• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Why Haven't Aliens Contacted Us Yet? (Fermi Paradox)

The Transcension Hypothesis:

"The transcension hypothesis proposes that a universal process of evolutionary development guides all sufficiently advanced civilizations into what may be called 'inner space,' a computationally optimal domain of increasingly dense, productive, miniaturized, and efficient scales of space, time, energy, and matter, and eventually, to a black-hole-like destination," Smart explained in a 2012 paper.

An old idea I think it may have been mentioned in The Great Silence by Milan Cirkovic that @SimonBurchell posted about but I can't find any other reference to it.

Article here:

https://www.iflscience.com/the-tran...-explain-why-we-havent-yet-found-aliens-72740
 
The transcension hypothesis is quite common in science fiction. Iain M. Banks called it Subliming, and any civilisation that Sublimes has very little contact with the civilisations left behind in real space.

I am sometimes quite optimistic that a form of transcension is possible in the real world - transcension to a tailor-made or artificially designed baby universe, with effectively unlimited opportunities for energy, living room and processing power might be so attractive that entire alien civilisations might vanish very quickly. If these civilisations vanish behind an event horizon of some sort (such as a supermassive black hole) then there may be no possibility of further contact. Fermi Paradox solved.

On the other hand, jumping into a black hole is a great leap of faith - there might be monsters in there.
 
eburacum said:
The transcension hypothesis is quite common in science fiction. Iain M. Banks called it Subliming, and any civilisation that Sublimes has very little contact with the civilisations left behind in real space.

I am sometimes quite optimistic that a form of transcension is possible in the real world - transcension to a tailor-made or artificially designed baby universe, with effectively unlimited opportunities for energy, living room and processing power might be so attractive that entire alien civilisations might vanish very quickly. If these civilisations vanish behind an event horizon of some sort (such as a supermassive black hole) then there may be no possibility of further contact. Fermi Paradox solved.

On the other hand, jumping into a black hole is a great leap of faith - there might be monsters in there.
Click to expand...
Isn't that what the Heechee didinFred Pohl's Heechee saga?
 
The Earth is around 4.5 billion years old.
The conditions were conducive to the "primordial soup" forming remarkably soon, with the earliest micro-organisms that have left any trace, dating to around 3.7 billion years ago. Life stayed like that for a very, VERY, VERY long time, with macroscopic multicellular life only making its presence felt from around 600 million years ago.
There are planets older than The Earth but, unless conditions are absolutely optimal, life would either never have started there or would have remained at the microbial level.
The universe may well be absolutely teeming with life, but I suspect the vast majority of it is nothing more advanced than pond scum, which would struggle to construct and fly interstellar craft.
 
Why would aliens be recognisable as aliens? If they come, then either they could look so unlike anything we'd recognise that we wouldn't know they were an alien (think light energy/wind form etc) or so like us that we wouldn't know they were an alien. I mean, if they've got FTL drive tech then they aren't going to need come to us like the equivalent of British People In Spain (ie, sticking out like sore thumbs), surely?
 
There is a lot to think about here. Yes, aliens could be very alien, and we might not be able to recognise them in their natural form. I'm impressed with some of Stephen Baxter's fictional aliens, especially the Qax (structured puddles of boiling mud) and the Xeelee (sentient flaws in spacetime). Nothing that we are familiar with there.

But if these superintelligent and very exotic aliens chose to interact with us, they could presumably manufacture human avatars which would appear unremarkable to our eyes; no need to look like Mothman or Grays, they could look like your next-door neighbour.

However, the fact that an alien civilisation has FTL drive doesn't necessarily imply that they are advanced in other respects, or that they are in the least concerned about blending in with human society. They might even relish conflict and causing confusion.
dr quinch.png
 
Sorry folks, this thread is redundant and Fermi can eat his hat as we were contacted in 2019*:

"According to the (ret) head of a pan European radio telescope project, an extraterrestrial signal was detected 11 light years away in 2019. He told me, we are in regular contact with the aliens. Is this true? How would we speak in real time to an ET, 11 light yers away? maybe with Quantum Tunneling Communication. Some of this story makes sense, other bits are pure science fiction. Is this the BIG reveal we have all been waiting for, or is it just bollocks?"


*alledgedly
 
eburacum said:
There is a lot to think about here. Yes, aliens could be very alien, and we might not be able to recognise them in their natural form. I'm impressed with some of Stephen Baxter's fictional aliens, especially the Qax (structured puddles of boiling mud) and the Xeelee (sentient flaws in spacetime). Nothing that we are familiar with there.

But if these superintelligent and very exotic aliens chose to interact with us, they could presumably manufacture human avatars which would appear unremarkable to our eyes; no need to look like Mothman or Grays, they could look like your next-door neighbour.

However, the fact that an alien civilisation has FTL drive doesn't necessarily imply that they are advanced in other respects, or that they are in the least concerned about blending in with human society. They might even relish conflict and causing confusion.
View attachment 74340
Click to expand...
I dunno, I reckon the ability to engineer a FTL drive would make them pretty advanced. Beyond wearing weird suits and piloting ships that look like something out of a 50's sci fi film anyway. As to blending in, I suppose it would depend on why they were here? If to study Earth and its inhabitants, then blending in would be almost mandatory. If it's just as (as Douglas Adams said) to strut up and down making 'beep beep' noises, then why appear humanoid? Why not appear as something so utterly outlandish - a talking chicken? An enormous naked green facsimile of Malcolm Muggeridge?
 

Can Starship-Like Rockets Escape Habitable Exoplanets​


"Our interstellar probes will be defunct and constitute space trash once they exit the outer boundary of the Oort cloud and venture into interstellar space in about 10,000 years. The above-mentioned numbers suggest that we are more likely to find in our backyard chemically-propelled trash from extraterrestrial civilizations than were born near Sun-like stars rather than dwarf stars.

Given the depth of their gravitational pit, intelligent alien species near dwarf stars may use alternative means of propulsion, such as light sails, nuclear engines, or novel orbits with gravity assist."

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/can-sta...kets-escape-habitable-exoplanets-e2515de73c0f
 
Paul_Exeter said:

Can Starship-Like Rockets Escape Habitable Exoplanets​


"Our interstellar probes will be defunct and constitute space trash once they exit the outer boundary of the Oort cloud and venture into interstellar space in about 10,000 years. The above-mentioned numbers suggest that we are more likely to find in our backyard chemically-propelled trash from extraterrestrial civilizations than were born near Sun-like stars rather than dwarf stars.

Given the depth of their gravitational pit, intelligent alien species near dwarf stars may use alternative means of propulsion, such as light sails, nuclear engines, or novel orbits with gravity assist."

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/can-sta...kets-escape-habitable-exoplanets-e2515de73c0f
Click to expand...
According to NASA, both Voyager probes are already in interstellar space.
 
SimonBurchell said:
According to NASA, both Voyager probes are already in interstellar space.
Click to expand...
This stumped me but it seems it is the heliosphere they have both exited and are now in the Oort cloud;

"The Oort Cloud is the most distant region in our solar system, and it's jaw-droppingly far away, extending perhaps one-quarter to halfway from our Sun to the next star."

"In 1950, astronomer Jan Oort proposed that certain comets come from a vast, extremely distant spherical shell of icy bodies surrounding the solar system. This giant swarm of objects, now named the Oort Cloud, occupies space at a distance between 5,000 and 100,000 astronomical units."

So I leant something new today

https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/oort-cloud/facts/#:~:text=If those distances are difficult,edge for maybe 30,000 years.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Sorry folks, this thread is redundant and Fermi can eat his hat as we were contacted in 2019*:

"According to the (ret) head of a pan European radio telescope project, an extraterrestrial signal was detected 11 light years away in 2019. He told me, we are in regular contact with the aliens. Is this true? How would we speak in real time to an ET, 11 light yers away? maybe with Quantum Tunneling Communication. Some of this story makes sense, other bits are pure science fiction. Is this the BIG reveal we have all been waiting for, or is it just bollocks?"


*alledgedly
Click to expand...
I just finished watching on Netflix 3 Body Problem and it's a warning from the Aliens that they are coming to Earth but it will take them XXX years or something like that.
 
Last edited:
It would be amazing if we did ever establish contact with another planet but I can imagine the powers that be would not be too keen to let the cat out of the bag
 
Robbrent said:
It would be amazing if we did ever establish contact with another planet but I can imagine the powers that be would not be too keen to let the cat out of the bag
Click to expand...

I can imagine two scenarios that would invite a world wide cover up:

Where the aliens told us, and had proof, that they were behind all the religions of the world which were their attempt at getting us to be nice or to manipulate us. The reactions from the leaders of the world religions and some of their followers would cause chaos.

Where the aliens told the governments of the world that they are not interested in sharing any tech and they would do with us collectively and as individuals what they liked when they liked - and made it evident that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

Back engineering a really advanced tech would be incredibly difficult. Imagine, the Wright brothers, Tommy Sopwith or Anthony Fokker in the first two decades of the 20th century trying to make sense of an F117 Nighthawk. Needs a computer to fly it (What's that?) Is invisible to radar (What's that?) Has jet engines (Whoa! They make my 80hp Le Rhone rotary look a bit feeble) That's just over 100 years of tech designed by humans - unless you buy in to some of that being back engineered which I'd argue means it wasn't that far in advance of us.
 
Tunn11 said:
I can imagine two scenarios that would invite a world wide cover up:

Where the aliens told us, and had proof, that they were behind all the religions of the world which were their attempt at getting us to be nice or to manipulate us. The reactions from the leaders of the world religions and some of their followers would cause chaos.

Where the aliens told the governments of the world that they are not interested in sharing any tech and they would do with us collectively and as individuals what they liked when they liked - and made it evident that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

Back engineering a really advanced tech would be incredibly difficult. Imagine, the Wright brothers, Tommy Sopwith or Anthony Fokker in the first two decades of the 20th century trying to make sense of an F117 Nighthawk. Needs a computer to fly it (What's that?) Is invisible to radar (What's that?) Has jet engines (Whoa! They make my 80hp Le Rhone rotary look a bit feeble) That's just over 100 years of tech designed by humans - unless you buy in to some of that being back engineered which I'd argue means it wasn't that far in advance of us.
Click to expand...
I don't think there could ever be a 'world wide cover up'. Too many people would be only too keen to give away (or, more likely, sell) the secret. It would be almost impossible to keep EVERYONE quiet who found out about it.
 
Not everyone agrees that there has been no contact.

The History Channel ran an old interview with Ex-Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer who stated that non humans and UFOs have cataloged all the nuclear facilities on planet earth.

Paul believed UFOs would be friendly and stop an all out nuclear war.

I hope he was correct !
 
Not alive today, Paul Hellyer served the Canadian government in different positions for many years.

I think this person would not say things about UFOs erroneously.
 
When alive, Paul Hellyer was the longest serving member of the Canadian Queen’s Privy Council which supposedly is a high honor.

I would say someone like this is not uneducated beside being an engineer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top