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“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying”- Arthur C. Clarke
I think every one of us has at some point in their life wondered “Are we alone in the Universe?”. Thought of drifting on a solitary, muddy globe through time among the cold, unforgiving and empty space is quite overwhelming and probably brings no joy even to the most introverted people between us. We’ve been looking for anything from outer space seeming unnatural or artificial, but so far we haven’t had a single piece of evidence that all we’ve seen, heard or felt bore the mark of extraterrestrial life. Shouldn’t there be someone out there?
Let’s wonder for a minute how likely it is that life sprung into existence somewhere else in the Universe. Of course, even with modern technology and decades of research we still don’t really now what made us become different than other carbon-based compounds and evolve into what we are today. That is really not the topic of today’s presentation though. Only in our galaxy it is estimated that there are more than 4 billion Sun-like stars[1] and according to 2013 PNAS study[2] 22% of them may harbor a habitable, Earth-like* planets. Bear in mind that is one of more pessimistic theories. Assuming that only 1 permille of them developed intelligent life that would still give us 88 thousand planets with different civilizations, only in the Milky Way. Why isn’t there any proof of it? That is the basis of Fermi paradox.
There are many possible solutions explaining this problem, today I’d like to tell you about one of them: the Great Filter. Although it might sound a little bit intimidating, its’ base is really simple. Every life in the Universe encounters one or more “filters” along its’ path. They may vary in principle, but they all have a common denominator: only a fraction of all life surpasses it and carries on. The Great Filter is one of them, practically unbeatable.
Now, there are two possibilities:
· The Great Filter is behind us – one of the steps we already took, being it evolution from unicellular to multicellular organisms, developing life on Earth at all[3] or perhaps something completely different, is extremely hard. Most likely no other life has ever transcended it and probably never will. If there is life, it’s heading for extinction and we will end alone in the Universe.
· The Great Filter is ahead of us – there is something we haven’t yet encountered, that is the doom of all conceivable life. Maybe it’s a super advanced alien civilization killing off everyone who develops too much or a sci-fi technology resulting in destruction of our home planet. The point is, it’s more deadly than everything else and we’re probably not going to make it.
We can’t know for sure whether the great filter is behind or in front of us. Luckily most of the supporters’ of the filter theory seem to agree that if there were civilizations more advanced by us (i.e. the Great Filter is ahead of us), we should’ve seen evidence of their existence by now.
1. What other filters do you think that life on Earth may have or will have to surpass? Present a few examples.
2.Is it, in your opinion, important to search for extraterrestrial life in the Universe and fund organisations like SETI(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) or is it just a waste of time and resources?
3. Let’s assume that extraterrestrial life was discovered one day. How, in your view, would life on Earth change afterwards? Would it be a uniting factor putting previous conflicts in the past?
Thank you for reading my presentation, I am looking forward to hearing your comments and thoughts.
If you would like to expand this topic I wholeheartedly recommend the article on waitbutwhy.com listed in the sources.
Sources and comments:
*-in their stars’ habitable zone, allowing for liquid water and receiving similar amounts of stellar energy
[1]- http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~emamajek/memo_star_dens.html
[2]- https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/10/31/1319909110.abstract
[3]- https://astronomy.com/news/2020/11/the-great-filter-a-possible-solution-to-the-fermi-paradox
[4]- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
[5]- https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
Comments
It's hard to tell as the filter mentioned in the article might be real as it explains the problem but could not exist aswell. There is also a possibility that there are no filters. What if there is a condition that has to be met in order to make an evolutionary leap? What if the filter is only a little step towards that condition?
2.Is it, in your opinion, important to search for extraterrestrial life in the Universe and fund organisations like SETI(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) or is it just a waste of time and resources?
In my opinion as we're slowly running out of resources it pretty important to expand our horizons when it comes to looking for extraterrestrial life in the universe. If even by an accident we were to find anything or even anyone that could have helped us maintain resources on earth so we don't actually destroy it entirely - well, that would be great.
Organisation like SETI is doing pretty good job but we would have to take a second look from the inside if there is something happening.
3. Let’s assume that extraterrestrial life was discovered one day. How, in your view, would life on Earth change afterwards? Would it be a uniting factor putting previous conflicts in the past?
If we happend to discover extraterrestrial life in a future it would affect every aspect of our life. Everything would have to change. Especially peoples approach - I can't really tell that human being are really friendly as they literally fight all the time among themsleves. Maybe we're not ready to meet other civilizations. Maybe it's too early for us and it's definitely way better for them to remain hidden till human specie improves themselves in terms of acceptance.
Personally, I believe that research and scientifical work behind it is really important, no matter what field it is in. Nowadays, many groups that believe in flat earth theory grow in popularity, with the help of social media and their suggestion algorithms and lack of proper education in critical thinking. I hope that scientifically-based facts could improve that.
I guess the discovery of extraterrestrial life would raise many ethical issues and questions, and I really hope that it would be carried out with mutual respect, and not treating any party as a test subject. Even though I think that any factor would good if it would unite people in the world, unfortunately, I guess that people on Earth would be divided in terms of the approach and politics we would have with the extraterrestrial beings.
We have been looking for extraterrestrial life for over 100 years by sending radio waves into outer space. It is not a coded signal in any way, and it can reach the farthest parts of the galaxy in unchanged form. So I am surprised that some people have objected to sending such objects as Voyager 1. They are afraid that the information on the golden plate attached to this probe will reveal too many details about the nature and life of people on Earth to potential race of aliens. They forget that much more dangerous and specific information has been circulating in space for over 100 years.
One of the rules of this English course is to refrain from offending other participants' beliefs. The most interesting topic for me is religion, but I prefer not to comment on it :)
Recalling to what you've said with regards to the first question, I also often wonder whether our self-demise due to climate change and terraforming of our home planet, won't be our great filter. I try to remain positive, but since the first researches about global warming and its' effects have been present for decades and only about now we've started taking any sort of extensive actions about (which are still not enough) I think our future is potentially looking very grim. Unfortunationately surpassing a 'climate filter' would require vast political changes (regulations, laws, penalties etc) long before that and politicians tend to be very short-sighted. Here it will just not cut it.
As for the funding for science, I couldn't agree with you more. In my opinion, it's fundamental that we keep all kinds of our scientific researches and educational bodies with sufficient resources for them to develop, because otherwise, as you've said, our society will stop consisting of adults capable of their own logical and rational thoughts.
What in your opinion would it take for us, as a humanity, to put aside all quarrels and focus, at least temporarily, on global issues such as climate change?
I do think that there may be a set of phenomenons that we can consider as such filters. One of them may be a set of requirements to meet for a planet to end up in a convenient enough distance from a star to develop the right temperature to sustain life. Another one may be an event that will gather enough (and correct) chemical elements for life to develop. Another one may be the very lack of destructive enough cataclysms that could end such development.
Yet again I have to admit that I do not have any developed opinions - this time regarding your question about research for extraterrestial life. One would have to compare pros and cons of achieving such goal. I like to think that it could be beneficial for us and, in that case, founding such reserach is justified. How could be beneficial for us, though? Every argument, so far, was inconvincing for me. "Aliens" could exchange their culture, technology and other concepts, but this seems too distant for me to actually try to fomulate an opinion on that.
Aaaand that brings us to your third question, to which I have a disappointing answer - I do not know and I do not think that, besides pure hope, anyone can really tell that they'd view such event as beneficial or, even, good. It all boils down to "could" and "may" type of speculations to which the usual answer is "why" and the usual answer to that is "I hope so" or "I have such feeling".
If I were to guess (which is not a replacement for an opinion, but it's still fun to share it), I'd say that it would not end up well for either side of the party. I hope my guess is wrong, though.
You've made a very good point with regards to humanhood and similarity to humans being possibly detrimental to itself. What in your opinion should we do to avert such "internal conflicts"?
Also, that's an interesting angle to worrying about sending probes into space. I agree that we shouldn't fret about doing that because if there was harm to be done, it was already done
As I've said before there are many feasible solutions to the Fermi paradox, maybe the Great Filter theory is not the best of them. I apologise if you didn't find some of my questions worth considering. Since my presentation was so long and scientific I've tried to make them a bit more fun to answer, perhaps too much :) Thank you for answering them all anyway, though.
Regarding your answer to the second question, I think you've gotten to the basis of the problem with funding organisations like SETI. It is practically impossible to conduct a cold, rational analysis of benefits and costs of running such an operation since the results of it would be literally alien to us and as of right now are totally unknown. However, because searching for extraterrestrial life is deeply linked with space exploration and evolution of space-faring technology in general I think it should be continued to be funded, perhaps just as side-projects of bigger ones. If e.g. we're sending a probe somewhere it might as well look for life there, right?
As for the result of such an extraterrestrial confrontation, well.. Your guess is as good as mine and in my opinion you're probably right, but I hope that if it happens we're both wrong.
I can't think of any filters that humans may have to surpass.
2.Is it, in your opinion, important to search for extraterrestrial life in the Universe and fund organisations like SETI(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) or is it just a waste of time and resources?
I think that it would be a waste of resources, because even if we are not alone in universe, the other forms of life would be too far away from us, that we shouldn't even bother.
3. Let’s assume that extraterrestrial life was discovered one day. How, in your view, would life on Earth change afterwards? Would it be a uniting factor putting previous conflicts in the past?
Life on Earth wouldn't change at all. Why should it? Any nation on Earth has its own problems and uniting it isn't possible.
What other filters do you think that life on Earth may have or will have to surpass? Present a few examples.
Very interesting question, I think I rarely think about that, but your article made me do that.
Life can constantly evolve to our level, but go into oblivion as a result of some kind of catastrophe. The discovery of nuclear energy, as well as a developed high-tech society, is a likely event for any advanced society, but it can also destroy us. Using resources to create an advanced civilization is killing the planet itself: a prime example is global climate change, which scientists believe is almost entirely human-driven.
2.Is it, in your opinion, important to search for extraterrestrial life in the Universe and fund organisations like SETI(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) or is it just a waste of time and resources?
I think this is perhaps one of the most underfunded areas of science - the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
For a while, SETI was ridiculed. The attitude of people towards the search for alien life has always been dubious. Because there are no exact and positive results. Yes, every time we read about the discovery of some kind of exoplanet or about the possibility of the existence of alien life. But this news usually fizzles out. Of course, I think it's worth developing this area, maybe the fact is that the technologies are not sufficiently developed and we are not ready for this
3. Let’s assume that extraterrestrial life was discovered one day. How, in your view, would life on Earth change afterwards? Would it be a uniting factor putting previous conflicts in the past?
It's hard to say and imagine, but this is usually what happens in films)))