Related papers: The Sustainability Solution to the Fermi Paradox
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…
Temporal explanations to the Fermi paradox state that the vast scale of the galaxy diminishes the chances of establishing contact with an extraterrestrial technological civilization (ETC) within a certain time window. This argument is…
The Zoo solution to Fermi's Paradox proposes that extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) have agreed to not contact the Earth. The strength of this solution depends on the ability for ETIs to come to agreement, and establish/police treaties…
Whether we are alone in the universe is one of the greatest mysteries facing humankind. Given the >100 billion stars in our galaxy, many have argued that it is statistically unlikely that life, including intelligent life, has not emerged…
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…
This paper proposes a long term scheme for robotic exploration of the galaxy,and then considers the implications in terms of the `Fermi paradox' and our search for ETI. We discuss the parameter space of the `galactic ecology' of…
We review Fermi's paradox (or the "Great Silence" problem), not only arguably the oldest and crucial problem for the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI), but also a conundrum of profound scientific, philosophical and cultural…
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.…
I introduce the Fermi Paradox and some of its solutions. Then I present my own solution which includes two proposals called the Subanthropic Principle and the Undetectability Conjecture. After discussing some consequences of this solution,…
An expanding civilization could rapidly spread through the galaxy, so the absence of extraterrestrial settlement in the solar system implies that such expansionist civilizations do not exist. This argument, often referred to as the Fermi…
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…
In this paper we consider the extent to which a lack of observations from SETI may be used to quantify the Fermi paradox. Building on previous research, we construct a geometrical model to compute the probability of at least one detection…
In this paper we consider the Fermi's paradox (FP) and propose a possible resolution in the context of super-advanced alien civilizations. In this sense it can be regarded as to be the weak Fermi paradox (WFP). By assuming that…
With an evolutionary approach, the basis of morality can be explained as adaptations to problems of cooperation. With 'evolution' taken in a broad sense, AIs that satisfy the conditions for evolution to apply will be subject to the same…
One of the beneficial outcomes of searching for life in the Universe is that it grants greater awareness of our own problems here on Earth. Lack of contact with alien beings to date might actually comprise a null "signal" pointing humankind…
Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…
I shall present three arguments for the proposition that intelligent life is very rare in the universe. First, I shall summarize the consensus opinion of the founders of the Modern Synthesis (Simpson, Dobzhanski, and Mayr) that the…
The Great Filter hypothesis is an extension of the Fermi Paradox: "If life is so common in the universe, why don't we see it?" The Great Filter theory posits there are multiple obstacles or filters life must pass through which ultimately…
We explore Fermi's Paradox via a system of differential equations and using simulations of dispersal and interactions between competing interplanetary civilizations. To quantify the resources and potentials of these worlds, three different…
The Fermi paradox highlights the dichotomy between the lack of physical contact with other civilizations and the expectation that technological civilizations are assumed likely to evolve in many locations in the Milky Way galaxy, given the…