Jobs Feel like I need a change of career. Have zero credentials and zero desire to pay someone money to tell me what they think I should learn. Thinkin’ &Stuff Been thinking about Fermi’s Paradox and also the borders between life and not-life and being alive and being dead. Need to sit down and write some things up for sharing. In the meantime: What are your thoughts on the Zoo Hypothesis?
I've always found the Zoo Hypothesis to be too geocentric by half. "They're ignoring us because we're too special." The longer I live, the more likely I think it is that nobody ever reaches Kardashev I. Can't reach Kardashev I? Then you, my friend, ...are alone.
That, and for every "scientist" that ever told you you weren't special, there's a dozen Youtube channels telling you exactly the facts you want to hear. If you told me I needed to communicate with Alpha Centauri A, I'd say "the best way to do that is to launch a probe at Alpha Centauri A." Ignoring slowing down to capture orbit, the Juno spacecraft would get there in about 18,000 years according to Wolfram Alpha. So maybe we create a 100GW laser and launch kleenex at it. But now I have a 100GW laserbeam pointed out into space and what could go wrong. What's gonna be funny is when we find out Oumuamua was fukin' Rama.One of the reasons that I think the Flat Earth people are popping up again is because it makes the earth, and thus by proxy Humanity, special, unique and just oh-so-wonderful.
Maybe there are and they're too far away to notice. Maybe there are and the technology they use is unrecognizable and/or undetectable to us. Maybe there are, but the attributes of life they exhibit aren't what we'd recognize as "alive." Maybe there are, but their metabolic structure is so different they don't give off biomarkers we'd recognize, such as creating oxygen or co2 during respiration. Maybe there are, and they're just very, very, shy. :)Why are there no aliens?
I think you and I are on a similar thought path. I think the Zoo Hypothesis is bullcrap, but more because the universe is huge and difficult to survive and navigate in than because the aliens think we suck. I highly doubt it is about us at all. There are a few more points, but that’s definitely part of why I don’t like the Zoo hypothesis.
What if the speed of light really is ultimate? What if radiation really does decrease by the inverse power law? What if it really does take all the energy and time to cross the gulfs of space that we think it does? I read a paper once that pointed out that "interstellar hydrogen" is a guess, not a fact. What we think of as the interstellar medium may end at the Oort Cloud. At that point, all your beautiful dreams of Bussard ramjets and VASIMR flame out and leave you in the deep black. Ockham's Razor on extraterrestrial contact is it's more trouble than it's worth.
I think the speed of light really is ultimate and that it would take a Kardashev III+ civilization to make long distance space travel feasible. At that level of energy expenditure, you’re not flitting around the ‘verse and chatting it up with whatever local yokels you happen across. Interstellar hydrogen is probably there but maybe not at any kind of concentration that could be used for propulsion.
Star Maker is mentioned in the article and was pretty good. “Probably the most powerful work of imagination ever written” according to Arthur C. Clarke; Borges deemed it “a prodigious novel,” the author called it “remarkably bad.” I'm still miffed that Fermi's Paradox had apparently been resolved a long time before anyone told me.