A New Theory on Why We Haven’t Found Aliens Yet - They’re sleeping.
A fter decades of searching, we still haven’t discovered a single sign of extraterrestrial intelligence. Probability tells us life should be out there, so why haven’t we found it yet?
The problem is often referred to as Fermi’s paradox, after the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who once asked his colleagues this question at lunch . Many theories have been proposed over the years. It could be that we are simply alone in the universe or that there is some great filter that prevents intelligent life progressing beyond a certain stage. Maybe alien life is out there, but we are too primitive to communicate with it, or we are placed inside some cosmic zoo, observed but left alone to develop without external interference . Now, three researchers think they think they may have another potential answer to Fermi’s question: Aliens do exist; they’re just all asleep.
According to a new research paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society , extraterrestrials are sleeping while they wait. In the paper, authors from Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute and the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic argue that the universe is too hot right now for advanced, digital civilizations to make the most efficient use of their resources. The solution: Sleep and wait for the universe to cool down, a process known as aestivating (like hibernation but sleeping until it’s colder).
Understanding the new hypothesis first requires wrapping your head around the idea that the universe’s most sophisticated life may elect to leave biology behind and live digitally. Having essentially uploaded their minds onto powerful computers, the civilizations choosing to do this could enhance their intellectual capacities or inhabit some of the harshest environments in the universe with ease.
The idea that life might transition toward a post-biological form of existence is gaining ground among experts . “It’s not something that is necessarily unavoidable, but it is highly likely,” Cirkovic told me in an interview.
Once you’re living digitally, Cirkovic explained, it’s important to process information efficiently. Each computation has a certain cost attached to it, and this cost is tightly coupled with temperature. The colder it gets, the lower the cost is, meaning you can do more with the same amount of resources. This is one of the reasons why we cool powerful computers. Though humans may find the universe to be a pretty frigid place (the background radiation hovers about 3 kelvins above absolute zero, the very lower limit of the temperature scale), digital minds may find it far too hot.
Just because the aliens are asleep doesn’t mean we can’t find signs of them.
But why aestivate? Surely any aliens wanting more efficient processing could cool down their systems manually, just as we do with computers. In the paper, the authors concede this is a possibility. “While it is possible for a civilization to cool down parts of itself to any low temperature,” the authors write, that, too, requires work. So it wouldn’t make sense for a civilization looking to maximize its computational capacity to waste energy on the process. As Sandberg and Cirkovic elaborate in a blog post , it’s more likely that such artificial life would be in a protected sleep mode today, ready to wake up in colder futures.
If such aliens exist, they’re in luck. The universe appears to be cooling down on its own. Over the next trillions of years, as it continues to expand and the formation of new stars slows, the background radiation will reduce to practically zero. Under those conditions, Sandberg and Cirkovic explain , this kind of artificial life would get “tremendously more done.” Tremendous isn’t an understatement, either. The researchers calculate that by employing such a strategy, they could achieve up to 10 30 times more than if done today. That’s a 1 with 30 zeroes after it.
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The idea that life might transition toward a post-biological form of existence is gaining ground among experts . “It’s not something that is necessarily unavoidable, but it is highly likely,” Cirkovic told me in an interview.
Doesn't sound like much fun.
I have no doubt that there is intelligent life on other planets. That said we would have to hit a planet with one or more forms on it that has evolved enough to receive our signal, yet still hasn't managed to destroy itself. While I would love to hear back from another planet, it is possible that by the time we respond they may be extinct or have self-destructed.
I think the universe as we know it happened in one exploding instant, and there is no reason why any other planets will have developed intelligent life any faster than the Earth, so although there can be parallel existences, none are more advanced than ours, but could be equal in advancement to ours. However, in our present stage of development, we are still incapable of communicating with aliens, and them with us.
Carl Sagan was a dreamer.
I can't think of any reason why there couldn't be ones that developed faster then us, depending on the conditions of the planet they evolved on. It's possible for instance that conditions on their planet were such that they did not have the era's of the dinosaurs, but rather evolved mammal life forms directly. We are not, after all, descending from dinosaurs, so would they have been necessary? It's also possible that they developed brains (or whatever they use) sooner then us. We can not assume that they are at the same stage of development as we are because we don't know what form they developed into. I doubt that human style life forms and evolution exists throughout the Universe.
Let's face it, Randy. With our present level of knowledge, almost any theory is possible.
I'll go along with that. With the Universe being infinite, I suppose an infinite number of possibilities is possible.
Although it's fun and entertaining to speculate on it.
My question is, does intelligent life exist on the third planet from our sun?
If so, what are the signs to prove or disprove this theory?
Enoch, Contemplating the Eternal Verities.
It's a fluke that intelligent life exits on this planet, let alone on any other. There have been several mass extinction events on earth, one of which wiped out the dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs had continued to exist, mammals (like man) would have never been able to evolve. Bear in mind that man has only been around 2 million years and that all of our civilization has taken place in the bubble between ice ages that occur every 10,000 years. Our greatest advances are withinin the last 150 years. In a universe that is 14 billion years old, we exist in the blink of an eye. Even if there are other earth-like planets, the odds of them having intelligent life in the same blink of an eye are probably staggering. And, even if they did exist in an evolutionary development parallel to our own, it could take our fastest spacecraft nearly a million years to reach them, enough time for a species to evolve and completely disappear. Sending messages through space presupposes that they have developed, and are using, equipment capable of receiving any signal we send. Even so, it could take more than 40 years for a signal to reach them just to say "hi" and another 40 years or more for them to respond. A conversation would take hundreds of years.
Expecting to find intelligent life in the universe may be like expecting two separate house fly species to develop simultaneously on opposite sides of the planet (separated by a vast ocean) and then find each other. Even if they developed simultaneously (a miracle in and of itself), their short life spans and the vast distance between them will mean that both will die without ever knowing that the other existed.
We've only had radio for about 100 years, so maybe the first radio waves we sent out weren't that strong, or undetectable. Then, they need the same amount of time to send a message back. Maybe they're sending us messages all the time, and we've not been able to recognize them, or access them. If they looked at the first TV transition-- Hitler screaming politics-- maybe they decided they don't want to contact us, and have quarantined us...
How would we handle it if we actually received a signal from an alien planet? I doubt we would handle it well...
Does anyone have a comment on the speculation in the article that life elsewhere than earth may have advanced beyond being biology based to being digital based?
Uh, I don't have the imagination to come up with something intelligent to say...
I think you are right. It sounds more like a science fiction movie plot than a picture of reality.
Like The Matrix?
The article speculates that advanced civilizations could be entirely comprised of Artificial Intelligence. Isn't it a fair question to ask if AI constitutes "life"? If it is "alive", why is it called "artificial" ?
I'm not buying this theory. I think Star Trek was more on the money than these scientists.
I don't think that any advanced species, would make contact with us, until they had to (i.e. we were about to use warp speed or learned how to bend space to travel). Then they would have to deal with us. Until then, we might be interesting to watch, but not to make actual official contact with.
Look at this planet. We have come so far with out technologies, but our basic nature has remained unchanged for thousands of years.
True. To an advanced alien life form our default position seems to be to kill each other. Individually or in wars. Why would they bother?
You are a science fiction buff.
What do you think of the speculative theory that we earthlings are some advanced interstellar civilization's computer simulation?
Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? - Scientific American
If that was directed at me I think it's amusing to think about, sort of like when stoned in the 60's and 70's there was a way to try to blow others minds with the theory that there may be an entire universe in our own atoms and that our universe is just a part of another much more huge being, but other then being fun to think of I don't give it much credence.
So does that mean that they would no longer reproduce, since they can technically live forever? This whole thing sounds like a stoner conversation.
Speaking of aliens, I think they're already here.
I keep expecting to see something explode out of their rib cages...
It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover the real reason is that civilizations tend to spend a small amount of time with respect to space-time broadcasting radio signals. First they have to learn the technology to do so and then I suspect they move on to better forms of communications. Maybe something that allows them to communicate across interstellar distances instantly. We wouldn't be able to hear that.
We've only been broadcasting for about 100 years but have been around for hundreds of thousands of years in one form or another. That's a tiny window in comparison. If we stop broadcasting in radio by the year 2100 then that means we only broadcast radio for 200 years. That means any alien civilization that might hear us would also have to be in the equivalent stage of development as we are for the past 100 years and future 100 years during part of our 200 year broadcast. Anything outside that and they would probably miss it.
Distance is also a huge problem with radio. Radio strength falls off rapidly as it moves away from it's source using an inverse square law. Twice the distance is 1/4 the power. Our galaxy is 200,000 light years across. That means any radio signal from us is going to be mighty damned weak by the time it covers hardly any of it at all. Then we've got other radio sources pouring out radiation to deal with too.
The galaxy could be filled with intelligent life and it still wouldn't surprise me that we've missed radio signals from all of them.
If we stop broadcasting in radio by the year 2100 then that means we only broadcast radio for 200 years. That means any alien civilization that might hear us would also have to be in the equivalent stage of development as we are for the past 100 years and future 100 years during part of our 200 year broadcast. Anything outside that and they would probably miss it.
I think that explains a lot of it. Well put.