Quote:
Originally Posted by Slappin Fish
Bacteria was just an example. binoculars and a pack of dogs works just the same.
My personal objection to the Fermi paradox is his "we would have found evidence" statement. any civilization capable of observing earth would have to be MILLIONS of years more advanced than ours, it's a bit presumptuous to think we have the mental capacity to even begin to understand their technology or that we can detect them with our shitty radio emissions.
Hanson's list is a slightly different debate...anyway... interesting questions  |
Fermi's Paradox-->great filter-->Hanson's list
c&p'ed (again, not claiming to be smart enough to make these conclusions on my own, but I am picking sides ;-)
There is no reliable evidence aliens have visited Earth and we have observed no intelligent extraterrestrial life with current technology nor has SETI found any transmissions from other civilizations. The Universe, apart from the Earth, seems "dead"; Hanson states:
Our planet and solar system, however, don't look substantially colonized by advanced competitive life from the stars, and neither does anything else we see. To the contrary, we have had great success at explaining the behavior of our planet and solar system, nearby stars, our galaxy, and even other galaxies, via simple "dead" physical processes, rather than the complex purposeful processes of advanced life.
Life is expected to expand to fill all available niches. With technology such as self-replicating spacecraft, these niches would include neighbouring star systems and even, on longer time scales which are still small compared to the age of the universe, other galaxies. Hanson notes, "If such advanced life had substantially colonized our planet, we would know it by now."