We covered mind-boggling Fermi Paradox in the first part of this article. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here before we start off.
Now that you all know what the Fermi Paradox is, check out these whacked out solutions to why our planet isn’t swarming with alien life…yet.
It’s too odd to believe, but it might just be true!
A kardashev scale is a scale that was developed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev who invented this scale to measure a civilization’s technological advancement. He proposed three types of magnitudes to measure technological advancement.
Type 1, Type 2, Type 3.Types 4 , 5 were added later by other theorists.
Type 1 is a type of civilization that has mastered interplanetary spaceflight, interplanetary communication, mega-scale engineering, and colonization, medical and technological singularity, planetary engineering, world government, trade and defence, and stellar system-scale influence; but is still vulnerable to extinction; Basically, a civilization that has learned to harness all the sources of energy present on it’s home planet.
Type 2 is a type of civilization that has tapped into evolutionary intervention, interstellar travel, interstellar communication, stellar engineering, terraforming, and star cluster-scale influence; Theoretically this level of advancement would lead to immense amounts of expansion and diversification which would dramatically reduce the probability of extinction. Terraforming is portrayed in the movie ‘The Man Of Steel’. In the movie an attempt is made to change earth to suit the convenience of the Kryptonians.
Upon achieving type 2 level of scientific advancement, the aliens might just lose interest in other civilizations or any other galactic scale ambitions like colonization or conquest just cause the others aren’t interesting enough.
A Type 2 level of civilization would theoretically be capable of harnessing the nearest star for it’s energy purposes.
There are two ways (or rather hypotheses) of doing this.
1. Build a Dyson sphere. A Dyson sphere is a humongous structure that completely encompasses anything from a star to it’s complete system (like the solar system for instance).The advantage of building such a huge structure is that you’ll be able to harness most of the power output of the star.
2. Build huge reactors after you master the process of nuclear fusion and power these reactors by stealing hydrogen from near-by gas giants by making these reactors orbit around the said gas –giant stars.
Such a Dyson Sphere or reactor can hypothetically be used to build Matrioshka brains which are massive computers that derive their energy by the power harnessed by stars.
These Matrioshka brains can be used to simulate universes within universes, realities within realities, lifetimes within lifetimes. The speed and the permutations and combinations with which these can be generated might make other civilizations mundane, almost boring to explore in-fact.
When there’s so much action at home that you don’t know what to do with, why would you go elsewhere and possibly seek out lesser evolved civilizations ?
Type 4 Kardashev scale civilizations are those that are considered to be able to harness the energy of the entire universe and those that could travel through the accelerating expanse of space and even possibly live inside super-massive black holes. They would be tapping into laws of physics currently inconceivable to mankind.
Type 5 Kardashev scale civilizations are so highly evolved, that it’s difficult to even begin to comprehend their scale of operations. According to many hypotheses, a type 5 civilization would be so advanced that they would be capable of harnessing not only the power of one universe , but several universes (termed a multiverse) and also across different times.
They would be able to easily manipulate individual discrete universes from an external frame of reference. Zoltan Galantai has argued that such a civilization could not be detected, as it’s activities would be indistinguishable from the workings of nature (there being nothing to compare them to). So, in short, keeping up with them would be impossible as they would just appear as a part of nature itself.
The Downstreamers from Manifold: Time, after completely controlling their universe, used time travel to induce the creation of a multiverse. Such a civilization would be considered as a type 5 civilization.
Another theory is that we are trapped in a celestial cage. The aliens might’ve stumbled upon us , but for now they’re content watching us from afar.
The reasons behind this maybe many. We may be like the animals in Zoo tycoon and they’re the gamer who’s pulling the strings. In other words, we’re just entertainment for them, to do with as they please.
Or, we may be under scientific seclusion or isolation as they’re studying us for their scientific purposes from afar.
John Ball proposed this theory in 1973. He argued that Extra-terrestrial intelligent life may be ubiquitous but they may not have interacted with us cause they want us to grow on our own, independent of any external influences.
He said that
“The apparent failure of such life to interact with us may be understood in terms of the hypothesis that they have set us aside as a part of a wilderness area or zoo”.
They may be waiting for us to achieve some pre-determined level of technological advancement and once we do, we’ll be contacted by those who are watching over us.
This concept has already been dealt with in Star trek.
O.k let’s take a look at this paradox from a different perspective – what if we are the aliens ?
WHAT IF WE ARE THE ALIENS?
What if Panspermia is the reason that humans were born? Sure, Darwinism explains how humans evolved over time, but what if the seeds to kick of that process were laid out by aliens ?
This theory was put forth by Francis Crick. (Yep, the same guy who was awarded the Nobel prize along with James Watson in 1953 for his co-discovery of the structure of D.N.A).
According to this, aliens came to earth, planted their seeds and wandered off to a galaxy far, far away. They may or may not return. Will they come back to collect what is rightfully theirs? Are they waiting for us to become more technologically advanced?
We’ll find out the answers to these questions if this theory is right. The movie ‘Prometheus’ tackles this concept extensively. This concept is also dealt with in Arthur c. Clark’s movie ‘2001’.
One more reason that you would’ve guessed by now – The reason we haven’t met any outsiders is, we are in a simulated reality. The reality that’s being simulated for us doesn’t include ETIs cause they are not being generated for us. In short we’re living inside a matrix that’s devoid of ETIs.
WE MIGHT BE LIVING IN A SIMULATED REALITY – THE MATRIX
Maybe the gods or aliens or whoever is generating this reality for us are making it look like there’s a whole other universe out there when there isn’t one. It’s like how a fish can’t see a fisher who’s maintaining his profile lower than 20 degrees above the water surface. You can’t perceive what you don’t know exists, right?
Here is where it gets more bizarre. What if the aliens are trying to figure out the Fermi paradox themselves? And one of the ways this omnipotent, post-human civilization can achieve this is by creating a simulation. A simulation that takes into account a zillion factors that give birth to life and this simulation is what we’re living in now? This simulation can show them what factors will produce a space-faring civilization. If this is true, how many simulations have we already been in ? Will there ever be an end to this experiment ? What’s next for us?
This theory officially welcomes you to the matrix.
Milan M. Cirkovic and Robert Bradbury introduced this theory.
If ETIs can evolve to type 2 or type 3 on the kardashev scale, they’ll probably have constructed mega structures like Dyson Spheres and Matrioshka brains. While these structures have enormous information processing capabilities which explains why they consume an enormous amount of energy, they also give rise to a lot of heat waste.
To dispose of this huge amount of heat waste, the civilizations might resort to bivouacking near the outer rim of the galaxy as the coolest part of any galaxy is it’s outer rim.
However, like if Stephen Wolfram predicted, heat-free computing becomes possible, this theory loses it’s credibility.
This theory proposes a hypothesis that’s the opposite of the zoo hypothesis.
According to this theory, certain ETIs have imposed a quarantine on themselves as they’re aware of the dangers out there. As we’ve seen in so many forms of media, there might be ETIs out there that are extremely dangerous. This has lead other, ETIs to either collectively or independently stay within a perimeter so as not to draw attention of any imperialistic civilizations.
[quote_center]THIS HYPOTHESIS IS OPPOSITE TO THAT OF THE ZOO HYPOTHESIS[/quote_center]They might have installed self-replicating, policing probes at their perimeter that enable them to detect sentient life and if need be, even hide their existence.
Many such theories exist that makes one wonder about the truth about the universe.
The best thing you can do is lay back and let the good times roll and deal with the ETIs as and when they come.
View Comments (1)
very interesting article, keep it up