The unimaginable size of the Universe has long led scientists to believe in an almost endless abundance of worlds inhabited in it. If so, where is everything? In general, this is the whole essence of the so-called Fermi paradox - a perplexing scientific anomaly indicating the absence of visible traces of the activities of alien civilizations that should have settled throughout the Universe over billions of years of their development. There are several billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone, according to various estimates, but we still have not found any signs of the existence of aliens. Why actually?
The paradox formulated several decades ago has puzzled more than one generation of scientists and thinkers. It has been hypothesized that the aliens are simply "sleeping", thus showing no signs of their activity. Others suggested that the technological development of extraterrestrial civilizations was hampered by some incomprehensible factors. Or maybe they just do not want to communicate with us and carefully hide their presence?
However, theoretical physicist Alexander Berezin of the National Research University "Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology" has his own opinion about why we are still alone in the universe. In a work titled “First in, last out”, a preprint of which is on the arXiv.org website and awaiting evaluation by other scientists, Berezin offers his solution to the Fermi paradox. Berezin himself calls it "trivial, not possessing any contradictory assumptions," but at the same time, "difficult to accept, since it predicts the future that awaits our own civilization. And this future will be more terrible than extinction."
In his work, Berezin notes that the main problem of the previously proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox is related to the fact that they all too narrow the possible range of types of extraterrestrial life.
"Some specific nature of civilizations reaching the interstellar level should not be taken into account at all, since it does not play any role," says Berezin.
"They can be biological organisms, like us, for example, or artificial intelligences that rebelled against their creators, or generally the quintessence of the collective intelligence of the planetary level, like the one described by Stanislav Lem in Solaris."
But even with this diversity, we still do not see any signs of the existence of other civilizations in the vastness of space. Nevertheless, according to Berezin, the only parameter that must be taken into account to solve the paradox - from the point of view of defining extraterrestrial life - is our ability to detect the existence of this life.
“The only variable that we are able to objectively measure is, perhaps, at what distance we are able to determine the existence of life in space from Earth,” says Berezin.
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"For simplicity, let's call this parameter A."
If an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization, for some reason, could not achieve the required "parameter A" - did not develop ways of interstellar travel, communication methods, or other ways to demonstrate its existence to the rest of the cosmos - it will still exist, but will not help us in solving the paradox …
The real solution to the Fermi paradox, proposed by Berezin, follows a rather grim scenario.
“Actually, why are we so sure that the first living species, which has reached the possibility of interstellar travel, will not destroy all the“competing”civilizations discovered on its way for the sake of its further expansion?” Berezin asks.
Readers familiar with Douglas Adams' novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy may remember the incident that laid the foundation for the entire plot. There, one kind of very highly evolved aliens decided to lay an intergalactic highway right through where our Earth is, not really caring about life that may exist on it.
Berezin explains that this is just an assumption. The scientist notes that a highly developed civilization can destroy other living forms not consciously at all. Literally without even knowing it.
“They can do it completely by accident and not even notice it. We also do not notice how we destroy the same anthill during the construction of the road? We don't even think about it."
No, Berezin does not say that we are ants and the reason why we have not yet found extraterrestrial civilizations is that they have not yet decided to build a new road through us. On the contrary, the scientist believes that in the future we ourselves will become the destroyers of worlds that we are looking for all this time.
"If we assume that the proposed hypothesis is correct, what future awaits us?"
“The only solution would be to turn to the anthropic principle. We will be the first to enter the interstellar level. And, most likely, the last ones to end their existence."
Again, such a potential destruction of all life along the path of expansion does not have to be designed and organized in advance - it may be the result of a larger system - something that defies any attempts to control the process.
As an example, Berezin cites capitalism of free competition, and as another - artificial intelligence, not limited by the power granted to him.
“Just one evil AI will potentially be able to populate an entire supercluster with copies of itself, turning each solar system into a kind of collective supercomputer. And here there is even no point in asking why he should do it,”says Berezin.
"The answer will be obvious: because he can."
According to Berezin, we can become winners in deadly competition, in which we do not even suspect taking part. Moreover, we are the answer to the paradox. It is we, our species, who will populate the entire Universe, destroying everything that comes along the way. It is impossible to exclude this possibility, Berezin believes, since to stop this process "it will take the existence of forces much greater than simple free will."
Berezin himself admits that he really hopes that he is mistaken in his assumption.
"The only way to find out the truth is to continue exploring the universe in the hope of finding another life," says the scientist.
Although from all of the above, some will probably conclude that now this may not be the wisest way to proceed.
Nikolay Khizhnyak