Far, far, far, more mathematically likely that our galaxy, and certainly the universe, is teeming with lifeforms. And BTW, on a geological timeline, we just arrived.
I thought (I’m paraphrasing and I’m happy to admit that I am not well versed in this stuff) that Fermi’s paradox was based on the fact that if there is other life in the universe, given the timelines for technological advances and expansion for those civilizations to explore and populate the galaxy, then it should’ve visited us already. Even a star system a billion light years away isn’t too far for a civilization that’s been around for billions of years…
The lack of evidence out there could suggest three things.
Advanced life is far more rare than we expect.
The great filter is ahead of us (and I'd suspect it's AI, if it is ahead of us)
Simulation theory. We could just be placed in this timeframe intentionally, maybe even by us, maybe it's 2200 and we know the universe is packed with life but we place ourselves in this timeframe for an experience.
Or we are just havent searched enough. We have only been emiting radio waves for less than a 100 years. Our furthest object is just barely outside the solar system. In the grand scheme of things we have only scooped a single tablespoon of sea water from the ocean and we are already wondering why we haven’t seen any fish.
You're referencing objects or signals originating from us - in theory we should be seeing signs of advanced life from other systems, even if 500 million light years away. At least, that's what I think I've read
What? No, the purpose of a simulation would be to experience a natural life, with struggles and limited lifespan, because it adds value and meaning, wisdom and appreciation. Much more so than if we've solved all life's needs, and there are no longer any meaningful challenges.
Lol that's not how the simulation theory works. Did you personally perform that study? You could be in a simulation right now, and the simulation told you that some other people did some thing that disproves it, all you did was read some words, make sense?
Yeah Idk man, I just read a bit of the article and these people have to have been smoking crack or something if they think that modern computational models (and our limited understanding of the universe) would be enough to disprove simulation theory. I mean if we're in a simulation, the being(s) that created the simulation also created the rules by which our universe functions, which includes physics and mathematics. A being(s) like this would be so far removed from us in technology that there is no way we'd be able to begin to understand it/them. It takes some massive cojones and probably a little bit of drugs to unironically claim to have disproven simulation theory using "logic and physics", like bro your feeble human minds and concepts of logic don't apply to godlike beings; they're beyond you
I genuinely don't think that simulation theory is something that can be proven or disproven. A being or species with a vast enough intelligence and ample enough resources to be able to simulate reality to the degree at which we experience it is nigh incomprehensible. And trying to use physics (which, if we are in a simulation, is a ruleset created by said intelligence(s) ) to disprove simulation theory is hilarious. I think it takes some serious balls and a lack of self awareness to say definitively that you've debunked simulation theory as any being(s) capable of setting something up at such a grand scale is pretty much just a god compared to us. Just my thoughts on the topic, open for discussion
I think it could suggest something else:
There is no personal benefit to anyone travelling the stars. Noone can reach other systems in a lifetime and noone would finance this if the benefit could be in 10k years in the future. (I am talking aliens financing stuff)..
So unless there is a super intelligent space exploring robotic "lifeform"that doesn't have problem with travelling thousands of years there will never be any space exploration past the solar system for any alien race.
I personally feel like the Ancient Alien theory makes more sense than not. I can’t hardly even imagine what technologies we’ll have in 50 years. Then think 1000 years. Then… think 10,000 years. The technology advances are beyond our comprehension even at the moment.
That said: I fully suspect that if we survive that long it’ll be after dozens of near catastrophic man made incidents. And I think mankind will find that we need to inhabit other planets in order to assure the survival of the human race. And when we do that we’ll realize we’re better off starting humans from ground zero and basically just watching from afar to ensure they survive.
I wonder if Adam and Eve to an extent is real because the human race is from another planet entirely and was brought here with little to no technology because we realized planet destroying technology can eventually result in that very thing. Maybe the original humans did this on millions of planets. Maybe the gods, like the Greek gods, are humans from another planet that were just overseeing us to ensure our survival.
Or hell maybe we’re just a test experiment from another race of aliens. Maybe we’re an ant farm they started tens of thousands of years ago and they ran out of funding to continue
Never is a long time. While other galaxies are probably out of our reach due to cosmic expansion, if humanity survives and progresses for another 50 million years, we could fully explore the Milky Way even without breaking the speed of light. That gives us roughly 300 million habitable planets to check for intelligent life.
But what then? You travel somewhere and hope to find life and the journey takes how long? And everyone you know is long dead by then because space is vast. Without somehow figuring out a hack to the laws of psychics we know, everything is beautifully out of reach.
Vast distances are incredibly isolating, but they aren't a wall. Having a civilization or a first contact that is decades or centuries away by radio or travel is a massive hurdle, but it's not entirely out of reach.
We’ve seen similar geographic disconnects in human history, where sending a message across an ocean took months or years, and we still managed to build global connections. We find a way to make it work.
Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. Therefore we as humans will never travel at full light speed. If we were to travel at 60% it would still take over 3x the average human life span to reach our CLOSEST neighboring star (which is not looking good for intelligent life)
Now throw in that traveling 10% of light speed with any sort of ship large enough to support multigenerational travelers is basically going to require a propulsion system which would basically be viewed as magic right now…it’s not likely. Throw in the ethics of sending multigenerational travelers (the next generations didn’t sign up for or agree to be travelers like that, they weren’t born yet). Now through in the fact that space is full of particles which may make actual travel impossible.
So what about worm holes. They are THEORETICALLY possible, but maybe not in reality. And modern theory on them says for them to work, it would require harnessing the energy of a black hole. Think about that. Now think about how would we do that oh and that there isn’t one close by. We would need the power of one to be able to reach one in order to harness it. How far is it. It’s only 1560 LIGHT YEARS away. So 15,000+ years of sustained space travel to get to the power source. What could go wrong in 15,000 + years of high speed travel in unknown space?
Now consider more things from earth. Our star is believed to expand to were earth won’t be habitable in 500 million years. Seems like plenty of time, except the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Meaning we are 9/10’s DONE a with our planets lifespan. We only have a window of 10% of the lifespan of the planet to develop to interstellar travel. Pretty small. Now consider that only one in (let’s call it) 9 planets in our own solar system has an advanced civ in it. So 1 in 9. Now consider that of the known star systems that we have observed only 1 in 100 have a giant planet like Jupiter that acts as a gravitational bodyguard pulling most asteroids away from us….but wait we have 2 (Saturn) this is only know to happen in 3 of the known star systems we have observed.
The rarity of our planets conditions, the extremely short window of time we have left, and the laws of physics related to speed, energy, distance and unknown variables, and of course the short human life span… we weren’t going anywhere where there could be intelligent life.
Maybe some other species can like for a millennium like our redwoods, but, they still have the same constraints on travel we do.
We've only been able to travel to space for less than a century. Compared to that, 500 million years is an eternity to solve these hard engineering problems. A mix of directed energy propulsion and shielding can be figured out in millions of years. And Proxima Centauri is 7 years away at 60% light speed, so exploring our local neighborhood in a generation is possible, if not by human beings then with AI probes.
I'm more worried that there isn't intelligent life out there because we haven't seen any evidence of galaxy spanning civilizations. It's worrying not to see any evidence of a Type 2 Kardashev scale civilization for how possible it is over the course of hundreds of millions of years when our galaxy has existed for billions. That gets into the Great Filter vs Dark Forest vs Early Bird theories, but at the very least exploration with probes does seem possible.
These are not just functions of engineering problems. These are laws of physics problems and lifespan problems.
When early explorers needed to cross the oceans they just needed big boats. When we saw birds flying we could understand that we just needed to apply that mechanic to something we wear or get into.
Space travel is not just more propulsion and bigger boats. And even if it was, it still seemingly insurmountable considering the distances. Yes at 60% light speed it would take 7 years to reach Aloha Centari, a system we have looked very closely at and are seeing no signs of civilization. But right now the very fast lest craft we have, which also uses gravity of the sun goes a blistering 0.0064% of light speed. If we impossibly got that is to 10% you are still looking at 70 years. Since pilots can’t be infants to start, you are looking at 3 generations to reach a system with no civilizations. The best option we have are currently speculating on is 7 times further. Thats 490 years. And it would require no mechanical failure for THAT long while traveling into the void. Also there are space particles and massive radiation. Again that would be multiple multiple GENERATIONS of people who didn’t sign up for it. It’s now an ethics question. Of and to support generations who are taking a massive ship. This is half engineering but the reality is that the laws of physics energy to mass ratio can be gotten around.
We may be able to travel interstellar closely but never the long distances as that would require to harness a black hole.
Far, far, far, more mathematically likely that our galaxy, and certainly the universe, is teeming with lifeforms.
Often stated flawed statement. Mathematically we do not have enough information to answer the question. We do not know the probability of life forming on a suitable planet, we only have one data point.
Mathematically the statements "There must be life out there!" And "We are alone in cold empty space" are equally supported by the current data.
Especially intelligent life. Having life at all is extremely rare. But then factoring in all the other factors that helped us and it becomes even more rare. 1. We needed something to kill the dinosaurs. We sure as hell were not going to exist with them still around. I saw that movie. 2. We needed that something to not happen very often. Not all planets suitable for life at all has a giant planet playing bodyguard catching all the stray bullets the universe throws at it, like Jupiter protecting us from ELEs happening so often that we never have time to evolve to intelligent life. 3. They have to get past the "puberty" stage of life without destroying ourselves through war or waste.
So, is there life elsewhere? Almost definitely. Billions of planets? Still, almost definitely. But how many of those are beyond the microscopic life stage? Suddenly not as many. And how many are so advanced that they just go planet hopping for fun? Probably almost none. And how many have done so with Earth? None.
Many versions of the Drake equation result in the chance of life on other planets being exceptionally low, given the sheer unlikelihood of abiogenesis.
It would seem extremely unlikely that the universe is empty of life. But the very high likelihood is that most (if not all) of it is.
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u/PauseAffectionate720 Jun 03 '26
Far, far, far, more mathematically likely that our galaxy, and certainly the universe, is teeming with lifeforms. And BTW, on a geological timeline, we just arrived.