![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Papers on the Fermi Paradox, aka "the universe is huge and old, space is transparent, colonization doesn't seem that hard, where are all the aliens or signs of their existence?"
http://www.kschroeder.com/weblog/the-deepening-paradox/
Karl Schroeder linking to the next paper, and briefly mentioning his own idea of Rewilding, that advanced technology for some reason ends up looking like nature.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...111.6131v1.pdf
13 page PDF by Keith Wiley, "The Fermi Paradox, Self-Replicating Probes, and the Interstellar Transportation Bandwidth", reviewing the potential impact of SRPs and flaws in various arguments against them, including Landis's percolation model, and Sagan's "mutations would be just too dangerous". Percolation stoppage requires unrealistic assumptions, and modern tech shows that we can reduce viable error rates to very low levels. For that matter, the number of replications in our own bodies is at least comparable to that involved in sweeping a galaxy -- he actually cites a much higher number, 10,000 trillion -- without having all that many cancers.
Comments to the blog post include David Brin pointing out that his 1983 review paper on the Great Silence is online:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983QJRAS..24..283B
27 page PDF, oldie but goodie. Modifies the Drake Equation, as does Wiley.
Me, I've long been in the camp of what Brin calls the Uniqueness Hypothesis, allied with the Anthropic Principle. Someone has to be first, and if von Neumann probes can sweep the galaxy easily, then the first can be the last. If we get as far as being able to envision such probes, probably no one else has yet, and we will. Unless we do ourselves in first, but that sort of thing doesn't help the number of aliens be larger than 0 either. As for why we might be first: planets are common, and life might be fast to develop where it can (but see Hanson on hard steps), but *stable* planets might be a lot rarer; we could be unusual in not having had total mass extinctions. Or human level intelligence is rare. Or industrial civilization -- heck, humans were around for maybe 90,000 years without developing agriculture; why?
( Other papers )
( How long? calculations )
http://www.kschroeder.com/weblog/the-deepening-paradox/
Karl Schroeder linking to the next paper, and briefly mentioning his own idea of Rewilding, that advanced technology for some reason ends up looking like nature.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...111.6131v1.pdf
13 page PDF by Keith Wiley, "The Fermi Paradox, Self-Replicating Probes, and the Interstellar Transportation Bandwidth", reviewing the potential impact of SRPs and flaws in various arguments against them, including Landis's percolation model, and Sagan's "mutations would be just too dangerous". Percolation stoppage requires unrealistic assumptions, and modern tech shows that we can reduce viable error rates to very low levels. For that matter, the number of replications in our own bodies is at least comparable to that involved in sweeping a galaxy -- he actually cites a much higher number, 10,000 trillion -- without having all that many cancers.
Comments to the blog post include David Brin pointing out that his 1983 review paper on the Great Silence is online:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983QJRAS..24..283B
27 page PDF, oldie but goodie. Modifies the Drake Equation, as does Wiley.
Me, I've long been in the camp of what Brin calls the Uniqueness Hypothesis, allied with the Anthropic Principle. Someone has to be first, and if von Neumann probes can sweep the galaxy easily, then the first can be the last. If we get as far as being able to envision such probes, probably no one else has yet, and we will. Unless we do ourselves in first, but that sort of thing doesn't help the number of aliens be larger than 0 either. As for why we might be first: planets are common, and life might be fast to develop where it can (but see Hanson on hard steps), but *stable* planets might be a lot rarer; we could be unusual in not having had total mass extinctions. Or human level intelligence is rare. Or industrial civilization -- heck, humans were around for maybe 90,000 years without developing agriculture; why?
( Other papers )
( How long? calculations )