Cosmic Myopia: A Perspective On The Fermi Paradox
Introduction: A Sky We Cannot See
To begin, this piece is being published mere months before the James Webb telescope is to be launched. Upon the deployment of said telescope, multiple predictions and analyses here may be proved wrong, or conversely may be utterly validated. Let us place this writing in its time, and enjoy the outcomes.
The Fermi Paradox: The famous Italian creator of the first nuclear reactor Enrico Fermi left us with a question that all wandering thinkers love to answer. Judging by the high probability of its existence, remnants of, direct contact by, and certainly visible activity of alien life should be currently perceived by human civilization. Yet I propose that with particular research and analysis, it becomes clear that humanity has no conceivable means to see evidence of alien life among the stars.
This is due to what we can think of as a civilizational cosmic myopia. Before people developed corrective glasses for natural vision impairment, a person born with high myopic vision would have no way to see another person standing on a hill half a mile away. No means of counting trees afield.
In the following four arguments I look at a sky we cannot see. Thinkers have asked why we don’t witness technological halos around entire galaxies or stars. They have asked why no one has visited us. It seems that the question of the evidence of alien life is tied in our cultural ontology with the validity of its existence. The thought models presented in these four short arguments present a different viewpoint. They make a case for a galaxy teaming with life that is completely invisible to us, and that we are unseen by as well, due to our profound lack of current capability and our distinct infancy in galactic affairs.
Four Arguments
1. Nothing in the Universe Exists in One Location, Intelligent Life is Imminent
There are no categorical phenomena inside our galaxy that appear in a singular proximal location. If something occurs in the galaxy, it occurs in multiple places or across a region simultaneously, with individual variations in each instance. Biological life is based on replicable conditions, and therefore can be assumed to already exist in multiple places. Similarly, the process by which humanity became intelligent did verifiably happen. Thus, intelligent biological life that produces civilization is a validated outcome of life in the galaxy. If a possible outcome has occurred in one place it will be repeated elsewhere. In our galaxy categorical phenomena are iterated across a large territory over a period of time. Intelligent life is generally imminent, as any existent thing in the universe is.
2. Starfaring Civilizations Cannot See Humanity Due to Distance
100,000 years ago humanity was uninteresting general biological life, and would be considered unintelligent by the standard by which contemporary humans judge intelligence. The light from our planet from that time has only reached the other side of the galaxy today. Humanity has been broadcasting radio waves for a meager 100 years. Those radio waves have barely penetrated any territory of the galaxy, a mere 76 stars(1). A civilization 1000 lightyears away that has reached the technological level necessary to detect life on earth would see the non-technological, archaic world of a thousand years ago. The basic concept that if alien life existed, it would have visited modern earth human civilization, is a false equivalency.* Considering the speed of light, evidence of modern earth human civilization doesn’t exist for the vast majority of the geography of the galaxy. Starfaring civilizations cannot see humanity, or count its progress, due to general relativity in relation to their distance.
*It is similar to an individual plankton becoming self aware in the morning and wondering why whales haven’t sent dignitaries by sundown.
(1)http://www.solstation.com/stars3/100-as.htm
3. We Have No Way To See Starfaring Civilizations, Starfaring Civilizations Cannot See Each Other Until a Point in Their Development
Though we may soon, we currently do not possess the technology necessary to clearly see evidence of intelligent alien life on other planets, even if they are very close to us(2,3,4). As of the writing of this passage in early 2021, this is a mostly factual statement. The ability to detect technosignatures that aren’t on the order of size of entire planets and solar systems is fledgling(5) and our ability to map landmasses on other planets is being developed, but its realization is a long way off on multiple fronts. That means that a planet orbiting the nearest star system only 4.3 lightyears away could have an advanced starfaring civilization on it and we would not be able to see a city at night on one of their worlds. We could not read any emanations of their starships unless said ships radiated on the order of magnitude of planets. Note that this is the nearest star system to us, Proxima Centauri, our likely one day first interstellar destination. All other star systems are out of the question. Our concept of technosignatures, and our technology for seeing evidence of extraterrestrials at all, is limited by a very real and extremely severe myopia.
With the concept firmly in mind that current capabilities are too underdeveloped to detect radiation that is not on the order of magnitude of planets and stars, we must accept several interesting realities. Myriad civilizations could and certainly may exist across the entire galaxy at a high rate of interaction and a general organizational level that matches with the majority of our wildest fantastical scientific aspirations and we would not be able to see them. We cannot even directly view planets orbiting other star systems, we rely on measurements of star wobble to detect their presences. Thus, to imagine we could manage to see some awesome construction of alien technology such as a Dyson Sphere is far more fantastical than the proposition of said technology. For now we are reduced to inefficient techniques like reading flickers of radiation and hope to see intervals that indicate stellar-scale tech. These methods carry obvious inadequacies.
This is a reality that analysis often fails to include. Looking up to the sky, one can imagine megastructures and interstellar wars between starfaring civilizations, and has no way to tell if they are there, even with the most powerful and potent tools available to humanity currently. Until a certain level of technological advancement is achieved, all civilizations will have this problem. Furthermore, due to the speed of light, they will be limited from seeing each other until they have existed for a considerable duration of time. For instance, for a civilization to be noticed on the other side of the galaxy it would have to exist for 100,000 years, as that is the length of the galaxy. As civilizations reach the capacity to accurately see each other, it will likely coincide with their existing long enough to have their light reach other planets. Thus, we should assume that regions of galactic geography will become activated all at once, with multiple advanced civilizations becoming aware of each other within a period of time.
(2)https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/luvoir/design/
(3)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pec4CMijEh4
(4)https://physicsworld.com/a/will-we-soon-see-city-lights-glittering-on-distant-planets/
(5)https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/technosignatures-and-the-search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence/
4. Proposition of Irrelevance of the Question.
Due to the effects of the inverse square law(6), radio wave broadcasts from us or from alien civilizations at broad range will decay too rapidly to come across as anything but static unless extremely powerful, and may produce unintelligibilities even if decipherable in the long run. If there is no way for humanity to see alien life unless it comes close, and since humanity has only propagated technological radiation for the past hundred years, meaning aliens cannot see us unless they come within 100 years of the planet and look at it, then the fact that aliens haven’t been more widely detected is rendered tangential to whether they exist. The theories that arise from “answers” to Fermi’s question, such as it being dangerous to communicate (as in Cixin Liu’s Dark Forest), to the tendency of life to destroy itself, to the earth being anomalous, are all non sequitur. We have no method to see aliens far more advanced than us that are ten thousand lightyears away, or even just ten lightyears away. They could be everywhere, right before our eyes, yet our eyes are out of focus. The current mode of discourse is functionally irrelevant. Regardless of what exists out there, we cannot detect it.
Imminent Galactic Sociology and The Responsibility of Civilization
In my opinion it is inevitable that intelligent alien life exists because intelligent earthbound life exists. Therefore, live long enough and explore enough geography and alien life will be discovered. Galactic sociology, the interaction of civilizations in the galaxy as a whole, is imminent. The only question then becomes whether or not humanity will live long enough to develop the technology that it needs to see alien life, and whether it can solve the problems of distance, and of its own megaculture, needed to interact with such life successfully.
