Hey all,
I've been browsing around the web, and i'm sure more than a few of you have hit upon an article about a certain theory called the "Fermi Paradox"
Wiki Link
Summed up? There are no other advanced civilizations... or just flat out life that we can see from out little blueberry of a planet... and we have been looking for quite awhile, with very powerful telescopes.
Fermi was just eating lunch when the question of "Where are all the civilizations of the galaxy?"
was proposed. He said that we are such a young planet compared to the rest of the galaxy. We know this due to the fact that our sun is something like several billion years younger than other suns in the galaxy. Our sun is about 5 billion years old (link), and the supposed oldest star in the galaxy is about 14 billion years old (link), with the average star in our galaxy being around 6.3 billion years old.Thats 1.3 BILLION years on average gap for the average star... 9 billion at most. Billion. Thats a freaking big number (1,000,000,000 years).
Next, we look at our own history. Ever since the first world countries got all industrialized, there has been an exponential boom of technology. Everything from a phone the size of a pinky to an elevator that goes into space, and that's just this lifetime.
So, if we are considered a young star... and there are so many other stars out there... and there isn't a civilization?
Fermi says that with this big boom of technology and a billion years head start, this advanced civilization should have shot out probes to every corner of the galaxy for colonization/exploration. Wouldn't you want to know just whats out there? So if there was a civilization, they would undoubtedly have found us, or we should have heard of them... so why haven't we?The solutions were as follows:
1. They have been here already and are here.
I'm not big on alien conspiracies... theres no evidence for this in my opinion, sorry.
2. They dont care about us.
Kinda interesting. This is valid, they don't care about us and dont wanna talk, and we cant hear them. But.. im sure we would have caught something by now.
3. They were killed off.
Something happened that killed them off. So... like what? Theres an alien race out there, THE GROX!? Probably not, we haven't heard of them either..
Or maybe some sort of event that every civilization seems to hit. No way to really tell... but if
you've watched enough sci-fi like me, you'll know the crazy shit that writers sometimes come up with. Sometimes its scary... because its plausible. Tapping into an alternate demension for energy?? Psh, yeah whatever. Trying to re-create the suns energy? You're crazy. But then again... we did figure out about atomic energy, and are currentley smashing particals together with the Large Hadron Colider (LHC) which creates miniature black holes (Don't worry, they aren't dangerous)As small as they are, we are still doing something that makes goddamn black holes. What does the future hold there..? Did these other civilizations hit the same problem?
Or is it some natural force? Did a sun explode on them? Did a black hole suck em up? Did the planet explode? If there were remains, we probably couldnt see anyting (Space debris and such) since, as far as I know, you can really only see things that are lit up in the sky.
4. They never existed.
The certain climate and science behind creating life is so unique... that they never came to be. Makes sense... the only other planets in our system are only bigass rocks our gigantic gas balls, no life we know of can live there.
And... from what we see... the only planets we have found, which isn't too many really, are mostley all gas giants. So... we are the only unique place that life has exploded in.
So there you have it. Fermis Paradox.
A few other things to consider: Our telescopes cannot see super far, so we still have a lot to explore.
Its kinda freaky to think about... outside of the human race and all of its problems, we are all alone in the galaxy. There's just a lotttt of nothing out there.
Anyways, something for you to ponder...
Yours truly,
-Jake
The milky way, our galaxy. For those of you who live in light polluted areas, you can actually see the inner edge of the milky way in an area thats not very lighted. Such as an island or australia or desert... as well as most all the stars in the sky.
