Related papers: Intelligent Life in Cosmology
In this work, we explore constraints on the emergence and longevity of technologically intelligent civilizations in our Galaxy, considering the Fermi paradox. We argue that under optimistic assumptions about the probability of life and…
Dennis Sciama argued that the existence of life depended on many quantities, the fundamental constants, so in a random universe life should be highly unlikely. However, without full knowledge of these constants, his argument implies a…
Where is everybody? This phrase distills the foreboding of what has come to be known as the Fermi Paradox - the disquieting idea that, if extraterrestrial life is probable in the Universe, then why have we not encountered it? This conundrum…
An interesting consequence of the modern cosmological paradigm is the spatial infinity of the universe. When coupled with naturalistic understanding of the origin of life and intelligence, which follows the basic tenets of astrobiology, and…
The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be…
I examine some recent findings in cosmology and their potential implications for the emergence of life in the universe. In particular, I discuss the requirements for carbon-based life, anthropic considerations with respect to the nature of…
No present observations suggest a technologically advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) has spread through the galaxy. However, under commonplace assumptions about galactic civilization formation and expansion, this absence of…
Fermi's Paradox is the contradiction between the fact that it would seem to be highly probable that there are other technologically advanced species beyond the Earth, and the fact that there is no generally accepted evidence for their…
Random sampling in high dimensions has successfully been applied to phenomena as diverse as nuclear resonances, neural networks and black hole evaporation. Here we revisit an elegant argument by the British physicist Dennis Sciama, which…
High-energy astrophysical events that cause galaxy-scale extinctions have been proposed as a way to explain or mollify the Fermi Paradox, by making the universe at earlier times more dangerous for evolving life, and reducing its present-day…
The existence of intelligent, interstellar traveling and colonising life is a key assumption behind the Fermi Paradox. Until recently, detecting signs of life elsewhere has been so technically challenging as to seem almost impossible.…
The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the strong likelihood of alien intelligent life emerging (under a wide variety of assumptions) and the absence of any visible evidence for such emergence. We use this intriguing unlikeness to…
One of the most interesting unsolved questions in science today is the question of life on other planets. At the present time it is safe to say that we do not have much of an idea as to whether life is common or exceedingly rare in the…
The Great Filter interpretation of Fermi's great silence asserts that $Npq$ is not a very large number, where $N$ is the number of potentially life-supporting planets in the observable universe, $p$ is the probability that a randomly chosen…
We present a simplified description of expansionistic life in the standard relativistic cosmology. The resulting model is exactly integrable, yielding a simple set of predictive formulas. This allows one to quickly propose new scenarios for…
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
The fact that life has evolved in our universe constrains the laws of physics. The anthropic principle proposes that these constraints are sometimes very tight and can be used to explain in a sense the corresponding laws. Recently a…
The so-called Fermi paradox claims that if technological life existed anywhere else, we would see evidence of its visits to Earth-and since we do not, such life does not exist, or some special explanation is needed. Enrico Fermi, however,…
We discuss the Carter's formula about the mankind evolution probability following the derivation proposed by Barrow and Tipler. We stress the relation between the existence of billions of galaxies and the evolution of at least one…
This study examines the hypothesis that the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), culminating in the emergence of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), could act as a "Great Filter" that is responsible for the scarcity of…