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Two opposing tendencies paradoxically coexist in terrestrial consciousness -- the insistent quest for intelligent signals from other civilizations and the persistent aversion to any attempts to transmit such signals from Earth toward…
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…
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has thus far failed to provide a convincing detection of intelligent life. In the wake of this null signal, many "contact pessimistic" hypotheses have been formulated, the most famous of…
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…
It is unclear how frequently life and intelligence arise on planets. I consider a Bayesian prior for the probability P(ETI) that intelligence evolves at a suitable site, with weight distributed evenly over ln(1 - ln P(ETI)). This log log…
The 1950 lunch-table remark by Enrico Fermi `Where is everybody' has started intensive scientific and philosophical discussions about what we call nowadays the `Fermi paradox': If there had been ever a single advanced civilization in the…
The possibility that extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) could be hostile to humanity has been raised as a reason to avoid even trying to contact ETIs. However, there is a distinct shortage of analytical discussion about the risks of an…
Motivated by recent developments impacting our view of Fermi's paradox (absence of extraterrestrials and their manifestations from our past light cone), we suggest a reassessment of the problem itself, as well as of strategies employed by…
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific endeavor which struggles with unique issues -- a strong indeterminacy in what data to look for and when to do so. This has led to attempts at finding both fundamental…
What is the chance we start a conversation with another civilization like our own? Our technological society produced signals that could be received by other extraterrestrial civilizations, within a sphere around us with a radius of $\sim…
Deliberate and unintentional radio transmissions from Earth propagate into space. These transmissions could be detected by extraterrestrial watchers over interstellar distances. Here, we analyze the harms and benefits of deliberate and…
We are at a stage in our evolution where we do not yet know if we will ever communicate with intelligent beings that have evolved on other planets, yet we are intelligent and curious enough to wonder about this. We find ourselves wondering…
For over 50 years, astronomers have searched the skies for evidence of electromagnetic signals from extraterrestrial civilizations that have reached or surpassed our level of technological development. Although often overlooked or given as…
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…
We propose a search for sources of directed energy systems such as those now becoming technologically feasible on Earth. Recent advances in our own abilities allow us to foresee our own capability that will radically change our ability to…
As our ability to undertake more powerful Searches for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) grows, so does interest in the more controversial endeavour of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). METI proponents point to the SETI…
It has been argued that self-replicating robotic probes could spread to all stars of our galaxy within a timespan that is tiny on cosmological scales, even if they travel well below the speed of light. The apparent absence of such von…
Throughout the entire history of terrestrial civilization, only four projects involving transmitting of interstellar radio messages (IRMs) have yet been fully developed and realized. Nevertheless, we should understand a simple thing -- if…
For more than 60 years, the predominant SETI search paradigm has entailed the observation of stars in an effort to detect alien electromagnetic signals that deliberately target Earth. However, this strategy is fraught with challenges when…
This paper suggests that a universal solution to the Fermi paradox exists and can be derived directly from the definition of life and/or intelligence, therefore eliminating the need for any questionable assumptions and even for the…