In the summer of 1950, at Los Alamos, nuclear
physicists Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and other colleagues brought up the
subject of unidentified flying objects (UFO’s) while conversing over lunch.
This topic was very popular at that time. After a while, when they had changed
subjects Fermi suddenly asked: Where is everybody? Performing fast mental
computations, Fermi had reached the conclusion that alien civilizations should have
been visiting Earth for many thousands or millions of years. Therefore, why we
do not see aliens around? This is the Fermi Paradox.
As it turns out, in our
galaxy there are thousands of millions of stars much older than the Sun, many
of them thousands of millions of years older (in the ‘habitable zone’ of the
galaxy they are on average one thousand million years older). Therefore, many
civilizations must have arisen in our galaxy much before ours and a fraction of
them must have expanded through vast regions or even through the whole galaxy.
Some other arguments
pointing in the same direction include estimates about the lifetime of the
second generation stars, inside of which the chemical elements of organic
matter are made, and also include estimates of the total time necessary for a
technological civilization to colonize, or explore, the whole galaxy. Regarding
the second generation stars, they are formed only two million years after the
supermassive first generation stars (these burn out exploding as supernovae in
one million years only and it takes another million years for the debris to
form new stars). Therefore, the appearance of organic matter in our galaxy
could have happened several thousands of millions of years before the Sun came
into existence. As to the total time necessary to colonize, or explore, the
whole galaxy by a technological civilization, conservative computations of
diffusion modeling give estimates from 5 to 50 million years, which is a
cosmologically short timescale. Besides these considerations, the fact that
life on Earth started very early supports the views, held by many scientists,
that life should be abundant in the Universe.
Many solutions have been
proposed to the Fermi Paradox, that we can classify as expansionist and
non-expansionist. The expansionist solutions are based on the assumption that,
generically, technological civilizations do expand through large regions of their
galaxy. The non-expansionist solutions, by contrast, are based on the
assumption that technological civilizations do not expand beyond a small
neighborhood of their galaxy. Among these solutions, the most popular ones
argue that interstellar travel is impossible, regardless of the scientific and
technological level reached by a civilization, or that advanced civilizations
have no interest in expanding across large regions of their galaxy, or even
that technological civilizations annihilate themselves, or disappear due to
natural disasters, before they can spread throughout their galaxy.
In turn, the most popular
expansionist solutions to the Fermi Paradox present two irreconcilable
positions. On the one hand, there are those who advocate that it is highly unlikely
that intelligent life will emerge in the Universe and that we are practically
alone in our Galaxy. Otherwise, some alien civilizations would necessarily have
visited us. At the antipodes of the former, on the other hand, are those who
maintain that advanced civilizations abound in the Universe, that they visit
the Earth in the present, for different reasons, and have also visited it in
the past. In this regard, it should be noted that some scientists and some members
of the military and pilots, of various countries, as well as many authors of
popular books, have been proposing for decades that some UFOs could be
extraterrestrial space craft, and some of the 'gods of the heavens', which
proliferate in many ancient traditions, may have been alien astronauts. There
are several reasons why such civilizations would not openly contact ours. For
example, advanced civilizations might have ethical codes that prevent them from
interfering with primitive civilizations, as suggested by Carl Sagan in his
work COSMOS. And it could also happen that we are ignored for lack of interest,
due to our very primitive level, among other possibilities.
The Subanthropic
Principle and the Undetectability Conjecture.
In the summer of 2003, I made a proposal to
solve the Fermi Paradox [1,2], after a simple reflection on the relations
between the different civilizations put into contact in the process of
expansion. Here it is crucial to differentiate between aggressive and
non-aggressive advanced civilizations. Aggressive advanced civilizations would
exploit and harm less advanced ones as much as it would be convenient for them,
and even annihilate them in order to take over their planet. The non-aggressive
advanced civilizations, on the other hand, would try to integrate the less
advanced ones, pulling them to their own level, as long as the evolutionary
leap between the two were not too pronounced.
In some cases, however, such
advanced civilizations would find planets inhabited by primitive civilizations
with an enormous gap (technological, scientific and genetic) between them. In
particular, as far as brain capabilities are concerned, the differences between
advanced individuals and primitive individuals could be pathetic. In these
circumstances, what would be expected is that the advanced individuals would
behave in an 'ecological' way towards the primitive ones, interfering as little
as possible and very discreetly with their social and cultural evolution,
taking into account that the open contact would destroy that civilization. With
this perception it becomes less difficult to accept the possibility that the
Solar System could have been explored or colonized many thousands, or even
millions, of years ago by at least one non-aggressive advanced civilization
that had treated, and may still treat, our planet as a nature reserve and us as
a protected species.
My solution to the Fermi
Paradox results from this scenario and consists of two hypotheses. The first
one is The Subanthropic Principle:
We are not typical among intelligent observers of the Universe. Typical
civilizations in typical galaxies would be hundreds of thousands, or millions,
of years more evolved than our Earth civilization.
The
second hypothesis is The Undetectability Conjecture: All
sufficiently advanced civilizations camouflage their planets for security
reasons, due
to the existence of aggressive advanced civilizations, so that no sign of
civilization (or life) can be detected by external observers, who would only
obtain distorted data for the purpose of deterrence. This hypothesis would explain why we would not
detect any signal of intelligence coming from outer space, even if the Solar
System were part of an extensive hypercivilization.
In addition, this solution
implies that: At present, most probably, all typical galaxies in the
Universe are already colonized (or large regions of them) by advanced
civilizations. In the vast territory of these hypercivilizations, a
small proportion of their individuals belong to primitive subcivilizations
Advanced civilizations would
have subterranean and submarine bases on the primitive planets in their
territory, for military and scientific reasons. Actually, the fact that our
civilization has never been attacked by aggressive aliens, as far as we know, could
be an indication that we are immersed in an advanced civilization that protects
our planet as part of its territory. Curiously, in one of the videos of Stephen
Hawking's Universe, the author comments: "Several of my colleagues
think that we may be visited by aliens aboard some UFOs. I don't believe it
because if aliens arrived here the interaction with us would be much more
unpleasant, ....”. Therefore, Hawking did not contemplate the possibility of
benevolent extraterrestrial civilizations, which would not attack us and might
even prevent other extraterrestrial civilizations from doing so.
The Undetectability
Conjecture predicts a very low probability of success for the SETI project
searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. The reason is that their antennas
could only detect primitive civilizations capable of producing electromagnetic
emissions. But after reaching that level, any civilization would take only a
few hundred years to learn to hide from outside observers, becoming
undetectable! As a result, the period of detectability of an average
civilization could be very short and the probability that a primitive
civilization, like ours, would detect another one would be negligible. For
example, it could have happened that planet Earth received the last radio or TV
programs from another planet 200,000 years ago and for a period of about 500
years. This effect should be added as another factor in the Drake equation.
By
contrast, this solution to the Fermi Paradox is obviously compatible with some
UFOs being alien spacecraft (either extraterrestrial, or intraterrestrial from underground colonies), and is also compatible
with the 'gods descending from the heavens' corresponding to various teams of
scientists and technicians assisted by military personnel. These teams would
have been sent to help develop the terrestrial civilization.
This solution is also
compatible with the possibility of contacts between individuals from advanced
civilizations and some individuals from primitive civilizations. As a matter of
fact, in the article of 2003 [1], I identified three main causes or reasons
that could motivate such contacts: scientific objectives in general,
entertainment and/or affection, and criminal purposes of all kinds (including
abductions and kidnappings).
The Soviet probe Phobos 2 sent 38 photographs of the surface of Mars, some showing strange shadows. On 25 March 1989, pointing to the satellite Phobos, the probe took a last snapshot (left), in which the satellite can be seen together with a very elongated cylindrical object, whose shape coincided with one of the shadows. Marina Popovich, a colonel in the Soviet Air Force, showed this photograph at a press conference (right) at the USSR consulate in San Francisco in 1991. (Associated Press - The New York Times)
To conclude, I suspect that
the main characteristic of the scenario I propose; that is, the existence of
primitive subcivilizations immersed in great hypercivilizations, is most likely
true today, or will be in the future, in most galaxies.
The answer to the question
whether our civilization is indeed such a subcivilization, ignorant of the
existence of the great hypercivilization, will come perhaps through advanced technology
that will allow us to rule out such a possibility. But it could also come from the decision of
our hosts, if they exist, to show us their faces openly, which could happen
much sooner.
Scientific Researcher.
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