that one day we will have to look elsewhere for the natural resources is present in fiction at least - so perhaps it will become a reality?

Note: P.S. I neither believe in aliens, nor am I a member of the tinfoil hat brigade - I merely have read/viewed a lot of sci-fi. In the past. I am much cooler now.

I didn't write it, but thanks.

In anycase, you kinda missed the point. Fermi's paradox says that if it were possible for technology to advance to the point to allow interstellar travel we would see evidence that other species have done it.

Ah well. You may not have written it, but at least you read it properly.

Of course... the aliens may already be around us in disguise! Like the special effects in "Men in Black"! ... who knows? It could be possible!

Alternatively, it may be that the Earth is a shit-hole that the alien species don't want to visit! I wouldn't blame them...

Television and radio signals travel forever. Eventually we would have to see their TV and radio signals. Electromagnetic technology for carrying signals is a natural outgrowth of advanced tool use. Why are we not watching alien TV shows? The only reason I can think of is that the kind of technological development that makes TV and radio possible is fleeting and is tied to a planets primary energy resources. Once they run out, you revert to a pre-technological age. If technology were not transient, the galaxy would be awash in organized signals from electromagnetic communications. Also, the kind of engine technology that would make interstellar travel possible would surely leave traces in space in some spectrum and we would be able to see them. We can't.

I think that maybe they answer their own question when they talked about the distances involved.

It hasn't been that long that we have been listening for radio waves. Does SETI cover enough ground? Could not a civilization passed that point of evolution before we started listening? I think we're over our heads here. It would be arrogant at this point to pronounce ourselves alone. We can't even explore our own oceans .

And we are in a very deep reality tunnel as humans thinking about what should be present in an alien civilization. We only have theories about how the Egyptians built the pyramids, can we expect to be able to extrapolate what alien technology would be and how it would work by using our own history ?

It was Carl Sagon that said that the universe was teeming with life. The scientist that thought that biological life was rare called themselves the un- Sagons. I imagine he considered these questions before saying that publically and writing books about it..


This has got me interested though. I ordered a book about it from Amazon. It's on the way.

On teh contrary, Fermi's paradox doesn't assume we're alone, it assumes we're not and asks the question, "if we are not and infinite technological progress is possible, why then do we not see evidence of this in the sky?" It seems impossible given the number of stars in the galaxy that the universe is not teaming with life and that many species must have evolved the abilityo to use tools both before us and right now yet we seen not one trace of organized electromagnetic signals in teh sky besides our own. We see not one signal of propulsion that doesn't seem to eminate from anything other than a natural stellar object. Given this reality, what Fermi's paradox says is not that we are alone, but that technological advancement has boundaries and that our faith in technology always being able to advance may be ill placed. there may be limits to what technology can accomplish. What this particular article posits is that those limits may be the result of the "most limiting resource." In our case, fossil fuels. What the author suggests is that a plantes endowment of primary energy sources at the time of technological advancement may set teh ultimate limit on how far that technology can take a species.

I think we can get past needing fossil fuels and that others could have their industrial revolution fuel sources whatever that may have been. We just lack the will. We are lazy and complacent and our politics are feel good and short sighted. The leaders of earthlings only spend money on things that please some voting block and gets them elected. We could have already moved on to other sources.

I think the liberal leaders should tie engery into evironmentalism and the conservatives should tie it into national security and we should go about doing it. Both may be happening now hopefully not too late.

There is an abundence of energy, we just lack the ability to harness it. Solar energy for example. The problem isn't the source, it's our primitive panels.

I'm an eternal optimist , I can't help it. I think the only limits of technology are the laws of physics and and don't think we understand them well enough to start setting outer limits of advancement.

based up my thoughts last night, how do we even know that by the time intelligent life had began on our planet, that planets had even fisished forming further out? and by that assumption how do we know that they became intellingent, and started broadcasting radio transmitions at the same point we did. at the time im making this post a civilization could have just made its very first radio transmition, and its barely escaped its neighboring planet by now. every possible civilization would develop at different rates, and who knows ho long it may take before they become industrialized? also factoring distance from one solar system to the next and one galaxy to the nest even if someone else out there started becoming industrialized at teh same point we did, the tranmitions may only be halfway or even one quarter of the way to reaching the other.

Because we are in the fourth generation of stellar formation. If it was possible, it likely would have happened already.

please cite your sources. i do not know what the stages of stellar formation are, and would educate myself on it.

Stars form, explode, form again, explode and so on. Based on the age of the universe and the average life cycle of a star this has happened about four times. Fermi's paradox does not claim that we are alone or that other advanced civilizations don't exist, when it gets to it's basics it says that sufficient resources do not exist and upper limits to technology do exist such that interstellar travel is not possible because if it was some other species would have done it by now.

most of the world is religious... how would the truth if we found evidence of extraterrestrial life play in modern society? we cant get past Jihads... i vote that we may have already found some circumstantial evidence but mass population couldnt handle the truth...

There's also a question of whether it's possible since the vast, vast, vast majority of this research is civilian and any evidence would be found by more people than just one. 30,000 years ago it wasn't possible to keep the moon a secret.

BAH! the shit isnt civilain run! and even the ones that are are govnment funded. thats fucking us over. if the private sector were to have a company that started mining asteroids and found some rare metal not found on earth the space trade would boom.