The more I think about the Fermi paradox, the less interesting it gets. The great filter isn’t necessary. It’s just the distances.
The distances don’t account for the complete, total lack of evidence, though. Our civilization is detectable to dozens of light years at least, if you’re looking. And we are looking. So, the others… Where are they?
Well, presumably more than a few dozen light years away. A few dozen lightyears is nothing on a cosmic scale.
Right, a few dozen light-years is like… Less than a rounding error lol. The Milky Way galaxy alone is like 100,000 light years across, and around 1000 light years thick. If we treat the Milky Way as a cylinder, that’s a volume of roughly 8 trillion cubic light years to sift through.
Granted, a cylinder is a massively naive simplification for calculating the volume of the galaxy and probably way overestimates things. But even dropping that estimate down several orders of magnitude, billions, or even millions of cubic light years is still an unimaginably large region to search for life. And that’s just one galaxy. There’s billions of galaxies (that we know of), and some are even bigger than the Milky Way. Searching through all of that for life, especially when we don’t really know exactly what to look for, is a hilariously huge task.
It’s easy to say “we’re just separated by time and space” but that discounts why there’s no evidence of current or past life even somewhere close like Mars, where life on Earth formed after the formation of Mars. Why can’t we find simple cell fossils?
It could be that life formation is a slow process, or rare process, so that means intelligent life may be even rarer. To me that means every wasted human life and potential is a crime on a cosmic level. The most precious commodity in the universe may be the human brain, as far as we know.
If there is another intelligent species that develops space travel, then we better hope to God that they’re woke otherwise why wouldn’t we logically expect them to do to us what we do to cows or chickens.
I doubt any civilisation has made intergalactic travel. There are enough worlds in any galaxy that there is very little purpose in venturing to another galaxy. The distance between galaxies is also insane. Even with faster than light warp speeds it would take thousand of years to reach a different galaxy.
I definitely agree. I’m more just talking about the search for life though, not necessarily going for a visit lol. If we somehow search our entire galaxy for life and don’t find any, naturally the next step would be to start looking through another galaxy - I’m just trying to illustrate just how massive a search that would be.
There are habitable planets orbiting about one in five stars. So a few hundred habitable worlds in that range. Why do none of them transmit?
“They’re just not that into you.” --galactic consensus
A theory I’ve been writing into a fiction for a while is that Earth is just the oldest planet with life on it and Humans are the most technologically advanced species in the universe. The reason nobody has contacted us is because the rest of the universe is still basically in the caveman stage. Of course, my story is set like 1000 years in the future, after we have FTL spacecraft and start finding alien life on other worlds to know this. Also: Things don’t turn out well for the aliens.
Thing is, the universe is really really really fucking big and old. There might have been a million other super advanced societies throughout the universe space and throughout the universe life, but the chances of us knowing about them would still be negligible.
There are tens of billions of planets just in the milky way, most of them probably at least 5 billion years old. And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, if not trillions. The nearest one is 25,000 light years away. Do the math.
The chances of life existing elsewhere are pretty much 100%. The chances of us ever knowing about it are pretty much 0%.
There is actually some real theories, i think kurzgesagt covered or at least mentioned it that makes a mathematical case for us to still be in the very early stage where advanced complex life can possibly form.
Maybe not the first, but one of em.
Oh for sure. My own hypothesis or twists on them generally come from actual things I’ve heard or read about, and I do watch a lot of Kurzgesagt. Even completely baseless ones, like Creationism, has some interesting ideas perfect for fiction to explore.
Also, if you compare the age of the universe right now to how long it will be until heat death, we are absurdly early. We’re in the first 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of the universe’s lifespan.
SPOILERS!
Let’s just hope the humans you are writing have moved past capitalism
NOPE! It’s a cyberpunk dystopia. We’re spreading crapitalism across the universe, like a plague!
The other thing I’m trying to do with this is have non-human primary character heroes in a world where humans exist, because I’ve never seen that in other fiction before. Avatar (the James Cameron film) was close; but the protagonist is still technically a human.
So Warhammer 40k but the emperors original crusades before the Horace heresy?
That’s what your first paragraph brought to mind lol.
All I really know about Warhammer is that orks can collectively bend reality, and space is haunted.
Honestly you should look into it. I have a feeling you’d enjoy it.
I think Vonnegut wrote something similar about Mars. Been years since I read it.
Sounds like a good story. A lot of SF has a forerunner civilization concept, but I can only think of a couple that present anything about their early stages.
Hopefully I actually finish something other than a bunch of worldbuilding that ultimately doesn’t have any stories set in it…
One of my DMs ran a campaign in his world, specifically to have a story because he had been world building for 6 years at that point. Might be something to consider, obviously you’d probably need a system other than D&D, but there are loads of Sci Fi systems out there that could probably be adapted to your world.
That’s also how the first Dragonlance novels were written.
My setting would be perfect for Shadowrun. And it’s been about 6 years… Hmmm…
There ya go. Go recruit some
GhostwritersPlayers!
The table along with the tableware resembles a face with a hint of dread.
Our filter is … ourselves
Yeah that’s kinda the point. That Intelligent life will eventually invent a way to eliminate itself is probably an extremely human concept though.
That’s one filter.
I’d rather say our filter was/is the carboniferous. We have too much energy for our technology level.
We have a lot of available energy everywhere when you think about it … it’s not the energy, whether abundantly available or not, around us that is the problem … it’s in how we use and abuse it all.
The problem is not the things we use, or create, or have access to, the problem is us.
It was that bad.
