Related papers: Expanding cosmological civilizations on the back o…
If a subset of advanced civilizations in the universe choose to rapidly expand into unoccupied space, these civilizations would have the opportunity to grow to a cosmological scale over the course of billions of years. If such life also…
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…
Suppose that advanced civilizations, separated by a cosmological distance and time, wish to maximize their access to cosmic resources by rapidly expanding into the universe. How does the presence of one limit the expansionistic ambitions of…
We model the settlement of the galaxy by space-faring civilizations in order to address issues related to the Fermi Paradox. We explore the problem in a way that avoids assumptions about the intent and motivation of any exo-civilization…
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…
If advanced civilizations appear in the universe with an ability and desire to expand, the entire universe can become saturated with life on a short timescale, even if such expanders appear rarely. Our presence in an apparently untouched…
Context. Astrobiological evolution of the Milky Way (or the shape of its "astrobiological landscape") has emerged as one of the key research topics in recent years. In order to build precise, quantitative models of the Galactic…
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…
Current evidence suggests that the cosmological constant is not zero, or that we live in an open universe. We examine the implications for the future under these assumptions, and find that they are striking. If the Universe is cosmological…
Ambitious civilizations that expand for resources at an intergalactic scale could be observable from a cosmological distance, but how likely is one to be visible to us? The question comes down to estimating the appearance rate of such…
The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high probability extraterrestrial civilizations' existence and the lack of contact with such civilizations. In general, solutions to Fermi's paradox come down to either estimation…
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…
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…
Applying a principle of "radical mundanity", this paper examines explanations for the lack of strong evidence for the presence of technology-using extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) in the Galaxy - the Fermi paradox. With this principle,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…