Episode 144 - The Fermi Paradox
Added 2022-03-15 00:47:34 +0000 UTCComments
Interesting podcast. Be careful about only using the Fermi Paradox in relation to the Kardeshev scale though. The Fermi Pardox is pretty much just pure probabilities based on observable quantities. The Kardeshev Scale is much more subjective and based on Human psychology of what the most important technologies and milestones of a civilization, and tends to be fairly arbitrary. For example, we have the capability of getting anywhere in our solar system and are capable of exploiting pretty much all known power sources on our planet, but can't do much about the weather. These technologies tend to be limited due to extreme cost and possible repercussions of using them. Messing with the weather could have VERY bad side effects. We could currently also be easily missing branches of science that would completely rewrite the Kardeshev Scale or change the mathematics of the Fermi Paradox.
Adam
2022-03-27 19:37:29 +0000 UTCAs for Musk and Bezos - are they interested in space exploration, really? I have my doubts. They are interested in making money, and right now space travel is the new hotness. Selling tickets to other rich people to skim across the atmosphere, wanting to build unregulated industry on other worlds, harvesting unclaimed resources... but the actual exploration seems utterly secondary to them.
Laura Thornley
2022-03-16 19:18:50 +0000 UTCMy theory is that we're so separated by time and space to any other intelligent life in the universe that any evidence of each other just can't be observed. It would be like shouting a message to someone on the other side of the planet who hasn't even been born yet. We 'might' one day get lucky and intercept messages or other evidence that's been travelling through the universe for centuries (or even millions of years), but that window is very narrow and we may simply be currently incapable of recognising it as evidence. Signals might be scrambled or decayed or confused with natural radiation patterns the longer its travelling through space until its unrecognisable next to cosmic background radiation (a bit like how you can write a letter and put it in a bottle, but eventually the bottle will smash and the paper will rot and the ink will fade into nothingness). Or we may be the first 'advanced' civilisation and our calls will be picked up by future civilisations some day. Or we might be ignored by higher forms of life the way we humans ignore messages sent between insects. Or they ignore us by choice because we're seen as lesser or dangerous. Or other civilisations have developed along a different technological path that we're unaware of (an ancient Greek would never even know a radio signal is being broadcast even if looking for a message, as an example). We've just not been looking long enough to draw any real conclusions.
Laura Thornley
2022-03-16 18:34:23 +0000 UTC
