One of the more interesting potential solutions to the Fermi Paradox are the variations and
scenarios of the so-called zoo hypothesis, where aliens exist, but are intentionally
hiding and maintaining silence in order to preserve Earth, and presumably other exoplanets,
as a kind of zoo.
But within the overarching question of the zoo hypothesis, the really important question
is why.
Why go through all the trouble to conceal your existence, just to isolate Earth.
So here are ten spooky zoo hypothesis scenarios.
Number 10.
Interplanetary Contamination
One concern we currently have with our lander missions to places like Mars or Venus is the
potential that microbes could hitch a ride and possibly contaminate with Earth life an
otherwise pristine environment like Mars.
This also works the opposite way, preparations are being discussed for sample return missions
from other planets in the solar system to avoid contaminating earth with alien life,
though the reality of panspermia is that if it were possible, it’s probably already
happened.
But, we’ve learned our lesson with this problem here on earth.
Numerous invasive species not native to where they were brought have colonized many places
on earth, often detrimentally so to the local ecosystem.
Aliens may well know this, and they may have species of their own that they know are so
invasive, or they suspect vice versa, that only sterile distant observation presents
little risk.
And that becomes a rule, where direct contact is never established, only contact from a
distance, even a short one, is all that’s ever feasible due to not only the risk of
cross contamination, but also there may be very severe physiological and environmental
differences between our species and our planet, and another species that evolved on a completely
different planet.
This galactic social distancing practice may lead to a zoo hypothesis scenario where it’s
just better to quietly watch a civilization, announce your presence just as soon as they
come to the conclusion that biological isolation is a smart move when dealing with aliens,
and we get full first contact in every way except in person.
Number 9.
Don’t Contact that which you can’t Understand
Imagine coming across something for which you have no understanding of.
This doesn’t happen often in a modern context, but the general human response to something
like that is to get away from whatever it is, though of course that’s not universal.
Rarely would anyone try to communicate with it, if it was even clear that whatever it
was could communicate.
This may be how it works in the galaxy, alien civilizations are so different from each other
that any attempt at contact is futile, confusing and never works.
But that may not stop aliens from studying each other.
Rather they may spend enormous amounts of time trying to figure out other civilizations
from afar.
This is best done under cover, so as to get a clearer, unadulterated picture of what the
mysterious alien civilization is like.
We might just do this in fact.
If we were to discover a SETI signal, while some would advocate we try to send a signal
back though METI, but most will say hold on, that may not be safe even at great distance,
and advocate we simply stay quiet and study the newly discovered civilization and try
to learn what we can about them.
We might even take measures to conceal ourselves by controlling radio leakage and other signals
from this world just so the aliens never really know we’re here.
In this event, it would be us and our activities constituting a zoo hypothesis scenario.
We know about the aliens, but they never know about us, so far as we know.
Number 8.
We’re Being Watched
One of the more common scenarios associated with the Zoo hypothesis is that of watchers
that passively watch us from cover, without us ever knowing they were there.
This might be done to study us without the cultural contamination of knowing about alien
life in order to help us remain as true to our species as possible during the period
of study.
Or it may not even be that interesting, in that aliens passively watch us just to keep
tabs on what we’re doing, but otherwise have no interest in establishing contact with
us.
They might see us as too primitive for anything but scientific study of our brand of life.
Another possibility is that the zoo hypothesis in this case is merely illusory, and that
the real reason we don’t see the activities of aliens in the galaxy is because they work
on far vaster time scales than we expect them to.
They may visit our star system and check in on our progress every ten thousand years,
or each million years, and while they might be visible for a short time while observing
us, they may otherwise be invisible and we’d never know they were even out there.
Indeed, imagine an alien spacecraft on a survey mission orbiting earth a thousand years ago.
Back then, it would have been just a moving point of light in the sky for a time, perhaps
dim like a satellite passing overhead, that most people wouldn’t have noticed in those
days, and those that did might have considered it some kind of strange meteor and never bothered
to record such an unimpressive sight.
Meanwhile, for all anyone knew, there were aliens landing on earth in uninhabited areas
to study earth’s flora and fauna without revealing themselves to humans on purpose
to avoid cultural contamination, or any kind of conflict.
This is an odd scenario in that it’s impossible to prove or disprove past alien visitations
to earth.
A one off expedition every now and again is highly unlikely to leave any traces in the
geologic record, and without anyone seeing them in the distant past, we wouldn’t be
the wiser leading to a kind of circumstantial zoo hypothesis scenario.
Though I guess if we ever make contact with alien life and we find that they have dinosaurs
in their zoos, then we might have a good clue that someone once paid Earth a visit.
Number 7.
The Slow Reveal
One could easily make the case that if an alien civilization were present in a star
system with a budding civilization developing within it, that a rapid reveal of astonishly
advanced technology could irreparably damage that civilization and radically alter its
development, or even conceivably drive it to extinction accidentally.
This was the case with us before modern times, and indeed may still be the case.
If there were an alien civilization present, but hiding within the solar system, showing
themselves suddenly to us in the past, they would have been incomprehensible, despite
depictions of such contact in science fiction and the fringe pop culture.
Such contact would very likely have been disastrous and damaging, regardless of the intent of
the aliens.
Even today, it would be disastrous.
If an alien civilization revealed its presence, and its vastly superior technology, the first
thing that would happen is widespread shock, or a litany of I told you so’s.
But that’s where it gets problematic, when you have something with superior technology
right in your star system with you, you are no longer in control, so the question becomes,
how do we defend ourselves, whether there is a threat or not?
It’s possible we may not even be able to recognize a threat in this scenario.
That’s an unanswerable and highly speculative question, the answer ranging from deciding
to nuke ourselves to poison this world should they invade to an acceptance of them as our
galactic overlords and trust that they’re telling us the truth, or misleading us for
some other purpose.
The questions in such a scenario would be far reaching, especially if the alien technology
upon discovery were silent.
So it may simply be better to do a slow reveal, and allow glimpses when certain levels of
scientific discovery are made, but keep it only to a hint until there comes a time when
a safe full reveal can finally occur.
Baby steps indeed.
Number 6.
The Ancient Taboo
Taboos are strange things, at least in human culture, and range in all activities from
the etiquette of eating to how to deal with footwear but taboos may not be unique to humanity.
Indeed, some taboos stem from very practical purposes originally.
So assuming that aliens may have taboos as well, it has to be asked that is a prohibition
of first contact a matter of taboo, and that’s the solution to the Fermi Paradox?
This might come about in a scenario where the galaxy is dominated by a very ancient
civilization.
This has been raised within astrobiology, the galaxy is old enough to host civilizations
millions or even a few billion years before we arose.
There may in fact be very long intervals of time that pass between the genesis of civilizations,
meaning that the first civilization in the galaxy may be the one that rules it.
In fact Monte Carlo simulations suggest that this is probably the case, and that intelligence
arising in the galaxy happens only on geologic time scales.
That also means that if such a civilization existed, and no longer does, its taboos may
remain engrained in any other civilizations that they spawned or came in contact with.
Or even a subsequent AI or machine civilization.
This may result in taboo enforcement, meaning that for civilizations at our level, they
remain concealed from, and only when civilizations become enormously advanced enough to challenge
the taboo does first contact occur, assuming the taboo civilization doesn’t reset or
destroy other civilizations before they get to that point.
This may not be that far out there of a proposition.
Beyond taboos, humans hand over traditions and laws and many other things generation
to generation.
We’re simply born into a system that we inherited, at least to some degree.
If we had inherited a taboo against astronomy, for example, we wouldn’t be having this
conversation and we wouldn’t be envisioning what alien life might be like.
Maybe aliens are the same way.
Number 5.
The minimizing Risk Hypothesis
First contact has been envisioned in many different ways in science fiction, from mysterious
to friendly to outright disaster.
But realistically, what might it actually be like?
Well chances are that any civilization we might come into contact with is likely to
be far older and more advanced than we are.
Our own level of technology has been capable of going into space in less than a long human
lifespan.
As a result, any civilization capable of traversing interstellar space is likely to be considerably
further down the road that we are.
As a result, they may know about technological pitfalls such as generalized AI that we are
only scarcely aware of and haven’t yet developed them to their fullest degree.
This and other technologies such as nanotechnology and the gray goo may simply be too dangerous
for an advanced alien civilization to allow to be developed, and thus they may prevent
any civilizations from doing so.
This would lead to a first contact scenario of intervention only, and otherwise silent
monitoring to preserve the element of surprise when intervention must occur.
To what degree this would extend is anyone’s guess, but one solution to the Fermi paradox
here is that there are no other civilizations in the galaxy advanced enough to be detectable,
save for one, the original first civilization to arise that maintains its technological
superiority by setting all other civilizations back when they reach a certain technological
stage, both for its own survival, and perhaps the survival of the downshifted species.
Number 4.
The Preservation Hypothesis
There is something to be said for uniqueness.
With first contact, uniqueness is always likely to suffer as cultural and technological exchange
occurs.
Say we met aliens, and they gave us their science books, which were much more complete
than what we’re working with.
It would change human civilization overnight as those newly revealed areas of science are
put to use.
It works the same with technology, before contact you might have a life expectancy of
less than a century, and then post contact you could expect to live ten thousand years.
If this happens enough times, to enough civilizations in the galaxy, the end result could be a cultural
and technological homogenization of all alien species within it.
This may be undesirable in that it may kill the biological, cultural and technological
diversity of the Milky Way, something alien civilizations may find uninteresting and defeats
the point of existence, which to them may be uniqueness.
We do this ourselves when we try to preserve cultural traditions in danger of going extinct,
if the world had just one culture things would be pretty boring.
This may be how the galaxy works, and that no one ever contacts anyone else and only
observes simply because to do otherwise would make life in the Milky Way uninteresting and
bland.
While that may not seem all that spooky, if you state it another way that all civilizations
are forced, by someone, to remain isolated and unique or else, then the game changes.
Number 3.
The Cultural Unknowns
In addition to spinning scenarios regarding the zoo hypothesis, there is a complicating
factor that cannot be predicted.
This involves alien cultural norms, of which we have absolutely no knowledge that may drive
a zoo hypothesis reasoning.
For example, take cultural xenophobia.
Perhaps aliens don’t contact anyone and conceal themselves because they don’t like
outsiders.
Or religious concerns, take an alien religion that reveres the process of evolution to the
point that they believe in no intervention in that process at all, based on religious
grounds.
And that’s a bit scary, altruistic helpful aliens are one thing, but religious zealots
are not, and as a result by knowing nothing about their beliefs, you can’t really predict
what they will do.
Perhaps they remain quiet and leave other civilizations alone for millions of years,
and then strike the moment they see an omen, say a supernova, and the civilizations they
wipe out go without ever truly knowing the reason why.
Number 2.
There’s No One Out there
One of the most commonly discussed solutions to the Fermi paradox and one that seems more
on the likely end of things is the idea that the great silence is simply because intelligent
alien life is extremely rare.
This makes a lot of practical sense in that intelligent technological life on earth is
rare from a historical context.
It took this planet a huge amount of time to produce us, and it may simply be that the
road to intelligence is very finicky and few exoplanets ever get there, at least this early
in the history of the universe.
But there’s also another option.
That intelligent life is intentionally kept rare by a single civilization and that the
mere act of reaching intelligence results in the hiding civilization striking and snuffing
out biological life when it reaches a certain level of intellect and we simply aren’t
there yet.
Another option is that intelligence is simply fatal, and that anything that reaches a technological
society goes extinct as a result of it, whether through exhausting resources or destroying
their planet.
But, to invoke simulation theory, it’s also possible that there really isn’t anyone
out there, and we are it, perhaps by the design of whomever is running the simulation.
That’s a different take on the zoo hypothesis entirely in that it’s not the aliens running
the zoo, but the simulators, whoever that may be.
Number 1.
The Laboratory Hypothesis
One of the earliest variants of the zoo hypothesis is also one of the most disturbing.
It’s the idea that the zoo facade is so extensive that what we think we observe in
the cosmos may not be the reality and that all of our measurements are simply altered
or otherwise misleading.
In science, this is a bad hypothesis because it fails on falsifiability.
And it fails on practicality in that it would require a very elaborate scheme to make it
work.
But the concept exists nonetheless, and one could make the argument that the fine tuning
problem, that the universe seems to be perfectly tuned for life, might support it.
So if what we see is not the actual reality of the universe at distance, then why would
anyone go through the trouble?
This gets into the laboratory hypothesis, that we are actually in some kind of experiment
being manipulated by undetectable forces that conceal themselves and control what we see.
Highly unlikely, but spooky nonetheless.
But within the zoo hypothesis remains one last spooky possibility, that at some point
someone will not go along with the premise of the hypothesis and reveal their existence
to us, perhaps as a form of dissent against the galactic status quo, and that the discovery
of alien life may be the precipitating event in a greater interstellar war.
Thanks for listening!
I am futurist and science fiction author John Michael Godier currently preparing the scripts
for spooky october.
I’ve been hard at work, and they include some concepts that I’ve never covered before.
It’s gonna be good and be sure to check out my books at your favorite online book
retailer and subscribe to my channels for regular, in-depth explorations into the interesting,
weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in which we live.