Related papers: Contact Inequality -- First Contact Will Likely Be…
We use a statistical model to investigate the detectability (defined by the requirement that they are in causal contact with us) of communicating civilizations within a volume of the universe surrounding our location. If the civilizations…
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…
The Drake Equation has proven fertile ground for speculation about the abundance, or lack thereof, of communicating extraterrestrial intelligences (CETIs) for decades. It has been augmented by subsequent authors to include random variables…
The fermi paradox uses an appeal to the mediocrity principle to make it seem counter-intuitive that humanity has not been contacted by extraterrestrial intelligence. A numerical, statistical analysis was conducted to determine whether this…
A new solution to the Fermi Paradox is presented: probes or visits from putative alien civilizations have a very low probability until a civilization reaches a certain age (called the Contact Era) after the onset of radio communications. If…
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…
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…
Life emerged on the Earth within the first quintile of its habitable window, but a technological civilization did not blossom until its last. Efforts to infer the rate of abiogenesis, based on its early emergence, are frustrated by the…
We estimate the relative likelihood of success in the searches for primitive versus intelligent life on other planets. Taking into account the larger search volume for detectable artificial electromagnetic signals, we conclude that both…
In this work we address the problem of estimating the probabilities of causal contacts between civilisations in the Galaxy. We make no assumptions regarding the origin and evolution of intelligent life. We simply assume a network of…
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…
Earth-like planets are expected to provide the greatest opportunity for the detection of life beyond the Solar System. However our planet cannot be considered a fair sample, especially if intelligent life exists elsewhere. Just as a…
In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), the highly incomplete sampling of the technosignature search space is often considered as a plausible explanation for the persistent lack of detections over six decades of searches. If…
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…
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…
This paper develops a detailed quantitative model which uses the Drake equation and an assumption of an average maximum radio broadcasting distance by an communicative civilization to derive a minimum civilization density for contact…
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…
For billions of years, evolution has been the driving force behind the development of life, including humans. Evolution endowed humans with high intelligence, which allowed us to become one of the most successful species on the planet.…
What would a human hundreds or thousands times more intelligent than the brightest human ever born be like? We must admit we can hardly guess. A human being of such intelligence will be so radically different from us that it can hardly, if…
In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of "age-specific small worlds" using data from a large-scale mobile communication network approximating interaction patterns at societal scale. Rather than asking whether two random individuals…