What are your thoughts on the Fermi paradox?
If extraterrestrial life does exist somewhere else, the exponential expansion of the universe is making it unlikely that we'll ever meet them.
Top | Newest First | Oldest First
I mean, the conditions required for life as we know it arising are really specific, the probability of abiogenesis is unknown, and life seems to need to evolve in a very particular way in order for civilization to take root. With those things taken together, it seems unsurprising that we've yet to find another civilization.
AdaXI · 41-45, T
I just think life will likely exist somewhere but the chances of two advanced forms of life being around at the sametime and also in a close enough proximity to actually make contact is highly unlikely considering the billions of years time scale and totally enormous distances envolved. I mean we have blasted various stuff out there into space but by the time they reach anything we might have been gone for millions of years and what if an object we've send out there passes a planet that has either had advanced life on but its died out or it passes by a few 100,000 years before they're evolved enough to even spot it? Like if a small alien sent satalite passed by earth right now we probably wouldn't even see it. We certainly wouldn't be able to retrieve it out in space even if we did see it so unless it literally smashes into earth we've no chance. So you know makes it near impossible to ever show any beings on another planet we exist and vise versa way around unless we happen to drop a billion to one lucky.
乂ᴼ◡ᴼ乂
乂ᴼ◡ᴼ乂
@AdaXI Even if we could send messages or physical objects at the speed of light, it's not looking too good for us. Latest research shows that the universe appears to be expanding quicker than the speed of light, and that speed is increasing. It would take about 4.5 years to reach our neighboring star system at the speed of light, without taking the expansion into consideration. If another civilization exists, for example, 100,000 light-years away (roughly the diameter of our galaxy), we'd never know. Given that we must wait 100,000 years for it to reach the target, plus an equal amount of time to receive a response (again, without considering the expansion), I doubt humanity would still be around. Just for fun, if they could see a live view of Earth somehow, they'd be seeing our planet as it was 100,000 years ago. It's fascinating, but it's also terrifying.
AdaXI · 41-45, T
@Fretnought Ha yeah that's a very good point I mean it's ok looking out for all these goldie locks zone type planets but if you can only see them from 100,000 years ago or a million years ago or a 100,000,000 million years ago or whatever. It is all very fascinating though like you say and also totally mind boggling like the shear time and space distances involved.
乂 ᵒ . ᴼ乂
乂 ᵒ . ᴼ乂
Tastyfrzz · 61-69, M
It's incredibly unlikely that there is not another planet with life on it out there. But we're unlikely to ever leave our galaxy. We may never get out of our solar system even. Humans' aren't really designed for space travel. We're too big. Short lived, We need gravity, air, water, a narrow temperature range, diverse foods, and lots of space. We don't care well in radiation, and we're nuts. It's more likely that we'll creat AI life forms to do the exploring for us.
@Tastyfrzz You're right. In addition, we're not even a type-1 civilization yet. Space exploration, realistically, isn't on our calendar in the next future.
SW-User
@Fretnought yes both are