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Fermi's Paradox and Peak Oil
May. 7th, 2008 11:19 amYesterday, I was referred to this article on Fermi's Paradox, which hopes that no other life is found in the Solar System, by Tim O'Reilly. For the non-geek, Fermi's Paradox is a question asked by Enrico Fermi, the great physist, "if there are other intelligent lifeforms in the universe, why haven't we seen them?"
The first-cited article spends ten pages talking about the "Great Filter." This is the concept that some event is so improbable of occurrence or difficult to survive that we are the only intelligent species in the galaxy. For example, development of multicellular life may be so unlikely as to almost never occur. Another example may be that many civilizations arise, but they quickly succumb to some massive disaster. O'Reilly's contribution to the discussion is to suggest that Peak Oil is one such event. The idea here is that when we run out of oil, civilization will collapse. Even after or if civilization recovers, they will not be spacefaring because the cheap sources of energy have been used up.
This is by no means a new idea to science fiction fans, as a casual recollection of the literature will find examples of this concept at least back into the 1970s. At least some of those examples suggest inventive ways around the energy crunch. In truth, an energy- or resource-starved world would have even more incentive to go to space. In short, answering Fermi's Paradox with "peak oil" doesn't work for me.
Going back to the first-cited article, part of the problem of Fermi's Paradox is the assumption that we'd be able to observe and detect an alien civilization. This article suggests that detecting random ETA broadcast radio signals from a civilization won't work over even interplanetary distances. Other wild ideas, such as Dyson Spheres, would be difficult to detect at best.
The one "sure-fire" way of finding aliens is to assume that one race built a fleet of self-replicating Von Neumann machines, which would fill the galaxy in a few tens of millions of years. In my mind, this begs two questions.
1) Why build the machines? What benefit accrues to the builders?
2) Could we even detect the machines? There could be a battleship-sized ship or even a fleet of them in say, Saturn's orbit, and we'd not know about it. Nor could this fleet detect Earth's radio signature.
It's impossible to extrapolate from a sample size of one, so the answer to Fermi's Paradox will have to wait.
The first-cited article spends ten pages talking about the "Great Filter." This is the concept that some event is so improbable of occurrence or difficult to survive that we are the only intelligent species in the galaxy. For example, development of multicellular life may be so unlikely as to almost never occur. Another example may be that many civilizations arise, but they quickly succumb to some massive disaster. O'Reilly's contribution to the discussion is to suggest that Peak Oil is one such event. The idea here is that when we run out of oil, civilization will collapse. Even after or if civilization recovers, they will not be spacefaring because the cheap sources of energy have been used up.
This is by no means a new idea to science fiction fans, as a casual recollection of the literature will find examples of this concept at least back into the 1970s. At least some of those examples suggest inventive ways around the energy crunch. In truth, an energy- or resource-starved world would have even more incentive to go to space. In short, answering Fermi's Paradox with "peak oil" doesn't work for me.
Going back to the first-cited article, part of the problem of Fermi's Paradox is the assumption that we'd be able to observe and detect an alien civilization. This article suggests that detecting random ETA broadcast radio signals from a civilization won't work over even interplanetary distances. Other wild ideas, such as Dyson Spheres, would be difficult to detect at best.
The one "sure-fire" way of finding aliens is to assume that one race built a fleet of self-replicating Von Neumann machines, which would fill the galaxy in a few tens of millions of years. In my mind, this begs two questions.
1) Why build the machines? What benefit accrues to the builders?
2) Could we even detect the machines? There could be a battleship-sized ship or even a fleet of them in say, Saturn's orbit, and we'd not know about it. Nor could this fleet detect Earth's radio signature.
It's impossible to extrapolate from a sample size of one, so the answer to Fermi's Paradox will have to wait.
