Supporters of the existence of alien life forms put forward a large number of arguments in defense of this theory, but, despite their abundance, humanity still does not even have indirect evidence of these statements. In the scientific world, this situation is called the Fermi paradox and naturally raises similar questions: "Are we really alone?" and "Why are they silent?"
In recent years, the hypothesis has become widespread, according to which extraterrestrial civilizations have chosen for themselves a temporary state of hibernation, in which they must wait for changes in the global space situation, and after that they will awaken again and return to the main positions in the Universe. The reason for this decision is the too high temperature of outer space for highly developed life forms that have entered a new stage in their evolutionary development and have managed to achieve a technological singularity. The result of these processes was their transition to the state of digital entities. Hibernation has become a necessary choice that will help them survive the difficult time period in cosmic development and wait for a colder period. A description of this study was published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.
Aliens from the digital world?
The idea that one of the stages of global evolution is entering a computerized form of existence is gaining more and more support from futurists, astrobiologists and experts from the SETI Institute (an organization that studies the origin of life in the Universe). This form of being even received its own designation - "datatism". But for the life support of electronic postbiological entities, both super-powerful computers and effective means for processing information are required.
The authors of the hypothesis, which are Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong, argue that the choice of highly developed digital cultures was due to the need to conserve their resources. For such civilizations, the issue of cooling huge storage servers should be very relevant. Also, do not forget that lowering the temperature increases the data transfer rates. Perhaps it was the last factor that prompted them to hibernate and wait for a significant cooling of the universe.
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According to the calculations of SETI specialists, for the civilization described above, the current temperature of the background radiation, which is equal to 3 degrees Kelvin, is very high. In the future, when the current environment changes irrevocably and background radiation disappears, and this should happen in a few trillion years, the data transfer rates will increase more than 1000 times.
Can these civilizations be found now?
Researchers name the signs by which one can find "sleeping" civilizations. In their opinion, these should be processes that run counter to natural astrophysical phenomena. It is worth paying attention to stars in which their mass does not convert into energy, as well as those in which the transition to black holes is blocked. In this series, it is worth mentioning the galactic winds, which are losing part of their reserves in the galaxy, and the absence of galactic collisions.
A more radical way to find civilizations sleeping in space is also proposed. In this case, it is proposed to initiate processes that can bring them out of their sleep state. It is assumed that digital cultures, before entering the state of cybernation, had to take care of their security and create a certain system of protection. It is a very risky task for humanity to irritate these protective complexes. One can only guess what kind of reaction such actions will cause?
Pros and cons
The proposed hypothesis of hibernation, although it explains the Fermi paradox and the reason for the silence of the Universe, still has its drawbacks and enough opponents. One such critic is SETI Institute specialist David Brin, who directly points out the weaknesses in the concept proposed by Sandberg and his associates.
It is not clear to him how a highly developed civilization could create a super-powerful computer, and then suddenly decided to wait for colder times. After all, they had to understand that they were losing a lot of potential opportunities for creative activity during the warm Universe. He also compared such actions with the creation of the most modern and fastest spaceships, but only in a single copy.
Sandberg responds to such attacks on the hibernation hypothesis by saying that even advanced civilizations have to make difficult choices when talking about limited resources. If on the eve of a holiday, when the prices for pastries are too high, you can buy only a small piece of cake, then most likely you decide to wait a few days, and after the reduction you will get a whole cake.
Such civilizations would not be able to significantly increase their efficiency in a warm era, even if they decided to do so, they had to sacrifice their future.
However, such arguments do not at all satisfy Brin, who believes that the choice of hibernation for the survival of entire civilizations is directly related to enormous risks. After all, the choice of datatism instead of the physical world might not be to the taste of all aliens. Some of them may have used hibernation in order to simply destroy this culture.
It is worth clarifying that in the process of the development of the cybernation hypothesis and its discussion, the final point has not yet been set. Research in this direction continues, and according to Sandbreerg, in the future, such a strategy may become essential for the human race. But at the moment, she is only trying to find an answer to the Fermi paradox.
Sergey Cheryshev