This video reflects my unscientific gut feeling on the Fermi Paradox, which is that because of the vastness of time and that when we say “intelligent life,” we actually mean technological life, it...
This video reflects my unscientific gut feeling on the Fermi Paradox, which is that because of the vastness of time and that when we say “intelligent life,” we actually mean technological life, it is not much of a paradox.
While there are likely many “earths” in our galaxy, we could not have remotely detected life, even theoretically, on our planet prior to around 100 years ago when we began broadcasting radio waves into space. This is an insignificant amount of time, and the earth was teeming with life for hundreds of millions of years before that.
So in a universe aged at ~14.5 billion years, which will have stars burning for trillions of years, it took earth ~4.5 billions years to create technological life. We showed up early to the party.
We already passed our major Great Filters, we have moved to technological intelligence really quickly, and we managed to actually do it, when compared to many much longer lived intelligent species on our own planet. Think about all of the life forms that have evolved, gone extinct, and even not gone extinct for millions of years.. and we just got super lucky due to genetics, environment, and maybe diet. We are the only species to have evolved to use true technology from nearly countless species on earth.
I think that technological life is really rare, and the universe is very young. I believe that we are amongst some of the first technological species in the observable universe, and possibly the first in our galactic supercluster.
This is all my supposition, but I am posting this video because Isaac Arthur does an excellent job of supporting my current beliefs on the Fermi Paradox, and our extremely unique place in the universe. I hope that you watch the video and share your thoughts on the topic.
Edit: I would like add a very interesting addendum. We are on the verge of being able to detect non-technological life to a ~95% certainty once we build the true Hubble replacement, LUVOIR.. What I believe they mean, is that once this telescope does its survey, we will know whether or not non-technological life exists outside of earth, with a ~95% certainty. This giant spacebased telescope will be able to detect chemicals in the atmospheres of exoplanets which we only know to be created by life. Here is an interview with the chair of the technological definition committee for the LUVOIR project.
This video reflects my unscientific gut feeling on the Fermi Paradox, which is that because of the vastness of time and that when we say “intelligent life,” we actually mean technological life, it is not much of a paradox.
While there are likely many “earths” in our galaxy, we could not have remotely detected life, even theoretically, on our planet prior to around 100 years ago when we began broadcasting radio waves into space. This is an insignificant amount of time, and the earth was teeming with life for hundreds of millions of years before that.
So in a universe aged at ~14.5 billion years, which will have stars burning for trillions of years, it took earth ~4.5 billions years to create technological life. We showed up early to the party.
We already passed our major Great Filters, we have moved to technological intelligence really quickly, and we managed to actually do it, when compared to many much longer lived intelligent species on our own planet. Think about all of the life forms that have evolved, gone extinct, and even not gone extinct for millions of years.. and we just got super lucky due to genetics, environment, and maybe diet. We are the only species to have evolved to use true technology from nearly countless species on earth.
I think that technological life is really rare, and the universe is very young. I believe that we are amongst some of the first technological species in the observable universe, and possibly the first in our galactic supercluster.
This is all my supposition, but I am posting this video because Isaac Arthur does an excellent job of supporting my current beliefs on the Fermi Paradox, and our extremely unique place in the universe. I hope that you watch the video and share your thoughts on the topic.
Edit: I would like add a very interesting addendum. We are on the verge of being able to detect non-technological life to a ~95% certainty once we build the true Hubble replacement, LUVOIR.. What I believe they mean, is that once this telescope does its survey, we will know whether or not non-technological life exists outside of earth, with a ~95% certainty. This giant spacebased telescope will be able to detect chemicals in the atmospheres of exoplanets which we only know to be created by life. Here is an interview with the chair of the technological definition committee for the LUVOIR project.