Fermi's Paradox: A New POtential Solution
During World War II, the United States invested in a research and development project,
which they dubbed “Manhattan Project”. For this purpose, they founded a laboratory,
the Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was a short distance northwest of Santa Fe,
New Mexico, in the southwestern United States. The laboratory was founded during World War
II as a secret, centralized facility to coordinate the scientific research of the Manhattan Project.
The main purpose of the Manhattan Project was to develop the first nuclear weapons.
General Leslie Groves wanted a central laboratory at an isolated location
for safety, and to keep the scientists away from the populace.
During the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos hosted thousands of employees,
including many Nobel Prize-winning scientists. The location was a total secret.
Its only mailing address was a post office box, number 1663, in Santa Fe.
Though its contract with the University of California was initially intended to be temporary,
the relationship was maintained long after the war.
And it was in the summer of 1950, at Los Alamos Laboratory, in New Mexico,
right after WW II, that scientist Enrico Fermi and his co-workers
Konopinski, Teller and York had a casual conversation about UFOs,
that was destined to become one of the most famous conversations in the history of science.
Follow me in this video to get to know more about Fermi's Paradox and his possible solutions!
In one version of the conversation, Fermi, Teller,
Konopinski and York were having casual chatting during lunchtime.
The men were discussing a spate of recent UFO reports while walking to lunch. Konopinski
remembered mentioning a magazine cartoon which showed aliens stealing New York
City trash cans] and as he wrote years later, "More amusing was Fermi's comment,
that it was a very reasonable theory since it accounted for two separate phenomena."
Teller remembered Fermi asking him, "Edward, what do you think? How probable is it that within the
next ten years we shall have clear evidence of a material object moving faster than light?" Teller
said, "10–6" (one in a million). Fermi said, "This is much too low. The probability is more like
ten per cent" (which Teller wrote in 1984 was "the well-known figure for a Fermi miracle").
At lunch, Fermi suddenly exclaimed, "Where are they?" (Teller's remembrance),
or "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?" (York's remembrance), or "But where
is everybody?" (Konopinski's remembrance). Teller wrote, "The result of his question
was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi's question coming from the
clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about
extraterrestrial life." York wrote, "Somehow . . . we all knew he meant extra-terrestrials."
However, Emil Konopinski was not emphatic that he immediately knew Fermi was referring to possible
aliens, merely writing, "It was his way of putting it that drew laughs from us."
Fermi died of cancer in 1954. However, in letters to the three surviving men decades later in 1984,
Dr Eric Jones of Los Alamos was able to partially put the original conversation back together.
He informed each of the men that he wished to include a reasonably accurate version
or composite in the written proceedings he was putting together for a previously-held conference
entitled "Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience."
Nowadays, a bunch of people don't know the conversation's details,
but I'm pretty sure that you have already heard Fermi's question at least once in your life.
Where is everybody? Are we alone in the universe? Will we ever find someone to share our existence?
Or are we just poor livings floating alone in the universe around a common star?
The fact is that, when it comes to answering these questions, one may get the creeps.
Think about it. There are only two chances:
1) we are alone; 2) we are not alone. Can you tell which is the scariest one?
I mean, the second is scary because if we are not alone, then somewhere in the universe there exist
another form of life that, while we are minding our own stuff, it's minding his own stuff.
I mean, don't you think it's weird to imagine that someone else, maybe a thousand light-years
away from us, on another planet similar to Earth, could possibly be making the laundry at this very
moment? And if it is so, are they looking for us? Are they trying to communicate with us?
And why is it that we cannot receive their messages? Maybe we “spoke different languages”,
maybe they are intentionally avoiding us. And if they are avoiding us, why?
All of this is scary. But, what if we are alone?
I think it would be much scarier. I mean, if we are alone, does it mean
we are special, in some ways? Or it's just we are random livings,
created by a casual perturbation of the laws of nature?
Isn't it weird? Either we are alone, or not,
the Fermi Paradox has the beauty of the weird scary questions that we are not ready to answer.
In fact, after 70 years, it is still a matter of debate. Why?
Well, the fact is that there are an estimated 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way
and much more in the entire observable universe.
Even if intelligent life occurs on only a small, minuscule percentage of planets
around these stars, there might still be a huge number of extant civilizations!
This, of course, assume the mediocrity principle, by which Earth is not a special planet,
but a very typical one, a pretty common one! So why is intelligent life a rarity?
In the years, there were advanced some solutions, for example, 1) extraterrestrial life is rare, or
non-existent.; 2) Extraterrestrial intelligence is rare or non-existent; 3) Intelligent alien species
haven't developed advanced technologies; 4) The nature of intelligent life is to destroy itself
(this would implicate that we are going to destroy ourselves, too!).
Anyway, this video wasn't made to get too much into the Fermi Paradox.
We are just going to discuss one of the latest possible solutions.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE Fermi Paradox, you can
WATCH OUR PREVIOUS VIDEO ABOUT FERMI PARADOX ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p456W1e8Tow )
As we were saying, we want to discuss one of the solutions
that came up to explain the Fermi Paradox. A few months ago an interesting paper came out
that essentially used statistical analysis to estimate the number of potential civilizations
out there in the galaxy but did so using several major assumptions. In fact, the only thing one can
do when it comes to trying to give an answer to the unsolved Fermi Paradox is to make assumptions.
The biggest assumption actually was something that might be very helpful:
All civilizations have a tendency to eventually self-destruct or self-annihilate. I know,
here we go...another creepy thing! It could be because of some sort
of a dramatic climatic change, because of some sort of a dramatic cataclysmic event that destroys
the planet, or because the civilization reaches the point where it basically destroys itself (as
someone has already theorized, the advances in technology could lead to our destruction!
Also, some sort of crazy artificial intelligence for some unknown reason could end life as we know
it on Earth!), but yes. The assumption is that we will annihilate ourselves.
In other words, the main premise here is that all civilizations have the same end.
We just don’t really know when and how long it takes!
Based on this premise of self-annihilation the scientists tried to calculate
how many possibilities we have for having civilizations out there right now.
Also, they tried to calculate when the best time was for civilizations to exist in the galaxy,
and where exactly we would be most likely to find more civilizations.
Some other assumptions that had to be made in this study include, of course,
the idea of the prevalence of Earth-like planets around sun-like stars, in this case, G-type stars.
Another thing we could ask ourselves is what are the chances for a civilization to be caught
by a sort of really cataclysmic and potentially deadly events such as supernova happening nearby.
Also, a question to be answered is the probability and also the time required
for civilization to develop just enough to be able to produce radio emissions
and communication (in fact, we are able to detect only these type of signals. Every
other type of signal would pass undetected! because we are just not able to detect them!)
But there had to be a numerical value for the tendency of all civilizations to eventually
destroy themselves even if the conditions are absolutely perfect, and so this is kind of similar
to the concept we have here on the planet in regards to empires: all empires eventually fall.
This sentence pretty much sums up these assumptions
Now, because of all of these assumptions, this is still a very hypothetical approach.
But scientists found that the most likely place to find the most civilizations
even right now is actually somewhere in between planet earth or between
the solar system and the centre of the galaxy. That region, about 13.000 light-years away from
the centre, has the highest probability of having the most Earth-like planets with G-type stars
(according to these scientists) but possibly not currently.
Scientists believe that this was very likely the case about 5 billion years ago!
As you can see, we are not so lucky. In other words, 8 billion years after
the creation of the universe, or possibly about a few hundred million years before earth
and the sun were created: that’s when that particular region in between earth and the centre
had the highest number of galactic civilizations capable of interstellar communication (and
possibly even knew of each other’s existence!), but with the universe now being 5 billion years
older and with us being on the outskirts of the galaxy that’s when the chance of finding
another civilization becomes much much lower. According to the scientists here we’re basically
like a frontier civilization and we also sort of arrived at the party kind of...LATE!
In other words, a lot of civilizations that might have existed have long perished with the
highest numbers still being clustered around the same area (around 13 000 light-years away
from the centre or about 12 000 light-years away toward the centre) toward this region.
It is about 12 000 lightyears away from us, and it will be almost impossible for
either one of the civilizations to know we exist or for us to know they still exist,
and also if they do exist they’re probably just really young, or might not even exist yet.
So in other words even though the chance for their existence is higher in the middle of the galaxy,
some of them might not have advanced enough to be able to communicate with us.
We can conclude this discussion by saying that maybe, at the party of the universe, where a bunch
of alien civilizations were invited, we weren't. Maybe our civilization is just too young,
and we cannot attend the party. And so are other civilizations
currently living in our universe! We are home with our parents watching
Peppa Pig, while our bigger brothers, that joined the first Woodstock, already died!
Maybe there will be time for us to give a huge galactic party someday (when we
will be adults!), but it will take a little. We just have to patiently wait and enjoy the ride,
but we mustn't t forget to start dreaming and preparing for our Tomorrowland!