The Fer­mi Paradox

A few weeks ago, I began a dis­cus­sion about the Kar­da­shev scale.  The Kar­da­shev scale builds lev­els of tech­nol­o­gy that rep­re­sent advanced civ­i­liza­tions, most­ly beyond our own. Giv­en the tech­nol­o­gy scale, and spec­u­la­tion from sci­ence fic­tion, we can scale pos­si­ble galaxy cross­ing times.

The galaxy cross­ing times can also be con­nect­ed to a civ­i­liza­tion’s col­o­niza­tion time for the galaxy.  Once we get those num­bers, it becomes appar­ent that the col­o­niza­tion time is small com­pared to the age of the uni­verse.  Enri­co Fer­mi noticed that the galaxy cross­ing time is small com­pared to the rel­a­tive age of the uni­verse. Hence the para­dox.  We should be in con­tact with aliens, but we aren’t. There’s more to the para­dox, but at the most gen­er­al — this is it.

In my arti­cle on the sub­ject, It Starts With A Para­dox, I dis­cuss this in more depth.

Eliz­a­beth How­ell wrote an exten­sive arti­cle Is any­body out there? for space.com in Decem­ber of 2021, that I high­ly recommend.

Anoth­er good arti­cle appears recent­ly in Big Think, Where is Every­body? A new hope for solv­ing the Fer­mi Para­dox. It dis­cuss­es the Square Kilo­me­ter Array (SKA) radio tele­scope, that may pro­vide us a use­ful tool in answer­ing this inter­est­ing sci­ence question.

Final­ly, this week.  I’d like to leave my read­ers with an inter­est­ing ques­tion: In sci­ence fic­tion where faster than light (FTL) trav­el is the norm, what is the most plau­si­ble means of dis­cov­ery of oth­er FTL capa­ble civilizations?

The New Fron­tiers Series, Book One: The Ship by Jack L. Knapp

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

The Space Envi­ron­ment: Impli­ca­tions for Space­craft Design — Revised and Expand­ed Edi­tion by Alan C. Tribble

Lunar Source­book: a Users Guide to the Moon edit­ed by Grant H. Heiken, David T. Van­i­man, and Bevan M. French

For more ref­er­ences and videos see my page: Fusion

For more ref­er­ences and videos see my page: Extra­so­lar Plan­ets.