The young researcher believes that more advanced civilizations simply do not notice us, just as we do not notice that we destroyed the anthill during the construction of the road.
Indeed, a paradox: in 54 years of his life, Enrico Fermi managed to invent the world's first atomic reactor, discovered the neutron moderation effect, a whole group of elementary particles (fermions) was named after him, but a casual conversation with colleagues brought him truly planet-wide fame. According to legend, it took place in the spring of 1950 in the cafeteria of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. We have heard stories that the famous physicist saw another opus from the famous cartoonist Alan Dunn in the May 20, 1950 issue of The New Yorker. Here is this picture.
The artist joked about the mysterious loss of street bins in New York. So you and I would have laughed and dispersed, but in the world of science this may turn out to be a reason for enthusiastic disputes. Subsequently, the question asked by Fermi was retold this way and that, but the meaning is the same: if aliens exist, where are they then? Why can't we see them? According to one of the versions, he already knew about the famous Frank Drake equation at that time, although it was officially published only a few years later. The fact is that this formula as a whole showed that, theoretically, planets inhabited by intelligent life should be somewhere.
This is how the Fermi paradox arose. And now we will go through the most interesting of the proposed answers.
Earth is a zoo
They have known about us for a long time, but they prefer to watch unnoticed, like animals in enclosures. Firstly, so as not to frighten, and secondly - in the expectation that we will rise to a higher stage of development, when the contact will make some sense. The author of the hypothesis is the American astronomer John Ball, he expressed it in 1973. In general, this version is consistent with the views of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who believed that humanity is still quite wild and contact with him is like an attempt to make friends with hungry wolves.
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Earth is a unique phenomenon
Studying the question of the origin and development of life on our planet, science comes to the conclusion that for such a prosperous oasis to arise on it, a lot of things had to coincide. And, in fact, it coincided. The planet is at the correct distance from the Sun. But what is there - the solar system itself is in a rather fortunate region of the galaxy, far from the center, because in a dense cluster of stars, some of them sometimes explode and destroy everything that may be alive nearby with a shock wave. Further - the planet has a solid surface plus a metal core, which creates a magnetic field and thereby protects from streams of deadly radiation. The planet has a Moon, which stabilizes the position of the Earth and prevents its axis from wobbling, and without this the climate would change so often and so radically that it would not be life. Based on all this,many scientists consider it practically impossible to find a second such combination in the Universe.
Land - in the wilderness
This is the hypothesis of the Soviet and Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev. It is approximately the following: for a civilization more developed than ours, the area where the solar system is located is completely uninteresting. They build spaceships that allow them to permeate the fabric of spacetime and move to more suitable locations. To more suitable universes. By the way, the scientist was interested in the center of our own galaxy. As you know, it is assumed that there is a supermassive black hole. So, Kardashev asked the question: what if in fact this is the entrance to a wormhole? Then we ourselves could someday go on an incredible journey to the other side of the universe. Or maybe even to another Universe.
Civilization is not for long
We are talking about the Great Filter hypothesis: from time to time, here and there life really does arise, but there are many options for the further development of events - thousands of things can happen and prevent this life from developing at least to our level, not to mention something more … By the way, there are many things that can happen on Earth and end all disputes forever. For example, a nuclear war. The fall of a huge asteroid. Hence the option proposed by the teacher of Kardashev Joseph Shklovsky: an intelligent civilization is a short outbreak in the Universe, its representatives do not have time to find brothers in mind before self-destruction or some other catastrophe.
The whole universe is a big illusion
We remember who remembers what: the film "The Matrix", Pythagoras' reasoning about the illusion of all that exists, an article by the Swedish scientist Nick Bostrom. All this, in fact, is about one thing: we live in a simulation - an artificially created reality, and there are no other civilizations on the horizon simply because it is not included in the "computer program". By the way, in a sense, this is combined with religious ideas about the creation of the world: there must be a "developer"!
And finally, we turn to the new version, which was expressed by the then future scientist, a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, Alexander Berezin. Recently, abroad again remembered his scientific article published in 2018. Later, an updated version of it appeared.
Let's try to briefly retell what is most important in it.
First, extraterrestrial intelligent beings may turn out to be so unlike us that we may not even notice each other. This is reminiscent of the statement of the head of the SETI project Seth Shostak: "The clicker bugs in my garden do not even suspect that they are surrounded by intelligent beings." According to Berezin, the variety of theoretically possible forms of life is simply enormous - only this does not mean that they are easy to detect.
And second (and, perhaps, most importantly) - any civilization, according to the logic of things, should strive to accumulate resources and seize territories. And this means a predatory strategy: the more highly developed someone inevitably appropriates new worlds for themselves, and if these worlds were inhabited, then an unenviable fate awaits the natives. At the same time, the author emphasized that it is completely unnecessary to consider hypothetical aliens cruel and bloodthirsty: they, again, may simply not pay attention to the modest community of creatures that swarm around on the average planet.
However, later Berezin came to the conclusion that even with the highest development, one might not live to see his brothers in mind. Why? Because of my own greed. The author of the hypothesis suggested that due to the accumulation of incredible amounts of resources and energy, a technologically advanced civilization could collapse into a black hole. Yes, that's right: Alexander Berezin suspects that it is in the vicinity of these mysterious objects that one should look for the wreckage of a once prosperous world.
In addition, the researcher believes that humanity may actually be not in the role of an anthill, but in the role of builders. It is from this perspective that he looks at current plans to colonize Mars.
The author of the hypothesis designated it as follows: “The first to leave, the last to remain”. The first part means: the first to enter outer space and begin the exploration of other worlds. With the second, perhaps, it is understandable. Alexander Berezin believes that any civilization strives for a monopoly and acts according to one rule: only we should be here. Accordingly, she defeats all competitors and in the end is left alone. Today we are striving to occupy empty planets, and tomorrow we will begin to destroy the "insects" - aborigines. Old story.
Author: Adel Romanenkova