Fermis Paradox F i P d

GEK1537: Discussion 1

How old is the universe?

Astrophysicists have deduced the age of the Universe (dated from the Big Bang) to be

13.7 BILLION YEARS!

The age of the Universe can be estimated from a cosmological model based on the Hubble constant and the densities of matter and dark energy. It can also be estimated from: The Th age of the chemical elements. f th h i l l t The age of the oldest star clusters. The age of the oldest white dwarf stars.

How old is the Earth?

Age of Earth is estimated to be

4.54 BILLION YEARS

Age of Earth and the solar system can be estimated from radiometric dating of meteoritic materials Ca-Al-rich inclusions (inclusions rich in calcium and aluminium) the oldest known so d co s ue s w ow solid constituents within meteorites that are formed within the solar e eo es a a e o ed w e so a system are 4.567 billion years old. This sets the upper limit of Earths age

Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996

Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence evidence

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A pale blue dot

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you g y y love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. "The Earth is "Th E h i a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of ll i i Thi k f h i f blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the dl lti i it d b th i h bit t f f thi i l th scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. hatreds "Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our dark obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

Carl Sagans cosmic calendar g

Imagine that the entire history of the universe is compressed into one year - with the Big Bang corresponding to the first second of the New Year's Day, and the present time to the last second of December 31st (midnight). Using this scale of time, each month would equal a little over a billion billi years, each day about 33 million yrs, each hour about 1.4 hd b t illi hh b t14 million yrs and each second about 400 yrs.

The Cosmic Calendar

Event Big Bang First Atoms form Stars and Galaxies form Our Sun is born Earth born Moon formed Earliest life on Earth First multi-cellular life on Earth Dinosaurs appear Dinosaurs die Humans arise Humans migrate from Asia to America First cities Shang Dynasty in China Pythagorian Age in Greece 1 A.D. AD Fall of the Roman Empire Columbus sails for America Present Day P tD Sun becomes Red Giant Sun becomes White Dwarf

When it happened January 1, midnight January 1 1:00 a m 1, a.m. January 8, 7:00 a.m. September 1, 8:00 a.m. September 11 2 00 a.m. S 11, 2:00 September 13, 12:00 p.m. September 30, 1:00 p.m. December 14, 11:00 p.m. December 27, 3:00 a.m. December 30, 10:00 a.m. December 31, 11:38 p.m. December 31, 11:59:30 p.m. December 31, 11:59:49 p , p.m. December 31, 11:59:53 p.m. December 31, 11:59:55 p.m. December 31, 11:59:56 p.m. 31 pm December 31, 11:59:57 p.m. December 31, 11:59:59 p.m. next J t January 1, midnight 1 id i ht next May 2, 4:00 p.m. 7 next May 7, 1:00 p.m.

The Cosmic Calendar

Just after the Big Bang

Condense history of our solar system

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Condense history of modern astronomy

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The future

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Human history as we know it December 31

Origin of Proconsul and Ramapithecus, probable ancestors of apes and men First humans Widespread use of stone tools Domestication of fire by Peking man Beginning of most recent glacial period Seafarers settle Australia S f ttl A t li Extensive cave painting in Europe Invention of agriculture g Neolithic civilization; first cities First dynasties in Sumer, Ebla and Egypt; development of astronomy t Invention of the alphabet; Akkadian Empire Hammurabic legal codes in Babylon; Middle Kingdom in Egypt ~ 1:30 p.m. ~ 10:30 p.m. 11:00 p.m. 11:46 p.m. 11:56 p.m. 11:58 p.m. 11:59 p.m. 11:59:20 p.m. p 11:59:35 p.m. 11:59:50 p.m. 11:59:51 p.m. 11:59:52 p.m.
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December 31

Human history as we know it

11:59:53 p m p.m. 11:59:54 p.m. 11:59:55 p.m. 11:59:56 p.m. 11:59:57 p.m. 11:59:58 p.m. 11:59:59 p.m.

Bronze metallurgy; Mycenaean culture; Trojan War; Olmec culture; invention of the compass Iron metallurgy; First Assyrian Empire; Kingdom of Israel; founding of Carthage by Phoenicia Asokan India; Ching Dynasty China; Periclean Athens; birth of Buddha Euclidean geometry; Archimedean physics; Ptolemaic astronomy; Roman Empire; birth of Christ Zero and decimals invented in Indian arithmetic; Rome falls; Birth of Islam and the Islamic Civilization Mayan civilization; Sung Dynasty China; Byzantine empire; Mongol invasion; Crusades Renaissance in Europe; voyages of discovery from Europe and from Ming Dynasty China; emergence of the experimental method in science i Widespread development of science and technology; emergence of global culture; acquisition of the means of self-destruction of the human species; first steps in spacecraft planetary exploration and the search of extraterrestrial intelligence; GEK1357 classes begin

FERMIS PARADOX

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Fermis Paradox: Where is everybody?

Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. neutrons Fermi posits that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire Galaxy. Within a few million y years, every star system could be brought under , y y g the wing of empire. A few million years may sound long, but in fact it's quite short compared with the age of the Galaxy, g y

Enrico Fermi

The paradox can be summed up as follows: The commonly held belief that the universe h many technologically advanced civilizations, combined with our has h l ll d d l b d h observations that suggest otherwise, is paradoxical, suggesting that either our understanding or our observations are flawed or incomplete.
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Possible solution to Fermis Paradox I: They were/are here!

They were here and they left evidence UFO's, Ancient Astronauts, Alien Artifacts: all tantalizing suggestions that , , g gg aliens are here now or have been here in the recent past. Problem: hard evidence for alien visitation/residence is practically nonexistent. existent They are us Humans are the descendents of ancient alien civilizations civilizations. Problem: where are the original aliens? Where are all the other alien civilizations Zoo scenario The aliens are here, and they are keeping us in a well designed zoo (cut off from all contact) Problem: scenario lacks the ability to be tested
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Possible solution to Fermis Paradox I: Were they here?

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Possible solution to Fermis Paradox II: They exist, but have not yet reached or communicated with us
They have not had time to reach us??? Speed of light limits communication relativity makes space travel long. ET's communication, long message may not have reached us yet. In the last two lectures, we learned that even the galaxy is a very big place. Human life is very short. So, how realistic is l i i galactic exploration/colonization? l i / l i i ? Problem: Galaxy has been around for billions of years, even if one ET civilization formed a few million years before us, the Galaxy would be filled with Bracewell-von Neumann probes.

Catastrophes

- Civilizations only have a limited lifetime and a prone to self selfdestruction through intra species rivalry of a dominant species - Overpopulation - Nanobots (Gray Goo Problem)
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Whats a Von Neumann probe?

A von Neumann probe is a fictional or hypothetical self replicating machine, self-replicating machine specifically designed for space exploration or colonization, named after John von Neumann, a Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist who was the first scientist to rigorously study the concept of self-replicating machines, although i i i l d h f lf li i hi lh h von Neumann himself never actually proposed or discussed the use of replicating machines for this purpose. The probe would be launched to a neighboring star-system. Upon its arrival it would immediately seek out raw materials (asteroids, moons, gas giants, etc.) to create replicas of itself. Once it had created a sufficient number of replica probes, p p p , the original probe to enter the system would go about exploring the star-system. A berserker probe is a hypothetical or fictional type of Von Neumann probe that has been deliberately (or inadvertently) designed to sterilize the entire galaxy so that life cannot emerge, and/or destroy all existing life in its path as the probes spread outward at an exponentially increasing rate across the galaxy. galaxy It has been speculated that the entire galaxy could be sterilized in this way in as little as half a million years. The technologies required for the construction of such probes do not currently exist and would likely require advanced molecular h b d t tl it d ld lik l i d d l l assembling nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. 20

Possible solution to Fermis Paradox II: They exist, but have not yet reached or communicated with us
They are signaling, but we do not know how to listen They have no desire to communicate

EM radiation, gravity waves, exotic p ,g y , particles are all examples of methods to p signal. Problem: they may use methods we have not learned yet, but if there are many civilizations someone would use EM methods. methods They Develop a different sort of mathematics Mathematics is a universal language. But humankind may have a unique language system of mathematics that ET cannot understand. Our technology is just too different
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Contact!

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Possible solution to Fermis Paradox III: Extraterrestrial civilization do not exist

We are the First, Life is New to the Galaxy Life is new to the Galaxy, evolution takes time, we are the first civilization. Problem: Sun is average star, if other stars formed a million years ahead of us, they would be a million years ahead of us in technology. Planets With the Right Conditions are Rare- Rare Earth Hypothesis Planetary systems are rare y y Habitable zones, proper distance from star for liquid water, are narrow Galaxy is a dangerous place (gamma-ray bursters, asteroid impacts, etc) Earth/Moon system is unique (large tides needed for molecular evolution) Earth/Moon -More in the last lecture Life Is Rare Life's Genesis is rare Intelligence/Tool-Making is rare
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So, was there enough time for life to become common in the universe?
Spitzer Space Telescopes infrared spectrometer has detected organic molecules in galaxies when our universe was one-fourth of its current age of about 14 billion years. These polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were formed billion 10 billi years further back in f h b ki time than we've seen them before"

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Alien civilizations

A scheme for classifying advanced technological civilizations proposed by Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. He identified three possible types and distinguished between them in terms of the power they could muster for the purposes of interstellar communications the Kardashev scale A Type I civilization would be able to marshal energy resources for communications on a planet-wide scale, equivalent to the entire present scale power consumption of the human race, or about 1016 watts. A T pe II civilization would surpass this b a factor of appro imatel ten Type ci ili ation o ld s rpass by approximately billion, making available 1026 watts, by exploiting the total energy output of its central star. Freeman Dyson, for example, has shown in general terms how this might be done with a Dyson sphere. hi i h b d ih h

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The Dyson Sphere/Shell

Dyson sphere: a spherical shell, 2 to 3 meters thick, centered on the Sun and rotating around it at about twice the orbital distance of the Earth (see Note 1 below). The material for building the sphere, Freeman Dyson suggested, could come from g p , y gg , disassembling the planet Jupiter and utilizing the minerals and metals from its deep 26 interior.

The Matrioshka Brain

A Matrioshka Brain is a imagined megascale structure constructed at atomic scale g g limits. It is essentially a Dyson Shell supercomputer, that uses all of the energy a star produces and all of the material in a solar system for "computronium". Because of their size, immense observational and computational abilities, Matrioshka Brains should have longevities at least as long as those of stars (~1014 years for smaller stars).
http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/
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Alien civilizations
A Type III civilization would have evolved far enough to tap the energy resources of an entire galaxy. This would give a further increase by at least a factor of 10 g y g y billion to about 1036 watts. Carl Sagan pointed out that the energy gaps between Kardashev's three types Kardashev s were so enormous that a finer gradation was needed to make the scheme more useful. A Type 1.1 civilization, for example, would be able to expend a maximum of 1017 watts on communications, a Type 2.3 could utilize 1029 watts and so on. communications 23 watts, on He estimated that, on this more discriminating scale, the human race would presently qualify as roughly a Type 0.7.

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Alien civilizations

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