Dirk Schulze-Makuch - Where Is Everybody - A New Hope For Solving The Fermi Paradox?

Where Is Everybody? A New Hope For Solving The Fermi Paradox?

If life is common in the Universe, then where is everybody? Known as the Fermi Paradox, a new project may help solve the riddle.

Key Takeaways

• The Fermi Paradox refers to the puzzling observation that we have as yet seen no clear evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, despite the vast number of stars out there and the expectation that most of them have planets and moons.
• Entire books have been written that propose a variety of solutions to the paradox.
• The Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which will be the world’s largest radio astronomy observatory when it is completed in 2028, might get us closer to a resolution.

Episode Transcript

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The following in foecast is a presentationof the XOON Broadcast Network, XOON TV
channel and Roma McConnell Media Company broadcastingfrom Canada to the world and beyond.
Where Is Everybody? After decades ofplanning, construction has finally begun on the

(00:23):
Square Kilometer Array SKA, which willbe the world's largest radio astronomy observatory when
it is completed in twenty twenty eight. The final version of the SKA will
use thousands of dishes and up toone million low frequency antennas located in South
Africa and Australia to study the skyat radio wavelengths. It also will be

(00:45):
a valuable new tool for SETI becauseit will have enough sensitivity to intercept potential
alien transmissions at large distances. Itssearch space will include many exoplanetary systems,
some of which will be habitable.A subset of those may contain life,
possibly even intelligent life the Fermi paradoxWhere's Everybody? For that reason, the

(01:11):
s K raises our hopes of findingan explanation for what's often called the Great
Silence, also known as the Fermiparadox. This refers to the puzzling observation
that we have as yet seen noclear evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent
life, despite the vast number ofstars out there and the expectation that most
of them have planets and moons,and no. Even though the number of

(01:36):
UAP sidings has increased, the USgovernment still hasn't found proof for alien spacecraft
on Earth. A recent survey byJeffrey Marcy and Nathaniel Tellis adds to the
long list of non detections over thepast sixty years or so. The researchers
went looking for transient light pulses atoptical and near infrared wavelengths in the galactic

(01:59):
plane, which might have been evidenceof extraterrestrial beacons. They found none.
Solutions to the Fermi paradox. Itcould well be, of course, that
we're simply not using the right technologyto detect extraterrestrials. I raised this possibility
once at a SETTI meeting hosted atArizona State University. Imagine using a wakie

(02:23):
talkie in modern New York, thenwondering why no one responds. The reason
is simple, the conversation has movedto Facebook and TikTok. Extraterrestrials might be
out there chatting away, but usinga technology we haven't even conceived of.
This is just one possibility. Somany explanations for the Fermi paradox have been

(02:46):
advanced that whole books have been writtenon the subject. Among the most recent
ideas is one proposed by Amri Wandlefrom the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel,
who suggests that planets hosting biology arerelatively common, while those that host
advanced technological life are rare. Ifso, it would be unlikely that technologically

(03:09):
advanced civilizations would be close enough toeach other to strike up a conversation,
and there may be little motivation forextraterrestrial civilizations to explore all the habitable worlds
out there if the odds of findingsomeone intelligent to talk to are low.
In that scenario, nobody would botherto explore exoplanets unless they detect a technosignature

(03:31):
from another nearby world. Radio signalshave been escaping Earth for only a century
or so, and therefore have reachedno farther out than one hundred light years.
We shouldn't expect a response from anyonefarther than fifty light years away.
Given the round trip signal time findingin extraterrestrial intelligence ATI that close to us

(03:54):
requires that such civilizations be very abundant. Wandle's umption that biology is common on
other planets but ETI is not isconsistent with both the rare Earth hypothesis and
the cosmic Zou hypothesis. It isalso what we would expect from the evolution
of life on our own planet.We've only been able to build telescopes for

(04:17):
a few hundred of the four billionyears that life has existed on Earth.
What are the chances that some nearbycivilization is at exactly our stage of technological
development? Pretty low? Probably furtherexacerbating the problem is the notion of a
so called great filter. If advancedcivilizations do arise, they might not last

(04:41):
for very long. There have beenmany intelligent life forms on our planet,
for example, dolphins, apes,crows, elephants, and octopuses, to
just name a few, for millionsof years. Yet only humans have graduated
to the point where we can buildspace probes, and that only very re
Unfortunately, some of the technologies associatedwith space travel can also be used for

(05:06):
self destruction. Another possibility is thatETI civilizations are plentiful but just don't want
to be detected. Perhaps they adhereto some kind of prime directive, like
in Star Trek, bound not tointervene in the evolution of young civilizations.
Carl Sagan pointed out that if anETI civilization is way ahead of us in

(05:29):
technology, their actions would appear tous like magic. Just imagine a spy
drone flying over a camp of Neanderthals. Aliens may consider Earth as some kind
of nature preserve or zoo, whichthey observe from time to time without being
observed themselves. Still, accidents mayhappen, and they could inadvertently show themselves.

(05:51):
Could that be an explanation for someof the UAP sidings now being investigated
by NASA. New technology may helpus figure out what's behind some of these
mysterious events, but it's an incrediblychallenging problem and no quick answers are likely.
Aliens may not act like humans.One thing we must be careful about

(06:14):
is not to assume aliens will behaveexactly like we do. In older SETI
literature, especially that having to dowith robotic interstellar von Neuman probes, it
was assumed that ETI would explore andcolonize the galaxy, just as historical civilizations
have done on Earth. Wandle assumesthe opposite ETI won't be interested in colonization,

(06:38):
but only will expend its limited resourceson interstellar exploration. If a technosignature
is detected. It's difficult to saywhat humans will do if we become that
technologically advanced. Perhaps it's because I'man astrobiologist, but I would want to
explore all possibly inhabited worlds, technosignaturesor not. Once the square kilometer array

(07:00):
is online, we may get closerto a resolution of the Fermi paradox.
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(07:24):
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England. I am Brooke McGuire