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Week 9 [11.12 - 17.12.2017] The Fermi Paradox

Are we alone in the whole Universe? Is there a life beyond our star system? Where are all other evidences of intelligent life in the Universe? Learn about what problems we might face in our way of becoming a stellar civilization and why it is so difficult for us to contact the aliens. 




Questions:
  1. What do you think about Fermi Paradox? Is it possible for us to somehow overcome it? Why you think so?
  2. Do you believe in UFOs and why so? Do you believe in existing of intelligent life beyond our solar system and why so?
  3. What do you think is the possible end for us as stellar civilization? Is it the way of resource consumers, that don’t care about other species (example with squirrel), fanatic purifiers (example with perfect weapon), it is the way of eternal life in virtual reality of infinite pleasure (matryoshka brain) or something else? 



Comments

Unknown said…
I do not believe in UFO, as there are no convincing evidences. I believe that there is life in the space - it was shown that at some planet there are bacteria. As long as there will be no evidence of intelligence in the space I won't believe it.
I think that this is possible for us to end our stellar civilization. As someone said, people are the worst
pests on the Earth. We are destructive and this isn't secret. We take more and more (for example forests) and we do not give valiuable replacements. We are destroying enviorment, waters - even air! If we won't change our custom to ownership and destruction we will end our stellar civilization - not on purpose and on our own.
Unknown said…
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Unknown said…
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Unknown said…
Thank you for your opinion.
So you think that we don't even have a chance to become a stellar civilization because we will destroy ourselves before it if we won't change our attitude towards our environment, am I right?
Unknown said…
I'm afraid that it may end that way. I believe in us, so I wouldn't like to cross out our chances :)
Unknown said…
Oh, what a difficult topic you chose. In my opinion, if there is a filter os something like that, then it created by people. We can destroy ourselves without any help.
But I like the idea of the communication and an example with a squirrel. Maybe we just don't know how to communicate properly. Some time ago I saw a very interesting film about it. It's called "Arrival", 2016. It's about aliens that came to the Earth, but they were not been able to communicate. Precisely speaking, they communicated, but they used for this the way people couldn't understand. And there was a woman, a scientist, who learned their language. I find it amazing and realistic. Because in many films it's shown that aliens talk to us in English. But common, how can they know English? Why should they speak? People speak, yes, but aliens can have their own way of communication. So, the film is very impressive.
What do you think? Are there aliens? And if yes, will we meet them someday?
Unknown said…
Well, like agent Fox Malder from "X-Files", I want to believe. The concept of humans being only one intelligent species in the whole Universe is really frustrating. And if we assume, that aliens are real, there should be some ways to find them and make a contact with them.

I watched "Arrival" couple of months ago, it was really impressive and well-made, I agree. In my opinion, the question in general is really not whether we can find intelligent aliens or not, it is about how can we theoretically make a contact with the species that we may not understand at all. If, for example, we will be found by the civilization from the example with squirrel, how can we explain to them that we are intelligent enough to be taking into account? And, by the way, there always is a danger that all our attempts to communicate will turn into movie "Pixels", where aliens interpret a message with videogames as threats and then turn videogames' characters into monsters. There is not so many options, I guess. It is either "Arrival" events or something similar, which will change our civilization in a better way or "The War of the Worlds", which may bring us to the extinction.
Anonymous said…
You've asked really good questions. Of course I believe there is any other life in the Universe. On the other hand I'm not a fanatic and I don't try to convince people to believe in UFO or something like that. Maybe we just don't know how enormous Universe is and that there could be millions of other lives.
As the end of our civilization I consider pollution, end of environment and things like that most possible. I mean - nature created us and now we are destroying it. It's obvious we won't survive without it long.
Unknown said…
What if it is our way, to exploit all possible resources of our world, move to another one and do the same thing? The only problem that we are facing now in such case is that don't know where is the world that we can consume and how to cross the enormous distances to such worlds. Just imagine, what can our civilization become, if we overcome the filter of self-destruction but all our exploitative habits will be kept. What do you think about it?
Unknown said…
As for me the Fermi paradox is all about this question: "If humanity can evolve and grow so large we can colonize the entire galaxy(or just part of it), why no one have done it before us?". We don't know for sure whether it is colonized partly or not, because maybe we just can't receive their hi-tech signals, but I can't believe that they can't receive our radio signals or notice other signs of life on our planet.
But, as it was said in the video, maybe those civilizations aren't consider us seriously yet and we have to achieve some point in evolution before they will contact to us. Anyway, I hope that there is no "Graveyard of life" filter in the future, even if this answer seems to be the most possible one :(

I hope that if we will grow up to a stellar civilization and die anyway, this would be something like eternal life in virtual reality, because that sounds better than to be killed by nanobots or burned by other civilization that just don't care. And I think that this is the most possible scenario too.
Unknown said…
Then our civilization will become giant virus that in the end will destroy the whole university trying to divide planets and stars between different countries, corporations and religions :)
Unknown said…
The fact that we have even left this planet is amazing, and that we're planning to live on other celestial bodies like our moon and mars is amazing. We evolved from simple bacteria not even capable of seeing, into intelligent life forms trying to figure out how to create life. So even if we never leave our solar system, even if we never contact life from other worlds, we've still come far from where we started.
I firmly believe that any advanced species would not be confined to planets. In planets like ours, bacteria will one day wipe out all life.
Yevhen Shymko said…
All of those cases might be equally possible but as for me I don't think it should matter for us since we have no chance to verify any idea we might have about our universe.
Unknown said…
Fermi Paradox is not explained and I think it is going to stay this way unless some outside civilization is found. I am more convinced to the idea that someone will reach us rather than we find someone, so I am not sure if we were able to overcome this paradox. UFO is unidentified flying object, therefore you can't believe it or not, but I guess the question was about life beyond our solar system. I am trying to not categorize it into intelligent, superior or funny-looking creatures, but I believe there is a life beyond our solar system. The odds for this are just to high, it must be some life somewhere else than Earth. Finally, I've heard that our civilization is likely to vanish due to Sun's heat in couple millions years and I find it possible to happen.
Unknown said…
What I mean in question about UFO is whether you believe that UFOs are some sort of spaceships of alien civilization or it is just some strange air phenomenon or something like that.

It is kind of ironically that the very thing that gave to us life billions years ago is going to destroy us. There is novel "Terre en fuite" (Earth's Getaway) by Fransis Carsac. It is about distant future, where people, after discovering that Sun is going to die and destroy the whole system, rebuild Earth into the giant spaceship and, as you can guess, get away from the Sun as far as possible. So yes, we really should take into account that our Sun is not eternal and is going to die someday.
Marcin Górski said…
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Marcin Górski said…
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Marcin Górski said…
Thank you for article! I've seen "Independence Day" when I was young (my first contact with aliens). It was very terrible for me :P
I believe in existing of intelligent life beyond our solar system. We need time to develop our space travels and we can find something. Our Universe is something inconceivably huge and that's why we are can't explore it too fast.
It's hard to say that they can look like in "Independence Day" or just like us.
What worries me is environment situation. People don't understand that it can be serious problem with our life. Trees are replacing by blocks now. We are loosing the most important source of oxygen. People don't think about it because everything is ok...
Maciej Główka said…
I think it is impossible that Earth would be the only inhabited planet in the entire universe. However, I don't believe in all those UFO videos and stories. I think we haven't contacted any other species yet. There is very interesting movie, "arrival", about aliens and our way to communicate with them. I would really love to live when we will discover life in the universe.
Tomasz Morawski said…
I think Fermi's paradox is quite reasonable but I think we just lack technical capabilities to observe another civilization and a lot of people wrongly assume they use the same means of communications as us, which is probably false.
I think we won't consume all the resources, since nothing we use is wasted - it changes structure but it still exists somewhere on Earth. I'd say our civilization will end due to some unpredicted natural catastrophes.
Unknown said…
I don't fantasise about UFO but I think that intelligent life beyond our solar system exists. Why? I think that we live in so much great universe that I would be very surprised if somebody would have possible to improve that humans are only one intelligent being.
Unknown said…
"Do you believe in UFOs and why so? Do you believe in existing of intelligent life beyond our solar system and why so?" - there was a presentation asking the same question already (week 6), so I will not feel guilty if I simply copy my answer an paste it here :D

"I strongly believe there is intelligent life somewhere in the galaxy. I would say, that it would be very naive to assume that there is no other planet that does not have natural conditions allowing intelligent life to develope."

I think we're going to end as all of those stellar civilizations combined (maybe excluding fanatic purifiers :)). Some people will probably choose to exist in ideal virtual world while others will choose to explore space looking for perfect worlds. To be perfectly honest though, I believe humanity is going to be wiped off the Earth sooner or later before that happens.
Unknown said…
Well, there is some logic in all that Fermi Paradox, but I try no to trust only logic, because I really want to believe the other civilizations do exist. I just can't stand the idea of Earth being the only planet with life forms. And I am a science fiction fan, when I was a child a wanted to have an alien like Alf at home:) ok ok, we are talking about serious things... With all this science there is always a problem - someone makes a theory, it sounds very logical, then another scientist disprove it, and this also sounds well. And that process could be endless. I have heard about that paradox before, but now I have started to read more articles, than found the contradiction and I don't really know what I think about it. I just want the aliens to exist! that's all:)
Jakub Lisicki said…
I really want to believe that there is some form of an intelligent life somewhere in the galaxy and it won't be hostile towards us. Fermi paradox just tries to explain how is that possible that if the galaxy is infinite whe still haven't found any clue for existence of extraterrestrial life forms. We can't really overcome it since it's just a form of explanation of some more basic facts.
I think that UFO's may exist somewhere in the universe, but I don't believe there was any real occurence of an UFO in our solar system so far. People just like to believe there was.
I think it's the most likely that humans would try to travel around the galaxies and inhabit some of the planets on their way. It would grant us some more resources to develop, some more space to overcome overpopulation and give us a greater chance of finding some alien life forms. I hope that we won't be the ones who would be hostile towards another races.
Unknown said…
If we meet Alf-like aliens, there will be war between our civilizations because of cats:)
Unknown said…
Well, only one encounter with hostile aliens species or one smart-talking guy is enough to shift our race to the total xenophobic way. Even if we simply face hostile environment beyond our planet, we will start hating everything that come out of it. We are really xenophobic race to behave otherwise.
Unknown said…
There is always a possibility that some angry guy becomes a dictator with "red button" in his hands and that this guy will proclame all other species unworthy for existence. As history shows us such possibility is quite high.
I like the idea of Fermi Paradox, even more so I enjoy the concept of Great Filter theory, which bases itself on the aforementioned one. I would find it weird if life was only found in one place in space, pretty unlikely to be honest, but I believe that nothing is to be taken for certain. I don't think people will be ever able to overcome the Great Filter, mostly because we are not as special as most like to think. We are just another animal on our blue planet and we adhere to the same rules. The last law of nature states that any species that overshoot its carrying capacities, will be brought down to more reasonable numbers, which might be an extinction as well looking at how we already destroyed everything around us, the only place that we can call home. I don't think that anything will stop us from becoming another fossil for future astro-archaeologists to uncover and smile at the thought of another species that went extinct, because they just couldn't overcome their basic instincts like tribalism, greed and speciesism. I believe that there won't be a structure resembling modern civilisation in a 100 years, probably sooner, but I'm no prophet so I'm not going to pinpoint a date. We are nothing more than junkies, having a high on the perfect energy resource, which is fossil fuel. Without it we are back to mud huts and outhouses, that is if the changing climate don't get us first and I think it will.
Unknown said…
It’s a great topic, you can’t just answer it because we just don’t have enough information/technology. Do I believe in UFOs? No, not really. But to think that we’re the only civilization in the entire universe is just arrogant.
As for the end of our civilization I’m really keen on the Matryoshka Brain idea, something like the “Ready Player One” VR world.
Unknown said…
Always a pleasure to watch a Kurzgesagt video. I really hope so there is life other than that here on Earth. It would be such a waste of space if we are the only one, right? On the other hand this thought is equally exciting as it is terrifying. What if there is an alien race out there flying around exterminating "lower" life forms (like us, in the eyes of those aliens). We wouldn't stand a chance. I'd still go with life beyond Earth. About becoming a stellar civilization.. maybe we already did? Maybe all of this is just a simulation inside a really powerful computer which is powered directly by the energy of some star? There are theories like this. I personally like the thought because it opens up endless opportunities and hidden secrets of the universe... or universes.
Unknown said…
I think there are other species in the Universe, we just haven't met them as it is so huge, that we currently can't even take our people to neighbor planet. Why bother with such deep and philosophical questions, when we still haven't colonized Moon, our closest satellite and celestial body? 20 years ago we couldn't even play movies with funny cats on the internet, cause it didn't exist back then, and now we are thinking about meeting other civilizations? Like a beggar thinking what would he eat for diner in hotel restaurant in Sheraton- Its just too early to ask such questions and expect anything more specific than just plain guesses.
>What do you think is the possible end for us as stellar civilization? Is it the way of resource consumers, that don’t care about other species (example with squirrel), fanatic purifiers (example with perfect weapon), it is the way of eternal life in virtual reality of infinite pleasure (matryoshka brain) or something else?
As I said before, its too early to give a proper answer, but if we manage to communicate with other civilization, it would be either a good cooperation, or one of the bad outcomes. As for "matryoshka brain"... Well, Agent Smith has already told you what happens if you create a 100% happy image of our race:
https://youtu.be/JrBdYmStZJ4?t=23s
There are obviously countless scenarios we've thought of and infinite scenarios we haven't, about what the state of life in our galaxy could be. Personally I like the one, where our galaxy is governed a group of civilizations that invite new ones once they show they are capable of peacefully coexisting with others. Unfortunately if that's the case, we still have a long long way to go...
We can safely say that there is no human life in a few close planets we carefully examined. There is no any sort of guarantee that such life doesn't exist in some far planet in totally different galaxy that is so far from us we don't even know about its existance. Even if universe is finite, it's so huge that it's physically impossible to just state that there is no any sort of other life and that's it. There might be one, but we won't know for sure until we either find one, or definitely explore entire universe to confirm that there is nothing out there.

I doubt any of this happens in our lifetime.

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