Stranger Things: The Rise and Fall of UFOs and Life on the Moon(bostonreview.net)
bostonreview.net
Stranger Things: The Rise and Fall of UFOs and Life on the Moon
http://bostonreview.net/literature-culture/john-crowley-stranger-things-rise-and-fall-ufos-and-life-moon
6 comments
There's several proposed, common sense resolutions to the paradox that still allow for plenty of ET life.
For example, regarding signals and probes, it may simply be that our time scale does not overlap with ET's. The universe is 1e10 years old but our civilization is only around 2e3. Perhaps the last signal aimed our way passed us millions of years ago and the next won't be for millions more. Similarly for probes coming here: if one landed a few million years ago, it would probably be buried under miles of rock by now. Perhaps we've seen one in our time and dismissed it as airliner lights.
Another explanation is the math is simply too hard to cross the galaxy. It would take tens or hundreds of thousands of years just to get to nearby stars, most of the industrial output of a planet, and you have to be really sure where you're going because by the time you get there, the civilization might be long gone.
ET might simply be stuck like we are.
For example, regarding signals and probes, it may simply be that our time scale does not overlap with ET's. The universe is 1e10 years old but our civilization is only around 2e3. Perhaps the last signal aimed our way passed us millions of years ago and the next won't be for millions more. Similarly for probes coming here: if one landed a few million years ago, it would probably be buried under miles of rock by now. Perhaps we've seen one in our time and dismissed it as airliner lights.
Another explanation is the math is simply too hard to cross the galaxy. It would take tens or hundreds of thousands of years just to get to nearby stars, most of the industrial output of a planet, and you have to be really sure where you're going because by the time you get there, the civilization might be long gone.
ET might simply be stuck like we are.
The problem with that is it only takes one civilization that develops a basic self replicating probe to fill the entire galaxy with robotic life.
The fact that this hasn't happened means that either intelligent technological life is extremely rare or there is a great filter that prevents a civilization from ever reaching that point in the first place.
We do not have any where near the amount of information to answer the question if are we first, rare or screwed.
But the more time passes the more likely it is the latter.
The fact that this hasn't happened means that either intelligent technological life is extremely rare or there is a great filter that prevents a civilization from ever reaching that point in the first place.
We do not have any where near the amount of information to answer the question if are we first, rare or screwed.
But the more time passes the more likely it is the latter.
There are many more possibilities.
Another is that we are late. The universe has already been bum rushed by von Neumann probes and other such things. This happened a billion years ago. The cowboy era of the cosmos is now over.
We are now in an era when mature highly advanced beings have some system of governance in place. This includes a kind of prime directive for simpler newcomers to protect them from premature contamination.
We don't see these beings because our solar system is a nature preserve (due to our biosphere being in it), and their surveillance takes such advanced unobtrusive forms that it is undetectable to us.
Radio silence in this scenario could be explained by distance, the use of cellular and complex modulations over inefficient broadcasting, or the discovery of something much better than radio that renders it obsolete.
Perhaps intentional high amplitude signals toward naive worlds are illegal, as is detectable visitation.
The only bugaboo with this speculation is where the megastructures are. Maybe highly advanced means so miniaturized and efficient that such big iron is pointless. The benevolent space brothers are immortal quantum computer brains at liquid helium temperature that consume a few watts of power, and space flight is done using low energy slow methods because when you are immortal who cares how long it takes.
I'll call this one the wise old universe hypothesis.
Another is that we are late. The universe has already been bum rushed by von Neumann probes and other such things. This happened a billion years ago. The cowboy era of the cosmos is now over.
We are now in an era when mature highly advanced beings have some system of governance in place. This includes a kind of prime directive for simpler newcomers to protect them from premature contamination.
We don't see these beings because our solar system is a nature preserve (due to our biosphere being in it), and their surveillance takes such advanced unobtrusive forms that it is undetectable to us.
Radio silence in this scenario could be explained by distance, the use of cellular and complex modulations over inefficient broadcasting, or the discovery of something much better than radio that renders it obsolete.
Perhaps intentional high amplitude signals toward naive worlds are illegal, as is detectable visitation.
The only bugaboo with this speculation is where the megastructures are. Maybe highly advanced means so miniaturized and efficient that such big iron is pointless. The benevolent space brothers are immortal quantum computer brains at liquid helium temperature that consume a few watts of power, and space flight is done using low energy slow methods because when you are immortal who cares how long it takes.
I'll call this one the wise old universe hypothesis.
I just want to add that, if you like this article, the author, John Crowley, is an amazing and underread novelist. Little, Big is the best fantasy novel I've read for people who are sort of lukewarm about fantasy (and one of the greatest novels of the last half century in my opinion).
> Sometime late in the 1960s, in the countryside of Vermont, my sister and I saw in the evening sky three round lights, apparently far-off, perfectly still and unchanging, each the size of a thumbnail held up before the eye. We hadn’t seen them appear—they were just there. They remained for a few moments, and then with instantaneous acceleration vanished over the horizon: in the blink, that is, of an eye.
Which was a jet that had been coming right at them that changed course 90 degrees. Probably the source of 99% of sightings if not more. Anything with three lights (white, red, green) or similar lights that appear to be "rotating" (because they blink, it causes the mind to come up with explanation of the blinking) is likely a human aircraft.
A sufficiently advanced alien civilization tends to fly without FAA-approved lighting.
Which was a jet that had been coming right at them that changed course 90 degrees. Probably the source of 99% of sightings if not more. Anything with three lights (white, red, green) or similar lights that appear to be "rotating" (because they blink, it causes the mind to come up with explanation of the blinking) is likely a human aircraft.
A sufficiently advanced alien civilization tends to fly without FAA-approved lighting.
If life and intelligence are natural phenomena, and if Earth-like planets are common (as Kepler has shown), then ET presence is if not a full blown prediction of science then at least a reasonable possibility.
The fact that we don't see it everywhere is known as the Fermi paradox, and it is genuinely such. There should be ET probes and signals at least.