There are a great many scenarios for the development of human civilization. We have selected the most, in our opinion, scary and amusing:
1. Fake vacuum
In short, according to this scientific theory, our Universe, being part of another even larger Universe, is now in a state of a temporal phase.
If we imagine everything in the form of a single image, then the big Universe is a pot of boiling water, and our Universe is one of the small bubbles that form at the bottom.
As a result, sooner or later, the bubble will still reach the surface of the water (even if it will take it for billions of years) and our entire world, along with everything we knew, will disappear overnight without any warning, and we will be unable to do anything with to do it.
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2. Great filter
A theory put forward in 1996 by Robin D. Henson offers an answer to the question: If there is life elsewhere in the universe, why haven't we discovered it yet? She claims that somewhere in the Universe between the planets where there is no life yet, and the planets with a developed civilization, there is a certain Great Filter - unknown factors that prevent the emergence of life or destroy it on the planets falling under their influence.
These factors either destroy the planet as such, or destroy life on it. This means that humanity falls under one of three development scenarios:
- We are an exception - our planet has already passed through the Great Filter, but for some reason, life was not destroyed.
- We are first. This version implies that the conditions in our universe have only now become favorable for the development of highly developed life that can inhabit other planets.
“We haven't reached the absorber yet. In this case, everything is very sad and the discovery of life on Mars or Europe will be just disgusting news, because it will mean that the meeting with the Great Filter is still ahead.
3. Brain in a container
This theory is often used to describe experiments aimed at identifying specific features of our understanding of knowledge, reality, truth, reason and meaning. She admits that:
- the brain is the source of our consciousness;
- the brain functions using electrical impulses;
- external stimuli can affect the brain;
- any external stimulus can be simulated to some extent artificially so that the brain cannot distinguish an artificially created external stimulus from a real one.
The most interesting thing is that according to this theory, you yourself can be a "brain in a container." And all life around you is nothing more than an artificially simulated reality.
The philosophical school of Solipsism has quite interesting views and to some extent reveals this concept.
4. Highly evolved creatures from another dimension
Imagine if there was a special kind of person whose life would take place exclusively in 2D format.
We could just watch them from above and they wouldn't even know. Existing exclusively in 2D space, they would not have imagined how someone could look at them from above.
Now imagine a person living in 4D space. He can observe us from his 4-dimensional world, and we will never understand this. They may be right behind us and we will never know, we will never know.
Just as we could interact with a person from the 2D dimension, so they could interact with us. But until they themselves want it, we will never even know about their existence.
Carl Sagan's Flatland Theory explains very well this concept of creatures living in another dimension (and much more).
5. The Fermi paradox
You may have heard about this. Imagine an anthill in the middle of a forest. And right next to the anthill, we are building a huge 10-lane highway. And here's the question: will the ant understand what a 10-lane highway is like?
Will the ants understand his technology and the intentions of the creatures building this highway next to their anthill? That's just it. Likewise, we can not only catch signals from the mysterious Planet X, but, quite likely, we will not understand what kind of organisms live on it, and what they do.
They are as far from us as we are from ants. And even if one day they want to teach us their technology, it will be tantamount to explaining the phenomenon of the Internet to ants.
When Francisco Pizarro went to conquer Peru, did he stop at an anthill to socialize? Was he so generous that he helped ants build an anthill? Did he put off achieving his goal in order to destroy the anthill?
Or is the whole story with the anthill - sheer nonsense and would never have interested Pizarro? Here we have the same situation.