What is the answer to the Fermi Paradox?

[jimmy olsen]

So, with this many habitable planets, why haven't we detected intelligent life?

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/8-8-billion-habitable-earth-size-planets-exist-milky-way-8C11529186

8.8 billion habitable Earth-size planets exist in Milky Way alone
Seth Borenstein The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Space is vast, but it may not be so lonely after all: A study finds the Milky Way is teeming with billions of planets that are about the size of Earth, orbit stars just like our sun, and exist in the Goldilocks zone — not too hot and not too cold for life.

Astronomers using NASA data have calculated for the first time that in our galaxy alone, there are at least 8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets in the habitable temperature zone.

The study was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For perspective, that's more Earth-like planets than there are people on Earth.

As for what it says about the odds that there is life somewhere out there, it means "just in our Milky Way galaxy alone, that's 8.8 billion throws of the biological dice," said study co-author Geoff Marcy, a longtime planet hunter from the University of California at Berkeley.

The next step, scientists say, is to look for atmospheres on these planets with powerful space telescopes that have yet to be launched. That would yield further clues to whether any of these planets do, in fact, harbor life.

The findings also raise a blaring question, Marcy said: If we aren't alone, why is "there a deafening silence in our Milky Way galaxy from advanced civilizations?"

In the Milky Way, about 1 in 5 stars that are like our sun in size, color and age have planets that are roughly Earth's size and are in the habitable zone where life-crucial water can be liquid, according to intricate calculations based on four years of observations from NASA's now-crippled Kepler telescope.

If people on Earth could only travel in deep space, "you'd probably see a lot of traffic jams," Bill Borucki, NASA's chief Kepler scientist, joked Monday.

The Kepler telescope peered at 42,000 stars, examining just a tiny slice of our galaxy to see how many planets like Earth are out there. Scientists then extrapolated that figure to the rest of the galaxy, which has hundreds of billions of stars.

For the first time, scientists calculated — not estimated — what percent of stars that are just like our sun have planets similar to Earth: 22 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percentage points.

Kepler scientist Natalie Batalha said there is still more data to pore over before this can be considered a final figure.

There are about 200 billion stars in our galaxy, with 40 billion of them like our sun, Marcy said. One of his co-authors put the number of sun-like stars closer to 50 billion, meaning there would be at least 11 billion planets like ours.

Based on the 1-in-5 estimate, the closest Earth-size planet that is in the habitable temperature zone and circles a sun-like star is probably within 70 trillion miles of Earth, Marcy said.

And the 8.8 billion Earth-size planets figure is only a start. That's because scientists were looking only at sun-like stars, which are not the most common stars.

An earlier study found that 15 percent of the more common red dwarf stars have Earth-size planets that are close-in enough to be in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold Goldilocks Zone.

Put those together and that's probably 40 billion right-size, right-place planets, Marcy said.

And that's just our galaxy. There are billions of other galaxies.

Scientists at a Kepler science conference Monday said they have found 833 new candidate planets with the space telescope, bringing the total of planets they've spotted to 3,538, but most aren't candidates for life.

Kepler has identified only 10 planets that are about Earth's size circling sun-like stars and are in the habitable zone, including one called Kepler 69-c.

Because there are probably hundreds of planets missed for every one found, the study did intricate extrapolations to come up with the 22 percent figure — a calculation that outside scientists say is fair.

"Everything they've done looks legitimate," said MIT astronomer Sara Seager.

[Razgovory]

I don't think there is life on any other planet.

[Queequeg]

I'd expect that alien civilizations evolve past radio signals relatively quickly, and that intelligent non-self destructive intelligent life is extremely rare.

[Ed Anger]

There are Klingons near Uranus.

[Berkut]

I've never understoof why people seem to find this so perplexing.

We simply do not have enough data.

Lets say there are 8 billion planets of the right size and the right distance from their sun such that life is even possible.

So what? That doesn't mean we should or should not expect a lot of life, because there are a shitload of additional variables involved in how life forms, and how it becomes intelligent, and how it becomes advanced enough to be noticeable.

What if we could know all those variables, and find out that once you do the math, the odds are about 1 in 4 billion? Then the silence makes sense.

The fact that there is such a silence certainly suggests something about what those final odds probably are...

For all we know, life itself could be incredibly rare even when the conditions make it nominally possible. Maybe abiogenesis is incredibly unlikely at best.

Maybe life is common, but the development of large brain intelligence is bizarrely unusual. Maybe it tooks some incredibly unlikely circumstances for it to come about on Earth.

Who knows?

It is an interesting question, certainly, but I just don't get the sense of bewilderment that seems to pervade the discussion. We know enough to know how very little we know.

[Eddie Teach]

Combination of 2,3, and 5.

[Ideologue]

I've never understoof why people seem to find this so perplexing.

We simply do not have enough data.

Lets say there are 8 billion planets of the right size and the right distance from their sun such that life is even possible.

So what? That doesn't mean we should or should not expect a lot of life, because there are a shitload of additional variables involved in how life forms, and how it becomes intelligent, and how it becomes advanced enough to be noticeable.

What if we could know all those variables, and find out that once you do the math, the odds are about 1 in 4 billion? Then the silence makes sense.

The fact that there is such a silence certainly suggests something about what those final odds probably are...

For all we know, life itself could be incredibly rare even when the conditions make it nominally possible. Maybe abiogenesis is incredibly unlikely at best.

Maybe life is common, but the development of large brain intelligence is bizarrely unusual. Maybe it tooks some incredibly unlikely circumstances for it to come about on Earth.

Who knows?

It is an interesting question, certainly, but I just don't get the sense of bewilderment that seems to pervade the discussion. We know enough to know how very little we know.

For once, I agree fully with you.

Personally, I do expect there to be lots of life, just less intelligent, high-technological life than in any given franchise beginning with the word "star."  Even if you appeared in any random moment of the history of life on this planet, there's like a 2/3500 chance of running into humans, and a 1/35,000,000 chance of finding yourself in an area where humans actually produce a lot of radio waves.  So the stridence with which the question "WHERE IS EVERYBODY?" is asked does seem a little odd and is premised on the idea that the odds suggest that we should not be the first intelligent, industrial civilization in the galaxy, something that is uncertain to say the least.

I also wouldn't be surprised if there were many non-radiating civilizations.  Nukes and television isn't humanity's default state, living in small groups as hunters and gatherers is.  That such people would be incredibly boring to meet also seems to have failed to cross would-be space explorers' minds.

[Siege]

Answer is "Other".

Computer technology advances faster than space tech, mostly because of the direct economic applications of computing while space tech only profits come from placing comm satellites on orbit. Because of this, a technological civilization is more likely to achieve the Technological Singularity, which entails that a civilization that achieves space exploration technology will not longer be interested in space colonization or mineral exploitation, and will explore only for the sake of knowledge, if it does.

The Technological Singularity is defined as:

"The technological singularity, or simply the singularity, is a theoretical moment in time when artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence that will "radically change human civilization, and perhaps even human nature itself."[1] Since the capabilities of such an intelligence may be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the technological singularity is often seen as an occurrence (akin to a gravitational singularity) beyond which—from the perspective of the present—the future course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Some of the possible consequences of this is that nanotech and computing will allow a post-singularity civilization to retire from the physical world as we perceived it. Meaning we cannot detect the aliens even if they are here, and that the aliens will not be interact with us, and only observe our behavior and development.
A post-singularity civilization will be immortal, therefore the will not reproduce and will have no need for territorial expansion. So we will never find their colonies which don't exist.

So, the answer to Fermi's Paradox, in my opinion, is that:

1- Only technological civilizations space travel
2- All technological civilzations reach the Technological Singularity before Hyperdrive Technology
3- All Post-Technological Singularity Civilizations in one form or another retire from our physical plane of existence
4- Therefore all civilizations capable of reaching Earth are undetectable by us.

[Eddie Teach]

You're really flogging that singularity shit for all its worth, ain't you.

[Siege]

You're really flogging that singularity shit for all its worth, ain't you.

Its my pet theory for the next 30 days.

[jimmy olsen]

I also wouldn't be surprised if there were many non-radiating civilizations.  Nukes and television isn't humanity's default state, living in small groups as hunters and gatherers is.  That such people would be incredibly boring to meet also seems to have failed to cross would-be space explorers' minds.

Are you seriously retarded? 

Meeting an intelligent alien race, even one in a stage of development equivalent to the paleolithic would be the most interesting encounter in the history of humanity.

[Siege]

I also wouldn't be surprised if there were many non-radiating civilizations.  Nukes and television isn't humanity's default state, living in small groups as hunters and gatherers is.  That such people would be incredibly boring to meet also seems to have failed to cross would-be space explorers' minds.

Are you seriously retarded? 

Meeting an intelligent alien race, even one in a stage of development equivalent to the paleolithic would be the most interesting encounter in the history of humanity.

Indeed.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Columbus said the same about that Indians.

[mongers]

You're really flogging that singularity shit for all its worth, ain't you.

Its my pet theory for the next 30 days.

What theories do your pets hold ?

[Siege]

An interesting question would be if an alien civilization can discover hyperdrives without discovering computing.

If that's possible, we are fucked.

[jimmy olsen]

No one's voted for the Reapers?