Since Fermi asked his famous question, "Where is everybody?" it has been increasingly realised that the feasibility of interstellar colonisation has deep implications for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In this paper, the feasibility of intergalactic colonisation is discussed. It is argued that a civilisation already technologically advanced enough to colonise its home galaxy would not find the task of settling a neighbouring galaxy to be insuperable. Most Geocentric arguments against SETl that involve interstellar colonisation require the probability of the independent origin of a colonising civilisation in a suitable star system to be~ 10-11 to account for an undisturbed Earth. Including intergalactic colonisation in the scenario requires the said probability to be ~10-22. Ultimately therefore, Geocentric arguments approach to Anthropic Principle arguments. It is contended that a Copernican hypothesis is more likely to be a true explanation for Fermi's Paradox than the "Anthropic" view that the Universe has to be the size it is to host one civilisation (us).

This thesis starts with the question how thinking about extra terrestrial intelligence came into existence. The idea is an interplay between cosmology and philosophy, before Enlightenment these two disciplines were merged. The historical overview starts with Epicurean philosophy being the first to posit the possibility of multiple worlds. The idea was rejected by Aristotle. Still both Aristotle and Plato developed philosophical principles that influenced the thinking about extra terrestrial life. De Copernican revolution in astronomy opened a new view on the Universe. The thesis shows how this new perspective, combined with ideas from antiquity resulted in the idea of multiple worlds harboured with intelligent life. And how this idea was widely accepted. Philosophers until Kant have contributed to the idea on the existence of extra terrestrial intelligence and strengthened the idea. The idea consisted of three principles: uniformity of nature, teleology and the ‘Great Chain of Being’. After Enlightenment astronomy and philosophy become separate disciplines. After reconstructing and analysing the idea behing extra terrestrial intelligence, the thesis continues with a search to what extend the principles making up the idea still influence our current thinking about extra terrestrial life. The Drake Equation, considered to be the current paradigm for SETI is used as the guidance. It is shown that many of the principles are still employed or influence current science. This has impact on the current SETI research. The conclusions criticizes current SETI research and present directions for widening the scope of the research to increase the chances of success in finding extra terrestrial intelligence.

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 2014

Cornell University - arXiv, 2019

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) makes certain assumptions which guide all current search programs. To illustrate some, this includes (1) that interstellar flight is not possible (2) that the motivations of interstellar cultures are based largely on anthropomorphic understandings of homo sapiens (3) that the Fermi Paradox and the Drake equation are the starting point (axioms) of all reasoning (4) that definitions of 'life' are based largely on our understanding of homeostasis (5) that radio waves are the most likely method of interstellar communications (6) that unknown single event source signatures detected in space are not amenable to scrutiny due to the demands of the scientific method to be reproducible (7) that such anomalous signatures are either astronomical or communications based in type, with no consideration for emissions from advanced industrialisation or propulsion and power technology. These assumptions, and others, have guided the SETI community towards a constrained level of thinking that is equivalent to philosophical dogma. In this paper, we unpack these assumptions, and others, and argue that the potential for life and intelligent life in the Cosmos may be much greater than the SETI community currently appears to conclude. It is also argued that more progress in our understanding of our place in the Cosmos, can be made, if the separate disciplines of astronomy, interstellar spacecraft design, SETI, biology and philosophy can work together in a complimentary way. Presented at the 47 th IAA Symposium on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI and Society.

SocArXiv Papers, 2023

The lack of any radio signals or other astronomical evidence supportive of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life possessed of technology of sufficient sophistication to bring itself to our attention here on Earth is not, per se, evidence of an absence of life, or even intelligent life, in the cosmos itself, but it does indicate that any such advanced societies, if they have come into existence at all, may be extremely rare and comparatively short-lived, destroyed by the very technology that might have brought them to our notice. This, it will be suggested, is the solution to Fermi's famous 'paradox', and the reason no SETI signals have been detected. The lessons we should learn are that life like that on our planet is very rare and precious, and we must not risk destroying it.

arXiv (Cornell University), 2011

It has been widely acknowledged that self-replicating space-probes (SRPs) could explore the galaxy very quickly relative to the age of the galaxy. An obvious implication is that SRPs produced by extraterrestrial civilizations should have arrived in our solar system millions of years ago, and furthermore, that new probes from an ever-arising supply of civilizations ought to be arriving on a constant basis. The lack of observations of such probes underlies a frequently cited variation of the Fermi Paradox. We believe that a predilection for ETI-optimistic theories has deterred consideration of incompatible theories. Notably, SRPs have virtually disappeared from the literature. In this paper, we consider the most common arguments against SRPs and find those arguments lacking. By extension, we find recent models of galactic exploration which explicitly exclude SRPs to be unfairly handicapped and unlikely to represent natural scenarios. We also consider several other models that seek to explain the Fermi Paradox, most notably percolation theory and two societalcollapse theories. In the former case, we find that it imposes unnatural assumptions which likely render it unrealistic. In the latter case, we present a new theory of interstellar transportation bandwidth which calls into question the validity of societal-collapse theories. Finally, we offer our thoughts on how to design future SETI programs which take the conclusions of this paper into account to maximize the chance of detection.

This paper includes a brief history of Anthropic Principle (AP) basic concepts and formulations. After the Large Number Hypothesis, presentation in Dirac-Eddington's formulation, are discussed some forms of Anthropic Principle (AP): AP in non-restrictive form (weak AP), AP in restrictive form (strong AP), AP and the multi-world interpretation given by Everett. Also here there are presented the analysis and proposals made by other scientists, Joe Rosen and Giancarlo Cavalleri.

International Journal of Astrobiology, 2006

This paper delineates the cultural evolution of the ancient idea of a plurality of inhabited worlds, and traces its development through to contemporary extraterrestrialism, with its foundation in the physical determinism of cosmology, and its attendant myths of alien contact drawn from examples of British film and fiction. We shall see that, in the evolving debate of the existence of extraterrestrial life and intelligence, science and science fiction have benefited from an increasingly symbiotic relationship. Modern extraterrestrialism has influenced both the scientific searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and become one of the most pervasive cultural myths of the 20th century. Not only has pluralism found a voice in fiction through the alien, but fiction has also inspired science to broach questions in the real world.

Biology & Philosophy, 2006

An interesting consequence of the modern cosmological paradigm is the spatial infinity of the universe. When coupled with naturalistic understanding of the origin of life and intelligence, which follows the basic tenets of astrobiology, and with some fairly incontroversial assumptions in the theory of observation selection effects, this infinity leads, as Ken Olum has recently shown, to a paradoxical conclusion. Olum's paradox is related, to the famous Fermi's paradox in astrobiology and SETI studies. We, hereby, present an evolutionary argument countering the apparent inconsistency, and show how, in the framework of a simplified model, deeper picture of the coupling between histories of intelligent/technological civilizations and astrophysical evolution of the Galaxy, can be achieved. This strategy has consequences of importance for both astrobiological studies and philosophy.

Acta Biotheoretica, 2007

Journal of the British Interplanetary Society

AI

Basing on the new physical approach in description of the characteristics of live matter, the author obtained a numerical values for mass of living matter in the Universe, quantity of biospheres in the Universe (N bio ~3.3·10 18), quantity of biospheres in the Galaxy (N~5·10 7). The calculated average distance between biospheres in the Galaxy is l ≤ 40 light years. However, the probability of disclosure of an extra-terrestrial civilization, analogous to Earth one, is too small, P~10 -5 . It is shown, that a paradigm of the expansive and extensive development of the modern technological civilization in the bounds of SETI is useless principally, as for planetary civilization exist demographic, power, destructive and genetic-adaptive natural barriers, and limits of continuous growth and cosmic expansion. A strategy of intensive growth of civilization using the low-energy quantum technologies is more realistic. In that case, the radiation of civilization becomes low and it is very diffi...

The emerging science of evolutionary developmental (“evo devo”) biology can aid us in thinking about our universe as both an evolutionary system, where most processes are unpredictable and creative, and a developmental system, where a special few processes are predictable and constrained to produce far-future-specific emergent order, just as we see in the common developmental processes in two stars of an identical population type, or in two genetically identical twins in biology. The transcension hypothesis proposes that a universal process of evolutionary development guides all sufficiently advanced civilizations into what may be called "inner space," a computationally optimal domain of increasingly dense, productive, miniaturized, and efficient scales of space, time, energy, and matter, and eventually, to a black-hole-like destination. Transcension as a developmental destiny might also contribute to the solution to the Fermi paradox, the question of why we haven't seen evidence of or received beacons from intelligent civilizations. A few potential evolutionary, developmental, and information theoretic reasons, mechanisms, and models for constrained transcension of advanced intelligence are briefly considered. In particular, we introduce arguments that black holes may be a developmental destiny and standard attractor for all higher intelligence, as they appear to some to be ideal computing, learning, forward time travel, energy harvesting, civilization merger, natural selection, and universe replication devices. In the transcension hypothesis, simpler civilizations that succeed in resisting transcension by staying in outer (normal) space would be developmental failures, which are statistically very rare late in the life cycle of any biological developing system. If transcension is a developmental process, we may expect brief broadcasts or subtle forms of galactic engineering to occur in small portions of a few galaxies, the handiwork of young and immature civilizations, but constrained transcension should be by far the norm for all mature civilizations. The transcension hypothesis has significant and testable implications for our current and future METI and SETI agendas. If all universal intelligence eventually transcends to black-hole-like environments, after which some form of merger and selection occurs, and if two-way messaging is severely limited by the great distances between neighboring and rapidly transcending civilizations, then communication with feedback may be very rare, an event restricted to nearest-neighbor stars for a very brief period prior to transcension. The only kind of communication that might be common enough to be easily detectable by us would be the sending of one-way METI or probes throughout the galaxy. But simple one-way messaging or probes may be not worth the cost to send, and advanced messaging or probes may provably reduce the evolutionary diversity in all civilizations receiving them, as they would condemn the receiver to transcending in a manner similar to that of the sender. If each civilization in our universe is quite limited in what they can learn given their finite computational resources, and if many civilizations evolve in parallel and in isolation in our universe for this reason, then a powerful ethical injunction against one-way messaging or probes might emerge in the morality and sustainability systems of all sufficiently advanced civilizations, an argument known as the Zoo hypothesis in Fermi paradox literature. In any such environment, the evolutionary value of sending any interstellar message or probe may simply not be worth the cost, if transcension and post-transcension merger are elements of an inevitable, accelerative, and testable developmental process, one that eventually will be discovered and quantitatively described by future physics. Fortunately, transcension processes may be measurable today even without good physical theory, and radio and optical SETI may each provide empirical tests. If transcension is a universal developmental constraint, then without exception all early and low-power electromagnetic leakage signals (radar, radio, television), and later, optical evidence of the exoplanets and their atmospheres should reliably cease as each civilization enters their own technological singularities (emergence of postbiological intelligence and life forms) and recognizes they are on an optimal and accelerating path to a black-hole-like environment. Furthermore, optical SETI may soon allow us to map an expanding area of the galactic habitable zone we may call the galactic transcension zone, an inner ring that contains older transcended civilizations, and a missing planets problem as we discover that planets with life signatures occur at a much lower frequencies in this inner ring than in the remainder of the habitable zone.

International Journal of Astrobiology, 2004

Perhaps the most straightforward solution to the Fermi paradox is that the distances between stars are too great to permit interstellar travel. Perhaps, no matter how technologically advanced a species becomes, it cannot overcome the barrier of interstellar distance. (This might explain why ETCs have not visited us, but not necessarily why we have not heard from them. But let us put this criticism to the side for the next few sections.) That the stars are far away does not in itself make interstellar travel unattainable. It is not impossible to build a vessel that can leave a planetary system and then travel through interstellar space. Take our Solar System as an example: its escape velocity, starting at Earth's distance from the Sun, is only 42 km/s. In other words, if we launch a vessel traveling at 42 km/s relative to the Sun, then it can escape the grip of the Sun's gravitational influence. It can become a starship. No problem: NASA has already built several such vessels! (With our present technology we have to cheat a little and use the gravity assist offered by the planets. The so-called "slingshot effect" is quite sufficient to boost a slow-moving craft to escape velocity.) Voyager 1, launched on 5 September 1977, toured the outer planets and then headed out into space. On 17 February 1998 it became the most distant man-made object, and it is now farther from the Sun than is Pluto. Unless alien probes pick it up, as happened to the fictional Voyager 6 in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it will eventually make its closest approach to a star-it will drift within 1.6 light years of an unprepossessing M4 star called AC +79 3888. The trouble is, Voyager will take tens of thousands of years to reach its closest encounter with the star. And that is the difficulty with interstellar travel: unless you travel fast, the transit times are long. 71 The best way to rate a starship's speed is in terms of c, the speed of light, since c is a universal speed limit. 72 The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792.458 km/s. So Voyager 1, which as I write is traveling at 17.26 km/s away from the Sun, travels at a mere 0.000058c. Now, the stars are so widely separated that a favored method of presenting interstellar distances is to use the light year: the distance light travels in one year. For example, the nearest star to our Sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.22 light years distant. 73 So the fastest possible "craft"-photons of light-would take more than 4 years to reach the nearest star; Voyager 1, were it traveling in that direction, would take almost 73,000 years to complete the same journey. The huge travel time involved when traveling at sub-light speed leads many commentators to conclude that interstellar travel, while perhaps not theoretically impossible, is impracticable.

Building on a new physical framework for describing the properties of living matter, the author derived numerical estimates for the total mass of living matter in the Universe, the number of biospheres in the Universe N_bio ≈ 3.3•10^18 , and the number of biospheres within the Galaxy N ≈ 5•10^7. The calculated mean distance between biospheres in the Galaxy is l ≈ 25÷40 light years. Nevertheless, the probability of detecting an extraterrestrial civilization comparable to that of Earth is extremely low (P ≈ 10^-5). The study demonstrates that the paradigm of expansive and extensive development characteristic of modern technological civilization, within the framework of SETI, is fundamentally ineffective, since planetary civilizations face inherent demographic, energetic, destructive, and genetic-adaptive constraints that impose natural limits on continuous growth and cosmic expansion. A strategy of intensive development based on low-energy quantum technologies appears more feasible. Under such conditions, the radiation emitted by a civilization becomes weak, making its detection in the electromagnetic spectrum exceedingly difficult. This offers a plausible resolution to the astro-sociological aspect of the Fermi paradox.

2000

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in ‘physical eschatology’ and, in particular, in the idea that, in the far–distant future, intelligent life will spread from earth to the rest of the universe. Although some of the early seeds were sown by Freeman Dyson, the main proponent of this idea has been Frank Tipler. Tipler (1995)—a book devoted solely to the elaboration of Tipler’s ‘Omega Point Theory’—was released with an enormous fanfare, and it spent many weeks near the top of the bestseller charts. In this paper, I cast a critical eye over some aspects of the theory which Tipler develops.

2022

The article advances a synthesized view of the world based on an intelligently communicated undivided Universe. It presents a fundamental component-based architecture and characterizes the controlling role of info-communication processes in the interplanetary system. The Fermi Paradox is then considered, which leads to a discussion about the concept of God as it pertains to Albert Einstein’s and Stephen Hawking’s theories. The article next introduces the author’s own understanding of God. The approach adopted in this study situates Earth’s civilization within the broader context of extraterrestrial civilizations, and it considers what this means for modern humans. Further research is also suggested in this area regarding the current needs of human civilization on Earth. The study uses an IT approach that is based on system-integrated info-communication processing. The approach is horizontal rather than vertical, which is popular for natural sciences such as physics and chemistry.

New Astronomy, 2006

Motivated by recent developments impacting our view of Fermi's paradox (absence of extraterrestrials and their manifestations from our past light cone), we suggest a reassessment of the problem itself, as well as of strategies employed by SETI projects so far. The need for such reevaluation is fueled not only by the failure of searches thus far, but also by great advances recently made in astrophysics, astrobiology, computer science and future studies, which have remained largely ignored in SETI practice. As an example of the new approach, we consider the effects of the observed metallicity and temperature gradients in the Milky Way on the spatial distribution of hypothetical advanced extraterrestrial intelligent communities. While, obviously, properties of such communities and their sociological and technological preferences are entirely unknown, we assume that (1) they operate in agreement with the known laws of physics, and (2) that at some point they typically become motivated by a meta-principle embodying the central role of information-processing; a prototype of the latter is the recently suggested Intelligence Principle of Steven J. Dick. There are specific conclusions of practical interest to astrobiological and SETI endeavors to be drawn from coupling of these reasonable assumptions with the astrophysical and astrochemical structure of the spiral disk of our Galaxy. In particular, we suggest that the outer regions of the Galactic disk are most likely locations for advanced SETI targets, and that sophisticated intelligent communities will tend to migrate outward through the Galaxy as their capacities of information-processing increase, for both thermodynamical and astrochemical reasons. However, the outward movement is limited by the decrease in matter density in the outer Milky Way. This can also be regarded as a possible generalization of the Galactic Habitable Zone, concept currently much investigated in astrobiology.

2004

Several assumptions used in the recent review paper on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) by Duric and Field (2003) are critically discussed. New astrobiological results-in particular those on the age distribution of terrestrial planets-enable relaxing of some of these assumptions, which gives further justification to optimism regarding SETI projects.

It is shown that the probability of observing at least one intelligent civilization in the Universe is close to zero. As a consequence the hypothesis of Multiverse is considered. We suggest a new classification of extraterrestrial civilizations (alternative Kardashev’s classification) on intensive rather than extensive grounds.

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